Strangers on a Bench - EPISODE 89: I Am What I Am

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Tom Rosenthal approaches a stranger on a park bench and asks if he can sit down next to them and record their conversation.This is what happened! Produced by Tom RosenthalEdited by Rose De LarrabeitiMixed by Mike WoolleyTheme tune by Tom Rosenthal & Lucy Railton Incidental music by Maddie AshmanEnd song : ''I Am What I Am' by Hetta FalzonStream it here : https://ffm.to/iamwhatiam-soabListen to all the end songs featured on the podcast (so far) on one handy playlist :https://ffm.to/soabendsongs————————————————————————————Instagram : @strangersonabench Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello. Sorry to bother you. Can I ask you a slightly odd question? I'm making a podcast called Strangers on a Bench, where essentially I talk to people I don't know on benches for 10 or 15 minutes. Are you up for that? Do you want to give it a go? Do you have a favourite day of the week? I like Mondays and Thursdays because they're the days I come to Hampstead Heath. But some of the other. other days I spend a lot of time writing and I like those as well so I think they're all lovely for you yeah I mean I'm retired so if any day isn't lovely it's down to me I like it yeah you're taking full responsibility of your yes you have to don't you so what so why would you come to hampsticee on a Monday and say not a Tuesday uh I like to give my weaker shape like on

On Wednesday I received the grocery order and on Tuesday is the day I finalised the grocery order. I do a stock check of our food. When was the last time you made a wild decision on there? Do you like, I'm just suddenly going to get this? Hmm. Maybe a month ago when I decided to buy some Biskopf biscuits. This went wild for the Biscophe. Well, for no reason that I could imagine, I suddenly remember what Viskof biscuits tasted like. And I thought, I haven't had those for years.

So what were you doing that made you think of Biskopf? Did you see an advert for Biscoff? Is that what I did it? No, no, there was no advert, just some stream of consciousness. Fantastic. And when you finally tasted the Biscuit, did it? Yeah, they tasted exactly as I remember. Yeah, when they arrived, I cut open the packet and ate one.

And then I ate another one because they're the kind of biscuits that one isn't enough. That's true. I'm very naughty. I end up eating a whole pack. I can't stop myself. But you can. I don't eat the whole pack. You could just eat the whole pack. But not in one sitting. So Mondays on the heat, what are we doing on Mondays on the Heath? normally. Well, I do the same walk each time. It sounds boring, but it isn't because I'm looking at the same thing time after time.

I notice all the little changes. That's lovely. Which at this time of year there are a lot. Because it's spring? Yes, because it's spring. But I mean, even at any season there's always something is different. The route is designed so that I do one hill, which I think I need for exits. size and I used to do three hills years ago.

And now we're down to one. Down to one. We still go strong. We still got this one hill. Yeah. I mean the three hills was before I had sepsis and was ill for quite a long time. Oh dear. And when you get old, illness isn't like it was when you were young.

When you're young, you take a few days off and you're back to where you were. If you get old, where you end up, I'm young. Where you end up after the illness is not where you were before. How do you feel about being old? Do you count yourself as old? Yes, I do. In about three months, I'll be 80. Well, happy birthday in advance.

Let's make it a birthday party. I mean, that is old, isn't it? Well, you know, you still got your hill. I've still got my hill. As long as you've got your hill, you've got a semblance of youth. How are you going to celebrate on the day? What are you going to do? I don't know.

Probably won't do anything much. Oh, come on. Probably do what I would do anyway. No, no, I'm not going to allow it. Is you going to celebrate? Yes. What do you dream of doing? What would be the thing you haven't done that you might like to do?

Well, haven't I done in my life? There's a lot of things I've done in my life that I'm glad not to have done. But for my, I really don't know. I have to think about it nearer the time. Is there anyone you'd like to show your birthday with? Well, yeah, maybe my sister. I used to have three sisters and a brother. Now I've got a sister.

That's one of the things about going old. The people you used to know are dead. A lot of them. All gone. Well, no, I've still got one. Don't forget there's one sister. So you got on her care of the sister? Yeah, yeah.

I don't see her all that often because we don't live near to each other. So you grew up with lots of siblings? Yeah, yeah. What was that like? Well, I was born just after the war and I had three siblings who were born before the war. There was a big age gap.

while my dad was Hitler's guest. He was a prisoner of war. So it was like my older siblings were grown-ups. Well, they weren't, but to someone as young as I were, they were. So they were on a bit of the same team. Yeah, I mean, one of my sisters wanted to mother me. One wanted to ignore me. and my brother wanted to bully me

well did bully me did your brother stop bullying you at some point not really oh dear he's dead now okay well at least he can't bully you now no he can't

how did you feel about it when he died I didn't really feel anything much maybe a little bit of relief Did anyone come to your rescue during the bullying times? Did you feel like you were kind of on your own with it? I felt I was on my own. Why was that, do you think? I don't know.

I mean, my mother should have intervened, but she didn't. I think my mother liked my brother better than she liked me. That's complicated, isn't it? I think I was her least favourite child. Why do you think she, why do you say that? Well, if she had stuff to pass on to her children, I would be near the end of the line. Did you get anything from Mother? Well, I mean, sort of birthday and Christmas presents, I guess I got a wedding present.

I can't even remember what it was. I can remember what some other people gave me, but not what my parents did. As a wedding present? As a wedding present. For when you got married? When I got married. When did you get married? I got married at the age of 30 in 1976. How did that go?

Not brilliantly. The wedding day or the marriage? Well, the wedding day, I don't know. My wife became very drunk, and we had a great deal of difficulty in reviving her sufficiently to go on the honeymoon. Oh, God. Even to go on the honeymoon?

We went off later in the... Oh, 80 in the night, okay. In the same day. How did you revive her? I think someone forced to eat bread. I was quite drunk myself, but I wasn't that drunk. And did you make the honeymoon? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Where did you go? A place called Arnside. I think it's three stops on the train from Lancaster, where we were living. and you kept it humble yes yes yes the honeymoon was in a hotel called the fighting cocks now you

couldn't make that out could you did you fight no he didn't oh that's good do you remember anything about this hotel huge breakfast but my wife was quite in sense though

because she as a woman got two eggs and I got three and I said did you actually three eggs and she said no but I can see the pipe. Oh dear. This egg discrepancy there. I mean it wasn't just three eggs there was everything. Yeah, the whole package. There was a sort of pyramid of food. I mean I mean I

Yeah, how did the marriage go then? Do you think it was a good idea to get married? I'm not sure. I think that both of us were married for the wrong reason. What was your reason? What was hers? The sex and the... Was that yours or hers? What?

Oh, well, both of that. Okay, yeah, okay. And, yeah, I mean, the sort of reasons that we got married were sort of reasons that passed. I see what you mean. There was a lustful connection, but not necessarily. Yeah, yeah. And also the big thing was she turned out to have fertility problems.

And the fertility treatment seemed to be designed to either make you have children or break up the marriage. for example the doctor's got us to put little X's on the chart for when we had sex which made me and I probably heard

as if there were doctors looking over our shoulder yeah I mean yeah that kind of destroyed a lot oh dear yeah I can see how that might happen and so I'm guessing it didn't work out kid wise no Well, we were together, I think, for about 10 years.

And then how did he rebuild? What was it from there? How did I rebuild? Well, eventually, I got a bed sit in South End, which was the town where I come from originally. And I started writing quite a lot. And I found a publisher. who wanted transgender fiction, which I wrote quite a lot,

and got paid intermittently. What is transgender fiction out of interest? Based on transgender characters. Yeah. And when were you writing about this? In the 80s, I suppose. Yeah. So you've always written about transgender?

I haven't. I mean, that was when I started writing about it. Oh, okay. I have, there you are, on my fleece, there's a little transgender flag. Oh, lovely. So that was another complication in my life. Tell me more. Well, I've always felt that I belonged with the girls.

When I was at junior school, at playtime I used to play with the girls I used to play fairies and witches which was a good game what happened in fairies and witches can I ask? Well to start with

all but one of the players was a fairy and one was a witch and there was two areas on opposite sides of the playground it was safe places and the fairies would congregate in those and the witch would kind of patrol outside and then someone would make a break for it

to get to the other safe area and the witch would have to grab somebody after they were grabbed they would be changed from being a fairy to being a witch Yeah, I see. Yeah, it's a game of the tag family It was a very noisy game

How do the girls feel having you in this? I don't know. At the time, I mean, it felt normal. Felt normal to me. I don't know what the girls thought. So this is an area that's always been of interest to you in your life. Yeah, yeah. Do you feel like you've been able to explore it fully?

I mean, what's... Well, I've never fully transitioned. I didn't know that it was possible to fully transition. until I was about 30, which is kind of leaving it a bit late. And also it's not cheap and not easy, and I've been poor for most of my life. This is another thing.

I mean, almost all the work I've had has been poorly paid work that's more often done by women than men. That wasn't a plan on my part. But somehow, my first job was a library assistant, and my last job was working for victim support. And in between then, I would care worker a cleaner at one time and all sorts of things.

What job has meant the most to you out of those? Or do you look back with most fondly, you know, when you think... I'm not sure that I look back on anything very fondly. the victim supported something that you get burnt out. So these are victims of what? Victims of crime. Okay. The worst thing that, I mean the worst thing personally,

was there was a victim of child abuse in Welsh care home. And the police wanted to interview him for a statement. And they needed an independent. witness and I was sent in to be the independent witness and the interview went on for literally hours and it was the most gralling thing to hear I couldn't intervene in any any way and that that that takes a lot out of you obviously the landscape in the transgender world has shifted a lot in the last 50 years, I guess, right? So when you would say you were 30 and you realised it was too late to transition, at what stage were we at in terms of

transgender life, do you say? Yeah, I was 50 years ago. So, so very heavily clotted, I would say. I didn't, what does that mean? You mean you wanted to transition, but you weren't, but you didn't feel like it was possible. Didn't feel like it was possible. Didn't feel that anyone around me would be accepting. It felt very lonely. Is this whilst you were married? Before and jury.

I go, yeah. Can I ask what your partner thought about this? Yeah, that was another trouble. She thought that it was just something. trivial that I would get out of my system and... But it wasn't? No. It's something fundamental about how you are.

Yeah. It's... Yeah. I don't think she ever understood that. Did anyone around that time understand you? Like, did you have anyone that you could talk to you? No. No.

Not one? I talked about it to my wife before we were married to, but no. I hadn't talked about it to anyone else. Yeah, it's kind of a lonely. But if you look at me now and you see what I'm wearing, everything is, I'm wearing is actually women's clothing. This is actually a woman's blouses. It's great.

Women's trousers. It's a great look. It's a great look. Life is too short for boring clothes. That's so right. But, yeah. And I come to Hampstead Heath to play with Dawson. Fantastic.

Okay, tell me about these dolls. So you... Yeah, I've got two with me. Let me introduce you to them. Oh, here they are. Here they are. This one is Samantha. Hi, Samantha.

Now, Samantha is my favourite and my bag, buddy. I always have her with me. What is it about Samantha that you feel connected to? I don't know. There's just something about her. It's like people. You can't really say why you take this to one person and not to another.

But the other one is Lavinia. Lavinia is named after the person I bought her from. And Lavinia is part of my dull rock and roll band, Cindy a mutiny, the greatest rock and roll land in the world. I bet they are. I bet they are. And you've got how many now? 200 and odd.

I don't know the exact statistics. Is there a limit? I mean... That is it. I've reached the limit. That's it. And they're all in your house? They're all in my bedroom. Wow.

How are they all arranged? Well, there's a shelf above my bed that I put up myself. Now, I'm not a handy person. It's actually kept up roughly on the principle of a suspension bridge. There's nails in the wall and string and support them. As long as it stays up, that's the means. It stays up and that's absolutely full of doles. One on top of another?

How's it working? They're all standing up on their own feet. Some of them have vending knees so they can sit on the edge of shelves. And I've got a set of shells that are full of them on doll stands. So it's a whole world of play with these dolls. It's a whole world of life. Oh, that's wonderful. I mean, look, the obvious thing to say is, I mean, it's lovely to talk here, you talk about it.

I mean, is this, you know, I'm guessing you didn't get a chance to play with dolls as a kid? Not much. My youngest sister, the one who's still alive, she didn't much care for dolls. Does your sister, the youngest sister now, does she know about your doll collection? She does. Well, I don't know, she knows how big it is, but she has been with me when I'm. I've photographed dolls, so yes. And what does she think?

I have no idea. I think she thinks I'm mad, but... Do you think you're mad? No, I don't think I'm mad. I agree, I don't think you're mad at all. I think I have been mad, but I don't think I'm mad now. When were you mad? In my 20s.

Why was that, can you say? I was in and out of mental hospital. around that times and certainly suffering from depression. Why were that time in particular? I think it was gender dysphoria. That sense of being trapped in a gender to which I didn't belong. That it's a big deal. And I never spoke to it about that to the psychiatrists or anything.

Is that because you feared what they would say? I don't think I had the vocabulary to talk about it. And in any case, I didn't trust them. Yeah. How did you kind of come out of that loop then? How did I come out of that? At what point did you emerge from it? Yeah.

I actually did a lot of deliberate efforts to get myself back into shape. One of the things I did was to paint a tarotep. As in tarot cards. As in tarot cards, yeah. And you painted it yourself? I designed them and painted them myself. Amazing. It was an exercise, both a mental exercise,

of being able to think about the design and the symbolism. And also a physical exercise of controlling my hands sufficiently to paint them. Okay. Because it's quite... Yes, it's intricate. Yeah, I mean, they're actually fairly big for cards, but they're still very small for paintings. Do you still have that pack? I've still got it somewhere.

So that act of making that pack of cards really helped to help you turn a corner? Yeah, another thing I did was to teach myself Middle Egyptian. The classical language of ancient Egypt. And you taught yourself that? Yeah, from gardener's Egyptian grammar. Oh, amazing. And which is a big book. Wow.

How long do that take you to know? I think maybe year, two years. And that also was the same thing. Obviously, it's a mental thing of learning a language. And a language that isn't very much like English. But there's also a thing with the hands of actually doing little, pictures of birds and things which is quite fiddly. Amazing. So these two acts really helped you emerge. Yeah, those two things I think really got me back. Amazing. Yeah. Do you feel kind of

any sense of anger kind of at the world that you were born when you were born? I mean, do you ever think, well, if I was born 20, 30 years later, then I would be? Yeah. It was, it was If I were, certainly if I've been born, say, 50 years later, I would definitely have transitioned. No, I'm not angry about that. It's just the way things are. How do you think your life would have been, you know, no, it's a slightly painful question, but imagine if you were born 50 years later, so that would make you 30 now. I'm not certain that it would have been any better.

Yeah. But is that, why do you say that? because it wouldn't have been easy it would never have been easy it isn't easy even now and I mean I was twice the victim of transphobic violence

and I think if I have born 50 years late it might have been more than twice when were those incidents? One of them was in Kennington tube station. There's a lot of underground passages. And there was this group of young men

who were sort of jostling me. How old were you at the time? Oh, goodness. Forties, I think. No, maybe in my 50s. I used to dress more femininely than I am now. I mean, what I'm wearing now is sort of... It's quite lighty.

...flossibly light. So, but no, I was actually wearing a skirt at the time, and I don't remember much about it because I think they must have pushed me, bashed my head against the wall of the passenger, and I fell unconscious. I suspect that they kicked me when I was, on the floor but I

have no memory of that and the second one was just around the corner where I was living at the time and I was set upon by about eight men why do you think they had such a kind of desire to do that to you? People don't

like the other do they? If you appear to be other people will blame you for whatever is wrong in their lives it happens all the time it's still happening and what would you like people let's imagine someone's listening to this yeah has never encountered a transgender individual yeah what would you like them to understand that that person is just trying

to be the person that they are and they need acceptance and just want to be another person who's and so that these events you know when they have obviously they must have shaken you well yeah shake you into prilling back from it at all did you well did you go harder did you do you what how did you respond The first one I carried on as I have been, really. The second one was much more dangerous because it was just around the corner from where I live. I see.

So you started to fear happening again. Yeah, that really did. And only now am I coming out again more than I was. But you see, I've got this. little badge with a transgender flag on my fleet and you know that's saying I'm here I am what I am and yeah oh there's so much um heat he kind of transgendered I don't know what you want to call it uh do people call it a debate yeah they call it a well yeah I mean it's become very controversial has, isn't it? I feel like when I was younger, it was less controversial than it is now.

Yeah. Can you try and explain that? I think people feel that the world is going wrong for them more than they did, and they're looking for people to blame, basically. So how does it, I mean, how do you cope now with it all, as in what I mean, all the kind of, the further, the... I don't have much to do with that, to be honest. I do write, but that's different. I mean, I have a publisher and I write what they want me to write. You're still writing transgender. No, no.

Oh, no, we're all different things now. No, well, yeah. What are we writing now, then? Transgender fiction is oversubscribed at the moment. So what are we all? on to you now? What do you write about now? What I write about now is spanking an age regression. Okay. Okay.

Is age regression? Yeah. I'm trying to think about what that quite means. Well, yeah. In the first one, I wrote, she thinks she's been offered a job as a teacher. Okay. and finds that actually she's been enrolled as a pupil in the boarding school. I see it now. Got it.

It is a fantasy. There's a market for it. And I actually don't like writing the spanking seats for my publisher wants them. And I need to write to keep my brain active. Take me through your desk. What's on my desk? Yes, I want a tour of your desk. Well, it's actually quite a small desk.

It's actually a child's desk. Okay. That's up on bricks. Okay, right. There's a brick under each leg. And then what's on the desk? What's on it is... There's actually a lot of dull shoes.

Okay. Scattered around my... Of course you've got to get all the accessory. Yeah, I mean, they all wear shoes. So that means if you have hundreds of dolls, that means you have hundreds of pairs of doll shoes? Exactly. I have more pairs of dolls shoes than I have dolls.

How long can you spend just happily playing with the dolls? Oh, can be ours. Yeah, okay. I love that. They're fun. So I have two daughters. I guess your daughters play with dolls. Well, one of them does, a lot.

And she's, you know, she can just be a little. be in that world with hours and hours, you know, dressing them, you know, put them in different places and stuff. And I just think, yeah, it's a beautiful world, isn't it? And I just think, I think it's such a shame that, like, some people would hear, you know, someone overheard us, you know, just that bit. They didn't know the context.

They think, that's complete madness. This person must be X, X, X, X, X, X, X. And actually, it isn't at all because it's just play. Yeah, it's just play. And for your daughter, I imagine that she's, imagining how her life might be when she's older. Mm. Because I take it they're teenage fashion dolls.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the dolls represent girls who are considerably older than her and actually represent her future life. And for me, it's actually in a way of a very similar thing because they can be a life that I haven't actually had. I would have liked to have had. So, yeah. Is it too late for you to do anything?

I mean, you know, is there anything now you wish you could do? I've been thinking about it and I don't know. I was wondering whether to start taking hormones, but I don't know. I mean, at my age, it's actually probably become dangerous to do that. But is there anything you could do just in terms of meeting people from that, community or yeah yeah I would like kind of like to meet more people but yeah like I mean I've learned so much from talking to you yeah and if I was in in the position of of thinking about my gender and and exploring those things talking to someone like

you would be really informative yeah it could be ranging to talk to you you know you would get something from the name would get something for you I'm sure if you yeah see if you can get involved with some groups maybe or something. I don't know. I feel like there's some fight in you there. Well, yes. Since I'm living in London,

they really ought to be people like a mate. Yeah, I'm sure there's some groups. I'm sure there are. There may even be groups of older people like you who feel the same way, who were born not at the perfect time to do what they might have otherwise done. Yeah.

That you could get together with. Maybe. You know, they must exist. They must exist. They must. You won't be, you'll 100% not be the only one. Can you think of what would be the happiest moment of your life? If that's too big a question, maybe a recent... I've lived too long there, been too many experiences.

Can you think of then a recent-ish joy that stands out? Sometimes it's the little things. Tell me about one. Well, I'll tell you about something. anyway. On Wednesday evening of last week

a toilet got blocked and a plumber came around on Thursday and said he couldn't do it

we needed a drainage company and a drainage company employee came around on Thursday and said

we needed a new toilet bowl which wasn't his job and someone was supposed to come around on Friday

and didn't on Sunday yesterday I phoned up the Housing Association's emergency line

and spoke to a nice young lady and she got someone else through the drainage company to come round and this person

finally I've locked our toilet after when it Thursday Friday after four days of not having a working toilet and having a toilet that you can actually flush again. I mean that is...

A joy of the flushing toilet. A flushing toilet. Fantastic. So you did little dance. Well, no, I did. If I do a little dance, it's usually when I'm doing the washing up. Because when I'm washing up, I have an MP3 player in my pocket

and earphones clamped over my ears and yeah some of the music is stuff it's impossible to stay still to so I used to dance a lot Oh do you? Yeah, I used to go out dancing Wonderful

Yeah And I bought myself proper dancing shoes Oh fantastic Well I really hope you do celebrate that 80th I think you should. I should. You deserve it. Yeah.

And maybe, you know, get one extra special doll or something. Or something, yes, yes. Get something special. We should celebrate ourselves. Yes. What have I got left to ask you? There's a million things I can ask you, really. Let's do this.

I often do an interesting game. Yeah. So I'm going to close my eyes. Yeah. You don't, you can either close yours or not. be up to you. But it helps a picture thing sometimes I find. So what I'm going to ask you do is think back to a room, a scene, a place you were that you can remember in the greatest detail. It can be anywhere. Just I want you to describe that moment that you find yourself going back to

and how you were feeling and what you were seeing. Ah, maybe from my dancing years. the bell on Penterville Road, the Sunday tea dance, and it was a really joyous occasion. It was predominantly a gay thing. I could go there in a skirt, looking pretty, and it will be accepted. And there was a old fellow who used to do the sandwiches called Geoffrey, who wore... A labyrinth earrings and a series of hats. One of them was a turban. And the DJ who was an ageing lesbian called Joe Purvis,

who played a big variety of music. I'd still listen to a lot of music from those days. Yeah. That's where you go back to. Well, that certainly A-flates that go back to it. Yeah, it was a celebration, a celebration of diversity. Particularly if you were going to be exuberant. Well, thank you so much for your time.

That's all right. I really enjoy talking to you. Don't leave just yet. I've got one more question for you. So last question for you, which is what are you going to do next? What, right away? Well, right away, however you want to answer it. It totally out to you.

Right. I'm going to walk across there. Yeah. Into a, like a little wood there. And I think of it as being the enchanted wood. And there's a circle of logs that someone's made. But it's got lots of places in and around it that are good for photographing dolls.

And then there's a sort of elaborate bow of intertwined sticks just down that way, and I will go there. And then after that, I walk down another path. There's a bench. It's kind of high above the surrounding ground, and I can swing my legs. And swinging your legs is tremendous fun. It is.

As any child knows. So true. And I'm fortunate in not being very tall. So if you were a great tall person, you wouldn't be able to swing your legs there. But, listen, you keep swinging those legs. And I hope Lavinia and Samantha perform well at this photo shoot. I'm sure they will. And good luck.

Good luck. Happy 80th birthday. Yes. Whatever I do for it. You must do something. Yeah. I should probably have a trifle. Yeah.

Have a trifle. Have a trifle. I like trifle too. You must have a trifle. Yes. And you don't understand what that. I am something much bigger Body, I'm back

Am I too late to start changing? Am I too old to keep growing? Am I never quite for what? And you can't take, though it seems to blame someone Question oneself