Costume drama from an innocent age

When I was a little girl I liked to dress up in boys’ outfits for fun. No one considered it strange – that’s what children did.

When I was about six, I was desperate to have a cowboy outfit, complete with waistcoat, pop-gun and stetson. Aged nine, I wanted to be Elvis and sing rock ’n’ roll, so Mum made me a pair of drainpipe jeans, with 4in gold fringing down the side seams (the fringing had been designed to be sewn along the bottom of curtains).

At 14, I often went out in a gent’s black bowler hat and silver-tipped umbrella.

Thank goodness it was a time when to do so wouldn’t mean people thinking you wanted to be ‘redesigned’ as the opposite sex. That would have been looked on as ridiculous, because I was just a child playing fanciful games. I never wanted to be a boy – I just wanted to be a sharp dresser. Anne Winfindale, West Bridgford, Nottingham