Transvestia

tenant, yet there remained long dark corridors and many large gloomy rooms, which in my childish imagination I furnished and peopled so they became like the staterooms of a fairy palace.

Living the life many other country lads did and for that matter still do, I was free as I grew older to wander where I willed over the many hundreds of acres of rolling farmlands. Towards the north the land rose quite steeply and far away in the distance one could see a line of high hills, but between the farm's boundary fence and those hills were deep valleys and miles of moorland, which in time I was able to explore to my heart's content. Shortly before we moved in, the farm had been bought by a weal- thy industrialist who intended to make it into his country estate and a showplace amongst his friends. Profitability was to be a minor consideration, as all the losses would be set against his income tax, everything was to be fully mechanized and it seemed every day father would take me to watch some new monster being unloaded in the farmyard.

Later, building materials began to arrive and after school I watched the workmen erect a fine new house nearby. This was to be the country home of the industria- list, Mr. Briggs, and soon after it was completed we moved into a new house that had been built for us some distance away, the old house being demolished and the rubble removed.. In spite of the hours I spent on the farm and wondering the countryside, I must have been a dili- gent student as I passed a scholarship, without, I recall,. any apparent effort on my part, which meant I would go to the grammar school in the town about ten miles away, when I reached eleven years of age. The great day arrived and off I went, very selfconscious in my new school uni- form, but my confidence soon evaporated amongst the many strange faces, I was the only one to enter from our village school that term, and consequently was very much alone. Mother often related afterwards the story of my return home at the end of the first day when I dissolved into tears and flatly refused to go any more because I did not like it, of course I went the next morning and soon made some new friends.

A couple of months later, at morning assembly, it was announced the school play that year would be "A Mid-