Introduction

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I used to go on yearly camping trips with a friend of mine called Drew. We’d spend a few days walking or cycling, maybe a bit of canoeing, and spend the evenings in a pub and the nights in a tent. These trips were regular but unplanned – if we both had a few days free we’d pack a couple of rucksacks with gear that was never quite up to the task and simply set off. Straight-forward and manly stuff. Until one year Drew thought there was something I ought to know.

I think it’s fair to say that initially I didn’t react to Dru’s news in a way that would have been approved by the commission for gender equality. Then gradually I came to see Dru as she is, far from the stereotypes usually associated with the transsexual story.

Becoming Drusilla is the story of how Drew became Dru, of what happened to our friendship, and our adventures in wildest Wales the first time we went camping as man and woman. Nothing went quite according to plan.

The Walk Photos

Becoming Drusilla Reading List

These aren’t all the books I read, but they’re the ones I found most helpful or illuminating.

Ames, Jonathan, Sexual Metamorphosis, Vintage, New York 2005
Ames, Jonathan, What’s Not to Love? Scribner, London, 2000
Ashley, April, The First Lady, John Blake, London, 2006
Angier, Natalie, Woman: An Intimate Geography, Anchor, New York, 2000
Bibby, Bob, Special Offa, Eye Books, London, 2004
Bloom, Amy, Normal, Bloomsbury, London, 2003
Boyd, Helen, My Husband Betty, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York 2003
Bornstein, Kate, Gender Outlaw, Routledge, London, 1994
Cossey, Caroline, My Story, Faber and Faber, London, 1991
Califia, Pat, Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism, Cleis Press, San Francisco, 1997
Cherry-Garrard, Apsley, The Worst Journey in the World, Pimlico, London 2003 (Constable 1922)
Cowell, Roberta, Roberta Cowell’s Story, William Heinemann, London, 1954
Ensler, Eve, The Vagina Monologues, Virago, London, 2001
Ettner, Randi, Confessions of a Gender Defender, Chicago Spectrum Press, Chicago, 1996
Finney Boylan, Jennifer, She’s Not There, Broadway Books, New York, 2003
Greene, Graham, Travels with my Aunt, Penguin, 1971
Household, Geoffrey, Rogue Male, Chatto and Windus, London, 1939
John, Brian, Pembrokeshire Coast Path, Aurum Press, 2004
Jones, John B., Offa’s Dyke Path, HMSO, London 1976
Kafka, Franz, Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Penguin, London 1961
Kay, Ernie and Kathy and Mark Richards, Offa’s Dyke Path South, Aurum Press 2004
Kay, Ernie and Kathy and Mark Richards, Offa’s Dyke Path North, Aurum Press 2004
Morris, Jan, Conundrum, Faber and Faber, London, 1974
Morris, Jan, Pleasures of a Tangled Life, Arrow, London, 1990
Morris, Jan, Wales, Penguin, London 2000
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Penguin, London, 1955
Sinclair, Iain, Landor’s Tower, Granta, London, 2001
Thomas, David, Girl, Signet, London 1995
Wells, H.G., The Invisible Man, Oxford Classics, Oxford, (1897)
Wheeler, Sara, Terra Incognita, Vintage, London 1997