I am a trangender woman who has started the transition late in life.

All my life I knew I was different.

At the age of 7 one of our cousins came down to stay for the summer. She and my sister were of a similar age, 10 and 9, and they played together every day.

I loved my sister and cousin and wanted to play with them. but they said that as I was a boy I couldn't. I begged and pleaded as only a spoiled brat can until eventually they agreed. On one condition, I had to be a girl. They insisted that I had to wear a skirt. I took a little persuading but eventually agreed and my sister took me to her bedroom and put me into her little tartan kilt.

We were happily playing in the garden for hours, picking wallflowers and trying to make perfume by soaking them in my old tin money box, when mum came out to call us in for tea. She took one look at me in a skirt and went ballistic. She shouted at us all and sent me to get changed, making me promise never to wear a skirt again. She sent my sister and cousin to bed with no tea.

After that I borrowed things my sister had grown out of and kept them under the matress of my bed. I couldn't stop, it just felt right to wear girls clothes as often as I could.