Steamy women....

Readers may remember that I have revealed before that I am a volunteer on Britain’s heritage steam railways.  This is a very male environment.   I volunteer as a signalman.  We have around 80 volunteer signalmen with 4 or 5 signalboxes to ‘man’ every operating day and in the 35 years the heritage railway has been open, we have only had two lady signalmen.  One was some considerable number of years ago, and the other more recently when the manager of our supporters association a (youthfully) retired ex US airforce logistics half-Colonel who decided that for credibility she should have a voluntary qualification.

I am well known amongst our volunteers not least because I am our second-longest qualified signalmen (first passed to work a signal box in 1986) and secondly because I have held a number of posts over the years, including ChairMAN of our supporter’s association.  My transition is, therefore, unlikely to go unnoticed.....

Britain’s railways had a noticeable influx of women into front line roles during the Second World War but they left again when servicemen came back into civilian life as the war ended and significant numbers of women have started to work on the railways only in very recent years.  Fortunately that influx of women in WW2 produced a useful collection of photos and I have a tailor, a milliner and a cobbler working to produce me suitable uniform, headgear and footwear for August on.  This hasn’t been cheap but it is how I spend a good part of my free time and I do want to get the image right.

Coincidentally, a really good friend of mine, from the time I worked for British Railways in the 1980’s before re-inventing myself as a lawyer is a really effective train crew (drivers and guards) manager who has been working part time for a few years whilst her children were young and is just about to go back to full-time work as they are now approaching school age.

It is now only 34 days until my trip to Belgium and I received my new passport last week, so one more hurdle down.  Tomorrow I should pick up the blood test results from my doctor’s surgery to check that all will be well under general anaesthetic.  It is all now starting to feel very real......

Lol

Moira

Out with the old and in with the new

Life at the moment seems to be marked by comings and goings.  It is now only 40 days until I head off to Belgium for facial cosmetic surgery and begin to live full time as a woman.

Going are the male facets of my life.  It is the little things like the fact that I haven't bought any new socks in a year and they wear out, so my stock is getting smaller all the time.  More crucially, my male shoes are fast wearing out.  I just hope they last the remaining 40 days.  My wallet got beyond the pale a short while ago and I am too mean to buy a new one for 40 days (there is plenty else to spend my money on at the moment....) so my purse is now in use.  Most folks at work know what is coming, so that has not caused comment but there are some practical difficulties like the fact that it does not fit into my suit pocket, and I have to remember where I am carrying it.  The temptation to carry my handbag now is very great....

On the female front it is just wonderful (and wonderfully comfortable) to have pierced ears and I have a small and carefully chosen (but growing!) selection of earings.  The tyranny of clip earings is now over - hooray.  I do love jewellery

My hair is doing REALLY well, so there will be no need to bother with wigs from July on (hooray again) and I have offered my four expensive wigs for sale (at a vast reduction on their cost) on a social networking site for transgendered folk in the hope that they can find a good home. (I know, it does rather sound like disposing of a well-loved pet.)

There are still plenty of difficulties ahead but I am now SO HAPPY it isnt true.  Life is jsut great, great, great.

lol

Moira

Steady as she goes....

I haven’t posted an update for a while as nothing major seemed to have happened, until I took a step back and thought about it….

I had a bit of time off over the Easter / Royal Wedding/ May Bank Holiday period and, yes, I dressed as a girl most of the time, during which my good (girl) friend from Cardiff  came to stay at my holiday home on the coast for a couple of days.  The lovely weather we have had (and last winter’s laser treatment) has allowed me to start working on a ‘female’ sun tan.  Cutting the grass in pink shorts and a white vest top was a particularly memorable hour or so.  I have a WW2 Jeep that I use around town and I am well known because of it in our High Street and at the local refuse site where the grass cuttings go, so, I presume my change is now well known around town here in the English west country.  I did drive the Jeep in vest top, new cleavage, pink shorts, long, long legs and sandals...

A minor landmark was that my wallet got just too worn out to use and I haven’t bothered to replace it for the just over 50 male days I have left, so my new purse / wallet is now in full time use.  This is a hint inconvenient as it doesn’t fit easily into a suit pocket and unless I start carrying my handbag I have to fit it into whatever else I am carrying.

On reflection, the BIG change is that I am now spending so much time as a girl that it is the ‘boy’ time that feels very wrong, especially collar-and-tie.  Sure, my features are a little masculine (hence the facial surgery shortly) but my hair is now a workable length (about 4 inches) and with a slick of eyeliner and some mascara I don’t seem to rate a second glance in the supermarket.  My lovely neighbours have now met the alternative version of me and not turned a hair, so all goes well.

I took some photos for a new passport in the booth in my local Post Office yesterday and boy! (sorry, ‘girl!’) do I look different from the photo in my old passport from 2001.  Frustratingly, my passport ran out in January and I need a new one for my trip to Belgium for surgery in July.  That will alter my appearance, so I will need a new passport…..Ho hum, £77 for a passport that will only be useable for 6 weeks.

I am, however, now floating along on the cloud of delight generated by the idea  that in only just over 50 days now I will be having my surgery and then gong full-time.  Hooray!  Hooray!  Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lol

Moira

Angela Rippon's legs...

The title of this post won’t mean much to my USA or younger UK readers unless I remind you that in the 1980’s the BBC TV had a ground-breaking female news reader by that name.  As she sat behind a desk to read the news, jokes were made about whether she had legs and/or what she wore ‘out of sight’.  Famously, she appeared on the Morecombe and Wise Christmas TV special to perform a dance routine that demonstrated beyond doubt that she had legs....

Over the winter I have had my leg hair virtually eliminated by laser and now the weather is warming up here in the UK, MY legs are coming out to play....  At the moment they are pasty white from years of long-trouser wearing, glimpsed only occasionally on the annual seaside summer holiday.  NOW I intend to be working on the garden in the next few weeks in short shorts and a bikini top, to give the real me  a chance to catch some sunshine.  I will be taking proper sun-protection precautions, of course, but I don’t intend to start my new life in August the colour of a piece of cod waiting to go in the fryer.

Angela, eat your heart out....

Lol

Moira

Keeping a stiff upper lip......

Well, this just got a lot easier.

I have been having electrolysis since last September, mostly every Saturday to fit around work.  I started with three hour session (three times one hour, with an hour gap between each hour) and now I'm down to about 45 mins and the remaining hairs are getting sparser and thinner and lighter in colour all the time...

The most painful are those on the thin skin of the neck and around across the upper lip and under the nose.  Boy! (note to self:  should theat now be 'Girl!' ?)  are they painful.  The therapist does one side, then neck, the front, the top lip and then the other side, so I know when we have finished the top lip that the end is nigh.  (Sometimes it feels like 'the end of the world is nigh', I can tell you.

Well today, she started on the top lip and I steeled myself for the usual 100 or so insertions of the needle and....it was only 30 or so.  I was so surprised but when she handed me the mirror at the end nothing had been missed.  Hooray!  Hooray! the electrolysis end of the tunnel may still be a long way off but it is certainly in sight.

I also don't look anywhere near as red as I did in the early days as the finer hairs I mostly now have needs a much lower current / shorter time to 'zap' them.

Only 75 days to go now until my facial surgery.   I had dinner with a female friend in the week and she remarked how happy I now seemed.  It is true.  My head hits the pillow and I drop off to calm sleep now, in a way I havent really known for many years.  I'm sure that there are some scary times to come but 'good scary', if you know what I mean...

Oh, and by the way, I can see that I seem to be developing a following in the good ol' U S of A.  Do I make sense when read in American?  If you are one of my readers from 'across the pond' do drop me a comment.

lol

Moira

Another milestone.

I passed another milestone this week.

I am a lawyer and regularly appear in court in my area of specialism.  Blog readers will remember that I am off to Belgium for facial surgery at the end of June and expect to begin living full-time as a woman in mid-August.  Several times recently I have had to explain that I will be having a 6-week break from court work this summer – very unusual for me.

This last week I was conducting a case in front of a lovely Judge who I have known for nearly 20 years.  We had 3 days allocated for the case and it was pretty obvious from early on that it wouldn’t be enough time.  When we compared diaries we could not find another suitable time for the necessary 2 extra days until November.  Only the other lawyer and I were in court sorting out dates with the Judge, the parties were back in their waiting rooms.  It seemed like a suitable time to explain to the Judge that an ‘alternative version’ of me was likely to turn up in November!  I have told 50 or 60 people so far but I was SO nervous (unusual for me in court).  Perhaps that was because this was the first time I was officially ‘out’.  The Judge was plainly very surprised but SO nice and also appreciative of the chance to be surprised away from the parties.  I can’t wait for November!

In fact my return to practice is set for mid-August and my first court case thereafter is set for Monday 22 August, so I guess I will be pretty nervous the week before.  I can remember when I first started going to court.  I would get there early and have to rush off to the loo as the flood of adrenaline affected my bowels.  After about 6 months this calmed down until I got my first appeal case – I was right back in the loo at the appeal court..... It feels rather like that.

Lol

Moira

Hello Boys!

Just a word to say how wonderful it is to have cleavage!

The hormones are working wonderfully well and I am now beyond an A-cup and my nipples are still sensitive, which I understand is a sign that development continues.  As a later-transitioner we tend to react a little less strongly to oestrogen and I had expected to have to have breast augmentation surgery at a later date but I will be quite happy as a 'B' and it seems I might get there under my own steam.  The only downside (temporarily) is that I now need to wear a bra the whole time and my changed shape is impossible to hide in anything other than the sloppiest sweater.

I saw my gender consultant on Thursday with the results of my latest blood test.  My oestrogen was '397' and my testosterone only '4' on whatever scales are used.  Apparently that means that my testosterone is down in the female range without using the nastier androgen-blockers and my oestogen is close to the female range (400 - 600) and I am reacting well to it.  There have been no unfortunate side effects and liver function is normal.  However, Dr Curtis did reccommend increasing my oestrogen patches from 100 microgrammes per day to 150.  It will be interesting to see what difference that makes.

Whilst there are wonderous times in prospect, this all adds to my feeling of 'oddness' at the moment.  I am just back from my Saturday morning electolysis session.  This is going well, in that we are down to mostly fine hairs now, but I cannot wear make up before or after the session for a while and it does make my skin very red in the 'beard and moustache' area from the time of the session for a couple of hours.  (I should say that witchhazel or aloe vera gel from the fridge helps enormously.)  However, with a distinct bust combined with pre- facial surgery features it is difficult to know what to wear, and I end up as a compromise.  All a bit frustrating, and not a little confusing for the other salon customers.

Lastly, a small request.  I can see from the stats that this site generates that there are quite a few of you reading my posts now.  It would be lovelly to get a comment or two in reply,

lol

Moira