Let's face it. It can be very comfortable in the closet and very painful coming out or even trying to get out.By Maggie David

Let's face it. It can be very comfortable in the closet and very painful coming out or even trying to get out.

Here we are surrounding by our fantasies and protected from the sneers and laughter of the outside world by our protective shell of fearful furtiveness. The protective shell is strange. It keeps us firmly in the closet, but it also protects us from our worst nightmares by threatening us with discovery.

There we are in the closet enjoying our secret femininity, but we share our closet with a whole variety of others. All of us comfortably uncomfortable in our pink silk knickered, macho jock strapped or rubber lined worlds and all petrified of being revealed as we see ourselves.

Understanding

Those of you who have dared to show your true colours to the world will laugh at our fears, hopefully with understanding but perhaps (and this is the crux of our fear) there may be some regretting their boldness.

There may be those who have personal acquaintance with someone who has come out.

Just recently I have become aware of, if not a friend let's call him a business acquaintance, who has gradually shown his true colours in a very public way. Let's call him Hector.

I have no way of knowing his objectives nor his feelings, but his fetish for uniforms and just lately frilly underwear have been very publicly displayed.

Hector is the cartoon character used by the Inland revenue to publicise the new taxation system, known as Self Assessment. This is the dramatic change in the relationship taxpayers will have with the tax man and seems to be a tremendous strain on Hector as the great day approaches. Strain has caused so many over the years to let their screts slip. You only have to read the tabloid press nearly any day to see accounts of the fall of the great and noble. But there hasn't been a mention of Hector's apparent dash from the closet.

Guises

In the leaflets issued by the Inland Revenue, Hector has appeared in a variety of guises. One shows him on a building site, stripped to the waist and wielding a towel but still complete with bowler hat, umbrella and moustache.

In the same leaflet there is a hint of things to come perhaps, with him anxiously peering out of a shop resplendent in apron. It is, as some of you will appreciate, only a short step from apron to frilly pinafore!

I began to wonder when in the General Guide there he was with knots in his umbrella and handkerchief. Not a very convincing indication of bondage, I know but just a few pages further on there he is dangling his keys. Surely it can't be true?