Chapter 1 Becoming Lexie

After a long drive up from my former home in the English Midlands, I arrived at Manor Lodge on the outskirts of the village of St John’s Chapel in Upper Weardale in County Durham. In some ways it was a new home for me, but in others I was just coming back to my roots.

I had been researching my ancestry and had found that my family for several generations back to the 1700s had lived and farmed in the area. Further investigations showed it to be a remote area set among the rolling slopes of the Pennine Hills. as I was looking to relocate anyway, I checked out the local property market and could not believe my eyes when I saw Manor Lodge up for sale, my great grandparents and two generations before them had lived there. It just drew me to it and I decided that fate had decreed that would be my next move.

The Lodge had been well maintained but was badly in need of a good clean and redecoration and for the next few days my time was spent washing down and freshening up the paintwork, painting over most of the dated wallpaper, which would have to be replaced eventually, but would do for the time being, and moving in what little furniture I had decided to bring with me.

With all the work that was needed I just carried on through the days, barely stopping for food and drink. i just wanted to get the place in order and be able to relax instead of sitting amongst turmoil.

Friday evening I decided that I needed a rest and made my way to the Maltby Arms down in the village to get a decent meal. It was a pleasant enough country pub and the food on the menu looked to be tasty and wholesome. It seemed to be the haunt of a lot of local regulars who were all sitting or standing around in their little social groups.

“ Hi, we’ve not seen you in here before, are you visiting?” the barmaid/waitress asked as she brought over my pint of local bitter and waited to take my order for food.

“ No, I’ve just moved in to Manor Lodge and hope to be here for a long time. I’m Alexander Robson, but everyone calls me Leckie.”

“ That’s a fine local name, Robson, there are a few of us around here up in the dale, I’m Julie Robson, or used to be, I am now Julie Marshal, and this is my pub.”

“ Pleased to meet you Julie, you never know we may even be related, my family are from this area several generations ago.”

“ I have been checking up my family tree too, maybe we ought to get together and compare notes some time. Anyway, people are waiting to be served, so I better get back to the bar. I hope to see you again.”

Julie seemed pleasant enough and friendly, and the opportunity to get even more information for my family tree seemed too good to be true. I resolved that I would have a look at the other pubs and hotels locally, but would definitely come back here again.

I had used up what little food supplies I had brought with me and needed to find a decent shop. It turned out that the only places locally were small convenience shops with high prices and a limited range but there was a Farmers Market on Saturday morning not too far way which served to get enough fresh stuff to keep me going. As I was leaving i bumped into Julie from the pub.

“ Hi Julie, what do you do for grocery shopping around here, there’s not a lot of choice in the village?”

“ You can go into Bishop Auckland, there a couple of supermarkets there, but it’s a bit of a drive, I get weekly deliveries brought out to me from online orders. You pay for delivery but it’s not much more than the cost of petrol to get there, If I were you that’s what I would do. I use the local shop for anything small or if I run out of stuff, but for a big weekly or monthly shop go online and order. It’s the same if you need anything DIY for doing the house up, it’s a lot easier to get it delivered.”

I took her advice and rather than waste the rest of the day driving over to Auckland, I was able to spend the time usefully working on the house.

By Tuesday, i had got the house in a fit state to live in and relax, I’d got my grocery delivery and had stocked the cupboards and freezer and was able to think about getting a bit of social life again. When i was in the Maltby Arms the previous week I had seen a notice that Tuesday was Quiz Night and decided to go and see how challenging it would be.

Most of the regulars seemed to have their own groups so I just decided to sit at the bar and work solo and see how I would get on. Julie was not working behind the bar, but was sitting with friends taking part in the quiz, the bar was being tended by what I found to be her husband Kelvin, who was acting as quizmaster for the night.

After ten rounds and two ‘refresh your glasses’ breaks it was all over, and I thought that I had done reasonably well.

“In third place are the ‘Robson Lasses’, at which Julie and her friends all gave a large cheer, in second place “ The Maltby Misfits’, and in first place, a clear winner, is Mr solo at the bar here, Leckie Robson. At which point Julie rushed over, grabbed the prize of a large bottle of gin, presented it to me, gave me a congratulatory kiss and took my hand.’’Come over and meet the rest of the Robson clan.”

“ Girls this is Alexander, or Leckie as he prefers, who may or may not be a distant long-lost relative, but anyway he is a Robson, Leckie these are my sisters Jane and Jeanette, and our cousin Josie. I have a brother Jason too, but he is away in the army and does not come home very often.” I smiled a hello at them all and thought that I hope we are relatives, it looks like a fine gene pool to come from.

“ We saw you at the bar, signing in to take part in the quiz and I was going to invite you over to join us, but the rules are teams with a maximum of four people only, but you didn’t need any help from us.”

“Look, I am not a great gin drinker, If I’m not interrupting anything why not go and get some tonic and ice, I’ll join you and you can help me get rid of some of it.”

Julie was off like a shot, quickly coming back with five clean glasses, a bucket of ice and a bowl of lemon slices. By the time we all left Julie and Kelvin to clean up after everyone, I had learned a lot about the Robson clan and had lost a lot of my prize bottle of gin to the ‘Lasses’. I made my way a bit unsteadily back to the Lodge, I was not used to drinking spirits and collapsed on the bed, either into sleep or drunken unconsciousness.

I woke in the morning with a heavy head and a splitting headache and decided that it would not be a good day to work on the house. Either I would damage something, hurt myself, or make a mess, so I just sat down in the garden with a pot of coffee and a plate of toast to try to bring myself back into the world. In a bit of a a daydream I had visions of people in Georgian and Victorian costumes walking up to me, greeting me and smiling, before continuing on their walk.

I was soon up to walking around again and took myself off into the hills to familiarise myself with the lands of my forefathers and many of the vistas gave me a flashback to the background behind the people who I had seen in my daydream. Maybe something deep down in my psyche or genes was being stirred by the conversations with the ‘Lasses’, or maybe it was still the after-effects of the gin.

Now that the house was almost in order, it was time to think about work again. My work as a freelance commercial artist and technical illustrator allowed me to operate from a studio virtually anywhere in the country and, within limits, to my own timescales, as long as I met deadlines from my clients. Most of my commissions were for the exploded view sketches of domestic and gardening equipment that serve as instruction manuals nowadays, which challenged my understanding of the products as well as my artistic ability, paid very well and gave me a comfortable living. As a refuge from this dry artistry, I often indulged in my hobby of painting comic-style, vivid-colour fantasy cartoon stories, which was much more fun and satisfying for the soul.

After I had completed the jobs I was getting paid for, I set up my easels to see what fantasies I could create and just started sketching, still in a bit of a metal haze, just going where the spirits moved me. When I sat back to look at what I had produced, instead my normal ‘Marvel’ or ‘DC’ adventure action scene, I had created a very victorian landscape with two figures, a young man and a young girl, running towards each other, very ‘Cathy and Heathcliffe’ from Wuthering Heights, except instead of the windswept wild Yorkshire moors, It showed the rolling hills above Weardale that I had walked in the morning. This surprised me as landscapes were not really my normal art genre, in my mental haze I had just reproduced what was in my most recent memory.

I put the painting aside on the bench by the door and was just sitting down for a coffee to clear my head when I heard someone approaching the Lodge.

“ We were just worried that you were feeling as hungover and sickly as we are, that gin went down far too easily last night.”

Julie and Jane were standing there with worried looks on their faces so I invited them to come through into the garden to join me in coffee. As they passed through, Jane stopped to have a good look at my new painting.

“What a lovely painting, is that of the hills just up above Wearhead, Middlehope Moor. It looks familiar, and I love the romantic touch of the couple rushing to each other. Did you do that.”

“Let’s sit out in the sunshine, let me get you a drink and I will tell you everything. I went for a walk this morning but not in that direction, just around the Fell above the village. When I came back I was still in a bit of a mental fog from last night and just started painting from my ‘mind’s-eye’ and that’s what turned out. I don’t know where it is, or indeed if it is an actual place.”

“I’m sure that I know where it is, what do you think Julie?”

“You’re right Jane, it is the hills between us and Allenheads, I think Lexie has captured it beautifully.”

“Thank you very much, Julie, but the name is Leckie, not Lexie.”

“Sorry about that , but I think Lexie rolls off the tongue more easily and it has a ring to it, if you don’t mind that is what I would like to call you.”

“With a smile like that you can call me anything you like.”

“Well Lexie, what we were thinking is that you have been researching the history of the Robsons round here, and so have we, let’s put the two family trees together and see if there are links. Not today because I don’t think any of us are thinking clearly, and we will be busy for the rest of the week. We don’t open the pub on Mondays, why not come round then and we can see what we have got.”

“Sounds good to me, I’ll see you then, and thank you for coming round to check on me. If you both like the painting that much, please take it with you, either for Jane for home or for you in the bar, it might give a bit of local interest.”

On Monday morning I arrived at the pub, armed with my laptop with all my ancestry research stored on it and was greeted with a big hug from Julie.

“Glad you’ve made it Lexie, I told Jeanette about your painting and when she came and looked at it she gasped. She ran back to her home and came back with a, bundle of old photos and one of them showed who we think is our great grandmother, Charlotte, when she was young and she looked the spitting image of the girl in the painting. If you did all that from your minds-eye and somewhere deep in your subconscious, your genes must be triggering memories from the past. You are definitely one of the Robsons of St John’s Chapel, let’s open up the computers and prove it.”

I did not take long to show that our great grandmothers had been sisters, making us third-cousins. Julie had found some earlier family members and I had found some different ones, so we were able to fill in the gaps and get leads for another generation back from hints from the website. So I was suddenly re-united with a family I knew very little about and my sense of belonging to Weardale was now even stronger.

After some phone calls Josie and Jeanette soon joined us, Julie told them the news, and the rest of the day was spent telling stories of the different sides of the family and the characters we remembered.

That night back at the Lodge I slept fitfully, my mind was turning over and over all the things I had discovered today. I had dreams involving the various ancestors we had discussed, including my Great Great Aunt Charlotte, the great grandmother of Julie and her sisters. I had a vision of her running across the hills to meet the man who was obviously the love of her life, just as I portrayed in my painting.

Tuesday night I was down at the pub again for the quiz night, but instead of being on my own like last time, Julie called me over.

“Josie can’t make it tonight, so if you don’t mind being one of ‘The Robson Lasses’ you’re more than welcome to join us. I promise that we won’t be drinking like last week, that was way over the top for all of us.” The girls were pleasant company and made me feel part of the family and so we settled down to take part in the quiz. The girls were quite knowledgeable but a lot of times did not have the confidence to write down their gut-feeling answers to the questions asked, which is where I made the difference. My general knowledge was quite broad and even if the answers did not come to me immediately, their suggestions triggered the answers in my head which confirmed their thoughts, and between us we considered that we had done quite well.

In third place are ‘The Rambling Boys’, in second place for the second week running, ‘The Maltby Misfits, the winners, with perfect scores in 8 of the 10 rounds are ‘The Robson Lasses’.

Julie went up to collect our prize from her husband, which this week was a couple of bottles of Prosecco, amidst a light-hearted barrage of ‘fix’ and ‘do you have to be a Robson to win in here’.

“Right girls, oh sorry and Lexie, let’s just share the one bottle and Lexie can take the other home, after all he made the difference to us tonight.

As I was leaving later, I saw that they had hung my painting to the side of the doorway and that it was getting a lot of admiring looks from the other customers, as they came and left.

“If you do any more like this Lexie, use the pub as your gallery, I’m sure that we can sell some of them for you.” Julie said as she gave me and her sisters goodnight hugs and kisses. Having been brought up as an only child it gave me a warm feeling to have someone close that I felt I could rely on.

Over the following days I was quite busy working on my commissions and did not have time for my ‘hobby paintings’, but Friday was warm and calm so I walked to Wearhead and up into the hills where I had captured the image of Great Aunt Charlotte and her companion and drank in the atmosphere. On my return after a long energetic walk I dozed off and woke with a start, rushed to my studio and started to capture the image that I had in my head. When it was competed I sat and looked at it for several minutes contemplating what I had produced.

The scene was similar to the last one but much more close up showing the tears and the haunting look of dejection on Charlotte’s face. This was so far away from the gaudy dynamic action scenes I normally produced, and seemed to come from my soul rather than from my eyes. I was unsure whether to show this to the girls as in a way it was quite depressing, unlike the joy of the two subjects in my first painting.

That night I had even more vivid dreams of Charlotte and her life and how she felt when she was rejected by her lover, and woke up with tears running down my face. I decided that this was becoming an obsession for me and that I needed to talk it through firstly with Julie, then depending on what she thought, following it up with the others.

“That’s a wonderful picture, I can feel the hurt she was experiencing and that is definitely Great Gran Charlotte, I can see bits of my mother in her face, the eyes and the wild raven hair. Are you sure that you haven’t been googling for more images of her and that this is all coming from your mind’s-eye?”

“I am having dreams about her too, as if she had been spurned and had her heart broken. I am not normally a sensitive emotional person, but it is as if she is speaking to me and passing on her feelings. Coming back to where my forebears lived seems to have kicked some genetic memory into my subconscious.”

“Let’s go back to the ancestry site and see if we can get any more details about her, there might be an explanation hidden away. We can look in the electoral registers and parish records to find out who she was living with and who her family were. “

Our research found out that she was not married and was living with her parents when Arthur, Julie’s grandfather, was born and that the birth certificate was blank in the sections for ‘Fathers Name’ and ‘Occupation’. At the time, having children out of wedlock was not uncommon but it was still considered scandalous and the mothers often treated as social outcasts, at least Charlotte’s parents seemed to stand by her.

“I’ve not heard any mention in the family about that, but then it is not something that people of my parent’s and grandparent’s age would talk to their children about. I must visit my Gran Edith, Arthurs wife, and talk to her about this, but she is getting a bit confused now and I don’t want to upset her.”

“What’s past is past Julie, it is good to know your family background, it’s part of who you are, but it’s not worth causing any upset for.”

“Changing the subject completely, Kelvin has been in touch with some other pubs and hotels in the area that do quiz nights and they all want to organise a tournament and maybe even start up a league, are you interested.”

“It’s ok in the Maltby Arms , but having me in a team of ‘The Robson Lasses’ will be at best confusing and could even cause some embarrassing comments.”

“Don’t worry about a little thing like that Lexie, you are man enough to laugh it all off, but I must admit that you have definitely got the Robson genes and could pass as another of my sisters with a bit of makeup and work on your hair, and that’s without even thinking about wearing a skirt or a
dress.”

“ Drop that thought straight away, it’s not going to happen.”

“Have you never thought what it would be like to be a woman instead of a man, most people have at least imagined being the opposite gender at some time in their life, even if it is just when watching films such as ‘Tootsie’, ‘Some like it hot’, ‘Yentl’ or ‘The Danish Girl’.”

“I can honestly say that I have not. Even if I had it would just be a fantasy, there is no way that I could ever pass as a woman.”

“Actually, I think you could, it could be a laugh. When we go to this tournament nobody there will know you. Let me and the girls give you a makeover and find you something to wear and you could really be one of ‘The Robson Lasses’, at least for one night.

“I’d know and I would feel awkward and stupid and it would be obvious that I am a man.”

“ Go on Lexie, please, give it a go, it would really make you part of our family. Let us see what we can do, if you don’t look right, I will drop it and never mention it again, but if you appear ok, you agree to go to the tournament as a woman as my cousin Lexie. After all, you’re already going by a name which is usually taken as a shortened nickname for Alexandra anyway.

Julie called the girls to see if they wanted to take part in the tournament and, as she thought she would be, was one person short. Jeanette could not commit to anything other than a social quiz night at the pub with her sisters. However, along with Jane and Josie she thought that the idea of humiliating me by giving me a makeover would be fun. I stayed there with Julie for the rest of the day until late afternoon when the others turned up. Before they even said anything they were captivated by my painting of Charlotte and they too recognised some of their mothers traits.

Jeanette was the first to show interest. “Is there any chance doing another copy for me, I will pay for your time and materials, I would love to have that on the wall at home, although I am not sure it is right for the public bar. “ and that turned into tour requests for copies

The four of them sat and planned out my transformation as if I wasn’t in the room.

“ I think I can do something with her hair.”

“I’ve got some skirts and tops I don’t wear anymore that will fit her.”

“Shoes might be a problem, although Lexie has quite small feet for a man.”

“I’ve got more make up than I know what to do with, it will do for a trial anyway, but we will have to get her some concealer and the right shade of foundation.”

“And of course she will have to have a good waxing to clean up her skin.”

“Just slow down a minute girls, you are already planning to turn me completely into a female, and even calling me ‘her’ and ‘she”, don’t I get any say in what you are suggesting.”

“No Lexie, you don’t, you agreed to this, we know what we are doing, just go with the flow.”

A week later I was transformed by Julie and Jane, my body was now completely hairless, my hair shampooed conditioned and set in soft waves, my face covered in all sorts of creams and colouring, wearing a bra and panties underneath a scoop-necked sleeveless top which showed of the cleavage formed by breast forms, a mid-thigh flared skirt and sandals with a 2”heel.

“Ok Lexie you can go and look at yourself now and see the result of this morning’s work. What do you think?” Jane asked as she pushed me over to the full-length mirror on my wardrobe.

I was amazed, I was almost indistinguishable from the sisters, although a bit taller and heavier built. I would definitely pass as one of the ‘Robson Lasses’.

“Ok you win girls, I will agree to give it a try at the tournament, now let me get changed back and cleaned up and we can discuss what we will do next week.”

“You must be joking Lexie, you can’t turn up there and expect to just be accepted as a woman, you need to be comfortable in the clothes and in who you are, you need to act, move and even talk like a woman, you need a lot of practice to be able to pull this off. Between now and then, you need to be a woman, continue to wear skirts until you are comfortable in them, get used to how they feel when you sit and move, You need to get used to the breasts you now have and change your posture, you need to get used to walking in heels, even low chunky ones like you are wearing now. In short, between now and then you have to think that you are a woman until it becomes second nature”Julie snapped back at me.

“Is all that really necessary, after all it is just a village pub quiz?”

“As a man you do not think about how you move and react to things, you have to get just as natural as a woman so that you are not constantly thinking about what you are doing, but just getting on with it and going about your daily life. Between now and then you must, to all intents and purposes, be a woman.”

“But what if anyone sees me, what will they think?”

“ If you throw yourself fully into this Lexie, all they will see is another woman. Are you going to do this properly or are we going to just get you cleaned up and forget all about it? We need you on our quiz team as one of the ‘Robson Lasses’, without you there is no chance of us doing well in the tournament.” Jane pleaded.

“ Ok, Ok, I give in, where do we go from here?”

“ First things first, take off your top and the bra, those breast forms sit fine and the size is right , but you need to get used to the weight of them on your chest and how they move, I got the medical adhesive to go with them, for the next week you are going to have breasts 24/7, let’s get them fixed on you properly.”

“They feel strange now, different to when they were just sitting in the bra.”

“ You’ll get used to them , half the population have had to live with them.”

“ Yes, but you adapted to them gradually as they grew, they did not suddenly just appear.”

“ Enough of that. Since you are now living as a woman, we have bought over some clothes to see you through the week, some skirts and tops, underwear, shoes, a couple of coats, and even a few pairs oft trousers for you, but try not to wear them until you get used to the skirts, oh and a bag of cosmetics and creams. You need to practice putting it on yourself, just repeat what we did to you. We’ll leave you to get them all put away and get on with your day. welcome to womanhood Lexie.”

To be continued.

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Authors note:

‘Lasses’ is a common term for ‘girls’ in the North-east counties ( Lasses, not Lassies -that is Scottish). Similarly ‘Pet ‘is commonly used as a term of endearment, much like dear, darling, honey, sweetheart or ducks in other parts of the country,, mostly towards women and young children, but often by women towards their menfolk too. .

Links for further information, click link to open.

St John’s Chapel http://www.discoverweardale.com/explore-weardale/our-village...