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In 1952 my family moved home from Chipstead Valley to Thornton Heath. Why they moved is still a mystery to me. There were two stories as to why the move, one was that they wanted to move to be in the catchment area for a particular school, and the other was because my father had had a business deal go wrong and they had to move to a cheaper house. Whichever reason it was is now irrelevant as it proved the first indication that there was something different about me. They had to take a temporary house before moving into the Thornton Heath one and that’s where it happened. It was a small terraced house with a tiny back garden. One day I was peddling up and down the garden in my sporty pedal car when I saw a girl in the garden next door doing the same on her tricycle. I just knew that I should have been a girl. Don’t ask me how or why ... I just knew. When I started infants it was fine. There were boys and girls in the class and it was the girls I wanted to be with. It was their parties I was invited to and that’s how I wanted it to stay. Then came the move next door from the Infants to the Junior school, a single sex boys school. I hated it. The fact that the girls school was just the other side of a tall fence made it worse. I remember standing by that fence and trying to wish myself through. I wasn’t the brightest but was in the top stream throughout Junior School and to the surprise of my teachers I managed to pass my 11 plus exam and get into Trinity Grammar School in Croydon. My parent’s were obviously very pleased but the bad news for me was that it was another single sex male school.