David Thomas’s transgender diary

The wrong trousers David Thomas’s transgender diary

Three days ago, I went into town and was administered electric shocks for an hour, to remove the white hairs under my chin. Oh great.

The following day, I had an appointment with Mr Hinchliffe, the hairpiece man in Chiswick. Then I took the Tube to Soho and was interviewed for an official report on the coverage of trans issues in the media. After that, I spoke to my agent about a couple of book ideas related to… can you guess what?

Yesterday I prayed that my car, which is in desperate need of a service and has warning lights flashing all over its dashboard, would somehow take me 20 miles to the Sk:n Clinic, and had laser beams blasted at my buttocks. The second that was over, I said another quick prayer, and zoomed back for another hour’s elecwinners’ trolysis on my chinny chin chin. So then I was uncomfortable from my backside to my beard.

And that’s enough trans stuff, thank you very much. Because I’m not entirely defined by my dodgy relationship with my own gender. I actually have a life, and other things I care about. Such as Strictly Come

Dancing. I watch it every Saturday, and quite often tune in to It Takes

Two during the week. I absolutely know my rumba from my cha-chacha, am in thrall to every sequin and spray tan, and am quite frequently to be found blubbing helplessly at the most crassly sentimental moments.

Before getting in touch with my girliest side, however, I’ll be channelling my inner bloke by trekking up to the London Stadium to watch West Ham play Newcastle. I have had a doomed half-century love affair with the Hammers, which has at times involved me having as many as three season tickets, to enable me to take friends, my father or my son to games. And it’s all been a tragic misunderstanding. I spent my early boyhood in Richmond, Surrey, in the southwest corner of London. Richmond is close to a place called Ham, on the way to which we used to pass some football pitches.

In 1964, when I was five, West Ham won the FA Cup, followed by the European Cup Cup a year later. I knew that Richmond was in the west and Ham was round the corner. There were football pitches there. I joined the dots and decided West Ham must be my local team.

Then, in 1966, England won the World Cup. All four goals in the final were scored by West Ham players, and my hero, the England and West Ham captain Bobby Moore, collected the trophy from the Queen. That sealed the deal. I was a Hammer.

Years later, I discovered that West Ham actually played at Upton Park in east London, 31 stops away on the District Line, but it was too late. A chap can change his sex, but never his football team, even though they’ve barely won a thing since that first infatuation.

My other sporting passion is American football, for which I support another hometown team, correctly located this time. In 1978, my father was posted to the British embassy in Washington, where our family lived for three years and I discovered the Washington Redskins.

They, like West Ham, wear shirts the colour of wine: claret and blue for the Hammers, burgundy and gold for the ’Skins. They too flatter to deceive, with a string of Super Bowl wins in the early years of my allegiance, and nothing but disappointment ever since.

And yet, my loyalty is undimmed. So tomorrow, I will watch the Redskins lose to the Buffalo Bills, and then I will go to bed and listen to the post-mortem on the Redskins Talk podcast: a safe space for lost American-footballing souls to which I am addicted.

As if all this were not enough excitement for one weekend, I’m also hosting a lunch party on Sunday, attended by an actual rock star, although he’s a very sweet, unassuming chap, as founder members of world-famous bands go.

Quite how I’m going to fit the cooking and flat-tidying in with everything else, I’m not sure. Suffice it to say that if I’m not already 75 per cent prepared by the time you read these words, I’m in serious trouble.

Then, this Tuesday, I’ll go up to London for a final pre-op chat with Mr Inglefield, my plastic surgeon. And I’ll be back in Transland again…

I’m not entirely defined by my dodg y relationship with my own gender. I actually have a life, and other things I care about