I was born in Derby in 1956. The house I was born in was one of a long row of terraced houses on Bloomfield Street. On one end was the Osmaston Road, and at the other end of the street was where they built the London Road Community Hospital. It was fairly downtrodden, and a bit grotty, but it was my home. You could live in worse places.
I joined the RAF in April of 1976 and went into basic training at RAF Swinderby for six weeks, before I was posted for my trade training at RAF Locking in Weston-super-Mare. My first posting was working in various jobs at RAF Henlow, where I began in construction, in a factory making things. I didn’t necessarily know what they were, but that didn’t matter. We just made things according to a set of instructions.
Eventually I got fed up with that and moved on to a public address flight, which took me all over the country to the various air shows. We used to put up all the tannoys, speakers and equipment for the general public. It wasn’t unknown for television and sound crews to sometimes use some of our sound gear.
After a few years and lots more training, I ended up in Berlin for three years during the Cold War, working as an electronics technician. I’ll never forget certain things and certain people. I met some people that I’d be happy to see again and have a pint and a chat with. But I’ve also met some people I’d never want to see again.
Britain today is a very different place to when I was a kid. The advent of electronic technology such as computers all started in the 60s, which is more or less when I started becoming interested in the subject. If I was to go back to the 60s now, it would be like going back to a different planet altogether. The television has changed so much, radios have totally changed. And society has changed with them.
Being a trans woman in the 70s was exceedingly difficult. We weren’t breaking Queen’s Regulations by being transgendered, but the military police thought that it could be used against us – that it could open us up to blackmail.