Thomas from the children’s home and others

I still remember two people from my early days at Holme Middle. One is a lad called Thomas. He was mixed race, what we called half caste at the time although it must be remembered that we quite often used terminology without understanding it and there wasn’t the awareness back then that there is now. Thomas lived in the children’s home on the other side of the valley. I don’t know the circumstances of why he was in the children’s home and never asked him. The children’s home was the biggest house on the estate and stood out because of this. I can’t remember anyone thinking any differently of the children from the home, they were just kids like us. I started hanging around with Thomas and he started coming back to my house. This ended when my mum caught him stealing money from her purse. I never saw Thomas again. Another lad whose name I can’t remember stood out because he dressed in a more feminine way. It didn’t bother me or anyone else, not in the way it seems to do in today’s society. He was a nice kid and we never said a bad word to each other. I met him again many years later. I was collecting loans on an estate and he lived in a flat there. He’d had a sex change and was engaged to a man who loved him. I was really happy for him. Despite growing up at a time when it was perceived that acceptance of difference was less tolerant he’d trod his own path and become the person he always wanted to be and believed he was, and he’d found love as well which is a very special thing indeed.