Truth can be much stranger than fiction and I heard a superb example tonight. I’d driven up to a pub in a village called Stewkley, which is almost in Milton Keynes (though people there would not like to be associated with MK too much).
I was chatting to someone who’s a regular at the pub and he and his wife told an amazing story about a transvestite roofer (with huge hands) who used to come all the way to their village pub from Banbury (probably a good hour’s drive) to hang out in his provocative and skimpy clothing. (The logic he used was that he wouldn’t be safe, in various senses of the word, nearer his home — he apparently had a wife and three children who were in the dark about his alter ego.)
I ended up having a first hand account told to me by the landlady of an incident that ended the chap barred from the pub — and it wasn’t a case of prejudice and bigotry as he’d obviously been made to feel welcome in the pub for quite some time before the inciting incident, as novelists say. I may re-use this story for ‘The Angel’ in some form. It shows there’s nothing quite like getting out into the field to do your research.
In the early 80s, I worked in a pub which was frequented by a transvestite. Maybe I was more naive then but transvestism did not seem to be so known about. So it was a point of great discussion. The man was well into his fifties, maybe more and used to come in dressed as a woman with his wife and grown up kids.
…there is no better fiction than life, I often(and infact recently) recall something someone has related to me in the past or I have myself experienced or overheard/witnessed and ascribe this to a character.
My yoga teacher came out with a great one liner a few months back and I instantly scribbled it down in one of my note books- and the context down – I dont now where or if Ill use it but I was a gem..she said… “Ive just had a coffee with this woman who’se a transexual porn producer and says she thinks shes a lesbian. The thing is, I think she fancies me…and I dont know what to do.”
BG
Not sure if I’d know what to do if I was told by a transexual porn producers that she (or would the equivalent be he?) fancied me?
The thing about this transvestite is that he was wearing a short skirt and then bent over to reveal to the rest of the pub he was wearing a G-string or thong, leaving nothing to the imagination.