I was very glad I put tights on under my trousers yesterday. We needed to go shopping in the evening, and it had turned bitterly cold. I told this to Lyn and our PA, Marta, and they agreed. There are definitely advantages to being a trannie sometimes. The thing is, it suddenly occurred to me that I can only dress as I do because I can communicate, and Lyn can only be lyn because she can too. I had to ask Marta that morning ‘please can you help me into a pair of tights’.

It seems to me that we often forget how important the ability to communicate is. It is, in my opinion, the most important facet a person has, and the most taken for granted. If I did not have that ability, I wouldn’t have gone to university, met lyn, moved to London or done anything. Someone can be as intelligent as anyone else, but if they can’t communicate their thoughts and ideas, they are treated as non-people. I mean this in the most literal sense: at the school I volunteer aft there are kids with no ability to communicate whatsoever. The are treated like babies. It seems to me that the most fundamental difference between them and me – indeed, the only difference really – is that I can communicate and they cannot.

I don’t think I’m going anywhere with this. I’m just recording what seems to me a fascinating contradiction: that the ability that is moist important and is most central to us as people is the one we take most for granted.