14. KAMBALA ESTATE

Kambala was one of the last council estates to be built in Wandsworth, planned by the last Labour council, and it was a low rise, pleasant estate with gardens and courtyards. We hoped to get a ground floor flat with a garden, but were very disappointed to be told these were reserved for old and disabled people. Most of these were simply not capable of doing gardening, and absolutely hated the thought of a garden. The builders were still on site, and loads of pensioners and disabled people in the ground floor flats begged paving stones off the builders to cover up their unwanted gardens, which some of us in the upstairs flats envied and couldn’t bear to see disappearing under concrete. You would have thought the council could have asked who wanted gardens, as there was plenty of space in the courtyards to give gardens to some of the upstairs flat dwellers, whilst some of the ground floor flats could have been designed without gardens. Years later the courtyards were overgrown with weeds, rundown and neglected. Of course, I now realize I should have qualified for a ground floor flat because of my disability (a club foot at birth resulting in one leg shorter than the other and the need for surgical shoes), but I didn’t think of myself as disabled so it simply didn’t occur to me to mention it. Anyway, we did feel safer upstairs, and less likely to be burgled, especially during our many trips abroad.

 

We viewed the upstairs flat which we eventually moved into, and although it was a lovely flat, because it didn’t have a garden or even a balcony we refused to accept it at first. George had a strange feeling as he walked around it that unhappy things would occur there - perhaps he sensed that he and several of our cats would die there. Anyway, after initially walking out of the estate office saying we’d have to think about it, we eventually retraced our steps and said we’d take it. I’m sure we did the right thing, as it was an even better flat than we had before, with a huge kitchen and plenty of cupboards.

 

We got the keys the following week and moved in on a Monday in January 1984. The council were paying for the removal, but the company they used were rather careless and broke our dressing table mirror, for instance. Thankfully George and I had packed some of our more delicate things in a shopping trolley, and I walked over to the new flat with the cat. I had to wait ages before George arrived, as he stayed to see the men put everything we wanted to take in the van. We were leaving our old suite and several other things, and buying some new stuff. The council gave us a certain amount of compensation for the inconvenience of the compulsory removal and for some of the resulting expenses.

 

George arrived, and we waited in the empty flat with no furniture for hours till the removal men finally arrived. They had decided to take a long lunch break right in the middle of our move!

 

The next few weeks we were busy getting straight, buying carpets and curtains, fixing a bathroom cabinet, etc. It was to be the last home we ever had together, and the best. In the next 7 years, thanks largely to George, we really got it looking nice.

 

The Kambala estate at that time was a maze of alleyways, which were later nearly all blocked off as it was considered a muggers’ paradise. We disagreed, and thought the alleyways were marvelous, since you could come and go so many ways. It was useful when we brought someone back to our flat we had met in ‘The Cricketers’ several times. We went down so many back alleys he could never find the place again on his own, which was why we did it. It was one of the few times I have met someone in a gay bar (rather than a backroom or darkroom of a gay bar) and gone back with him, but this guy was so bold he came right up to both of us and invited himself back to Jay Court, and later, to our new flat. He was very attractive but we felt he was not entirely trustworthy, hence our caution. We saw him a few times, but then he disappeared when ‘The Cricketers’ ceased to be gay.

 

No sooner had we moved into our new flat than we had a visitor from Glasgow. George’s nephew, John, was doing a cookery course at the Hotel Forum in Kensington and paid us a short visit. He had never been to London before, and he and his fellow trainee cooks were wandering around posh Kensington trying in vain to find a ‘fish supper’. Not finding a fish and chip shop they contented themselves with raiding the mini-bars in their rooms, not realizing they had to pay for these drinks before they left.

 

One Sunday in February we invited Ray and Vic, the landlord and landlady of ‘The Cricketers’, round to lunch to see our new flat and discuss the possibility of our doing a drag show, but they left the pub soon after and it went straight. They’d only been in the pub a year and had really turned it around to one of London’s most popular gay venues. It was a shame they couldn’t stay there, but I believe there were problems with the lease.

 

George was by now working at Oxfam, a charity which was to be a main part of his life during the next few years. He was really suited to the work, starting off helping out in a shop just off Carnaby Street. He never got full recognition for his efforts, mainly because at the crucial time when he might have been offered a shop manager’s post which could have led to paid employment at Oxfam, he left to go back to the Australian company we had once both worked for. I know he regretted this decision later, but at the time he thought it was for the best.

 

Among the outings we had in March were a visit to the Lyric, Hammersmith to see ‘Rents’ and a preview of ‘Starlight Express’ at the Victoria Apollo theater. The Lyric play about rent boys caused one woman to walk out early on muttering that it was ‘filth’, presumably thinking when she booked it was something to do with tenants paying rent to landlords. ‘Starlight Express’ was a technically amazing production with roller skaters coming right out over the audience on specially constructed tracks. During March we also heard Ken Livingstone and Des Wilson speak at two separate meetings at Battersea Arts Centre. These meetings were about saving the Greater London Council and about a Freedom of Information Act. We also saw our friends Lena and Frank that month, and caught a coach from the Victoria Embankment for a long weekend in Amsterdam. We made so many short visits to Paris and Amsterdam I can’t recall details of individual trips, but we always enjoyed ourselves in these two cities.

 

After an Easter at home which included a visit to the fair at Hampstead, we were off on our travels again in mid-May. We caught a double-decker ‘luxury’ coach, complete with hostess, coffee and sandwiches, to the South of France. We traveled by coach and ferry all that day, right through the night, skirting round the center of Paris, and going through Lyon. It was a good job we brought food and drink with us, for we didn’t see any sign of the hostess on the upper deck until the afternoon of the second day, when she tried in vain to sell us sandwiches which by now were quite stale. We’d seen them taken into the coach nice and fresh in London, but the lazy cow had let us starve for 24 hours before she got off her butt and tried to get rid of her stale stock just before arriving at our South of France destination!

 

When we did arrive it was raining. This more or less set the pattern for the week. Having stayed at George’s sister’s caravan in Scotland a couple of times, we had decided to go on our first foreign caravan holiday. It seemed a cheap way to see the South of France. Our caravan site was in Antibes, and as we trekked across the muddy camp site (which fortunately had paved roads) we discovered our tiny caravan was as far away from the entrance as it could be. Alongside the perimeter hedge beyond was a country lane. We had expected a caravan similar to Betty’s, which had a separate bedroom. Instead we squeezed into a tiny space hardly big enough to swing the proverbial cat. When the beds were down there was barely room to move, and the rain on the roof kept us awake for hours. At least we were able to step out on to relatively solid ground, but the caravan opposite seemed to be in the middle of a swamp, and the occupants had to step gingerly on to wooden planks to get to dry land.

 

Despite the bad weather, we enjoyed our holiday. Graham Greene had a home in Antibes, though we never saw it or, indeed, Mr Greene. We caught buses from the site into town, where a train ran conveniently all along the coast into Italy one way, and probably into Spain the other way. Our favorite town in the area was Nice, where we discovered the ‘Flunch’ chain of self-service cafeterias. These were confined to the South of France at the time, but later moved northwards to Paris, and we always used to visit the ‘Flunch’ there too. We loved self-service restaurants as you could see what you were getting before you ordered, and you didn’t have waiters hovering around you. It was really essential for George, as he was so fussy about what he ate. It was impossible to eat in any place where he couldn’t see and smell the food before ordering. One whiff of onion or garlic and he was likely to be physically sick, and the sight of any kind of sauce, or ‘muck and squalor’ as George so delightfully put it, and he wouldn’t touch the food. The Nice ‘Flunch’ became our second home, so we made daily trips to Nice to visit it. We certainly couldn’t be bothered trying to cook meals in our tiny caravan, so the cafeteria was a Godsend.

 

Nice itself was a pleasant city with pretty gardens, wide boulevards, fountains, a very wide, long promenade with a stony beach and at one end a high cliff with gardens and a water cascade. The palm trees gave it all an exotic look, even in the rain. There was also an old quarter with steps and narrow winding streets which we liked very much.

 

We took the train to Cannes, where the film festival was in full swing. This meant, ironically, there wasn’t a film to be seen for the ordinary tourist like us, since all the cinemas had been taken over by the industry, and tickets were unavailable to the general public. We hated Cannes. You could not even go on the sandy beaches since they were all private and mostly attached to hotels. So unimpressed were we with the town, I haven’t got one picture of it in our photo album.

 

One day we took a train along the coast to Monte Carlo. We spent a lovely day looking round the principality. We saw the palace guard in their strange uniforms outside the palace, and visited the yacht harbor, where George posed with a yachting cap, making out he had a boat moored there. We also found the Casino, and I took George’s photo outside. It was quite a nice day, and eventually we stumbled upon the Monte Carlo beach which amazingly (unlike Cannes) was a free public beach. It was a lovely bay of soft sand, with palm trees and very few people. I went in for a swim - it was cold, but at least I could say I went swimming in the millionaire’s paradise of Monte Carlo!

 

We then caught the train again to go further east back into France for a few miles, and then across the border into Italy and the town of Ventimiglia, a haven of cheap booze, especially Italian vermouth. We bought several bottles before catching the train back through Monte Carlo to Antibes.

 

The longest trip we made was an all day journey by train west to Marseilles, a town George had always wanted to visit since seeing the Marcel Pagnol ‘Marius’ trilogy of films. Once there we visited the waterfront marina, where George again posed in his yachting cap in front of the yachts, and we made the pilgrimage up the big hill to the cathedral overlooking Marseilles and the harbor. Well it certainly felt like a pilgrimage, as it was quite a climb.

 

We only had a short time in the city, but we liked what we saw, and took a lot of photos. There were some marvelous buildings, sculptures and fountains, and in my album there is a very sexy photo of George wearing a light colored jacket, jeans and a check shirt sitting on a fence in front of the big neo-Classical cascade fountain and sculpture. Whenever George wore certain clothes, especially a denim jacket with tight jeans, I got turned on, but then I have always been a clothes fetishist. Naked bodies do very little for me, and let’s face it quite a few are better covered up. I actually prefer fully clothed male models in clothes catalogs to naked ones in porno mags, though I suppose my ideal erotica would be a partly exposed model.

 

Later on in Marseilles we found a little sandy beach, and George sat overlooking it whilst I went for a swim. We also had time to make our way to the head of the harbor, where there was a good view of the city. All too soon it was time to catch the train for the long journey back to Antibes.

 

Two days later we caught the coach back to London. It had been an interesting trip, despite the poor weather and primitive accommodation, and it gave us a chance to see the French Riviera.  It was not a place we would want to rush back to, however. Marseilles was perhaps our favorite memory.

 

We traveled back mid-week, and the late May Bank Holiday weekend followed. George was working at Oxfam on the Saturday, but on the Sunday, his birthday, we went down to Hastings to see our friends Rose and Neil, coming back on the Monday. Then George had two week’s paid work at Austral Development, where we both used to work. When George left our friend Angel replaced him, and she was on a fortnight’s holiday. George fitted in his voluntary Oxfam work when he wasn’t doing Angel’s shift.

 

We saw another production by the Bloolips drag revue company in June. President Reagan visited London that month, and there were some protests which we certainly sympathized with, if we didn’t participate. I saw his helicopter fly low over Hyde Park as I was swimming at the Lido in the Serpentine one day. Ronnie and Nancy were staying in Battersea House, a 10 minute walk from where we lived. This river-side house was very convenient for Battersea heliport, from which the President could be whisked to any part of London within minutes.

 

That weekend the GLC, about to be abolished, had a last fling with a Festival for Jobs, and the following week George went to Oxford for an Oxfam meeting. We went on the Gay Pride march at the end of the month, and the weekend after on a sponsored canal walk organized by CND. It was a very long walk indeed, starting somewhere in central London, all along the canal towpaths and the banks of the River Lee to Lea Bridge. George dropped out near the River Lee at Victoria Park and caught the bus back home. We had a more relaxing day trip to Brighton in July.

 

In August our friend, neighbor and my work colleague, Angel, had her anniversary party with her husband Doug. I had met her originally on the rock’n’roll circuit with her second ‘husband’ Charlie. Angel had a very complicated love life: she had apparently been a very happily married middle-class housewife living in Oxfordshire until she suddenly decided to run wild and came to London. She’d had three children by her fist marriage, and then had three children by Charlie, a gentle Teddy-boy. I believe he also came from Angel’s part of the country, and he used to wear his drape jacket everywhere even in the 1970s. We often saw him and Angel shopping in Clapham Junction Tesco’s together, Charlie in his full Teddy-boy suit. We only discovered years later than Angel had never married Charlie, and eventually she dropped him and married Doug, another Teddy-boy. Later still she was to settle down with Red, a rocker very much into motorbikes. Doug and Angel had a real rock’n’roll wedding with most of the guests wearing Teddy-boy and Teddy-girl clothes. I didn’t go to the wedding for some reason, but a big photo of it hung on their wall. This photo had been featured in a magazine article about their wedding and lifestyle. When Angel moved on to Red this picture was censored in true Stalinist style to eliminate the bridegroom non-person from the picture.

 

Angel’s tastes seemed to change along with her partners, and once she met Red she had little time for Teddy-boys anymore, it was all bikes, motorcycle runs, leather gear and the 59 Club, a rockers’ club started by a vicar in 1959.  Charlie confided to me once that Angel only pretended to like rock’n’roll, but really hated the music, screaming for Charlie to ‘turn that bloody row off’ when he played his records at home. This would certainly make sense, as she was never in the room where the records were playing at any of her parties, and she never danced to rock’n’roll at gigs, just the occasional slow number. I think she was far more into the guys who like rock’n’roll than the music itself. She was also into the clothes, making and wearing flared skirts and all the rest of the gear. She had peculiar ideas about British rock’n’roll being the best, and had little time for Rockabillies, who preferred the genuine American original music.

 

The August Bank Holiday we also spent with our friends Rose and Neil in Hastings, going down Friday and staying till the Monday. The two of them used to go boating on the Norfolk Broads every year, with Neil’s sister, her husband and their son. On one such trip Neil struck up an acquaintance with a woman named Ena, whose family owned a string of pubs and hotels in Norfolk. Ena must have been pretty naive, for she didn’t seem to cotton on that Neil and Rose were a gay couple, even though Rose is the campest creature on Earth. A romance developed between Ena and Neil, and at one point they were planning to get married. Rose was rather upset by all this naturally, but put it down to a senile phase Neil was going through in his old age. Later Rose and Ena became very good friends. I think for Neil it was nice to get a bit of attention and to be looked after by Ena. Rose was lazy and would never cook meals or fuss over Neil like Ena did. Of course the fact that Ena’s family owned a string  of Norfolk pubs was undoubtedly part of the attraction, and indeed Neil found temporary summer time work in one of the hotels they managed in Great Yarmouth for years after Ena died. They never got married in the end, but I remember going down to Hastings when she was there and they behaved like a couple of love-struck teenagers, chasing each other around the flat.

 

I can’t remember the first time I met Ena, but it must have been sometime in the early 1980s. I went down to Hastings a day or so before George, and Ena not only refused to call me by my name, she directed all conversation to me via Neil, asking: ‘Would Rose’s gentleman friend like a cup of tea?’ (She used Rose's real name, not his camp one.)

 

Of course Ena took over the kitchen completely. She did not seem to mind the mess, putting it down to two men living on their own without a woman’s touch. I can’t remember things improving very much whilst Ena was staying there though, to be honest. When George came down Ena referred to him as ‘Rose’s other gentleman friend’.

 

George had no time for Ena at all, especially when she insisted on cooking some foul concoction with curry powder in it, which stank the whole flat out. George and I hated curry, so he went into the kitchen to investigate the horrible smell and to tell Ena he couldn’t eat ‘that muck’, but she ordered him out saying: ‘I can’t have men in my kitchen’. Well, it wasn’t her kitchen to start with, and George soon put her right about the gender question. Ena had a horrible dog called Becky which snapped and barked whenever anyone came near. Ena used to say: ‘She doesn’t like men.’ George decided to put Ena straight, so in response to one of these remarks about men he replied: ‘there’s no men in this flat, dear’. This seem to perplex her, but George soon made sure she got the message. He sent Rose a very camp card on his birthday which could leave Ena in no doubt Rose was gay, and she apparently broke down in tears and said she didn’t want to come between Rose and Neil or spoil their relationship. I think that is probably the moment they all agreed to remain just good friends, and Rose’s relationship with Ena took a turn for the better. She became very ill soon afterwards, and eventually died. Rose took great care of her in the last days, visiting her at the hospital in Norfolk. He seemed to take more care of her than her own family did, and after she died tended the rather neglected grave whenever he went up to Norfolk.

 

On this particular visit I can’t remember if Ena was there, but whenever she was she would change her dress about three times a day. She and Neil would get up, then she’d change to go to the pub for a lunchtime drink, change again when she got back, and change again to go to another pub in the evening. She wore a lot of make-up, and had her hair in ringlets. George said she looked like Bette Davis in ‘Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?’ and he wasn’t far off the mark.

 

In October I went up to Barrow-in-Furness for a national CND demonstration against Trident, but I can’t remember if George came with me. We saw the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘Mother Courage’ at The Barbican in November, and I remember how much I enjoyed this production compared with the amateurish avant garde Edinburgh Fringe Festival performance in that canteen. We also paid our annual visit to a Dorothy Squires concert that month, this time at Wimbledon Theatre. December saw us on a demonstration and march to the Soviet embassy, and also at a rally in Trafalgar Square marking the anniversary of the arrival of Cruise missiles in the UK. Another year came to a close, this time without a New Year’s Eve party.

 

In February we attended a public meeting at Battersea Labour Party headquarters on the sinking of the Belgrano. This was the meeting where Tam Dalyell MP made some very strong remarks indeed about Margaret Thatcher. George attended an Oxfam area conference at Westminster Cathedral in March in his new role as shop leader of the Chelsea Oxfam shop in the King’s Road, which was a voluntary position. We also went on a CND vigil outside the Belgian embassy which I presume was something to do with Cruise missiles. CND seemed pretty active that month as we also went on an anti-Cruise vigil on Clapham Common and helped out at a local CND jumble sale. Even at the annual Easter Parade in Battersea Park, which we attended, the local CND had a stall. In mid April we were off to Portugal for the first time, with my mother. We were to spend a week on the Atlantic Coast at Estoril, a short train ride from the capital, Lisbon.

 

It was only a moderately successful week, mainly because the weather was rather dull and overcast with some rain, a fact my mother never let us forget. We were all sharing a room in the hotel (to save money) and very early in the morning my mother would wake us up by trying to creep to the French windows leading out to our large balcony overlooking the sea, in order to open them up and have a cigarette. Every morning she seemed to trip over something in the semi darkness and exclaim ‘Oh shit’, which woke us both up. We then pretended to be asleep hoping she would keep quiet, but it was always the same routine. She would open the curtains and window, light up her cigarette and say: ‘Cloudy again, duck. Don’t think we’ll see the sun today.’

 

It was like an accusation: ‘You’ve brought me all the way out here when I’d have been happier in Margate. Where’s all this sun they are supposed to have in

Portugal?' Perhaps it wasn’t meant that way, but that’s how it came across to us, and it was most annoying. The last thing we wanted to know at 7 a.m. in the morning was that it wasn’t worth getting up because the weather was so horrible.

 

Of course, most people holiday on the Algarve in the South of Portugal, but the Atlantic coast is always cooler. Also, April is very early in the year to expect summer weather. However, we were very near Lisbon and could catch a train just across the road, so we made several trips there and enjoyed exploring a new capital city.

 

One thing which surprised us were the number of beggars about - it was almost like being in a Third World country. Yet the main streets were paved with very ornate tiles which gave them an affluent look. In the central area was an old iron tower housing a lift which led up to an observation platform and a high level walkway, which was unusual. Otherwise Lisbon was a typical Continental capital, with its streetcars, large squares, and an old district of narrow winding streets called Alfama. There was also an area called Belem which had quite an impressive monument to sailors on the waterfront, and on the way into Lisbon by train you passed under an impressive suspension bridge across the river, and on the far side could be seen a smaller-scale replica of the huge statue of Christ which overlooks Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

 

Whilst in Portugal we paid a visit to Sintra, an old town set on a hill inland, which is very picturesque. Tourist buses go there, but we made our way by local bus which was much more interesting and a lot cheaper.

 

Estoril itself wasn’t much to write home about. It had a large casino, but not much else. We were staying on a bed and breakfast basis, and it was cheaper to eat out than in the hotel. My mother rather irritated us by eating in the hotel several times rather than be bothered looking for cheaper places with us. When she did eat with us at a restaurant she was sometimes acutely embarrassing. We found a reasonable place overlooking the main gardens by the casino, and as it was fairly good weather that day we had our meal at a table outside. As the waiter put a cloth on the table my mother exclaimed:

 

‘Oooh!’, like a little girl excited at the sight of a tablecloth, and then tried to speak to the waiter in, of all things, Greek! (She only spoke a few words of the language herself.) We told her it’s no use speaking Greek to a Portuguese waiter, but she just said she kept forgetting.  (Foreigners were associated in her mind with her husband’s friends and relations.) She then asked us how much we should tip the waiter, but as this was early on in the holiday we hadn’t yet gotten used to the local currency, so she tried to ask the waiter how much the various coins were worth. It was quite farcical, an English woman trying to ask in English and Greek what Portuguese coins were worth in English currency to a waiter who only spoke Portuguese. As the young man smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders to indicate he didn’t understand what she was on about, my mother finally had to admit defeat and give up. After that we didn’t try too hard to dissuade her if she decided to eat by herself in the hotel.

 

There was a lovely little town a few kilometers from Estoril, one station down the line in the opposite direction from Lisbon. It was a fishing village called Cascais, full of picturesque streets with whitewashed houses and shops. We spent some nice days there, and saw an open air Festival in one of the little squares in honor of the Portuguese revolution overthrowing the Salazar dictatorship. We also found a very good little cafe in Cascais where we all ate on several occasions.

 

 

There was a big shopping mall in Estoril which included a cinema complex, and I remember George and my mother electing to go and see ‘Amadeus’, the film about Mozart. Since this didn’t appeal to me I went in one of the other cinemas and saw something else. Afterwards we met and had a huge ice cream sundae each in the complex whilst discussing the films we had seen.

 

The last day of our holiday was beautiful weather, so we headed down for the beach thinking at least my mother couldn’t grumble about this day. We were wrong. She embarrassed us more than ever by stripping off down to her petticoat (why on Earth didn’t she wear her bathing costume, like she usually did on beach holidays?) Not content with this exhibitionism, she insisted on putting up her black umbrella to use as a sunshade. This was the first real sun we had seen in our week’s holiday, and she had been moaning about no sun all week, yet there she was sitting in the shade against a wall in her pink petticoat under a black umbrella grumbling: ‘Too bloody hot’ over and over again. We just couldn’t win, and swore never to take her on holiday again.

 

Poor George, no wonder his relationship with my mother was always strained. It was the classic ‘mother-in-law’ situation only worse, since George knew my mother resented George being a man. She had always wanted me to marry a girl and give her some grandchildren. Although my mother said she accepted George, and knew how much he had helped me and was good for me, making me a much more well-adjusted and less bitter person, there was always that unspoken resentment that George was not my wife or the mother of my children, and never could be.

 

We flew back to London on the Friday. It had been an interesting holiday to a new country, but spoiled by the weather and my mother’s rather silly behavior. In later years we laughed at the whole situation, but it caused tension at the time. No wonder George gave my mother the nickname ‘Mum Grouch’. Apart from her moaning, it annoyed him immensely that an intelligent woman should put on this ‘silly little girl’ or ‘senile dementia’ act, but somehow holidays abroad always brought out this eccentric behavior which never happened at home.

 

When we got back our Polish friend, Barbara, was in London, so we arranged to meet her one day. During that Spring we visited Battersea Park several times, where the Buddhist Peace Pagoda was inaugurated on May 14th. I went along to that alone, but while they were still building the Pagoda George and I visited the Buddhist nuns who lived in the park, and gave them a very modest present of some fruit. They were embarrassingly grateful and kept bowing, so we had to keep bowing back, and then to our horror they invited us into a temple-like room with a statue of the Buddha at one end and incense burning, and George and I had to kneel before this ‘golden idol’ with our little bag of fruit as if it were some sacrificial offering. The nuns and monks looking after the Pagoda relied on donations such as ours, but we didn’t expect to have to offer them up to the Buddha first for his blessing. All this Eastern mysticism was hidden away in a little hut behind some bushes in Battersea Park.

 

Our friend Sheila had a party in May and on the 26th, the day before George’s birthday, we paid a visit to Stratford-on-Avon and saw the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Shakespeare’s birthplace, Anne Hathaway’s cottage and the rest of the tourist sights, including some Morris dancers. On George’s birthday itself we went to see ‘Pravda’ (Truth) at the National Theatre. It is a play which sticks in my memory because of the very strong performance by Anthony Hopkins.

 

Two days later there was a party at the Kensington High Street Oxfam shop, in the room at the back. Our friend Lena, who was a volunteer at the shop, was there, and we all sat round and had a little too much to drink, ending up having a good old sing song together.

 

In June we had a weekend in Hastings and we also attended Gay Pride in Jubilee Gardens. The first day of July we met George’s sister Margaret and her friend Anna at Victoria Coach Station, and they stayed with us a week before returning to Glasgow. They went round by themselves most places, probably spending most of their time window-shopping. That month our friends Lena and Frank moved from the cramped furnished room in Earls Court where they had lived for years to a council flat near Westbourne Park tube station.

 

We went to a local meeting about plans for Battersea Power Station, which they were going to turn into a theme park. George and I were all in favor, but the vocal locals and political groups of left, right and center were all against it. In the end the project fell through when the cash ran out, and Battersea Power Station was left an empty, half-ruined shell for years. I always thought it a great pity the theme park never materialized. Battersea had always been associated with the fun fair since the Festival of Britain in 1951, and every other big capital city had an amusement park. George and I thought Battersea Power Station was the ideal replacement for Battersea Fun Fair, which in our view should never have been closed down. It was an exciting project, but the opponents could only see traffic problems.

 

In late August I finished working at Austral Development after about ten years, the longest I had ever stayed in one job. George was to take over from me working with our friend Angel on alternate shifts, as he thought it would enable him to catch up with telex technology, a field he hadn’t worked in for a year or so. The job wasn’t to last, as the firm was on its last legs. We both knew that, and it was the reason I was leaving and taking a part-time job at Amnesty International at slightly less money. It proved to be a very good move for myself, as the money at AI soon went up to way above what I could get per hour anywhere else, but not such a good move for George. He felt later if he’d stayed with Oxfam he would have got a permanent paid job very soon, as he was already a successful voluntary shop leader. But in the end it was his decision to go back to Austral and so end a long period of unemployment.

 

The day after I left Austral we were off to Scotland. During our week’s stay we visited Edinburgh, and went on a one day trip to the Highlands by train, visiting places like Oban (which had a sort of mini-Coliseum) and Fort William. Whilst in Glasgow we paid a visit to the Citizen’s Theatre to see a production.

 

We both started our new jobs on Monday September 2nd, George at Austral Development and myself at Amnesty International. Both of us had worked at these places in the past. Since George had left AI they had moved from Covent Garden to bigger premises at Mount Pleasant. I knew quite a few of the people from when I worked there before on a part-time basis, and also people George had introduced me to at parties and theater visits.

 

On our 15th anniversary we went to the Academy 1 cinema in Oxford Street to see a delightful film starring Deborah Kerr called ‘The Assam Garden’. We had a party the following Saturday to celebrate our anniversary. There was another meeting that month about plans for Battersea Power Station, and we went down to Hastings again for a day. Harvey Fernstein in ‘A Torch Song Trilogy’ was a highlight of the things we saw in September.

 

A note in George’s diary for early November reads: ‘Royal Overseas Club’. This was, incidentally, where my mother met my father before the War. He was a chef and she a waitress. It was also right next door to Austral Development’s old offices before they moved to Knightsbridge, and had become the location for the annual ladies’ Christmas dinner (the men didn’t get one). However, soon after I left they did have a one-off dinner at the Royal Overseas club for all employees and their partners. I believe I was invited to come along more as a past employee than as George’s partner, but it was nice to go together. In December we saw the film ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’, with a strong gay storyline, and we recognized some of the outdoor locations near Vauxhall and Battersea. ‘Letter to Brezhnev’ was another good film we saw that month, though it quickly became very dated, overtaken by the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The year closed quietly without a New Year’s Eve party, but we did have one on the first Saturday in the New Year, 1986.

 

In February we went to a rather strange combined housewarming and 40th birthday party for Ylia and Paula in Hendon Way. Ylia, under his former name of Lee, used to be married to George’s old friend Marlene. He had now re-married, this time into a Jewish family. The house was set back a little from the busy Hendon Way, which is virtually a slip-road to the M1 motorway, but the traffic noise was not all that noticeable. We felt a little out of place with all the rather posh Jewish guests. We seemed to be the only ones who had arrived by bus, so we stayed a little while and then made our escape. There was a sit-down blockade at Molesworth Cruise missile base that month, and this may have been the occasion when the ground was covered in snow and I slipped and fell. Later, on the sit-down demo, I ate my sandwiches and was about to drink a cup of soup from my flask, when I realized the little bits floating in it were shivers of broken glass from inside the flask, which had apparently shattered when I fell, though there was no way of knowing this looking at the outside of the flask. I had a narrow and lucky escape from serious internal injury. George had stayed home for this demo.

 

In early March we were off to Paris for four days, a long weekend. We went with Rose by train and Hovercraft, and stayed in a little Vietnamese-owned hotel near the Eiffel Tower. We had a great time, and Rose really enjoyed it. It may well have been his first trip abroad, and certainly it was his first to Paris. George in particular enjoyed showing his oldest friend around the city he loved so much, and where he had lived for several months in the 1960s. We visited all the usual tourist sights and Oscar Wilde’s grave in Pere Lachaise cemetery, where of course we also visited Edith Piaf’s plot. Our hotel room was rather sleazy, as so often with small Paris hotels, but we loved it. The washing area was screened off by a little partition with an archway, and the walls were covered with pink floral paper. It was quite homely in a way, and we sat in there and ate snacks consisting of French bread, sardines and bottles of duty-free gin.

 

No sooner were we back from Paris than we were off to Amsterdam in March for a weekend. I can’t recall the details as we went so many times. We spent Easter fairly quietly at home, and saw two gay productions - ‘The Normal Heart’, one of the first plays about AIDS, at the Royal Court Theatre, and the fabulous musical ‘La Cage Aux Folles’ based on the French comedy film, at the London Palladium. Sadly the AIDS crisis soon killed off this brilliant, sparkling production packed full of excellent songs. Unfortunately, the public mood stirred up by the tabloids over AIDS meant it was not the right time for a jolly musical about gays to succeed in the West End, but the night we saw it the house was packed, and most of the audience were heterosexuals who thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

A few days later we had dinner with our friend Anne, the daughter of someone George worked with at Oxfam. They were both very good friends, and they witnessed our Wills for us in which we left everything to each other, or to Oxfam if we both died together (I’d left a small legacy for my mother too.) I remember they signed these home-typed Wills in the cafeteria at the Royal Festival Hall.

 

Significantly we watched an AIDS movie on TV called ‘An Early Frost’ and George remarked in his diary that it was ‘very good’. In later years he would turn the TV off or to another channel when AIDS was mentioned, and in retrospect I can see he was OK with AIDS plays, films and TV programs until he started to develop possible symptoms (recurrent mouth ulcers) of HIV himself around mid-1988. On a lighter note, we saw the very funny film ‘Clockwise’ starring John Cleese, and Joan Hickson as a dotty old lady. We also saw a play at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn which was based on the book about a CND supporter who died under mysterious circumstances possibly involving the intelligence services, ‘Who Killed Hilda Murrell?’ That month we also helped out at a local CND booksale, which didn’t make nearly as much money as their usual jumble sale, although for middle-class fundraisers books are considered nicer to handle than old clothes and junk. For the Spring Bank Holiday we spent a long weekend in Hastings. The Tuesday was George’s birthday, so we celebrated on the following Saturday with a party.

 

I believe it was in June that I had my first visit to see ‘Les Miserables’, which I saw four times and George six times in all. George took me to see it for the first time with Pat, a co-worker from Oxfam. I didn’t enjoy it so much the first time, partly because my seat had a restricted view, but once I got to know the music it became a favorite of mine too. It is a very operatic type of musical, but the score is really tuneful and moving, as is the story, of course, from Victor Hugo’s book. The sets are also very dramatic, and almost like oil paintings brought to life due to the clever lighting.

 

At the end of the month we were off on our first visit to Yugoslavia.  We visited places which after George’s death became the location of atrocities and bloodbaths not seen in Europe since the Second World War. It broke my heart to read about it, because my memories of the holiday with George was of a beautiful country with happy people all living peacefully together. It was the nearest thing to paradise we could imagine on Earth, a clever amalgamation of the best of Communism and Capitalism, and very prosperous compared with East Germany, for instance, the only other Communist country George and I visited together. It is a tragedy that nationalism destroyed such a wonderful Socialist federation of Republics. Tito must have wept in his grave at the futility of it all and the end of a dream he had worked so hard to create. Had the system not been corrupted by opportunists, of course, the ‘Communist’ politicians would not have become ‘ultra-nationalists’ overnight. Like other Communist regimes, Yugoslavia was a one-party dictatorship, but the economic system of market socialism is a model I am sure will supersede capitalism in the 21st century, since it avoids the mistakes and inefficiencies of state monopoly Socialism.

 

We flew to Dubrovnik on Saturday June 28th, and next day set off on a coach tour of the country which was to last a week. Traveling up coast and then inland, we left Croatia and entered Bosnia-Hercegovina where we visited Mostar with its ancient arched bridge (since destroyed then rebuilt). We crossed this and went inside what they called a ‘Turkish’ house, which was a Muslim dwelling open to visitors.

 

Next stop was Sarajevo where we stayed in a skyscraper hotel in a wide boulevard. A tremendous dramatic thunderstorm brew up the night we arrived, perhaps symbolic of the turmoil to come to that ill-fated city.

 

It was here in the Sarajevo hotel that our Slovenian courier, Paul, made his move. He invited us to join him at his table for dinner. Afterwards we had drinks in the bar, and he invited us up to his room for more drinks and... well, it was pretty obvious by then what he was after. This is where George’s problems came to the fore. Whether or not he fancied Paul, he just could not respond to his advances at all without amphetamines, and he had none with him on this trip. The result was he got into a blind panic, and just could not cope with the situation. He had one drink in Paul’s room and then made his excuses and left.

 

Paul was reasonably good-looking but certainly not the dream courier one might have fantasies about scoring with. However, I felt we had led him along a bit, or allowed him to lead us on, and accepted his drinks, etc., and we had many days to go with him on the trip. I did not feel I too could make my excuses and leave. George had said to me he didn’t mind if I stayed, so Paul and myself had a little session and then I left to join George for the night. I had to try and explain George’s behavior to Paul, and the best I could think of was that he wasn’t very well and wasn’t in the mood. Both were the wrong thing to say, because next day as we boarded the coach Paul asked George how he felt today and if he was in ‘a better mood’. He was definitely interested in scoring with George, and I got the feeling it was him rather than me Paul was really after. For George in his later years, however, it was strictly a case of ‘no sweeties, no sex’ and it was as frustrating for him as for those who had desires on him. So those few minutes with Paul were the only sex I had myself during the holiday.

 

Next day we visited the center of the city, including a museum near the spot where the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand took place which sparked the First World War. The actual street corner where this happened was pointed out to us. We then went on to Banja Luka for our overnight stay, stopping en route in Jajce where there was an impressive waterfall. We had a quick look round the shops in Banja Luka that night, but we were off quite early headed for the Croatian capital.

 

Zagreb was a very European city after Muslim Mostar and Sarajevo, with an impressive twin-spired Gothic cathedral, and a delightful church with a Central/East European type spire (like a squashed onion) and colorful mosaics on its sloping roof, visible from the street, depicting various coats-of-arms. There was also a big square ablaze with neon signs at night, and full of cafe tables and people by day. We stayed at a very up market hotel in Zagreb, the Inter-Continental (part of the Western chain).

 

Next stop on our itinerary was Ljubljana in Slovenia, and the city where our courier, Paul, had been to University. We only had an hour or two there, but what we saw of it was very attractive. There was a beautiful bridge over the river, a fortress on a hill overlooking the city and plenty of big shops.

 

For our overnight stop we stayed in a rural setting in Postojna, where there are some very deep caves. The hotel was set by a weir on a river, and was also right next to the cave system, which of course we visited. The only thing I can remember is how very cold they were, and how warm it felt when we came back into the sunshine.

 

Bypassing the center of Rijeka, then the main northern port of Yugoslavia, we headed inland again for the Plitvice area for our overnight stay. This was really the highlight of the coach tour for me, a beautiful rural park full of waterfalls, lakes and woods. I swam in the lake, and we went on a kind of nature land trail part of which crossed the lakes on floating bridges consisting of a footpath made of planks literally floating on the water. It was the most beautiful place in our entire trip, which had included some breathtaking scenery. Imagine how sad I was years after George died to read of the bloodshed that had taken place right there in Plitvice amidst all that natural beauty. For me, however, it remains a tranquil place of beauty and peace in a wonderful, united, Socialist country called Yugoslavia where I spent three happy holidays.

 

Our next stop was Zadar, an ancient town on the coast with some old Roman-type remains by an unusual circular building next to a five-story spire. We had a meal in a restaurant overlooking the marina.

 

Further down the coast we stopped in Trogir, a very picturesque town with palm trees lining the promenade, and a fortress, clock tower and some other impressive buildings.

 

Our next overnight stop was in Split, in a modern hotel overlooking the harbor. We fell in love with Split, and may well have paid another visit there sometime had George’s death and the civil war not intervened. One disadvantage over Dubrovnik, however, was the apparent lack of good, accessible beaches in the town itself.

 

It was a very interesting city indeed. The old part of the town was a hodgepodge of architecture from different eras. Relatively modern buildings had been erected literally on top of much older walls, beneath which were dungeons or catacombs. Inside the ancient walled city were some old ruins and columns, and mushrooming between these were the colorful umbrellas of a street market. There were little narrow winding streets, which opened up into open piazzas and irregularly shaped ‘squares’. One in particular which had cafe tables set out we stopped at several times for drinks.

 

It was in Split we discovered Mestrovic, a local sculptor whose statue of a religious figure dominated some gardens just outside the city wall.  There was an art gallery dedicated to his work, and we enjoyed it immensely. He had a unique style, specializing in impressive, heavy, solid Slavic figures, some in almost surrealist postures. We liked his work so much we bought a white figurine depicting one of Mestrovic’s works on display in the gallery, a peasant woman in a headscarf, kneeling on one knee with her hands clasped over her ears. The sculpture is entitled ‘Despair’. It was prophetic of the times to come in that beautiful, troubled land. All this symbolism was lost on George’s sister when she visited from Glasgow one time, saw the peasant woman ornament and commented: ‘That woman looks as if she’s got a sore heed.’

 

We arrived back in Dubrovnik at the end of our coach tour and said farewell to Paul, our courier, before moving into our hotel for our week’s stay in the city.

 

It seemed Dubrovnik had everything. An ancient walled city which was perhaps the best preserved anywhere in the world. Also many excellent beaches, and a hill with a cable car overlooking the Old Town. Also an island just offshore, easy to reach by boat. We explored all these during our stay.

 

The Dubrovnik Festival was on whilst we were there, and we attended the opening ceremony which was held after dark and consisted of a procession in medieval costume. There was also a very impressive firework display which we watched from the walls of the Old City overlooking the sea.

 

The Old Town within the walls contained one long, wide pedestrian street (motor vehicles are banned from the Old Town) lined with shops and with a clock tower at one end. Just off this street in a maze of narrow alleys was a self-service restaurant we visited nearly every day. We called it Madame Tito’s after a nice woman who worked there under the obligatory portrait of Marshal Tito.

 

We loved exploring the alleyways, and because the town was built on different levels, many of these narrow streets were very steep, with flights of steps. The buildings were very close together, and there was plenty of foliage in the narrow streets. There were also tranquil courtyards with palm trees and other plants.

 

We walked right around the city walls, which give beautiful views of the tiled-roofed Old Town, the sea and islands and the mountain behind (from which the Serbs later shelled the ancient city, but thankfully did little damage apparently).

 

The main entrance to the Old Town was by way of an arch and drawbridge, and this led to the main square from which the local buses left. The other side of the Old Town we discovered a little beach, which was very convenient when you wanted to relax after walking round the hot cobbled streets.

 

Whilst in Dubrovnik I bought a snorkel and mask and discovered for the first time a whole new dimension beneath the sea in the crystal clear waters of the Adriatic, which are excellent for this activity, the fauna, rock formations and fish being so interesting and abundant.

 

We also visited a beach further out of town near the main tourist hotels. This gave the impression of being on a lake, because the sea inlet here was surrounded by mountains. It was like a tropical version of the Scottish lochs or English lake district. This was the Babin Kuk area of Dubrovnik. We also visited the nearby island, mainly covered with trees, and I had a swim in the sea there too, and in a little pond on the island.

 

We went up in the cable car and from the mountain top had a breathtaking view of the Old Town, harbor and the island. Also of the modern town beyond the city walls.

 

Whilst staying in Dubrovnik we went by bus to the nearby town of Cavtat, where there is a mausoleum set on a hill jutting out to sea. You can walk all round the peninsular in about half an hour, which has a rocky beach good for swimming and snorkeling. Cavtat was also an attractive little town, with narrow streets and pleasant pavement cafes, and it was also surrounded by mountains, making it very picturesque.

 

On Saturday July 12th we returned to London, having packed an awful lot into those two weeks. We had seen most of Yugoslavia, but strangely Serbia and the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade had been omitted from this, and most other, tours of the country. We certainly enjoyed what we saw very much, and decided to go back again the following year.

 

A few days after we got back we went to see ‘La Cage Aux Folles 3', but as you might expect the second sequel was not as good as the first, which itself was not nearly as good as the original film.

 

The following weekend George’s sister, Betty, arrived in London and we met her overnight coach at 7.30 a.m. Sunday morning at Kings Cross. If relatives must visit, at least they could have the decency not to arrive at such an unholy hour on a Sunday morning.

 

George doesn’t record in his diary now long Betty stayed or who she brought with her (usually a niece or nephew, or both), but exactly two weeks later her sister Margaret and her boyfriend, Andy, arrived by the more expensive coach service direct to Victoria Coach Station. Margaret’s husband had died suddenly of a heart attack some years before, and she had met Andy at a singles’ club. The family didn’t like him much, probably because he was very quiet and was something of a mystery. There was a family joke that he kept so quiet about his past he might well be a cat burglar. We felt, during their one week stay with us, that we were being used as a cheap hotel, so little did we see of them. When they were in, they didn’t communicate much. In later years, after George died and Margaret secretly married Andy, he seemed to open out and became quite friendly. I could never understand why their marriage was such a secret and kept from some relatives: most couples pretend they’re married rather than just living together, but with Margaret and Andy it was the other way around.

 

August Bank Holiday weekend we went to stay with Rose in Hastings, as we so often did. One year I stayed for a whole week around the Bank Holiday weekend, George just staying for the 3 days. I thoroughly enjoyed my stay, and got plenty of exercise walking across the cliffs to the nudist swimming beach near Fairlight Glen on several occasions, because it was a new experience and a lovely walk there and back, though very strenuous.

 

At the very end of August we went to the London Palladium to see again the musical version of ‘La Cage Aux Folles’. We probably would have gone to see it more than two times had it not been taken off soon after.

 

We celebrated our 16th anniversary on September 10th by going to see the sequel film ‘Aliens’, and towards the end of the month had a memorable day trip to Cardiff. We walked all round the city center, visiting the shops and arcades, the park with its castle and the impressive civic buildings. Best of all we found a market place and brought home with us the most delicious sausages we had ever tasted.

 

Two days later we went to see ‘The House of Bernardo Alba’ at The Lyric, Hammersmith. It was a somber piece, with a very atmospheric set, but light relief was offered in the guise of the marvelous Patricia Hayes who played a grandmother figure in her typical comic manner.

 

The next day we visited Alton Towers theme park, but were not very impressed. It all seemed very tame after Disneyland in California. In fact, we both preferred Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Alton Towers seemed a vast area of empty grassland, with just a few rides scattered here and there. We liked the White Water ride and the Log Flume, but there was nothing really spectacular to compare with Disneyland.

 

Just over a week later on a Saturday in early October we paid one of several visits to York by train, a city we really liked. It was full of history with a castle, well preserved walls, and some fine Tudor buildings, as well as a cathedral. We wandered round ‘The Shambles’, as one of the Tudor-style shopping streets is known, and followed the walls round all the main tourist sights.

 

Nothing of note happened for the rest of the year. I believe it was in January we saw a preview of ‘Phantom of the Opera’ with Michael Crawford in the title role. One Saturday in early February 1987 we went to see a matinee production of ‘Road’ at the Royal Court Theater. The auditorium seats had been removed, and the ‘Road’ set had been extended from the stage into the auditorium. The audience wandered around the set watching the action/acting taking place around them. It was an innovative piece of theater and we both enjoyed it very much. It was so realistic that Ian Drury greeted us in a Cockney accent as we entered, and unthinkingly I replied in similar vein. I am a born Londoner myself, but in any case tend to unconsciously modify my accent according to whom I am speaking. I come out with Glaswegian expressions when in Glasgow, Americanisms when talking to Americans, and start to adopt aspects of the various dialects of England when with people of those areas for more than a few hours. On this occasion when asked by Ian ‘Where d’ya come from mate?’ I instantly replied ‘Ba-ersea’ with a very pronounced glotteral stop in place of the ‘tt’, and immediately felt very foolish.

 

After the play we went to visit an Indian colleague of George’s who worked at the Oxfam shop in King’s Road, Chelsea. She lived just round the corner from there, and I was enthralled with her exotic little flat smelling of incense and decorated with Eastern drapes and artifacts (though a peek into the kitchen was a mistake, it was a hovel). I was also very impressed when she told us stories and showed us Indian newspaper cuttings of when she was a very famous actress there. She also showed us some home movies taken during a holiday to India, and she swore there was a scene in the finished film which she had never taken, but which had appeared supernaturally.

 

On the last day of February we went to a friend’s party, which was held in a scouts’ hall by Barnes common. Sharon worked with us at Austral Development, but was off on a world tour taking in Australia the next day. We too were off to less far flung places.

 

Next day we departed Gatwick early in the morning bound for Gibraltar and a tour of Southern Spain, with possibly our first visit to North Africa thrown in.

 

We caught an early morning flight from Gatwick and arrived at the very unusual Gibraltar airport, on a narrow isthmus between Spain and The Rock, about midday. The sun was shining and we were in for a very pleasant surprise as we were driven, not into Gibraltar town itself, but to the other side of The Rock and a little village called Catalan Bay. This consisted of a few houses, shops, bars, a little church and a quite big hotel, plus a sandy beach. Our hotel was right next to the beach, and I well remember going in the sea for a swim the day we arrived, March 1st. The sea was cold, but I enjoyed it all the more because we just never expected to be anywhere near a beach on this touring holiday, and certainly did not expect this hot sunshine so early in the year.

 

Next day we were hoping to take a one day trip to Tangier in Morocco, just across the Straits, as advertised in the holiday brochure. However, at the welcoming party the night before they announced that for some reason the trip was off, so George and I never got to step foot on the African continent together. Instead we spent more time on the beach. There weren’t that many tourists, but quite a few young lads were loafing around in jeans and Union Jack t-shirts, obviously from the British military bases on the other side of The Rock.

 

The bars were full of them too, and no wonder. Drinks, especially spirits, were ridiculously cheap. George and I knocked back the gin and tonics like there was no tomorrow.

 

We did a tour of The Rock that day too, through Gibraltar town and right up to Europa Point to view the Pillars of Hercules. These are two mountains, The Rock of Gibraltar itself and another mountain in Morocco, which stand each side of the Straits of Gibraltar, one ‘pillar’ in Europe and the other in Africa. Through the heat haze we could just make out the mountain on the other side, the only time George and I glimpsed the African continent together.

 

There was a cable car from Gibraltar town up to the top of The Rock, but we went by road in the coach, and halfway up The Rock alongside the road we encountered the famous Barbary Apes roaming around free as birds. Rumor has it that when they disappear or die off, the British will leave Gibraltar. The coach then drove on to some excavations in The Rock, which we explored on foot. These caves led right through to the other side, and there were observation points looking out across the airport towards Spain. Of course all these were used as fortifications in the Second World War.

 

We also spent some time walking around Gibraltar town, getting a little bus in from Catalan Bay. It was an eerie experience seeing shops you would find in any British high street, red pillar boxes and British police uniforms in a Mediterranean climate. It felt like being on the Isle of Wight or somewhere very close to home, but it also didn’t seem right to us and smacked of colonialism. As with the Malvinas/Falklands, we felt the wishes of local British settlers and their descendants should not be the sole arbiter when deciding the status of former colonies. The views of ethnic Argentinians should help decide the future status of the Malvinas, and the views of ethnic Spanish the future of Gibraltar. A compromise solution would be the obvious answer in each case, perhaps some sort of autonomy linked to the neighboring Argentinian and Spanish states rather than the British one so far away.

 

Next day we set off in the coach across the airport runway, which transversed the main road from Gibraltar into Spain. Luckily there seem to be few collisions between planes and road traffic as people tend to obey the lights and gates of this unique level crossing. We crossed the border into Spain and headed for Seville by way of Jerez, famous for its namesake, sherry.

 

We of course stopped in Jerez and visited the Sandemann’s sherry distillery, where we saw the process and had a good sample of the product. We sat at long tables where bottles and glasses were placed at our disposal. George remarked afterwards how all those people with phony posh accents gradually lost them as they drank more sherry, till they were laughing and joking in working class dialects like the rest of us, betraying their true origins. He really enjoyed this observation as much as the sherry itself.

 

We then pressed on to Seville (famous for its oranges and the opera ‘Carmen’) for our two night stay. As soon as we reached Seville we saw orange trees full of fruit lining the streets. We were told they were bitter and only fit for marmalade, but whether this was just a tale told to tourists to stop the trees being stripped bare I can’t say.

 

Our time in Seville was marred by George’s face swelling up alarmingly around the eyes. We went to a local pharmacist in Seville, and the assistant diagnosed acute sunburn. Lying out in that hot Gibraltar sunshine after coming straight from an English winter had caused George’s face to react in this way. The pharmacist prescribed some cream which George applied, and by the time we left Seville his face was going back to normal.

 

Despite George’s trouble and difficulty seeing clearly because of it, we explored the city, including the mosaics of Spanish Square, the buildings of Americas Square, the cathedral and the old streets around it. We also visited an orange grove in the Alcazar area.

 

On the Thursday we set off in the coach for Cordoba, stopping on the way in Ejica which also had a very big church or cathedral by the main square, which was full of locals standing or sitting around chatting and enjoying the sun.

 

We arrived in Cordoba where we were spending one night. It had a river, some narrow winding streets and a huge mosque, part of which had been converted into a Catholic cathedral. We were amazed at the sheer size of the mosque, the columns of which gave us the impression of being in a petrified forest. Some were very ornate and made of colored marble. Suddenly and rather disconcertingly you came into a very ornate Christian cathedral, completely at odds with the Moorish architecture of the rest of the building. From the outside the Christian bell tower dominated the mosque. It had been built around the mosque’s original minaret. Of course it was both religious and architectural sacrilege, with the result that the Cordoba mosque was neither one thing nor the other, but the Christian alterations had been done a long time ago so were themselves of some historical interest.

 

On the Friday we set off for Granada, dominated by the famous Alhambra high on a hill overlooking the city. We visited this palace, but were a little disappointed with it as it seemed rather plain.

 

We enjoyed exploring the city, and found a quiet area with a little stream running through it, as well as the main squares and big shops.

 

Our hotel room had a balcony, and we sat out there in the sunshine with snow-capped mountains in the background. We were taken up these mountains in the coach and visited the ski resort at the top. We watched the skiers piling into the cable cars and skiing down again. It was quite a new experience for us, but we didn’t feel tempted to have a go ourselves.

 

We drove back to Gibraltar via the coast and dreadful places like Torremolinos and Fuengirola. It think it was at the latter resort we stopped for breakfast at a huge hotel where you had to line up in separate queues for tea and coffee, toast, and boiled eggs. It was like the feeding of the 5,000, and this mass catering and the gray skyscraper slabs that dominated the resorts confirmed that we were right to avoid them like the plague, choosing the architecturally purer resorts of the Costa Brava instead. Llorret de Mar certainly had its share of tourist hotels and nightlife, but still looked and felt like a Catalan town, with only one building which could be described as a small ‘skyscraper’. Torremolinos and Fuengirola were just huge tourist resorts with nothing but skyscraper hotels, tourist shops and bars and apparently not a scrap of Spanish culture to be seen.

 

We arrived at the airport in Gibraltar with plenty of time to spare for our flight home, and whereas in most airports this is a boring time locked up in the departure area, with only the duty free shop to console you, here in Gibraltar we were free to stroll out of the terminal building, walk across the runway on the main road and go into Gibraltar town. We didn’t venture too far, but stopped at a Wimpy bar and had a snack and a drink before wandering leisurely back to the airport. Our fellow passengers were amazed when we told them we had strolled into town for a snack, whilst they had been huddled round the airport bar afraid to wander even out of the airport building.

 

We flew back home arriving in the early afternoon of Sunday, and as we arrived back in the depths of winter I could hardly believe I had been swimming in the Mediterranean just a week before, or that George had gotten badly sunburnt lying on the beach.

 

The next few weeks were fairly quiet. We really enjoyed seeing Julie Walters in the very funny film ‘Personal Services’ loosely based on Cynthia Payne’s brothel in suburbia, and on Good Friday we went to Hastings to see our friends Rose and Neil.

 

In late April I was off to Cyprus for a week with my mother.  George didn’t want to come, as he felt the island had little attraction for him. I strongly suspect a letter my father had once written about it not being a good idea my coming to Cyprus with my boyfriend had a lot to do with it.

 

My father had met George and got on well with him, even telling me he was very good for me. He knew the score back then, but later word had apparently gotten round his village in Cyprus that I was gay, which was beyond the pale in that society. I angrily told my dad I’d bring who I liked, and if the villagers knew I was gay he must have told them himself, which he admitted was true. That argument had been years before, but understandably George felt uncomfortable about coming with us. Anyway, after previous experiences on holiday with my mother, especially the recent Portuguese trip, George was quite happy to let me go on my second visit to Cyprus with her whilst he stayed at home.

 

My mother had never visited Cyprus although my dad was Greek-Cypriot. Plans to visit had fallen by the wayside for various reasons, not least their separation in 1951 and all that led up to it. The separation had, in fact, been precipitated by a planned visit to Cyprus. A friend told my mum that the holiday in Cyprus planned for the family in that year would be a one-way trip for my brother and myself, as my dad intended to bring us up in Cyprus so hadn’t bought us return tickets.

 

It was a pity my mother hadn’t come with me to Cyprus ten years earlier as my dad’s mother longed to meet her, and sadly died shortly after my first visit. They had corresponded by letter years before, my mother reporting to my grandmother the progress of my various operations as a child. Now my grandmother was gone so was one of the main motivations for my mother visiting Cyprus, so I think she embarked on the trip with mixed feelings.

 

She had only sporadic contact with my dad in the preceding 36 years, and while part of her wanted to see Cyprus and places she had heard about, part of her was very apprehensive.

 

We arrived to atrocious weather, which kept up half the week we were there. We stayed at a little hotel in Kato Paphos, a few blocks from the house where my dad lived with his former business partner and common law wife, Helen. We had a meal there once, and Helen tried to make my mother feel welcome, though she speaks very little English and my mother very little Greek. Needless to say the atmosphere was strained.

 

My dad lent me his car for the week, and I soon got the hang of driving again. We visited the Tombs of the Kings and mosaics in the Paphos area, and then I took my mum into the Troodos mountains. I had decided to take this more scenic route to Nicosia, the capital, but it proved disastrous because of the torrential rain.

 

We could see very little scenery because of the weather, and my mother was terrified by the hairpin bends on mountainous roads too narrow in most places for two cars to pass, with a sheer drop on one side. We reached the tomb of Archbishop Makarios high on a mountain and I got out of the car and ran several hundred yards in pouring rain to visit it, but my mum stayed in the car. She said later she thought she might be stranded there forever, and had visions of me stumbling and falling off the mountain in the downpour.

 

I came back drenched, and we carried on. The roads got steadily worse and became rough mud tracks. We came across a Greek-Cypriot family whose car had broken down and was stuck in the mud. They spoke not a word of English, but they made quite clear they wanted a lift to Nicosia. As few cars were likely to be taking this route in such terrible conditions we could hardly refuse, and anyway we thought they could help with directions.

 

The man stayed with his car whilst an elderly woman in black and presumably her daughter sat in the back and helped direct us. We entered Nicosia by a totally unfamiliar route to me, and suddenly the two women demanded to be let out. We dropped them off to find we were heading straight for the Turkish sector, so no wonder they were in such a hurry to get out. We turned right to avoid the checkpoint and eventually I managed to find my dad’s block of flats. He had given me the keys to stay a couple of nights.

 

We got in to find there was no food in the place and we couldn’t get the stove working, so we ate in a nearby cafe. I managed to get the TV working, and left my mum watching that whilst I took a quick drive downtown. I just wanted to check out the sunken gardens by the walls of the Old Town to see if the gay scene I had discovered ten years before was still thriving. It wasn’t - there had obviously been a big clean-up and not a soul was about even though the weather in Nicosia was dry (we’d left the rain back in the mountains).

 

I drove back to the flat, we watched a bit of TV and then went to bed. My mother refused to sleep in the big bedroom because she said it stunk of Helen’s scent, so I slept there and she had the smaller room.

 

Next day I drove my mother into Nicosia and we walked around the shops and the Old Town. Her shoes were hurting her, so we went into a shoe shop in the Old Town and bought some comfortable sandals. I remember feeling very embarrassed because as she took her shoes off her feet were black, but the shop assistant didn’t bat an eyelid. I don’t know if it was dirt from the streets or dye from her shoes, probably the latter in that heat.

 

We walked on up to the Green Line and looked into the UN Zone and the Turkish quarter beyond. Later we tried, as long planned, to visit that part of Nicosia which is the capital of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, but I made a fatal mistake and we were refused entry.

 

Ten years before I had visited the Turkish part of Nicosia in what was then known as the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus. I had followed my dad’s instructions and stated that my father was English. This time I forgot, and as we entered the customs office on the Turkish side they asked one of us to fill in a form. If my mother had filled it in there would have been no problem, as only one in each party had do so, and only the person actually filling in the form had to state the nationality of his or her parents. My mother’s parents were both English.

 

However my mother left the form for me to fill in, and foolishly I wrote that my dad was Greek-Cypriot. So, although we both had British passports, they wouldn’t let us in. Before leaving for Cyprus I had even been to the London travel office of the TRNC, which doubles as an unofficial ‘embassy’, and spoken to a high ranking official about my forthcoming visit and tried to get a visa in advance. I had told him my father was Greek-Cypriot, but that I was very sympathetic to the Turkish-Cypriots and thought the Greeks were to blame for the current situation. Even then it didn’t occur to me I was saying all the wrong things. I should have just walked up to the border and gone in as a British tourist like anyone else. The London official simply told me to apply for a visa at the border post. That’s what comes of being a total outsider to the Turkish/Greek Cypriot mentalities of mutual distrust and hatred - being British I just accepted two equal Cypriot republics even if one was only recognized by Turkey, and didn’t realize the Turkish side had every reason to be suspicious of Greek-Cypriots trying to enter their zone. Since then the regulations were altered to allow non-Cypriot citizens with Greek-Cypriot parentage to visit the TRNC at their discretion.  On a later visit I was not even asked any awkward questions before being granted a visa. Later still in 2003 the borders were opened to most Cypriots living in Cyprus to visit the other republic, nearly 29 years after the closed border came into existence (although even before this Turkish Cypriots could unofficially slip into the Greek-Cypriot republic via a Turkish-Cypriot border post adjacent to the British Dhekelia sovereign base. The Greek-Cypriots had no jurisdiction at this border post. No Greek-Cypriot citizens could enter the Turkish-Cypriot republic before 2003 except on a few special occasions.)

 

We took the fast motorway back to Paphos by way of Limassol, and on the way stopped off at Kolossi Castle and the ancient theater at Curium. We also stopped at a beach by Aphrodites’ birthplace and I went in for a dip, and nearly got my neck broken by the force of the huge waves which threw me right over.

 

Later in the week I took my mum up into the mountains again so she could appreciate their beauty in fine weather. We also visited Aphrodites’ Baths on the northwestern tip of Cyprus, stopping at Coral Bay on the way. This had been a deserted golden sandy beach ten years before, but was now packed with tourists. An airport had been built in the Paphos area in the intervening years which had totally altered the nature of Paphos itself and the surrounding area. Ten years before Kato (Lower) Paphos had been a little fishing town with a quiet harbor, but it was now full of discos, restaurants, hotels and was almost indistinguishable from Mediterranean resorts in Spain and elsewhere.

 

After visiting Aphrodites’ Baths, which is a little grotto with water running down into a pool, we visited my Uncle Filaktis and his second wife, Marie, in Polis. This was a very happy visit as my mum got on well with my dad’s brother. Sadly he died of a heart attack shortly after our visit, and his wife was heartbroken. She was in ill health herself with cancer and died a few years later.

 

We also visited other relations whilst in Cyprus, such as my dad’s other brother, Costas. His sister, Athena, was visiting her daughters in England at the time, but we visited her house and saw her husband Michael. My mum knew both of them as they had lived in London for many years. The house where they lived was the one where my father had been born, so this must have been as interesting for my mum as it was for me, even though the house had been altered quite a bit since then, although it was still very basic compared to many other houses in the village. It had no electricity, plumbing or sanitation before the War, and I think my mum was quite surprised after all the horror stories she had heard from Filaktis’ first wife about having to dig a hole in the field to go to the toilet, and sleeping on straw with the animals to find the house now had all these modern facilities (though only an outside flush toilet, no bathroom, and hot water only from a tap in the basement area.)

 

Whilst in the village we visited my grandparents’ grave, and were both shocked at the neglected state of it, and the fact that my poor grandmother had been interred with my grandfather (who had been the local priest) but nobody had bothered to alter the inscription to indicate she was also buried there. Such is the position of women in rural Greek-Cypriot society, even in death they are completely overshadowed by their husbands, though an inscription with her name was later added.

 

I must relate one other story about our visit to Cyprus. My father decided to take us for a day out, and he drove us to some monastery in the mountains. Now my dad has never been a religious man. He has had strong connexions with the Greek Orthodox Church both in London and Cyprus, giving lots of money to it and serving on committees, but at the same time he was an avowed atheist. The Church is a political as well as a religious animal in Cyprus, and my father used it to win influence, giving it money publicly whilst decrying its riches in private.

 

This hypocrisy was demonstrated when we all walked into a little church by the monastery, and my dad made a big show of crossing himself several times, and then kissing every icon in the church.

 

This was never part of the culture of myself or my mother. True I was christened in a Greek Orthodox cathedral in London, but we had always attended either the Anglican or Methodist churches as children.

 

My father was in a furious temper as we drove back. He picked on me, ignoring my mother’s similar misdemeanor, and accused me of entering the church like a tourist, with my hands clasped behind my back. He also said my brother and his wife were just as bad, which I suppose was some consolation.

 

We flew back home the first week in May. The weather had been much better the second half of the week, and I think on the whole my mother enjoyed the holiday and was glad we went. I had phoned George once or twice from the hotel in Paphos, but was so glad to see him again after our week apart.       

 

We celebrated George’s birthday at the end of the month by going to the National Theatre to see ‘Six Characters In Search of an Author’. I believe this was the play in which various characters of the 20th century such as Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and Albert Einstein all find themselves in the same New York hotel room for the night. In June we went to Hyde Park for the Gay Pride carnival, and a memorable film we saw was ‘Prick Up Your Ears’ about Joe Orton which we saw at a cinema in Islington very near wh