Married Life
August 1979 heard Wedding Bells. We were married in a small country church and after the reception headed off for the Lake District for a few days spent walking the Southern Fells round Langdale, Sargeant Man and Wasdale.
The hotel was lovely, overlooking Elterwater and yet another Basil Fawlty type character ran the place. He had us in stitches usually at the expense of one of the other guests.
We had a good start. We did up an old house which we’d picked up for a song - in fact it was so dilapidated we couldn’t get a lender, so my parents loaned us the money until we got it into a fit condition enabling us to get a mortgage.
For the first year I was battling with my two personnas or rather my feminine one. It had prove more difficult to kill off what I came to call Rachel. She’d surface every now and then when I raided my wife’s make-up draw and pulled out that pale blue basque I’d hung onto to which I’d added some knickers and stockings, but no shoes. Opportunities didn’t arise very often for my dressing so a fairly tight lid was kept on it.
However, when you live with someone, and share your intimate thoughts and feelings I found it harder and harder to keep my secret from my wife.
In the end I told her - no preamble, just straight in.
At first she didn’t believe me (she had no idea). Then she asked if I was just saying it because I wanted a divorce.
Slowly it dawned on her that I was in fact telling her the truth. And all the questions came up. Was I Gay? Did I want to change sex? Would I want to go round the house all day in women’s clothes?
She knew I didn’t borrow her clothes because of our size difference, but she no longer wanted me to use her make-up.
After a few days it became apparent without much discussion that this revelation wasn’t going to end in divorce, but neither was Rachel welcomed with open arms. The ground rules were that Rachel (I didn’t adopt that name for quite a few more years to come - see part 4) kept herself to herself, and preferably didn’t get mentioned at all. If I did mention the subject it was discussed and put to one side as quickly as possible. In short there was a toleration policy, but that was as far as it went.
Working in London meant I could go to places like ‘Cover Girl’ and later on ‘Transformation’ where I paid handsomely for my first complete outfit. This consisted of black 4″ inch stilettoes, black stockings, suspenders, waist-clincher, lycra body stocking, lacy black bra and silicone boobs.
I had the good sense to go to a wig shop in Cleveland Street, W1 where I got one of my blonde wigs.
Whilst buying these items to add insult to injury the staff at ‘Transformation’ tried to palm me off with a shop soiled pair of stilettoes costing £65.00! They soon changed their minds after I’d said my little speech in front of a few other embarrassed customers.
After a few more years we started a family and decided to move back up North, same destination as before.
That was 1991. Things carried on pretty much the same way as before except that I was doing a lot more travelling around the country. This gave me the opportunity to visit lots of Tranny shops, and so bits and pieces were added to the ‘Rachel Collection’. But they all still fitted into a suitcase!.
Come 1996 I got into another line of work (still self-employed) and started using the Internet, and that’s where (eventually) Rachel was born - “The internet” years…