Lynda's Life

A New Life (Part 1)

I had been on my own now for about 6 months and had finally gotten rid of the shackles that had tied me to James for so long. He still continued to contact me from time to time and said that he only wanted the best for me and that should I finally find someone ‘nice’ then he would disappear from my life for good. All this sounded rather good but given his past reluctance to let go I had my doubts…

Roving around & other things.

“For he’s football crazy, he’s football mad, the football it has taken away the little bit o’ sense he had, and it would take a dozen servants to wash his clothes and scrub, since Paul became a member of that terrible football club.” My name isn’t Paul but it could be. In another incarnation I played soccer, I don’t consider that I was much good mind you but, for my sins, I really enjoyed the…

The agony of the Long Distance Runner.

This is just a short but I think amusing story. Exercise can be addictive. I found this to be so true in my early 30 when I had a sudden rush of blood to the head & decided that I would go back to my old sport & passion, soccer. I was already showing the results of 10 years of married life and Jill’s good cooking, I decided that I needed to get into shape. I joined an infamous band of rogues…

A Funny Thing Happened (part three)

Its the 24th of August 2021!, and I’m sitting here for the first time in a long time writing a piece that I should have written a ages ago. Although all these events happened a long time ago they still remain in my memory, some happy and funny and some not so. I will in any case carry on with my wee story about our Sydney sojourn with my late parents. As before my dear father is the main…

It’s funny what you think about when you are running on a treadmill, its hardly the scenery, but this morning a thought popped into my head that I felt that I needed to write about.  I haven’t written this for anyone else except for myself, and there are no hidden agendas or motives. Additionally, I want to say that this doesn’t negate what I have written about previously, it’s just me…

A Funny Thing Happened, Part two.

Its been a few weeks since my last posting so you may wish to have a quick scan over the previous one. That’s the trouble when you are writing a series of events & don’t post regularly, therefore my apologies to all.

If you recall we had visited the Olympic Pool complex & had returned to our charabanc for our further progression north to the Blue Mountains. About half way there we called into a…

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Theatre.

I think it was about 1990 when Jill & I bought our house in Puriri Park Road in Whangarei, Jill had originally picked it out from several that we saw, her eye for potential especially in matters of property was unquestionable & as we had in mind to move her Mum & Dad up from Southland to live with us, we both realised that an arrangement like that was only going to work if we could find the right…

Working my way down!.

“Hey, its that girl Whitehead come to collect her wages”. Sour faced female wages clerk at the MOW offices in Whangarei.

As my friend Ross would say, “when I left that international institution of higher learning known locally as the Whangarei Boys High School” I was plunged into the cut & thrust world of employment, or should I say the lack of it. I had staggered abysmally through School…

Welcome to the real World.

“Welcome to the real world “. A family member to me some years ago when the money ran out. 

Some years ago when I first knew that the only way forward for me was to live my life as the person who I had always been, I knew that to shrug off the outer cladding & attitudes of years trying to conform & live up to the expectations which were place upon me as a man would be difficult, if not terribly…

Clearing the Wreckage of the Past.

As part of my recovery it behoves me to make amends to those who I have hurt in some way during my past life when I was a practicing alcoholic. This is often easier said than done, but done it must, painful as it can be.

The thing that surprises me though is how often my approach to those I have harmed is not returned with a rebuffal, quite the opposite. There are of course exceptions to the rule…

Sobering Thoughts (a bit muddled)

Isn’t it funny that even when you are in a crowd that you can feel alone?. Looking back to my earliest years I can remember feelings of anxiety & fear. Its almost as though I was inside a house at night & the world was looking in, scrutinizing my every move & nuance of behavior.

Like a lot of kids, I found that starting school was a huge trauma, probably not helped by my close attachment to my…

Dating, a Cunning Plan

I have been pondering on the subject of relationship’s for a wee while now & I have had more than a few experiences on this rather tricky subject, what I am referring to of course is… ‘Dating a Transgender Woman’, so I thought it was about time that I put pen to paper (so to speak) & give it my spin, & no its not about ‘you know who’ either!.

One day my prince will come

You all know of my…

Thank you for reading my blog I hope that you find it interesting & entertaining & if so please click the 'follow' link. Many thanks, Lynda W.

As some of you know, I was the subject recently of a documentary on TV One & I thought that now the dust has settled, so to speak, that I would try to fill in some of the gaps that I feel weren’t outlined thoroughly in the program, I also want to add some additional information that many of you probably won’t know.

The first things first, how this all came about: I was approached by Dianne Lindsay…

Business Freebee’s

Yes, I know that this is a slight departure from my planned posting, but I was having a conversation the other day with a friend when the topic of conversation turned to what businesses give away for promotional purposes & this got me thinking about all the useless cheap rubbish that we would invest in, in the vain hope of impressing our clients. A few examples follow:

The Messy Pen. Many of my…

How not to be a Boss

I am a signwriter (sign painter for my American readers) by trade & these days, a Signwriter/Graphic Designer by profession. When I first came into the industry in 1968 there weren’t many, if any women, that development in the evolution of the industry came much later. Signwriting is a craft & probably more an art form than most other trades, it requires a subtle sense of touch, dexterity & what…

This apparent division was all the more worse when Lancashire played Yorkshire at cricket & although my Mum & Dad knew very little about the game they always said that Brian Statham, the darling of Lancashire cricket, was ten times a better & quicker bowler than that “bloody Freddy Trueman!”, “big edded sod ‘e is” and so forth. Similarly with football (soccer, for all those uninitiated in the beautiful game) as it was the belief that any Lancashire team could thrash any other team that could be cobbled together, heck, Preston North End had Tom Finney so what more could you ask?, he’d have beaten them single handed anyway you could have left the other 10 players off the filed…maybe kept the goalie perhaps?.

Freddie Truman, Brian Statham & Tom Finney respectively.

But it was the Royal Family who not only ruled the country but also our house as well. I always remember coming down the stairs at our house in Darwen to hear my Mother & Father talking in hushed tones in the lounge (not ‘ower’ front parlour you understand), I paused at the door to hear the name of a well known Royal with the shocked utterance, “suspected of being a lesbian, oh my God Frank, whats the world coming to?”. I didn’t even know what a lesbian was in those days but I do remember my Mum whispering, when she suddenly realised that we may be close by say, “ssshhhh Frank what if the children found out!”. Intrigued, I rushed away immediately & scoured every book I could find on ‘lesbians’ this of course prompted a morbid curiosity in me which lasted for about 10 years.

It was much the same at Christmas in the early days when we would gather around Grandads ‘wireless’ to listen to the Queens speech, “Frank, her Majesty will be speaking soon, go put your jacket on!” was the directive from my Mother. Grandad immediately donned his cloth cap & held on to his ferret while quietly pushing his pint of brown ale under the table. As soon as the strains of ‘God Save the queen’ droned across the airwaves we all stood, my dear Mother, misty eyed & looking into the distance, much like Julius Caesar must have done when he first surveyed the white cliffs of Dover. It was only later that I realised that she was in fact looking at a stain on the wallpaper that had been there for quite some time, I think it may have been when my brother Roger threw one of Grandad’s many ash trays at me after I had been teasing him unmercifully for hours.

It was the same performance maybe worse when we got our first TV as it was almost as though seeing her Majesty in full blown black & white was like having her sacred presence in our lounge, my Mother burst in to tears the first time she saw her as she hadn’t vacuum’d out that morning, fortunately we were all wearing clean underwear & I had a bow tie on!. Christmas dinner was always punctuated by the usual toasts & my Father, who was a consummate speaker, would stand up glass in hand & drone on for about 25 minutes before Mum would intervene saying “get on with it Frank”, after which he would clear his throat & say in a booming voice “Merry Christmas all & God Save the Queen”  to which we would all jump up & echo “the Queen!” whilst downing a beverage, in later years of course the response was something like “yeah right”.

Protocol at Grandads house.

It was about this time that I wondered about my Mothers origins, as for most of the time she had a beautiful Lancashire dialect, however when speaking of the Queen & even in the presence of someone whom she thought rather upper class, her voice inflection would change quite dramatically & it was on these occasions I actually thought that we were in fact secret nobility hiding out in the nether regions of Preston, a notion that got me into all kinds of trouble later. Strangely enough she did something similar in the evenings when she had had a couple of extra Gins, oh dear 🙂 Dad wasn’t much better although I have to say that I never saw him doff his cap or tug at his forelock….he came close though!.

In later years Mother softened her stance on Royal protocol in the house & I think that a lot of it had to do with her passion for English History & in particular the Kings & Queens of England. You could ask my Mum anything you liked about people, places & dates & if it had anything to do with the Tudors through to the present day she was an expert. The only trouble was that she had read so much stuff about Royal scandal of the past 500 years that, shall we say,  I think that the sheen of Royal Godliness had somewhat worn a bit thin.

For my sins I like the Royals, if only for my dear Mother & Father’s sake. God help me. God save the Queen. 🙂

More ramblings later.

It was the 9th October 2007 when I first met Jess. I drove out to the airport with my granddaughter Sarah-Lee to fetch her from the Air New Zealand freight depot. I reported to the front desk & was directed to an inwards goods room to wait, a cage was wheeled in, a loading certificate was pinned to the side, it had my name on it & the words “Have Faith” written across the sheet, one of the men…