Farewell 2025

 So that was 2025.

To be honest, I won't be unhappy to see it go, though I worry, both globally and domestically, what it bodes for 2026.

I can't remember how 2025 started but it definitely ended on something of a mixed note. L had a couple of days out in the week running up to  New Year that gifted me some much-needed Susie time, although in both cases a late start and a mid-afternoon return precluded the opportunity to get out, even for a quick walk. Unfortunately L had a bad fall at the end of the second day and arrived home shaken and in obvious pain and spent the evening and most of the next day, New Years Eve, nursing a bruised knee and side, which rather put a damper on seeing in the New Year. 

  

(err, yes. One day when I'm feeling a bit braver I might try explain the thing about the overly girly white tights. Part of it comes from growing up as a teenager in the 60s and the Mary Quant/Biba thing at the time.)

Make do and Mend.

I picked up the belted polka dot dress above as a charity shop markdown just before Xmas and only noticed later that it had a slit almost up up to the top of the thigh on one side. That seemed just a bit too racy unless you wanted a flash of stocking every time you sat down, so I broke out the sewing kit and reduced it to a more modest mid thigh slit.

I've had the blue dress for as long as I can remember. Originally it had a high collar which was getting a bit too tight so earlier in the year the repair kit came out again and I removed the collar and converted it to a V neckline which felt far more comfortable.

***

Up to that point, though, much of 225 had felt like it had been stalled in a holding pattern as far as Susie time was concerned, especially compared to the 2024, with the buzz of euphoria after taking part in  Witney Pride for the first time as Susie and revealing that side of me to a number of work colleagues (admittedly in the relatively safe space of the company Pride Network). L also took several extended trips during 2024, gifting me a number opportunities where I could spend several days at a time (in once case almost a week) as Susie, during which I took full opportunity to get out as much as possible, including a visit to Blenheim Palace.

 

In contrast, opportunities for similar extended periods of Susie time or getting out during 2025 have been few and far between. 

There was one in early February where I released my inner domestic goddess. I enjoy cooking and the opportunity to let Susie take over (even if it was sadly only for one) was too good to miss. 

***

By May I started to realise Susie's stash was starting to take over more than half the closet and an ever-growing pile at one end of the spare room, resulting in a cull  of 'unsuitable' clothes, shoes and boots (some of which I'm now starting to regret) and two or three black bags being donated back to the local charity shop, releasing space which has inevitably started to refill, despite a self imposed moratorium of buying any new frocks. A resolution that lasted at least a couple of months, but which I technically broke by buying an white lace jumpsuit (not actually a frock) when I saw it marked down in a sale. Unfortunately the lure of sale racks, and a quarter of an hour wait near a charity shop where every item is marked £3 or less while waiting for the bus home from work hasn't done anything to keep Susie's stash under control.

Interestingly, both Lynn and Sue, who I shared this photo with remarked on what they saw as a nice combination of the shoes with turquoise tights even though the latter were definitely grey when I fished them out the bag and put them on. Obviously a trick of the camera, but I had to agree which set me off on a hunt for a pair of turquoise tights. 

Age, infirmity and illness (both of us) and weather managed to conspire against any extended Susie time through much of the second half of 2025, although my photo gallery shows one local outing to a local park during September. 

(L mentioned we'd just completed our 640th jigsaw puzzle - she's been keeping a count since lockdown - which will give you an idea of the busy social whirl we lead at Susie Towers, which otherwise largely revolves round Saturday coffee mornings and the monthly book and collector fairs at the local church. Not that either of us are particularly religious. We started as volunteers for the monthly book sales some years back and it's now become a bit of a focal point for our social life in village.)

***

Partly as preparation for an increasingly deferred retirement (something I really must sort out in 2026) I reduced my work week to four days with one other day set as working from home. That at least gave me a few brief periods to dress for a couple of hours at home (albeit with one eye on the clock) if L went out during the morning, something I came to thing of as 'microdosing'. (She would often phone before lunchtime to let me know she was on her way back, so I don't know how much she was aware of how I spent those mornings. I suspect so, and this was a way of avoiding any embarrassment for us both.)

A Visit from the Tit Fairy?

Things sort of settled into a holding pattern in the second part of the year, although a referral for a walk in X Ray after I reported chest pains send me back into the clutches of the NHS, something I have managed to avoid for years, and eventually to a diagnosis of high blood pressure and a course of of pills to try and bring it down. 

One unexpected, but by no means unwelcome, side effect of the latter appears to be a little more squeezable flesh up top than I've been used to. Unfortunately some of that spare flesh also seem to have migrated to my tum, which I'll have to watch.

Take care, and I hope you have a happy and fulfilling 2026.

27 (or more) Dresses and the Rule of Three

 Idly flipping TV channels before the footie yesterday afternoon, I caught part of the start of the romcom movie  27 Dresses just at the point where the wedding journalist Kevin Doyle (James Marsden) interviews Jane (Katherine Heigl) who has been a 27 times bridesmaid for her friends, and discovers she still has all the bridesmaids dresses crammed into a closet in her small apartment. 

Kevin declares that they are all uniformly terrible, and the main point of a bridesmaids' dress is to be so awful that even the plainest bride looks good in comparison, and dismisses even the least offensive that Jane picks out in defence as being "vomit coloured". In a scene that will be very familiar to those of us who have far too many frocks and too little opportunity to wear them, Jane models each of the outfits one after the other during a hilarious impromptu photoshoot. (Which only goes to prove Kevin's point - although I will admit to a slight envy for the floaty peach/orange number.)Naturally, afterwards I had to go and count just how many dresses I had crammed in my own closet. Which turned out to be more than 27 and nearer 32 or 33. And that's just those hanging in the closet, ignoring another 10-12 in the spare room - or  skirts, suits and tops. Is that too many? How many is too many?

L hasn't worn a dress since 1988, so there was no help there. 
Google AI suggests women have around 18  dresses on average,  ranging from 2 to 30+, which puts a figure of 30-50 in the "I may have a dress problem"* range. 
[* Well, yes, rather obviously  I do have a dress problem, certainly as far as L is concerned even if I don't see in the same way, but that's a whole other conversation that we won't go into here.]
Google AI also suggests that most women have between 70-100 items of clothing overall. I suspect, if I dared add them up, I could easily double that. 

The sheer amount of stuff that has accumulated in 40 odd years of browsing charity shops presents a more practical problem of storage. When we first moved here, 30 something years ago, I could hide all my girl stuff into a small suitcase. Now, I probably have more (and certainly nicer) girl clothes than boy clothes, and certainly more than I have opportunity to wear. From being able to  hide Susie's undies discreetly beneath my socks, pants and t shirts in the bedside dresser, Susie's stuff has now taken over two bottom drawers of the dresser and evicted 'his' t-shirts, socks and pants to an untidy pile on the chair at the foot of the bed.

I guess 50-odd dresses is too many, which led me to think about a Rule of Three. A third could be likely donated or recycled, as either unflattering, too short even for Stana's  fingertip test, or bought as retail therapy and worn only once or twice. Another third are definite keepers, practical or favourites that  I keep going back to; and maybe another third that fall between the two, that are pretty or make me feel good but I probably wouldn't want to wear outside the house. 
As a case in point, I picked up two 'new' dresses in the last couple of weeks, lured by 'everything £3 or less' sale in one of the charity shops. 
   

The one on the left is probably a keeper: it's a nice fit, decent length and feels comfortable. 

The one is the middle looked lovely in the window display during the week and I took a punt on it when it went back on the rack. But while it feel lovely and floaty, it's way too short and probably a size too small. (I can still squeeze a 10, but sometimes it really is a squeeze.) 

The third picture is one of those in-betweens that falls into that third rule, as an old favourite that is still a bit tight and only just passes the fingertip test for being too short.

I'm a bit undecided about this one. I keep moving it between the donate/recycle pile and the keep pile. Having worn it again, I think I might put it back on the reserve pile, at least for summer.

***

I was looking forward to attending Witney Pride again this weekend, as this year would likely be my last chance to take part in the march and help run the stall with my company, and I wanted to be able to go again as Susie this year. Unfortunately there was a email at work at the beginning of this week that said there had been too few volunteers to justify a place in the march or to run run a stall this year, although a few people might still attend. 

I might still have gone, except I was relying on using the stall as somewhere convenient to leave my bulky bag of boy clothes, shoes and makeup after finding somewhere to change, rather than having to cart it around all day. So regretfully, I'll probably pass this year and go to the Saturday lunch and bring and buy sale at the church instead.

xx

S
 

Quiet pleasures.

  In her recent post Better than the Past  Lynn mentioned the enjoyment of quiet time to get on with household chores while spending time not stuck in bloke mode. (Not that either of us, I think, would consider ourselves at all 'blokey'.)  It also coincided with the first extended free time I've had to let out my Susie side since the end of last August, so Saturday was a blitz of washing and drying umpteen pairs of tights and smalls after an early morning bottle bank run and to drop a repeat prescription into the box at the health centre. Then some quiet me time pottering about and watch the darts on TV (and idly checking off the drag fancy dress in the audience). Sunday evening I felt like dressing up a bit after a weekend slopping around in a jeans, sweater and flats jeans and decided I should release my inner Nigella before settling down with a bottle of wine. 

As I mentioned to Lynn, I wonder sometimes who I'm dressing up when I slip into something more constricting and raid the jewellery box: me, or an imagined beau? (And what would happen if one turned up, ideally bearing flowers and chocolates.)

Early Monday morning, after  a quick browse of the sales racks in Sainbury's, I popped across intending a quick walk through the nature reserve, to be confronted by a sea of mud on the approach path and decided I'd need something more sturdy than low-heeled ankle boots until it dried out a bit. So back home for coffee and then a trip to the library to return a couple of books and a quick trawl of the local charity shops. While I've long got over any embarrassment at buying woman's items in charity shops in boy-mode (most assistants either don't care or notice, and a sale is a sale) there's something a bit freer about doing it as Susie, where you pull things off the rack and hold them against yourself in front of a mirror to check the length.

How many, if any, of the shop assistants have made the connection between Susie and the bloke who browses the same racks most weekends is another matter. The sweet trader on the market, who I greeted twice on the same morning, first as Susie and then an hour and a half later as bloke-me didn't seem to notice anything or at least didn't comment. The real test, I suspect, would be if I encountered anyone from the local church group while out as Susie. So far I've dodged that one. *

*Postscript Tuesday: Well, that didn't take long to find out, when I got off the bus this morning an found myself directly behind one of the lady volunteers at the local church and who has served me Saturday morning coffee every week for five or six years. No hint of recognition, although she may have been absorbed in her own shopping trip. 

A good day

Yesterday was a good day. In fact it's a been a good week all told.
L was away for the day and warned in advance what time she would be back (she was late - she's always late).
I did an early shop and trawl of the local charity shops in man mode. I was rootling around in a box of odds and sods and found a white box. When I looked inside there was an ash blonde bob wig inside. The box was marked at £3.45 (!) so there was no way it wasn't coming home with me.
And Friday I left work a bit earlier than normal which gave me an hour to trawl the shops before they closed. I was hoping to find a pair a flats, but nothing approaching my size (instead I found a pair of black flats, size 8, in Sainsbury of all places). But browsing the racks in Helen Douglas  house I found a white peplum dress marked at a fiver. No way was that not coming home either.
I don't have a problem buying female clothes as a male. I realised a long time ago that most assistants really don't care or pay much attention, and attempted excuses that you're buying for someone else (who just happens to be your size) are likely to be pretty transparent. A sale is a sale. If there is private gossip in the local charity shops that I'm the guy who sometimes buys women's clothes, then I've not heard it, and frankly I no longer care.
The weekend before that I ventured into town - again looking for some more comfortable flats - and instead found a stunning red peplum dress. (Are you beginning to detect a pattern here?) It's a bit short (mid thigh) and racy and not something you'd go to the shops in, but who says we have to practical and sensible all the time. It's also rather low in the back. I really ought to get a backless bra or one of those multiway things, as I have no natural assets up top. I must have a look on amazon.

I've noticed I go through cyclic clothing obsessions, often based on something I've noticed other women wearing that has struck me as particularly stylish or attractive. A while ago it was cowl neck sweaters and sweater dresses (I would still love to find one in soft white wool), then it was shrugs. I don't know where the peplum thing started, but it crystallised with the girl on the bus on the way in to work. I usually sit behind her, and noticed after a couple of week that she had a set of around seven or eight very stylish  jackets and tops that she would cycle through. One of those was a white zip front peplum jacket (she has another in orange and another in a nice floral design) that I would be tempted to mug her for if it wasn't at least a size too small and she didn't look so good in it.

So anyway, home again, home again, with whole day to myself, a couple of new outfits and a new wig to try out. Can a day get better?
Weirdly though, while I spent most of the day catching up on Susie's blogs (I have my first ever comment. Yay! Thank you Lynne) I settled for a rather more restrained black top and leggings with a pair of low(ish) heels.

Even having to change back, scrub my face off and tidy everything away by mid-evening when I expected L to return, to have her turn up over an hour later, didn't manage to kill my mood.

Back in the jug agane

How do you explain to someone what the problem is when they have made it clear to you that the very subject that lies at the heart of your mood swings is a topic that off limits?  Something that might be alluded to occasionally - often with a put down comment that make you want to retreat further back in your shell – but that can and will never openly discussed between you.

The thing I can’t get my head around is that L has been there, come out the other side, and now lives as the person she wants to be. Far from understanding, accepting or tolerating my need to dress, she finds constant opportunities to belittle it as something kinky and ‘pervy’.

 “There are also transsexuals who dislike transvestites as well as homosexuals. Intolerance can be found in strange quarters.” 

Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon.

 

 Saddening, but absolutely true. As cross dressers, we are sometimes seen as the pond-life end of the scale not only by mundane women and men, but also by some transwomen who, having struggled to arrive on the far shore, can be more militant in their intolerance and dislike of ‘mere’ TVs than born-that-way women.

Sometimes we can be our own worst enemies.

This definitely seems to be the situation I find myself in. L knows about my need to dress – has known all along in fact, since we first met – but has always rebuffed and deflected any attempt to discuss it openly. She certainly doesn’t want to be involved in or confronted with it, or meet Susie.

I should be grateful I suppose that at least I’m spared the problem of coming out to her, and as long as I’m reasonably discreet, I don’t have to find hidden corners of the house to hide Susie’s clothes in secret.  Which is starting to be a problem as I tend to shop as a displacement activity when I'm denied the opportunity to dress, and she probably now has many clothes as my male self (and far more shoes) and running out of places to put them.