Why my sister never had a penchant for pretty dresses I simply cannot remember a time when my younger sister (the baby of five siblings) did not express a distinct and vehement desire to dress like a boy. Aged two, she was found advancing upon her new smocked Viyella dress with a large pair of scissors. By four, she was standing at the gate of our country cottage in a cap and cords, asking passers-by with a poker face: "Do you think I'm a girl or a boy?" A year later, she asked Santa for a punchbag, some rope and a mask. She also put in a plea for a penis, but I didn't know that until this week, when I asked her if she recognised anything of her younger self in Zachary Avery, the five-year-old who feels he was born the wrong gender. Zachary's family, school and friends have all accepted his desire to live as a little girl, allowing him a good chance of the happy childhood that comes more readily to those born feeling relaxed in their own skin. It wasn't so for my sister. "I felt desperately wrong being a girl," she said. I asked Mum for a sex-change operation, because I didn't know there were any other options. She was given some pamphlets on gender reassignment, mainly in order to terrify her about the major surgery. My mother was the most empathetic woman on the planet, but she dreaded my sister suffering the ostracism that accompanies marked displays of difference. In the event, my sister suffered it anyway. The bullying was low-level, but insistent: girls at her school asked her if it was true she was a boy and one tried to force her hand down her underwear to check. One July, she attended a summer camp and decided it would be easier to introduce herself as "Michael," which worked until a neighbour's child blew her cover. Happily she had some good, supportive friends in her class and milieu, none of whom was surprised when she came out as a lesbian after she left school. Her decision ably demonstrates the fact that many a child who declares a strong wish to become a member of the opposite sex may find it's not their biology that's the real problem, just a dearth of role models; beyond the school gates there are plenty of masculine women, feminine men and androgynous types, who defy easy labels. What is certain, however, is that my beautiful, talented sister would have avoided years of self-lacerating anguish if she had been shown the latitude and understanding afforded to Zachary Avery. My family were nearly incinerated at half term, and I blame myself for not reciting enough poetry. If my son were better acquainted with Struwwelpeter, he surely wouldn't have dared hop on a kitchen chair to retrieve the big box of matches from a high shelf, and he would not have set light to a pile of tissues. The Dreadful Story of Harriet and the Matches would have been reverberating too loudly in his guilty conscience: "And see! Oh, what dreadful thing! /The fire has caught her apron-string; / Her apron burns, her arms, her hair - /She burns all over everywhere. Furthermore, if he were properly drilled in Hilaire Belloc's Matilda, "who told lies and was burnt to death," he wouldn't have bothered denying his crime. I read both poems to him later and understood for the first time that cautionary tales really can instil caution. The only person happy about the water shortage in the South East is my husband. He's been policing my water consumption for months now. I often jump while brushing my teeth because a shadowy figure is lurking behind me, stretching out a pallid hand to turn off the flowing tap. He looks upon the paddling pool as Satan's tool, and urges me to bath no more than once a week. Finally, the officials have adopted his urgency. "I told you there was a drought," he said smugly.