‘It was also known as the pansy depot. Before I’d even got to Parsons Green, when I was doing my training, at White City… in the 1959 stock, behind the driver’s head there is a little recess in the cab. It looks like a little niche into which a statue ought to go, or something like that. It has no purpose whatsoever. It is one of those strange design quirks. And I very camply said, when I was being trained… oh, look, you’ve got a lovely little niche for a vase of flowers here! And he said, you are going to Parsons Green, I suppose…
…It was all male, number one. And number two, an incredible number of ex services people. Ex-forces. And yes, there were a huge number of quite closeted gay men, who were never outed by the rest of us, which I think is quite interesting. People just got on with it. Yes, there were closet cases, you know. The < >, at the time. And his boyfriend. But we never outed them. But if you were out there, then you were very very out and it was a question of… we wandered into canteens between Acton Town and Earl’s Court, and Barking and Upminster… Ah, hello girls, how are we all today? You know. Ha ha ha. Looking a bit down in the dumps, darling! Well it rubbed off to a certain extent. And maybe this is the part of the ex-forces, but the minute you had been accepted by the people in your depot you got stood up for. So there was that kind of thing going on.
It started as a bit of joke, egged on by my driver, < >. And so I’d put in this thing that I ought to be able to wear all the uniform that was appropriate to my grade. Guard, yes. And the Czechoslovakian serge trousers that they gave us was pulling all the hair off the back of my legs, it was really… well, if I wanted to Immac I would, thank you very much. And why couldn’t I wear a jaunty little side cap, etc. etc. etc. So this went through all the chain of command. You know this is not x and y and z. And it also got taken up by the local ASLEF branch, as well. So I became the first out gay ASLEF delegate to a gay workers’ conference that happened in Leeds ’76 or ’77.
Eventually I got summoned to 55 Broadway. And in 55 Broadway there was a whole row of like, people with huge amounts of braid, sitting on one side of the table, with a little person sitting at the edge of the table, who was a psychiatrist, who said you do realise, < >, that, if you did have a sex change, we would give you a year off, while you sort it all out. We would hold your job open. You would retain your pension rights. And you could come back to work for us. So in some ways they were being really sweet. They were being really nice. And… you do know we have a few people who have had sex changes working for us, you know, so you wouldn’t be alone, even on your line… there is the ticket inspector in… But I said that is not the point. That is really not the point.
So then I and < >, now dead, faxed it out to anybody and everybody, saying this is the story. Saying tomorrow is my last day of work, and the reason I will be resigning, and I will be on London Transport Earl’s Court station doing my last day as a Tube guard in a female guard’s uniform. So we got there, and we had Time Out, Gay News, The Standard, Reuters, The Guardian. We had about eight stringers. It was November 1979.
And we got to Earl’s Court station and the station was an absolute commotion, all these people in braid and all the rest of it. And all the trains that were going across back and forth from Earl’s Court all giving me the thumbs up and the beep. And allowing me to pose on the back of their trains, to do this, which was totally not allowed. And somewhere there is actually a picture of the woman, lovely girl, < >, platform attendant, who lent me her costume… or gave it to me, to do the whole thing.’
