Wednesday 27th August 2025, 16:27
About an hour ago I had a rather odd experience.
I was crouching down taking a picture of a prettily painted terminal box
when I heard a voice asking me what I was doing. I tried to think of something sarcastic to say but I'm not a very quick thinker so I had to content myself with saying that I was taking pictures of the prettily painted box as I took a picture of the other side.
Then I stood up and faced the voice and saw a young man in dark jeans and a white singlet. He looked at me and his eyes widened and then he said "Are you a man?". I answered yes and he went on to ask why I was dressed like a lady. Lady was the word he used. I told him that I simply prefer it that way.
It seems that he was in a phone conversation with a friend because he then asked me if it would be alright if he showed his friend. I said yes, that's fine. He pointed his mobile at me and said a few words to the person on the other end, finishing with something like "He said he prefers wearing women's clothes.". I asked if he had heard of trans, he shook his head.
I looked at him and said I prefer feminine pronouns. He looked at me utterly blank and confused. By now I'm feeling confused too, the idea of preferred pronouns is surely one that anyone who consumes even the slightest amount of current mass media must surely be familiar with.
So I asked him if he knew what a pronoun is. He said no. Now I'm really confused perhaps he's not a native English speaker despite there being no obvious signs to suggest that. So I ask him where he's from and he says he's an Irish traveller.
I'm not especially proud of how I conducted this conversation because I went on to say that he must be seriously lacking in education and really ought to get out in the world a bit more. Then we parted company.
It wasn't until sometime later that it occurred to me that perhaps that's exactly what he was doing. Then I thought of the Amish tradition of rumspring.
