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hairdressing apprenticeship. This had a certain appeal to me. I had frequently assisted Betty in the application of her bleaching unguents.
    It was around this time, not uncoincidentally, that I started to consider the possibility of gender reassignment.
    One night when Betty was tucking me in, I impulsively told her that I had decided to become a girl.
    “My name will be Clare,” I said, assuming a wistful demeanor, “and I will have very, very long blond hair.”
    Betty smiled enigmatically and stared at the space on the pillow around my head where one day soon that long blond hair would lie in all its flaxen glory. Turning out the light with a jangle of her heavy bracelet, she advised me not to share my secret with anyone in my little B class or with that nasty Mrs. McCann. She might not understand.
    Betty was right.
    Mrs. McCann would never have understood. Mrs. McCann had never thought about the possibility of gender reassignment. Mrs. McCann did not think about anything much, except Canada.
    Mrs. McCann had recently returned from Canuck country. She had traversed that continent on the Canadian Pacific Railway. The double-decker observation car had afforded Mrs. McCann a spectacular view of the endless wheat fields. For some reason she found this very life-enhancing. In fact, she returnedfrom this trip having fallen hopelessly and madly in love with wheat.
    She elected to share her new passion with us, over and over again. In lesson after lesson, Mrs. McCann dragged us from one side of Canada to the other, while encouraging us to marvel at the immense, golden nothingness of it all.
    Once she got warmed up, Mrs. McCann would stride about in front of the blackboard, twitching her dirndl skirt and tossing her dry, crinkly torrent of split ends, which coincidentally, had the consistency of wheat.
    No detail of her sojourn was too small for our consideration. After the wheat fields, she introduced us trolls to the concept of grain silos and then more grain silos and still more. Time and time again her chalk would break as she passionately scrawled endless statistics on the board relating to the vastness of the Canadian prairie, number and size of silos, and the inconceivably massive amounts of grain which poured forth from “The World’s Breadbasket.”
    Her travelogues were supported with brochures and personal snaps: Mrs. McCann boarding a train, Mrs. McCann staring into the middle distance on an observation platform, a grain silo, a wheat field, another silo. To this day, I cannot look at a loaf of bread without thinking of Mrs. McCann and the vacation of a lifetime which she shared with us over and over again, ad nauseam, ad delirium.
    Her thinking was no doubt as follows: “Since these trolls and trollettes will never ascend to the level of society which permits transcontinental Canadian vacations, let them vicariously enjoy mine.”
    It was inconceivable to me that Mrs. McCann could find this stuff interesting or glamorous. Statistics about grain silos and wheat fields would never have held the attention of anyone in my house. The gin-fueled, witty repartee which sizzled and crackled between my parents and their friends was infinitely more titillating and engaging.
    And getting more so.
    Not only did we have free gin but we now had free wine, gallons and gallons of it.
    It all started after we took a mind-expanding trip of our own. It wasn’t very far, and it didn’t take very long, but when we returned we were changed forever.
    *  *  *
    One day in the early 1960s, Betty; Terry; my sister, Shelagh; and I took the train up to London and visited the Ideal Home Exhibition.
    This sounds like it might have been a gigantic yawn, but nothing could be further from the truth. Here, in booth after booth, we deprived postwar Brits encountered something beyond our wildest dreams. Talk about life-enhancing! There were free beverages! Free hors d’oeuvres! Chips and dips! Crackers and nibbly bits! Cheeses of the world,