13. JAY COURT
We had put our name on the council waiting list only the previous year, thinking we never stood a chance. In a very short space of time we were offered a lovely, centrally heated, two-bedroomed flat on the 18th floor of a tower block. We jumped at the opportunity.
There was a policy by the then Labour council in Wandsworth to get families with young children out of tower blocks, and move single people in. This was why we only had to wait about a year. A few months later a Tory council was elected, and the scheme was scrapped.
When I put our names on the council list, I had hoped to be able to get a flat in Camden, where I had been raised till the age of 6, returned to for 5 years in 1968, and where both my parents still lived (in separate flats). I soon learnt there was no chance; because we had landed in Battersea by accident, we were stuck there, even though we had no connexions at all with the area and most of our friends and family lived north of the River. The only chance of getting to another borough was by taking inferior council accommodation, or accepting a flat in Battersea and later getting an exchange. In actual fact, once we moved into Jay Court we did not really want to leave. We did apply for some Camden flats, but the ones we were offered came nowhere near the standard of our Battersea flat.
We had two cats, and since they were used to going out in our backyard, we thought it unfair to keep them in a high-rise flat without a balcony. So my mother had them both for a time, but eventually we took Dixie back, and he settled in OK. My mother kept Dinkie, our other cat.
During March we were busy getting our new flat straight, and having furniture and carpets delivered. Our previous flat had been partly furnished, so there was quite a lot to buy.
No sooner were we straight, than we were off to Brussels for Easter, which fell at the end of March that year.
We crossed the Channel by hovercraft on Good Friday, and had an enjoyable weekend, returning on the Monday. Brussels is not the most exciting of European cities, but we saw what there was to see, including the famous Mannequin de Pis (a fountain in the guise of a little boy pissing), which is tiny and quite hard to find. We also saw the various costumes the statue wears on special occasions.
We paid a visit to the Atomium, left over from a big international exhibition held in Brussels in the 1950s, a sort of equivalent to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. We went up inside the structure, but it has never become as famous or popular as the Paris tower.
There were some interesting Japanese and Chinese pagodas nearby, but we missed perhaps the most exciting architecture in Brussels, the buildings designed in art nouveau style by Victor Horta. His work in Brussels was apparently similar to Gaudi’s in Barcelona, but we had no knowledge of either architect at the time.
The next three months were fairly quiet with occasional theater and cinema visits, and seeing friends. In June George’s two sisters came down to London to stay for a few days, and they were followed by George’s cousin, her husband and her mother at the end of July, who stayed for two weeks.
George was very fond of his Auntie Rose, whom he lived with for a while when his father died. His cousin, Margaret, and her husband were a wonderful couple, who could not do enough for people. Neither Margaret nor her mother were fond of cats, yet they soon got used to Dixie, our cat, and by the end of the fortnight Margaret was spoiling it thoroughly with tins of salmon bought from Marks and Spencer. It took us weeks to wean him back on to regular canned cat food.
We took them to Windsor, Richmond and Kew Gardens, and they also visited the usual tourist sights in London, including the Royal Mews. We all went down to Portsmouth for the day to see George’s Uncle Robert and his wife. This became a regular trip whenever George’s cousin came to London.
We took them all to see ‘The Two Ronnies’ at the London Palladium, They enjoyed the show, but Auntie Rose suffered from vertigo, a fact we didn’t know when we booked tickets up in the gods. For the first 15 minutes or so she was very nervous of looking steeply down at the stage at all.
Another mistake, according to Margaret’s husband John, was to take them to Brent Cross shopping center. Margaret and her mother were delighted with the shops, but John pretended to be horrified as they rushed round seeing where they could spend their money.
‘Oh, this is the worst place you could have brought them,’ he joked. He liked his little dram and would no doubt rather spend his money in a pub, or rather a Trades and Labour club where the drinks were cheaper. His wife, however, strongly disapproved of drinking, but they joked about each other’s extravagances and seemed to get on very well. John was always in a good humor, and both were very generous.
In between these two visits from George’s relatives, we paid a visit to Ipswich to see the friend whom we had helped move a few months previously, and his mother. We also saw a very funny Alan Ayckbourn play called ‘Bedroom Farce’ at the National Theatre. I liked it so much I later took my mother to see it. She was late, and missed the first Act.
For the August Bank Holiday weekend we went down to Somerset with my mother to stay with her friend in Porlock.
My brother Philip turned up there with a friend in tow. Since Philip had never shown any interest in girls, and was now nearly 30, my mother expected another male potholing buddy, but to her delight and surprise it was a girl, Hilda. We met them on the beach by Porlock Weir, and Philip and I went in swimming, but when it was finally time for them to go, Hilda shook hands with everybody else but pointedly ignored George’s proffered hand. I did not notice this at the time, but George was understandably deeply hurt. This was the start of a long breach in relations with my brother. His wife hated my name so much she forbade it to be spoken in her house, and made this fact obvious to my mother. The only possible reason for this hatred could be that we were a gay couple.
Philip and Hilda came back to London with us, and for the one and only time actually came into our flat. I remember them standing holding hands looking out at the view from our 18th floor window.
In September we flew to Spain for a week of touring, and a second week by the sea in Lloret. It was the forerunner of many late September holidays we were to spend in Lloret, and as we always went that time of year it is pure chance we were not there at the time George died in 1991. We had broken the pattern and gone a week earlier to Jersey instead that fateful year.
In 1978 we flew out to Barcelona on Monday September 25th, and stayed overnight in an hotel just off The Ramblas. We did not have that long to explore the city, but I remember venturing out of our hotel that evening after we arrived and going across The Ramblas to wander the narrow streets of the Old Town and see what we took to be the old cathedral, but years after George died I discovered it was just a church, when I found the real old cathedral in a square.
Next day we were driven south to Valencia for sightseeing and an overnight stop, and the following day we moved on to the capital, Madrid. My first impression was how tall the buildings were. It seemed like an American city, with its canyon-like streets of buildings at least 9 stories tall. In the center of the city were much taller buildings, reminiscent of 1930s New York skyscrapers. There were also some impressive monuments and fountains, including a very modern waterfall fountain in a central square where it was possible to walk along a passage behind the waterfall - very cooling on a hot day in this city in the center of sunny Spain. We also visited the famous Prado art gallery and saw its paintings by Heronius Bosch and others.
Our hotel was on the outskirts of the city, a very pleasant little hotel with a half-timbered dining room, reminiscent of an English inn.
Whilst in Madrid, we visited the ancient city of Toledo nearby, and witnessed a religious procession for one of the Spanish festival days. Toledo was impressive, with its huge castle on a hill towering over the town and the Spanish plain.
En route to Madrid we had made a stop at Old Medinaceli, another interesting town, and en route from Madrid to our overnight stop in Lerida we visited the city of Saragossa.
On Sunday October 1st we arrived in the tiny principality of Andorra, the Catalan statelet sandwiched between Spain and France. It is a mountainous little country in The Pyrenees, and is basically two small towns arranged along two valleys, joining in a ‘V’ shape. The principal town is Andorra La Vella, which consists mainly of hotels and duty-free shops where you see French and Spanish people loading up their cars with TV sets, hi-fi equipment, etc.. We spent one night in an hotel here, and had a drive up into the mountains almost to the French border. There was snow up there, and we just briefly emerged from the coach for a photo, but without winter coats it was too cold to linger.
Then it was on to Lloret de Mar for our second week, relaxing by the sea. The town quite impressed us because, although a very commercialized tourist center, the main resort for the then popular Costa Brava, it was a genuine old Catalonian town with some beautiful buildings and narrow streets. Unlike artificial places such as Magaluf in Majorca, which we had visited previously, and which were created solely for tourists, consisting of huge tower block hotels and holiday apartments. Lloret only had one tall building, and boasted a Ramblas lined with palm trees and some interesting old buildings, a very colorful little domed church and the inevitable castle overlooking the sea. It also had an excellent beach of coarse sand, though the sea shelved rather steeply and deeply for non-swimmers.
At night Lloret came to life, its narrow shopping streets a blaze of neon with discos, bars and shops. The main modern street leading down to the sea from the bus station had a canal running down the center. At least in winter it was probably a canal, as the rains drained from the inland hills down into the sea. In summer it was a large, dry, cemented, excavation with a pathetic trickle of water winding its way down the center.
We also made a visit to the nearby resort of Tossa de Mar, which is smaller and quieter than Lloret, but also boasts a castle on a hill overlooking the sea.
On the Friday before returning we went to nearby Blanes and caught a train along the coast into Barcelona, as we had only spent one evening there at the beginning of our holiday. Here we discovered what was to become one of our favorite cities in the world, largely due to the fantastic art nouveau architecture of Antonio Gaudi.
We were very impressed by his still unfinished (in fact hardly started when you look at the plans for the finished building which will be massive) Sagrada Familia. This is an art nouveau cathedral, started about 100 years ago. The original Nativity Facade is the most interesting since it was built largely whilst Gaudi was still alive. Run over by a tram, work on his Sagrada Familia virtually stopped during the Franco years, and was only continued after the downfall of the dictator who disapproved of this unorthodox Catalan architect. The newer facade follows Gaudi’s overall design, but incorporates many modern sculptures not in Gaudi’s art nouveau style.
We also discovered some of Gaudi’s other buildings, including the really unbelievable Casa Battlo, with its dragon’s back roof and cave-like windows, and the larger Casa Mila, occupying a corner site further up the road. On later visits to Barcelona we were to venture inside these fantastic buildings, and even get on the roof of the Casa Mila.
On this first full day in Barcelona we also discovered the Guell Park with its fairy-tale pavilions, walls, sculptures, staircase, terrace and tunnels, all in Gaudi’s art nouveau style. There was also some wonderful art nouveau iron-work in the form of gates and fences. We were so impressed by Gaudi’s work, not least this delightful little park, we were distressed to see children playing on the terrace with its winding, snake-like seats, because they were ruining its colorful mosaics. On a later visit to the park one year to the day after George’s death I was pleased to see these seats were being restored to their original condition, and at the hour of George’s death a year later I left a tiny sprig of flowers in one of the art nouveau tunnels we had first discovered on this trip in October 1978. The park was one of George’s favorite places on this Earth.
Whilst staying in Lloret, we also visited nearby Blanes, but were not impressed with this rather dull town. However we ran into two cockney brothers from our hotel whilst passing a bar on the sea front, and they urged us to go in and join them in a drink.
‘C’mon, ‘s’cheap, ‘s’luvly’ one of the middle-aged brothers slurred.
He was chatting away about the delights of cheap beer, to the obvious annoyance of local Catalans watching on TV the somber funeral of The Pope, who had died a few days previously. They kept giving us withering glances, and when we pointed this out to our cockney friend and signaled him to speak more softly, he just looked round at the TV and said untactfully:
‘Oh they’re just burying some old Pope, don’t worry ‘bout that mate. Drink up, ‘scheap, ‘s’luvly’.
After two more days in Lloret, we flew back to London on the Monday. The two cockney brothers were in a high state of intoxication at the airport as they tried to consume as much duty-free booze as possible before the flight. They were still exclaiming ‘drink up, ‘s’cheap, ‘s’luvly’, and most of the other passengers seemed to agree, as they were either drinking or smoking duty-free goods, or both. This was the typical Costa Brava tourist at the time, attracted by cheap booze, sun, sea and sand (with possibly a bit of sex as well if they were lucky and drunk enough.)
We had done our own thing, however, and avoided the bars and places where the lager louts hung out, discovering the more interesting delights of Catalonia, as well as enjoying the beaches. We were to return many times, but not for a few years yet.
The rest of the year was fairly uneventful. We went on our annual visit to the London Palladium in November to see Dorothy Squires, and one Saturday evening also spent ‘A Night With Dame Edna’.
Coming up at the end of the year was my brother Philip’s wedding, but his bride-to-be, Hilda, had stipulated George was not welcome. This message was conveyed through my mother, and the excuse was it was a ‘family only’ affair. It so happened George and I had arranged to go to Scotland for the New Year, and we had planned to stop off in Settle for the wedding, but after this shocking news, the first firm evidence of Hilda’s raging homophobia, we both decided to skip their wedding and go straight to Glasgow.
I was visiting my father in his London flat a few weeks prior to the wedding, and when he heard I was not attending he was furious. I explained the reason why, and he fairly exploded. He got on the phone straight away to Philip and told him in no uncertain terms that his brother was coming to his wedding and would bring whoever he liked. Philip and Hilda, being very aware of my father’s money, did not dare upset him, and meekly agreed to his demand. To save a further family row, George and I agreed to stop off at Settle for a few hours for the wedding on the way up to Scotland, but we were not happy about it, and there was a strained atmosphere throughout our visit.
Hilda’s relations were quite amiable - her brother was nice, and a butch female relative was obviously gay, and very friendly towards us. Hilda and Philip were very distant, and accepted our wedding gift as grudgingly as we gave it. My mother gave them a dinner service she could ill afford, and told Hilda it was complete apart from some vegetable dishes which were extra to the set, and Hilda turned round and said:
‘Oh, we’d like the vegetable dishes as well, please’.
So my mother, an old age pensioner, had to go home and order the vegetable dishes to add to their wedding gift. As we came out of my father’s car on the way to the reception, he handed Hilda gold watch, and she was fawning over the watch and my dad saying:
‘Oh it’s lovely, lovely. O thank you, oh it’s lovely. Oh thank you, thank you.....’
The whole thing made us sick, and we could hardly wait to board the Settle-Carlisle railway to complete our journey to Glasgow that night. Everyone told us what fools we were to miss the most picturesque railway ride in England by traveling at night, but we were just pleased to leave and head for the welcome of a Scottish Hogmanay. We left Settle at 7pm, and arrived in Glasgow 10pm that night. Next day was New Year’s Eve, when the festivities began. It was another enjoyable Hogmanay spent in Glasgow with George’s relations, who all made me feel welcome and one of the family. Such a change after the hostility of my brother and his wife.
We returned from Glasgow on January 4th and a relatively quiet few months followed.
It may have been a very unlucky day to choose, but April the 13th was Good Friday, and we were off to spend Easter in Paris. It was very good weather, and we visited all the usual sights on Saturday (Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Notre Dame) and spent Easter Day in Pere Lachaise cemetery visiting the famous (and the infamous) in their final resting place, and the remainder of the day we spent around Sacre Coeur in the Montmarte area.
On this occasion we had not booked a room in advance, so looked for an hotel when we arrived. We found one, but the only room available was a sort of hut on the roof. Inside it was a proper room, very basic and a bit sordid, but full of the Paris atmosphere we loved so much. It was a marvelous weekend, with the weather so warm it was almost like summer.
In May we paid a trip to St Albans and visited the Veurulanium Roman site and museum with our next door neighbor, Levy, and my mother. Levy had introduced herself as soon as we moved in by giving us some curtains. She only had one lung and was not in the best of health, yet the council had given her a flat on the 18th floor opposite ours. On several occasions when the lifts were out of order she climbed the stairs and nearly killed herself.
A few days later we saw a good production of the play ‘Bent’ at the Royal Court Theatre, about the treatment of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. The cozy domesticity of the opening scene with the two gay lovers at home could almost have been contemporary to the gay liberation days of the 1970s, till the Gestapo burst in and carted the lovers off to a concentration camp. I cannot help but draw an analogy with how our own little nest was also shattered by the latest persecutor of gay men, AIDS. George died in the holocaust, and for the first few years without him I felt as if I was serving a life sentence in a prison camp, only to be released when we are reunited in the next world. Then thankfully someone came along who gave me some affection and made life worth living again.
George’s birthday at the end of May fell on the Sunday before a Bank Holiday, so we spent a long weekend with Rose and Neil in Hastings.
Saturday June 30th was the day of the annual Gay Pride festival in London, and George went along, but Mum and I were off to Glasgow to stay with George’s cousin, visiting Philip and Hilda in the English Lake District on the way back. For some reason George could not come with us. Although we both worked in the same office, we usually managed to get holidays off together. Perhaps this was one time we couldn’t, or perhaps the visit to Philip and Hilda put him off.
George’s cousin and her husband made us very welcome, and she took us on the local train to Loch Lomond. We had a boat ride on the loch, and a coach trip right round it. I also took my mother to Helensburgh, and to visit at least one of George’s sisters.
The stony cold reception which greeted us at Philip and Hilda’s house was such a contrast to the warm hospitality of Margaret and John in Scotland, who were not even related to us. My brother and his wife just acted as if my mother and I did not exist. They sat all evening hardly talking to us, Hilda looking at school books (she was a schoolteacher who hated kids) and Philip reading, while the TV was tuned inaudibly to boring programs nobody was watching. They did not attempt to make conversation with us, or ask what we would like to see on TV. If we tried to talk we just got sharp, one syllable answers which clearly told us to shut up. My mum asked Hilda:
‘What are you reading?’
‘School work’ she snapped.
We felt most uncomfortable, especially as every now and then she and Philip would bend their heads close together and start whispering confidences to each other. At one point during our stay my mother was telling Hilda something and she just got up and walked out of the room in the middle, without even saying ‘Excuse me’. She later claimed there was an emergency outside with Philip and a hosepipe, but that hardly excused her abrupt departure without a word of apology.
Philip used to share my tastes in music, but his Country and Rock’n’Roll record collection, including a lot of Jerry Lee Lewis albums, seemed to have been relegated by Hilda to the back shelf in favor of classical albums. Certainly I never heard him play any of the music he used to like either at home or in the car.
My mother and I visited Ullswater by bus and spent a pleasant day, and on the day we were returning home Philip drove us to Hilda’s parents by the scenic route. I had brought some Glasgow goodies for George (potato scones, black pudding, lorn sausage, etc.) and Hilda had put it in her fridge to keep it fresh. Quite deliberately she insured it remained in her fridge. I am convinced she planned it all beforehand.
We were sitting in their lounge, when suddenly Hilda popped her head in the door without any warning and said:
‘Come on, we’re off’.
She had her coat on, and Philip was already in the car, having loaded our cases. So we just had to grab our coats and run. When we were safely miles away on the Yorkshire Moors, Hilda turned round to me in the car, smiling sweetly, and said sarcastically:
‘And did you remember to take George’s things out of the fridge?’ Of course she knew full well she had not given me a chance to remember. Philip offered to go back for them, but she said: ‘Oh no you will not’.
She later insured he did not go back afterwards either. She had an appointment at the hairdresser’s near her parents’ place, but canceled it so she could come in the car with us to make sure Philip did not go back for George’s things. It was all incredibly petty, but it created further very bad feeling after the business over the wedding and not shaking hands with George the first time we met Hilda.
At her parents’ house they served up strawberries for dessert, and there was some trouble because Hilda did or did not want cream or sugar, I cannot remember the details. I know Philip snatched away her dish and like a dutiful husband tried to put things right, but Hilda went into a sulk and said:
‘No, I don’t want them now’, and refused to eat them at all.
It was all so childish, and when I got home and related the story to George he remarked that Hilda had acted like a spoiled child. He urged me to write a letter to Philip, saying it was my duty as a brother to make sure he treated my mother properly, and that he appreciated all she had done for him. Hilda and Philip kept on very good terms with my father, who had money, and Hilda valued Philip’s university education, but my father had not paid a penny towards it. My mother had to sacrifice the little money earned from her job to help keep Philip at university, and look after him in the holidays.
I wrote a letter and tried to tactfully remind him of this and other things Mum had done for him. I thanked him for all he had done for us during our visit, but also pointed out we felt uncomfortable particularly when they both had their noses in books and kept whispering to each other, which I said was very impolite in company. Perhaps unwisely, with George’s encouragement, I remarked that Hilda had acted like a spoilt child.
Of course Hilda read this letter, though it was not addressed to her, and it was the excuse she had been looking for. She made Philip cut all ties with me, and decreed my name was never to be mentioned in her house again. From that day till our father got terminally ill in 1998, Philip never contacted me or sent me a Christmas card, and all communications to him from me went unanswered. In 1995 Philip made the one exception in breaking all contact by phoning me obviously to make sure I was not visiting my dad - in London for a few days - on the same day as Philip and Hilda. This happened once before when my dad was staying with some relations on his annual UK visit. I knew Philip and Hilda would be there and wondered if I should go, but George insisted I did and that I get there before they arrived. They were forced to talk to me, and seemed to act as if nothing had happened. But afterwards I got the cold shoulder again. Philip’s phone call that time was to make sure there was not a repeat performance when Hilda would have to tolerate my presence.
My mother went up to their house after George died and mentioned my name a few times. When she did so to Philip, his eyes began filling with tears and he rushed upstairs. When she mentioned my name to Hilda she glared at her with such a look of hatred my mother was taken aback. She told me she had never seen a look of such utter evil in anyone’s face before. However, when I met them in Cyprus for my father’s funeral in 1998, she had mellowed, and even became quite friendly towards me after the initial ice was broken. Is it cynical to wonder if my being a potential fellow inheritor of my father’s wealth whose cooperation was needed for any legal formalities had anything to do with it? Certainly they needed my cooperation to contest the Will which they were not satisfied with, but perhaps Hilda had just become more mature in her attitude towards me over the years.
Less than a month after my mother and I had been there in 1979, George and I were back in the lake District, but needless to say we did not call on my brother and his wife. It was a one day British Rail Merrymaker excursion to Carlisle, with a coach ride and boat trip on one of the lakes included. Unfortunately it was typical Lake District weather, cloudy, misty and gray.
At the end of July we had a one day trip to Margate, and George’s cousin Margaret and her husband, John, came to stay. We took them round and about as usual, and had a trip to Southend together.
At the end of September we had both my mother and our friend Andre round for lunch. They had gotten to know each other when we all went on holiday together to Majorca. The next day George and I were off on the big trip, our first transatlantic venture to the States.
In George’s 1979 diary was a blank hotel guest check on which someone had written his name, address and phone numbers in New York. Of course we did the gay bar and backroom scene in the Big Apple, and this was just when the AIDS epidemic was starting, unknown to anyone at the time. We paid return visits to New York in 1980 and 1981. According to a letter George wrote to a friend of ours, he met a sailor in one of the bars and went back to an hotel with him. I do not know on which trip he met this sailor, or what they did together, but I cannot help wondering as I look at the name on the hotel guest check if it is the person who passed on the virus to George, and ultimately took him away from me. If it is, I cannot be angry with him. He did not know anymore than we did, and he is probably dead now himself. Anger is not an emotion I have felt over George’s loss or the AIDS crisis generally - it would only turn into anger if it transpired AIDS had indeed resulted from some diabolical biological warfare experiments as some people, myself included, have wondered.
The air flight to New York was a nightmare. When we boarded the jumbo we discovered someone was sitting in one of our seats. Eventually a stewardess came along, and told us there was no time to sort the problem out now as the plane was about to taxi ready for take off. She told me to sit down in the available seat, and whisked George off to the first class section. That was the last I saw of him for the entire eight hour flight. Of course the plane should never have taken off at all with seats double-booked, which meant there were not enough for all the passengers.
During the flight I asked if I could join George, and the stewardess refused, saying I could not even go and talk to him as I was not allowed into first class. I found out he was seated upstairs in the first class dining section, without any company or films to watch. I then asked the stewardess if we could at least change places for a few hours, so George could come down and watch a film, but she refused this request too.
I later learned from George that not only had he been stuck alone for many hours (apart from the odd crew member who would come in from time to time) without any film, audio entertainment or anyone to talk to, but when the first class passengers came up for their meal he was treated like an outcast. When he saw rare roast beef (his favorite meat) being carved from the joint, he thought at least he had this consolation, and was astounded and dejected when they brought him a regulation economy class meal on a plastic tray. Not only was it mental torture whilst everyone around him was tucking into roast beef, but it was extremely humiliating, as the first class passengers kept glaring at this second-class intruder eating his economy meal in their midst, making it plain they felt he had no right to be there.
When we finally reached New York and met up in JFK airport, George was in a terrible state and wanted to catch the next plane back home. The final insult was when he complained, and the stewardess told him he had nothing to complain about as he had been treated as a first class passenger. Of course we later wrote and got some cash compensation, but it was a dreadful start to the holiday.
I can now see some symbolism in this episode. My separation from George on our first flight to the States, with him being taken upstairs, only to meet up at our final destination, could be regarded as a premonition of when he was taken from me and left this Earth plane for a higher level. We will only meet again when I too reach this final destination. It is significant that our three trips to New York at just the time the AIDS epidemic was starting there (plus one trip to San Francisco) were the most likely reason George became infected with the HIV virus. A doctor at the hospital where he was diagnosed said the likelihood of him catching the virus at that time was greatly increased if we had visited the States and been active on the gay scene there (especially in New York and San Francisco of course). This was certainly the case. So this traumatic incident on the flight and George’s initial desire to turn back immediately on arrival was, perhaps, a warning that if we did not do so, our separation would one day be more permanent than a few hours.
Of course, we did not turn back. We joined the long line for U.S. Customs and Immigration, and the final straw for George was when he was accused of not declaring a banana (it was left uneaten during the unhappy flight), and it was promptly confiscated with a warning it was a serious offense to try to smuggle a banana into the Big Apple (or more precisely, into the U.S.).
However, once we left JFK airport, we instantly fell in love with New York. The sheer excitement of approaching Manhattan with its dramatic skyline soon made us forget the traumas of the journey out. We were ready to begin the first of our great American adventures.
We arrived in the evening, and then had two full days in New York. During that time we did all the sights, visiting the Statue of Liberty by boat, going up the Empire State Building and World Trade Center, visiting Chinatown, Times Square and Central Park. We discovered lesser known delights such as the Flat-iron Building, so named because of its shape, and reportedly the world’s first skyscraper.
On this and subsequent visits to the Big Apple we enjoyed the culinary delights of New York such as the huge beef sandwiches which were a meal in themselves, and the Blarney Stone chain of licensed restaurants which not only served these sandwiches, but had a bar down one side, and a self-service food counter down the other where they carved huge portions of meat from the joint and topped it off with vegetables. We also discovered strange exotic drinks like Orange Juliuses, which actually came in several flavors.
New York seemed to have everything in abundance, and not just delicious food. The gay sex scene was as free as in Amsterdam, but all the establishments here were bigger and better. We visited the enormous Adonis cinema, which also had a bar and a disco dance floor attached if I remember rightly, and numerous backrooms including one behind the cinema screen, where you watched the porno film back-to-front. There were other gay clubs on several levels with very spacious, exotic backrooms, and most of these establishments gave you tickets so you could wander in and out of several all night long. It all seemed so civilized compared to Nanny-State Britain at the time.
I do not feel the backroom scene in New York in itself greatly increased our chances of catching the HIV virus. You were probably more likely to catch it if you took someone home or to an hotel than if you stayed in the backroom, simply because you were more likely to practice what is now known to be unsafe sex in the privacy of a bedroom. I believe, if George did come into contact with the virus in New York, it was probably when he went back to an hotel with somebody. I was at least as active on the New York backroom scene as George was, yet do not ever remember practicing what we now know to be unsafe (unprotected anal) sex in any of them. I may well have done so if I had gone back and actually ended up in bed with someone. The reason it was so dangerous visiting New York at that particular time was that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was already spreading there like wildfire, yet no-one knew about it or what precautions to take.
We were staying in an hotel near Washington Square called the Gramercy Park, after the area where the hotel was located. The Square itself was an oasis of parkland with a fountain at the center, and was a hive of activity day and night. Skateboarders and drug pedlars were everywhere, and the New York Police Department seemed at the time to take almost as liberal an attitude over cannabis as the Amsterdam police did. At any rate it seemed to be on sale quite openly, especially in Washington Square judging by all the dealers inviting the passing public to ‘check it out’, referring to their wares.
We rode the Subway down to the Battery, and ventured Uptown as far as Harlem. I think the city cast its spell on both of us. Certainly I felt this was the only place to be on Earth. It was like coming home to where I belonged. It seemed everyone belonged in New York, a huge cosmopolitan city where all races and nationalities mingled. It is the melting pot of the world, and I felt proud to be a New Yorker even for only a few days. It may well have been on this occasion the Pope visited New York whilst we were there, and we caught a brief glimpse of the ‘Pope-mobile’ as he drove past. Whilst waiting for it a woman remarked that the top of the Empire State was still covered in mist, evidently a New Yorker’s way of judging the weather, and I felt privileged to be part of it all.
New York is full of the kind of real odd-ball characters who disappeared from London streets years ago. The people are friendly - you only have to open a map and they gather round to show you the way. Transport is very inexpensive, as is everything except the theater, though nowadays London seat prices have more or less caught up.
We arrived in New York Monday evening, and on Thursday we were off by bus (coach) to Newport, Rhode Island. On the way we stopped off at Mystic Village in Connecticut, a delightful but artificial looking place. Newport had a very English-looking church, where John F. Kennedy was married. The harbor and some of the other buildings had a very English feel about them too, but of course we were in New England.
That evening we drove to Cape Cod for our overnight stay, but all we saw of it was a typical American ‘strip’: a highway lined with fast-food outlets, blazing neon and huge signs on high poles. We were advised to eat in the restaurant of the hotel, but we decided to find a place by ourselves and risked life and limb by trying to walk down the strip, which of course had no sidewalks. I think we reached Wendy’s hamburger joint, which had waitress service. All we wanted was the kind of place where you went up to a counter to get served. So we decided we might as well go back to the hotel restaurant, and we were so glad we did. As we sat down at our table the waitress introduced herself:
‘Hi, I’m Millie and I’m your waitress for tonight....’. She showed us the menu, and we decided on roast beef. Instead of a thin sliver of meat, we were amazed when we were each served with the equivalent of the British weekly joint, either of which would have fed an English family of four for several meals. We remarked on this fact to Millie, who shook her head in sad disbelief that the English should be so starved as to make one meal go so far. The bill, when it came, was extremely reasonable, and we were pleased we did not chomp into a hamburger at Wendy’s, delicious as they may well have been.
Friday we stopped of at Plymouth, Massachusetts where the Pilgrim Fathers landed. We saw Plymouth Rock, a statue to the original Americans (a Red Indian) and a replica of the Mayflower.
We stopped for about an hour in Boston, but did not see as much of it as we might because my watch had broken, and we spent most of the time looking for somewhere to get it fixed. We walked through a big market arcade, and eventually found a department store where they mended my watch free of charge. That is American service for you.
We then drove across the river to the other half of the city, known as Cambridge. Here we visited the campus of the famous Harvard University, which also looked very English indeed.
Saturday we drove to Camden, Maine where we stopped for about an hour. During that time I was accosted by a woman on the waterfront who invited me back to her place for ‘a party’. Evidently she thought I looked like a ‘swinger’,but I had to feebly make my apologies by explaining I was just a tourist who had to be back on his bus within the hour.
We drove through the beautiful New England countryside with its brilliant fall colors, and crossed the border into Quebec. Eventually we reached Quebec City, where we were staying for a couple of nights. It is probably the most European city in North America, and the location for many North American films when they want a European setting without the expense of a transatlantic trip. It actually has walls round it and turreted gates, and inside are narrow streets which could easily be taken for Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris or almost anywhere else in Europe. There are also impressive French-style chateaus and towers with pointed green roofs. We loved the city because it seemed so different and out of place in North America. The language, of course, is French, but a peculiar kind hard to understand if you are used to the European dialects. George spoke French quite well, but found it very difficult to understand the Quebec variety.
Next we drove on to Montreal, and stayed in a large room with our own cooking facilities. We bought some bacon and eggs and George cooked us a meal. I have a photo of him cooking over the gas stove, with the open fridge full of cans, and another photo shows me at our own dining table eating the meal he cooked. In yet another corner of the huge room or suite was a large sofa and armchair and a color TV. Of course by now we had discovered the multi-channel entertainment on offer in North America, with an endless choice of programs old and new.
Whilst in Montreal we went to the cinema and saw ‘Apocalypse Now’, a film George appreciated more than myself. I think I found it just too heavy, and a bit above my head.
As we left the city in the bus, bound for English-speaking Canada and the capital, Ottawa, Montreal was receiving one of its first falls of snow that winter, and on October 9th the ground was already carpeted with a thin covering of white.
Ottawa, like Quebec City, had some interesting European-looking buildings, especially the neo-Gothic spires of the Parliament Building. We arrived on the day of the opening of Parliament, and were privileged enough to see the new Prime Minister, Joe Clark, and his wife go past in a horse-driven open carriage, escorted by the Mounties in their scarlet uniforms.
Next day we were due to move on to Toronto for two nights, but George had arranged with his cousin, Sally, for her to meet the bus en route so we could spend the night at her place in Peterboro’, a town some miles from Toronto. We stopped at Kingston, Ontario for a short break, and viewed a Mississippi-style paddle-steamer and an old Canadian Pacific steam engine which were on display, and then George phoned Sally to give her an idea what time to intercept the bus.
As we drove the final lap to Toronto, Sally and her husband Bill met us in their car by a road junction, and the coach stopped and let us off with our luggage. Sally and Bill drove us back to their house, where we briefly met their adolescent sons. It so happened my own cousin also lived in Peterboro’ at the time, so we gave him a ring and he popped over to collect us. We met his wife, Tina, and their two young children, and had a pleasant chat. Tina was a Mormon, but apparently my cousin Bruce was not.
Time was drawing on and we felt trapped there, with no means of escape. George was getting very agitated, since we had really stopped off in Peterboro’ to see Sally and Bill, and it was they who were putting us up for the night and had made all the arrangements to meet the bus. Finally Bruce gave us a lift back, and we had a late night chat with Sally and Bill before going to bed.
During our 24 hours or so with Sally and Bill they showed us all round their big, suburban house, which was typical of many Canadian town houses and included a veranda and a large basement. They also took us round Peterboro’, accompanied by their little dog. We saw the famous elevator lock on one of Peterboro’s waterways.
Finally they drove us to Toronto, showed us one of the huge new shopping malls, and then left us at our hotel. We then did a quick city tour of Toronto, which included a ride up the world’s tallest free-standing structure, the CN Tower, with its dizzying view from the top (you looked down and felt the whole thing was going to topple over at the next gust of wind). Here we had our portrait done by computer-photo, then a fairly new phenomenon. We took the portrait home with us and put it up for a time in the Telex room where we both worked. Computer pictures are made up of letters and other characters to form a photograph, and we kidded everyone who asked about it that we had produced the picture on our telex machine. Most of them fell for it, because we often did receive computer-originated graphics over the telex line, especially at Christmas when transmission of images like Santa Claus and his reindeer blocked our lines for ages. We sometimes ran up our own telex bill by recording these images on telex Murray-code tape, and re-transmitting them on to our Australian correspondents as a Christmas greeting.
That evening in Toronto we went to see a new film, ‘The Amityville Horror’. Next morning we were off for Niagara Falls and the U.S. border. All the main attractions were on the Canadian side, where we were staying overnight, and this side also gives the best view of the Falls
We had our photos taken by the very dramatic Horseshoe Falls, then had a ride on the ‘Maid of the Mists’ pleasure boat to near the foot of the Falls. Everyone had to cover up from head to toe in black plastic macintoshes with hoods, so only the face was showing, otherwise our clothes would have been soaked through with the spray from the Falls.
On the way down through New England from Niagara to Washington D.C., we stopped overnight at a place called Scranton, Pennsylvania. In the motel room we found a little envelope with a printed note from our maid, hoping we would enjoy our stay and if we did could we leave a token of our appreciation in the envelope before we left. Now to us this was like a red rag to two raging bulls: it hit two sore points in one go. We hated tipping, and maids were just a bloody nuisance. We didn’t have maids at home in our flat, so why should we be pestered with them on our holidays? We were quite happy to use the same towels all week, pull the bedclothes together and put up with a bit of dust, but they insisted on knocking at our door at some unearthly hour in the morning when we wanted a lie in, even when we managed to find and display a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign sometimes. If it was wet weather, you felt obliged to vacate your room just so the maid could get in and clean it. We never cleaned our flat every day, but when on holiday and you felt like a lie in you couldn’t do it because of these armies of maids who seemed to be employed solely to annoy us. Now this one in Scranton had added insult to injury by not only demanding to be tipped for being a nuisance, but she had actually had the audacity to leave an envelope to put it in. Well she certainly got a tip, but not the kind she hoped for. As far as I remember the note we left in the envelope for her read something like this: ‘Get back to your Scranton scrag-hole you mercenary maid’. The Scranton alliteration was no doubt lost on our transatlantic pest, since ‘Get back to your scrag-’ole’ was a phrase we had adopted from that marvelous British comedy actress, Patricia Hayes, in the TV play ‘Edna, The Inebriate Woman’ I believe. Of course we were off the next morning, but as we sat on the bus we imagined the greedy maid tearing open her envelope for some dollar bills, only to find this insulting note. We felt we had gotten our own back on all those maids intent on spoiling our past and future holidays by insisting on doing their silly job every morning. At the very least maids should not start work till 12 noon to give people a chance for a lie in, but one clean-up before we arrived, and once after we left would have been quite sufficient.
We were now bound for Washington, D.C. by way of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the peace treaty ending the American Civil War (or War between the States/War of Northern Aggression as it is referred to in the South) was signed. I took a photo of General Robert E. Lee’s headquarters which had the rebel Confederate flag flying outside.
We arrived for our two nights in the U.S. capital city in time for a big gay march, which we joined in, going right by the White House. Whilst in Washington we visited the other sights including the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol Building. We were taken on a tour and saw the Senate and House of Representatives. We also went across the river to Arlington, Virginia (in fact a suburb of Washington) to see John F. Kennedy’s grave in the huge military cemetery.
Whilst in Washington we had arranged to make our way to nearby Baltimore where my penfriend lived. I had been writing Dee Snoble for 15 years, but we had never met. We were both interested in 1950s rock’n’roll, and she was once a personal friend of our mutual idol, Jerry Lee Lewis who frequently passed through her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. We met up in the bus station, and she looked quite different to how I imagined. We had a lot to catch up on, and she showed us Baltimore Harbor, then took us to her house and introduced us to her pet cockatiel. She was very surprised when it took to George immediately, but then he seemed to have an affinity with all animals.
Dee’s house was rather weird in that owls in all forms, shapes and sizes were very much in evidence. A huge stuffed owl high in one corner dominated the room, and seemed likely to swoop down on us at any minute. Owl pictures and ornaments filled every available space on the walls and shelves in the main room, giving it a very eerie feel.
I had brought Dee an album of Newcastle-born Jerry Lee-style pianist and singer, Freddie ‘Fingers’ Lee as a present. I wore my American Eagle string tie for our first meeting, but regretted having abandoned my usual 1950s hairstyle for this American trip. I was rather relieved to find Dee looked very ordinary too, and certainly did not have a 1950s hairdo herself. The reason I didn’t recognize her when we met was my mental picture of her was composed from caricatures of herself she had drawn in our early correspondence, which used to be very wild, both of us doing drawings so the letters were more like comics. Dee depicted herself as a sort of short Brenda Lee type with a huge beehive hairdo, when I met her I was mildly surprised to find she was of normal height with a contemporary hairstyle, and, like myself, wearing spectacles.
When we met some of Dee’s friends on a subsequent visit it became pretty plain she kept her love of 1950s music and Jerry Lee Lewis very much to herself. I mentioned his name as George and I were eating out at a seafood restaurant with Dee and her friends, and they exclaimed in shocked amazement:
‘Jerry Lee Lewis? You’re not a fan of HIS, are you?’
This was in a tone of voice that implied Dee must be 100 years old, and possibly a little perverted for liking someone with such a colorful personal life. Dee was obviously a little embarrassed for she squirmed and then admitted that she had gotten to know me through the various 1950s rock’n’roll fan club magazines.
After our visit with Dee on this first of our American trips, we made our way back to Washington, and next day we were returning to New York for the flight home. En route we stopped off in Philadelphia long enough to see the main sights of that city, including the cracked Liberty Bell. This reminded me of a very similar bell I had seen before I met George in the Kremlin. The Russian bell did not just have a crack, but a large triangular-shaped chunk broken off. (George, in his witty way, had later written on the back of a photo of the Statue of Liberty which we took on one of our American trips, the caption: ‘The Liberty Belle’).
We arrived at JFK airport and flew back to London without further incident. This time we had seats together, and could enjoy the movies and other in flight entertainment. This may have been the time ‘The Muppet Movie’ was being shown during the flight, and George kept dozing off. He was seated between me and a woman passenger, and every now and then George kept half waking up, looking bleary eyed at the screen and, seeing the green figure of Kermit, kept exclaiming grumpily: ‘That bloody frog’ before drifting back to sleep again
The rest of the year was fairly uneventful. We met a Swiss guy called Peter a couple of times for dinner. One of these was at the Swiss Centre near Leicester Square, where we enjoyed a typical Swiss meal. I cannot now recall how we met Peter or what became of him.
We paid our annual visit to a Dorothy Squires concert in early December, this time at the Dominion, Tottenham Court Road. Later that month we also saw a very funny French/Italian film called ‘La Cage Aux Follies’ featuring two gay men in a lifelong partnership. Of course, this film achieved cult status, spurned many inferior sequels and was eventually made into a musical whose initial success was thwarted by the AIDS crisis, which temporarily made a musical with a homosexual theme very risky box office. Happily there are annual revivals of the musical, which has some excellent songs and a very funny but also moving story line. An American version of the film has since been made, called ‘Birds Of A Feather’, but I don’t think you can beat the French original.
In the latter half of 1979 I had applied for a telex job at Amnesty International, in response to a newspaper advert. At the interview I explained I wanted to work similar hours to my current job, which was effectively part-time. George and I used to do alternate shifts at an Australian company, one of us doing mornings and one afternoons, and we changed over every week. Amnesty International were looking for a full-time employee, but they agreed on a trial basis to offer both of us the job on a part-time basis. Whoever was on early shift at the Australian company would go over to Amnesty International in the afternoons and do that job also. At Christmas time we were in a quandary as both the Australian firm and Amnesty International had their staff Christmas parties on the same evening. I cannot remember now which one we went to.
As usual when we were in London on New Year’s Eve we had a party at our flat to finish the year off and see in the new one.
In mid January 1980 George decided to leave the Australian firm we both worked for in order to take up a full-time post with Amnesty International. Two things had prompted this rather sudden move.
The Australian firm wanted to change some procedures, and George was not happy with this and gave in his notice almost on the spur of the moment. At the same time Amnesty international had decided they really did need someone to cover the mornings and were therefore going to advertise the telex position as a full-time one. George decided to take the Amnesty job.
Although it eventually turned sour on him, his time at AI was a rewarding and self-developing experience. He lost his paranoia about anything vaguely left-wing, and thoroughly enjoyed mixing with people who shared his tastes in theater and the arts. It was in the Telex Room at Amnesty international that he first created his famous collages, one of which was later to be featured on TV. I will quote George’s own words to describe what prompted him to do his first collage:
‘‘The inspiration for my first collage came to me when I worked at Amnesty International. On first taking over the office allocated to me, the walls were completely covered with posters and images about torture, the death penalty, and other human rights abuses being inflicted on prisoners of conscience throughout the world. Partly because I felt the posters were preaching to the already converted members of Amnesty, and because I was continually telecommunicating press releases, Urgent Actions case-sheets on the horrors inflicted by inhuman regimes, I felt I didn’t need to be surrounded by spectres of political dictators looking down on me during my working day. So I replaced them with theatre playbills (free from theatre foyers and booking agents), film poster postcards, photos of art and architecture that I liked or admired, etc.. It soon became a special event for all new staff/volunteers/visitors to be shown round my office to admire the artistic, theatrical and cinematic effects. I recommend anyone to alter boring workplace walls with images that reflect their personality and tastes.’
A very sad event occurred on January 20th when George’s much loved Aunty Rose died, She was almost like a mother to him, since he had gone to live with her after both his parents had died. George went up to Glasgow on his own for the funeral.
In March we saw a production of ‘Piaf’ at the Piccadilly Theater. 23 years later I again saw a production of this biographical musical play about Edith Piaf at the same theater, which this time starred Elaine Paige in the role. I cannot remember now who played Piaf in the earlier production.
On March 22nd we had a day trip to Chester, which we instantly fell in love with. Its Tudor-style streets with their unique two-level shopping arcades, all dominated by a pedestrian bridge with a famous clock, gave the city a special appeal. The bridge actually forms part of a walk which takes you all round the old city wall, from which you can view some Roman remains at one point. We visited the city on at least one other occasion, and even bought a picture-clock which represented the one in the middle of Chester. It still hangs in my hallway, but unfortunately I have never been able to get it to keep to the correct time, so have now removed the batteries.
We went to the annual Easter parade in Battersea Park on Easter Sunday early in April with George’s cousin Margaret and her husband John, who had come to visit from Scotland. It was Margaret’s mother, Rose, who had died in January. I took some Super-8 film of the parade and us watching it, which I have since had transferred on to videotape along with our holiday Super-8 film clips. It also includes clips from one or more of our parties and so is a memento of our life together.
Later that month we took a friend to see ‘La Cage Aux Follies’ for his birthday and in May George took me to the Tate Gallery to see an exhibition of Dali’s paintings, which we both loved. We also saw the drag artist Mrs Shufflewick at Battersea Town Hall at one of their Old Time Music Halls attended mainly by pensioners.
In late June we were off again to the States. George has written in his diary the date we flew off: ‘USA. Heathrow-New York. Chapter Two.’ This was the big one - we visited New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Hawaii and San Francisco in a 19 day holiday we would always remember.
We left home on a Sunday and spent the first three nights in New York. Our three visits in as many years to The Big Apple now merge into one in my memory, but on this occasion photos prove we re-visited some of the main sights and some new ones to us, such as Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park. We spent some time walking around Greenwich Village and the Gay Street area. This may have been the visit where we narrowly missed being killed or seriously injured by a window-cleaners’ heavy wooden platform which came crashing down several stories on to the sidewalk, just missing both of us, in the SoHo district as we were walking either to or from the Village.
We re-visited Washington Square, and also made a trip by subway to Coney Island, where we spent some time on the beach and I swam in the Atlantic. A week later I was swimming in the Pacific in Hawaii, where the water was far warmer. Whilst in New York we also saw the film ‘The Shining’.
On the Thursday we flew to Las Vegas via Los Angeles. We somehow lost our courier at L.A. airport and instead of going through the transfer lounge ended up outside the airport terminal in front of the famous Air Travel sculpture. After a few minutes of panic, we found our way to the connecting Las Vegas flight.
The temperature in this gambling city in the middle of the Nevada desert was about 110 degrees, and even at night it was so warm you felt like jumping in the hotel swimming pool to cool off. We were not in the least interested in gambling, and would not have spent two nights in Las Vegas had it not been included in the package. However, we did enjoy the dazzling lights and the excellent, inexpensive self-service restaurants in the casinos where you could pile up your plates with as much as you could eat very cheaply. Obviously the intention was that you should spend your money gambling, but we did not put so much as one cent in the machines between us during our visit, not least because neither of us understood how modern slot machines work, and I still don’t. Anything more complicated than the old-fashioned one-armed bandit where you pull the lever and hope for three cherries or three bars completely foxes me.
Our hotel was some way out, at the end of ‘The Strip’ and down a side street. I remember shopping in a supermarket on the way and discovering a huge can of V8 vegetable juice on sale which I loved. In America it is widely advertised and very cheap, but in the UK it is only available in small cans, is quite expensive, and not nearly so well known. I drank the whole giant can in the heat of this neon oasis in the desert.
Whilst in Las Vegas we went on a sightseeing trip, during which Liberace’s home, among others, was pointed out to us. We also had the opportunity of a flight over the Grand Canyon, and much to my regret we missed out on this, feeling it was just too expensive.
Next stop on our itinerary was Los Angeles, where we were staying in a downtown hotel for three nights. L.A. has been described as seventytwo suburbs in search of a city, so there is no real central or downtown area, and where we were staying was a main street near the old City Hall skyscraper (famous from the old 1950s Superman TV series). This street was lined on either side with cinemas, built in the heyday of Hollywood for showing the latest releases. We discovered that not one of them were showing any films in English, and the whole downtown area was entirely Spanish speaking. All the shops sold Hispanic food, and all shop signs, notices, etc. were in Spanish, which was the only language we heard spoken in that area. We had been considering a one day trip over the border to Tijuana in Mexico, but since we seemed to be in Mexico already as soon as we stepped outside our hotel, there did not seem any point, so we gave that trip a miss.
Unlike New York, which has an excellent subway system, we never did get the hang of Los Angeles’ rather poor public transport system. There were buses, but it was difficult to discover how to get anywhere specific. However, during our visit we saw the famous Hollywood sign in white letters on a hillside, we visited Universal Studios (which is much more of a theme park than a genuine film studio). We saw the Chinese Theater and the stars’ autographs, hand and footprints in the sidewalk and, of course, the highlight of possibly the whole trip, we visited Disneyland, spending all day and staying to see the illuminated parade after dark. We loved the rides, and found it totally unlike any other amusement or theme park we had visited. We even walked through a replica of the French Quarter in New Orleans, which gave us a foretaste of our visit there a few years later.
Next day, Tuesday, we flew the farthest west we were ever to travel together, to Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands. We were now 11 hours behind British Summer Time, and quite near the International Dateline. As we approached Honolulu airport at night it was like a fairytale land below, full of mysterious twinkling lights. As we stepped off the plane garlands of flowers were placed around our neck, a traditional Hawaiian greeting for all visitors. George and I had our photos taken (separately) with an exotic Hawaiian girl with a flower in her hair. An exotic Hawaiian boy would have been more to our taste, but he was reserved for the photos with the female arrivals (perhaps we should have dressed in drag).
We were staying in Waikiki, the main resort area of Honolulu. It was a high rise area very reminiscent of the Spanish Costas, except this was more exotic with taller palm trees, and everybody in colorful Hawaiian shirts and dresses.
We fell in love with Hawaii, which felt much more like being in Polynesia than in the United States (in fact it is in both). There was a group of musicians we saw several times playing in the street near our hotel, consisting of two male guitarists, and a well-built female singer in a colorful, Hawaiian ankle-length costume and a big flower in her hair, who played a mandolin-type instrument as she sang. There was also a younger woman, similarly attired (possibly her daughter) who sometimes danced, Hawaiian style, to the music. We loved this group, and would stop and listen whenever we passed. The music was typically Hawaiian, but the only individual number I can remember was ‘Blue Hawaii’ made famous by Elvis Presley.
The weather in Hawaii was warm, but surprisingly cloudy. It is in a latitude where the temperature stays warm throughout the year and there are no real seasons, but they do get quite a lot of rain. However, the sea and air temperature are so warm you can swim in the sea when it is raining. We did have quite a bit of sun each day, and one day when there was no cloud at all we stayed on the beach and got terribly sunburnt, not realizing the power of the sun this near the Equator. We were both in agony for days afterwards.
We visited the zoo (we had also visited the Bronx zoo in New York on one of our trips), also Pearl Harbor and downtown Honolulu, where we discovered frozen yoghurt for the first time. It was delicious. We had the misfortune of being in Waikiki on July 4th, American Independence Day, which is the day they light fireworks. Whether it is true of all American high rise cities I could not say, but certainly Waikiki was no place to be out on the streets on July 4th, because crazy people threw enormous firecrackers down from the skyscrapers, especially after dark. Our hotel restaurant was across the street, and we were literally too scared to go out and eat. In the end we made a mad dash, firecrackers raining down all around us, ate our meal and dashed back across the road to the safety of our hotel, not daring to venture further afield that evening.
We did not take the opportunity to see more of the island whilst in Honolulu, which perhaps we should have done, nor did we visit any of the other islands. We were quite happy drinking in the atmosphere of Honolulu/Waikiki and enjoying the beach and the rest between our city sightseeing on the mainland. We had five full days in Hawaii, and spent quite a lot of time on the beach. George probably did this for my sake as much as anything, but he really preferred exploring cities to outlying nature reserves and tourist-orientated ‘culture centers’, so we skipped the coach trip round the island. We saw genuine Hawaiian culture in the streets and parks of Waikiki in the form of Hula dancers and Hawaiian music and singing, and did not feel the need to travel to a special show for tourists, though I do now regret not seeing more of the island.
There was one unpleasant incident I remember, which was entirely my fault. I was aware of a military base in Waikiki, and like many gay men I have always been attracted to uniforms. American uniforms held a special attraction for me, and one day we were walking along the main street in Waikiki and George caught me looking at someone (I believe he was in uniform, but certainly he was not a Polynesian native of Hawaii). George accused me of wishing I had been on my own, since the look in my eyes said I felt if George was not there I might score. He felt, at that moment, that he was in the way. I have always remembered this incident, and it hurt at the time and hurts even more now, because George exactly read my thoughts at that precise moment. Naturally, I felt guilty about it then, and even more so now that George is dead. It is not that I ever really wanted him out of the way, but there are times we all feel our style is being cramped, and George caught me at one moment when I would have liked to have been free to do some cruising to investigate the possibilities of meeting an American Serviceman in uniform.
It was not as if we were in a completely monogamous relationship, since we both used to see other people sexually, and indeed we did the gay backroom clubs in both New York and San Francisco on this trip, but George had to have a supply of amphetamines in order to get in the mood or even think about anything sexual, so if I was feeling in the mood and he had no supply of ‘sweeties’, as he called them, we were in deep trouble. I had to curb my impulses, or it would ruin our holiday.
I could easily have waited till we got to San Francisco and George had either obtained a fresh supply of sweeties, or used the ones he was saving up for our visit to that city. However, I knew it was only in Waikiki I stood any real chance, however remote, of meeting a military guy in uniform because of the proximity of the military base to a nearby cottage (public toilet) which held distinct possibilities. This sense of frustration on my part caused tension between us, because George was very sensitive to moods, and could often read me like a book. However, I curbed my impulses as much as I could. Quite likely nothing would have happened had I felt free to cruise, since Waikiki is hardly a gay paradise as far as I know.
Whilst in Waikiki we went to see a rather strange film called ‘The Island’. We also bought the obligatory Hawaiian shirts. Mine was bright green and George’s blue, both covered in exotic colored flowers, and we wore these almost constantly whilst on the island. They were particularly useful in view of our sunburn, as they were very loose fitting.
On the Sunday, our sunburn thankfully wearing off, we flew back east to San Francisco for our final four nights. George immediately fell in love with the city, because if its friendly atmosphere and almost European architecture. Then there were the hills and cable cars, which made this a unique American city. I also liked it, but still preferred New York.
We saw all the sights including the Golden Gate Bridge, the pyramid skyscraper built to withstand earthquakes, Fisherman’s Wharf and we also had a distant view of the prison island of Alcatraz. We had a ride on a cable car on at least one occasion.
We visited the gay bars and backrooms, and who knows whether George got his fatal infection here, in New York, or possibly back home in London. Certainly HIV was prevalent in San Francisco and New York in 1980 when we were there, whilst it was virtually unknown in London back then.
We walked into one bar, where gay pornographic videos were being shown on a screen above the bar. There was nothing outside to warn the general public, and we were rather shocked as anyone could have walked in off the street just for a drink - possibly a man and his wife, or even a woman on her own. Two guys were watching the screen fascinated, and one of them said to us:
‘This wouldn’t be allowed back home in Texas’.
We explained it would not be allowed back home in England either, though we were going through a liberal patch in London which lasted about three years during which such films were shown at certain seedy establishments in and around Soho, but the clampdown came very soon. Here in San Francisco such things were accepted as a matter of course, and at one gay backroom cinema club, called ‘The Nob Hill Cine-club’, we were handed a membership card on the back of which was printed a list of statements which would cause any British lawmaker or police officer to have an apoplexy. I reproduce it in full below:
‘- The bearer is admitted to the membership of the Nob Hill Cine-Club.
- The Nob Hill Cine-Club is a members only social and artistic facility dedicated to cinema and conviviality. Members are entitled to use and enjoy all of our facilities.
- We believe in a atmosphere of freedom for consenting adults.
- If you are harassed or restricted by any unwelcome police agents or entrappers, please notify the management and we will provide legal representation to you at our expense.’
In London in the early 1990s gay clubs were still employing straight security men to throw people out on the street for such activities, in San Francisco over a decade earlier the club paid your legal expenses if the police dared interfere with your rights as a consenting gay adult. Now the San Francisco attitude is prevalent throughout Europe, Australia and the main cities of North America (although AIDS has caused some restrictions in the latter), and it is only in quaint backwaters such as London where the sexual hang-ups of the population maintain Victorian laws for victimless ‘crimes’ and the gay population still creep around feeling guilty, as if the Stonewall riots which liberated New York’s gay scene had never happened. Things are changing slowly in the major cities of the UK in the mid and late 1990s, and hopefully this more liberal attitude will this time be permanent and not followed by yet another clamp-down as has happened so many times before. The draconian anti-gay laws which survived the 1967 Sexual Offences Act remain on the statute book to be brought back into use at any time. They could close down many of the gay establishments in London at any time under these laws (which thankfully had been changed by 2005).
In San Francisco everyone seemed friendly, and the city had an almost carnival atmosphere. The main streets were full of open-air theater, with crowds gathering around to watch all sorts of entertainers performing.
We visited the Amnesty International office in a Victorian-style house, which was quite a contrast to the AI office in New York which we had also visited. The night before leaving San Francisco we went to a very ornate cinema, The Alhambra, to see ‘Hangar 18'. The exterior of the cinema was built like a mosque, complete with two minarets.
On the Thursday morning we began our long flight back home, changing planes at New York’s JFK airport. I was frantically hoping our London-bound flight would not be called until I had seen my favorite singer, Jerry Lee Lewis, perform on ‘The Eddie Rabbitt’ show in the coin-in-the-slot TVs in the terminal building. Just as the program was about to start our flight was called. It was then delayed for about an hour, and I sat fuming with frustration in the plane whilst my idol played one of his best-ever versions of ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ just minutes after I had technically left American soil, although we were still on the tarmac. It is the only time he has been on TV whilst I have been in the States, and I missed him by minutes. I later obtained the show on video, so I now know I had every right to feel frustrated to miss such a show whilst trapped on a plane a few yards from the terminal television screens.
We arrived back at Heathrow, considerably jet-lagged after the very long flight and 8 hour time difference since we left San Francisco. It had been a wonderful trip, and one we would always remember.
At the end of July and beginning of August George’s cousin Margaret and her husband, John, came down from Glasgow to stay with us for two weeks. Then, for the August Bank holiday weekend at the end of August, George and I went down to Porlock in Somerset with my mother to stay with her friend, Cath.
On September 10th it was our tenth anniversary of meeting. I wanted to give George something special, and racked my brains. In the end I decided on an engraved glass of some kind, with our two names and the figure ‘10'. When you are not looking for something out of the ordinary like this, you see such things everywhere, but when you really want something you never find it easily. I looked in Yellow Pages and only a few places were listed. Foolishly, I chose one in Belgravia which charged sky-high prices, but I was so determined to get this special token of our ten years together I ordered it anyway. I could only afford to have our two initials and a figure 10 engraved on a plain brandy glass. I think it cost £15 back in 1980, which was way, way above the going rate for such things. Later, after I had given George the present, I found out where I could get much more elaborate engraved glass for just a few pounds.
The reaction, when I gave the present to George, was not what I had expected. He soon got out of me how much it cost, and he was absolutely furious that I had been silly enough to be ripped off in this way. He was not a great one for present-giving, and the glass was hardly very decorative. Still, he was a bit more appreciative later, but we both felt bad that I had paid at least three times its real value.
On the Saturday following our anniversary we had a special party, and had a wide range of guests including some of my old cronies from the days when I used to work at CND head office, many of whom I had not seen for years. I took some Super-8 film, which was a relatively short-lived craze of mine at the time. Later transferred to video along with other Super-8 film clips, I called this memento of our life together ‘Happy Days’, and our tenth anniversary party was just one of these.
Also In September we saw Shirley Bassey at The Apollo, Victoria and finished off the month with a one-day trip to Blackpool for the illuminations.
October was also a busy month, since George’s sister Margaret came to stay with us for a week, which included her birthday. That month George went to see ‘Les Miserables’, a musical he saw it six times altogether, and I saw it four times. Maybe this was the first visit which got him hooked.
On November 22nd George has written in his diary: ‘Mae West died’. She was, of course, a gay icon, and we loved all her films, tatty as they were. We also loved her recordings, but her last film, ‘Sextette’, was never released in the UK during George’s lifetime, so he never saw it. It appeared on TV after he died, and I recorded it and will always keep it as I think it is the best film she ever made, despite it being panned by the critics. The very fact she could make a film at all at around her mid-80s is a miracle, and that she could still manage to look glamorous and to deliver all her old one-liners plus a few new ones without sounding ridiculous, testifies to her legendary status as a unique star without equal. It was a sad day for both of us when she finally did die, and took all her secrets to the grave with her. Some people suspected she was really a man in drag, or possibly a transsexual. She was certainly a revolutionary in promoting sexual liberation decades before the Swinging 60s, and she did it with a wry sense of humor and an ability to laugh at herself which modern day liberationists and her critics do not seem to appreciate.
Those who panned ‘Sextette’ for being tatty, and ridiculous in casting an 85 year old woman as a nymphomaniac whom young men are falling over themselves to go to bed with, miss the entire point: Mae West always did everything tongue-in-cheek and over the top. She never made a film till she was fat and forty, so making her last one at around 85 was just a new twist to an old joke. If she really was pushed along on castors and had the lines fed to her through earphones beneath her blond wig, it certainly does not come across that way in the finished film. She performs her swaying, mincing walk and delivers her lines as convincingly as ever. I can only surmise a jealous younger generation spread these foul rumors because they knew they did not have half the talent at 20 or 30 which Mae had at 85 or so, and which enabled her to steal the show and put all the younger actors in the film in the shade.
At the end of November we saw two very controversial productions in the same week. The first was ‘The Romans In Britain’ at the National Theatre, which Mary Whitehouse had complained of because of a simulated sodomy scene, and the second was ‘Bent’, about the plight of gays in Nazi Germany. This last play opened in a very ordinary looking sitting-room with two gay lovers, and it was a real shock to the senses when the Gestapo and SS stormtroopers burst in upon this gay domestic scene which, until that moment, seemed almost contemporary to the 1980s. (This was our second visit to this play.)
In December we saw ‘Accidental Death of an Anarchist’ which neither of us liked very much, not appreciating Defoe’s anarchic sense of black humor.
George did not record what we did at Christmas or New Year, so perhaps we did not have a party or go to Scotland, as we often did. We moved into 1981, unknown to us the year which would mark the beginning of our last decade on Earth together.
George’s diary for 1981 starts off in early January with a few days he spent in Rome with a friend of ours called Eric. As we had visited Rome several times, I did not feel like going again at that time so stayed at home.
George and Eric (who was not gay) stayed in a little hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps. There was some delay with the flight back, and they had to stay an extra night in the hotel at the tour company’s expense. George phoned me to let me know he would be a day late. They had a good time, visiting St Peter’s and other sights, but George told me one amusing story which shows he got exasperated with Eric at times. George had gone into a shop, and left our friend standing outside. When George came out, Eric said to him: ‘George, do I look Italian?’
George asked what prompted the question and Eric explained with a perplexed tone:
‘Well, this woman came up to me and started talking to me in Italian’.
George pointed out that they were, after all, in Italy, so what language did Eric expect Romans to speak - Chinese? Our friend still seemed puzzled, as though British tourists had ‘I only speak English’ tattooed on their foreheads or something.
After George got back we went to the CHE (Campaign for Homosexual Equality) fair at Porchester Hall on the last Saturday of the month. In February George’s acquaintance, Roy (I hesitate to call him a ‘friend’ in view of the nature of their relationship) was hospitalized for a short while, and after his release George went with him to see a film at the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street.
The next day, the February 20th, George made a note in his diary to ring his cousin Margaret in Scotland as it was exactly one year since her mother, George’s Aunt Rose, died, I know George felt the loss very strongly, since Aunt Rose was a mother figure for him too.
George went to the cinema again with Roy on the 25th, this time to the Minema in Knightsbridge. It was a strange relationship, since George was very wary of Roy, knew he had a very sinister side, yet kept in touch with him till Roy died about a year before George. It is true George saw much less of Roy towards the end of their lives, since he managed to get a supply of amphetamines prescribed by his doctor so did not need to go to Roy’s place every Saturday to get a supply. Roy lost his hold over George, but apparently retained a sinister influence through ideas he had planted in George’s mind by means of hypnotism. These ideas ruined George’s sex life (in his later years he could only think about sex when he was on speed) and had a devastating effect on George after Roy died. George was convinced he would die soon afterwards, which indeed he did. I can never forgive Roy for these things, or for being part of the mysterious revolutionary group which terrorized and abused George through hypnosis and drugs in the years before I met him. I have to say my own impression of Roy was of a funny little man with a ridiculous wig, pottering around and always in a bit of a muddle, though admittedly there were some occult objects in his room which possibly were just decoration, but could equally well have been used for worshiping strange gods, black magic and hypnotism.
The last weekend of February George and I spent in Amsterdam together. It was very cold - there was snow on the pavements, and in Volendam the canal was frozen over leaving ducks waddling on the ice. We went to see the picturesque village, but of course the coach trip included the obligatory cheese and clog factories.
In March we had a party for my birthday, and in April we saw ‘La Cage Aux Follies II’ but were rather disappointed in the sequel. Margaret and John came down from Glasgow on Good Friday, and we took them up to the fair at Hampstead on Easter Monday. Later in the month we saw a brilliant production at the Whitehall Theatre called ‘Anyone for Denis?’, which was a comedy centered on the then Prime Minister’s husband. Both Denis and Margaret Thatcher were excellently portrayed, and we thoroughly enjoyed the evening.
In May we saw a production of ‘The Seagull’ together. George took me to one or two Chekhov plays at the Royal Court Theatre, but I never really did get into his work, finding it a little too deep for me.
More to my taste was ‘An Evening With Quentin Crisp’ at the Mayfair Theatre off Piccadilly, which we also went to that month. Of course, George knew Quentin personally from the days before he became famous (when he was infamous in fact). The first half of Quentin’s show consisted of a monolog on ‘style’, and in the second half he answered questions from the audience which they wrote out on cards during the interval. I put in a question based on something my favorite singer, Jerry Lee Lewis, frequently ad-libbed at the end of one of his songs:
‘A famous singer has said he does not want a headstone on his grave, he wants a monument. Would you say he has style?’
Quentin replied to the effect that it did not matter what happened once you were dead, the point was to have style whilst you were alive. One of my favorite Crispisms is his advice about never trying ‘to keep up with the Joneses - drag them down to your level.’
At the end of May we spent a Bank Holiday weekend in Paris, but it merges into so many other visits to that city I cannot now recall anything specific, especially as we appear to have taken no photos on this trip. It could well be the time I took my Super-8 camera, in which case we were with my mother, stayed in an hotel near the Gare du Nord, took her to the top of the Eiffel Tower and showed her Montmartre, Notre Dame and all the other tourist sights.
When we got back George went with Eric to see the opera ‘Don Giovanni’ in June, and together we saw a preview of what was to become the long-running musical ‘Cats’, and both enjoyed it. We also attended a debate at County Hall about the GLC and London Transport. This was the time of Ken Livingstone’s ‘Fares Fair’ policy which radically transformed London’s public transport system for the better, dividing the capital into fare zones, introducing the Travelcard for use on buses, tubes and trains and keeping fares reasonably low. It led ultimately to the destruction of the GLC by Margaret Thatcher, even though the ‘Fares Fair’ policy had gotten the Labour GLC voted in with a large majority in the May 7th elections in 1981.
On June 27th we flew off for a one week trip to New York, our last ever visit to that city together. The day after we arrived there was a huge gay march from Greenwich Village to Central park. It was so inspiring to see, and participate in, with marching bands, people in fancy dress (including someone in drag wearing a Richard Nixon mask), and a large contingent of parents of lesbians and gay men. One woman held up a sign saying: ‘My gay son is the greatest’, and an old lady on Fifth Avenue stood on the sidewalk with a homemade cardboard placard reading: ‘Grandma for gays’. People all along Fifth Avenue gave us a traditional New York tickertape welcome by throwing scraps of paper out of their high rise windows, and the balconies were crowded all along the route as people waved and cheered. New York really is the friendliest city on Earth, despite what people say.
As we were walking along Fifth Avenue on the march, someone must have heard our accents and mistook George for one of the Bloolips, the British drag cabaret troupe which was currently visiting New York. ‘I saw you in Bloolips yesterday’ he said excitedly, possibly hoping for an autograph, but George had to deny it, explaining we had only arrived last night on the plane from England. We were lucky in joining two gay marches on our visits to the States, as we had previously joined the one in Washington D.C., which was also very impressive.
On the Monday we visited Coney Island again. We saw a film whilst in New York, ‘The History of the World Part 1', and we went to a show at the fantastic art deco Radio City Music Hall. On the Friday we visited my penfriend Dee in Baltimore. The bus back arrived in Manhattan at about 3 a.m. in the morning, and we were a bit nervous about walking to our hotel at such a time, because of the city’s violent reputation. We need not have worried. As we walked the few blocks from the bus station in Eighth Avenue to our hotel just off Times Square, we were amazed to see all sorts of people strolling about, including old grannies doing their shopping, as nearly all the stores in this street stayed open all night long.
Whilst in New York we went on a helicopter trip, which was a rather scary yet exhilarating experience, looking down on the skyscrapers and knowing if the engine stopped you would be plunged into the canyon-like streets far below. George scolded me for giving him the Super-8 camera to operate (since he was by the window) as it spoilt the flight for him when I kept telling him where to point it. The 15-minute trip was soon over, but well worth the £15 or so it cost us.
We flew back on Independence Day, July 4th. We had decided we did not want to risk being pelted with firecrackers from the Manhattan skyscrapers, after our experience the year before in Waikiki. We felt safer watching ‘The Clash of the Titans’ on the plane home.
Later that week we saw a fabulous production called ‘One Mo’ Time’ at the Cambridge Theatre. It had a mainly black cast and was based on New Orleans Jazz and Blues. It had excellent music and songs, including one sung by a big black woman which went: ‘You’ve got the right key baby but the wrong keyhole’, and the climax of the show was when the cast, led by a jazz band, came into the audience, up the aisles and invited us all to form a Conga line. We danced around the auditorium, then right out into the street, around Seven Dials and back into the theater again. It was really fantastic, like being in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
We spent a weekend in Hastings with Rose and Neil that month, and also made a visit to Portsmouth to see George’s Uncle Robert and his wife. George’s cousin, Margaret, made her second visit to London that year in late August, but otherwise it was a fairly uneventful Summer until we went, with our friend Eric, on a tour of Scandinavia in early September.
Flying to Copenhagen, we then traveled the next day by coach to Gothenburg for one night. Then on to Oslo for two nights, which included our 11th anniversary of meeting. Finally we visited Stockholm for two nights, before returning to Copenhagen. In just one week we had seen the capitals of three Scandinavian countries, and although Eric missed the Norwegian fjords, which he had seen on a previous trip, we were quite pleased with this whirlwind tour which gave us a flavor of Scandinavia.
We loved the rural scenery, the fantastic statues of Oslo, the buildings of Stockholm including the Town hall with its huge main chamber, the walls of which were stunningly decorated in gold leaf. We also went on a river trip in Stockholm, though Eric did not come with us on this. We enjoyed our final two days in Copenhagen, with its fantastic collection of spires, one of which we climbed up. It was a church with a gold spiral staircase on the outside of the green spire. Eric was too scared, but George and I climbed right to the tip where the staircase dwindled to nothing beneath the golden ball at the top of the spire. There was another spire in the city shaped like entwined serpents with clawed feet, and of course we also saw the famous little mermaid statue on the rock.
I got a real taste for caviar in Scandinavia, as some of the hotels had little packets of red caviar paste on the breakfast table along with the butter and marmalade. I always chose the caviar, and brought home a pocketful of these little packs which I ate up within a week, after giving a few to friends to try.
Two days after we got back, we went to see ‘Steaming’ at London’s Comedy Theatre, about a women-only steam room at a London public baths which were threatened with closure. We enjoyed the production very much.
We went on a CND march and rally on United Nations Day, October 24th. In December we saw the bitchy Joan Crawford Biopic ‘Mommie Dearest’ which sealed the fate of the wire coat-hanger for ever. We went to the A.I. Christmas party and panto at the Africa Centre, and ended the year with a New Year’s party of our own.
About the turn of the year George began the first of his long-term bouts of unemployment since we had met. He had worked full-time at Amnesty International since 1980, and after two years had now left because he was fed up with what he and others saw as the waste of money and bad management. When he was on holiday, for instance, £500 was spent on one telegram rather than train someone to send telexes. He asked for meetings with his boss to sort out such problems, but his requests were ignored.
One of the final straws seems petty, but it was typical of the attitude he felt prevailed: his script for the Christmas pantomime was rejected in favor of an inferior one submitted by a new employee considered more important than a mere telex operator. Only months before George had written a brilliant script on the occasion of the departure of Martin Ennals as Secretary General, and the sketch about two cleaners discovering secrets in the old Secretary General’s office was a great success when performed by two staff members. Unfortunately we were in America at the time and missed the only public performance of a script written by George, and we had to be content with hearing an audio recording. Despite this recent success, and a very topical script about the International Secretariat’s forthcoming move to new premises, his script was rejected. George had been to the trade union representative about his work related problems, and incredibly the shop steward told him to resign from the job and ‘we’ll take it from there’. So George finally took this not very helpful advice in desperation.
Soon afterwards in February 1982, when the British Section announced the nomination of Jeremy Thorpe as their next Director, George wrote a letter to ‘The Guardian’ protesting. Jeremy Thorpe had recently been involved in a controversial court case also involving Norman Scott, and the judge’s summing up had received much criticism from the satirical Left, including a brilliant sketch by Peter Cook in ‘The Secret Policeman’s Ball’ which, ironically, was a fundraising event for the British Section of A.I.. Although Jeremy Thorpe won the case, many people felt he was inappropriate to be spokesperson for the UK Section, and George wrote along these lines, taking the opportunity to point out some of the deficiencies of the International Secretariat of A.I. which had led to his resignation. Years later this letter was still on file at the I.S. and George was blacklisted till the day he died, not even allowed to work at A.I. as a volunteer. His only crime was trying to save the organization money by criticizing what he saw as its financial mismanagement, but he suffered the fate of most whistle blowers. I repeat below in full his letter to ‘The Guardian’:
‘Sir,
‘Having recently reluctantly resigned from the International Secretariat of Amnesty, due to disillusion and despair about its management and administration, I can affirm that its appointment of Jeremy Thorpe as Director of its British Section only accentuates the already existent problems within the organisation. There was a mass exodus of long-term staff towards the end of 1981, due to disputes, frustrations and fears, not to mention growing discontent between national sections and the International Secretariat.
‘My personal grievance was with the increasingly unnecessary expenditure in certain areas, which as a fundraiser I found appalling, and said so openly, but to no avail.
‘The staff of Amnesty international consist of two distinct classes: those who are genuinely and primarily dedicated to human rights and those who are primarily dedicated to careerism, opportunism and the ‘‘perks’‘ of the post. The appointment of Jeremy Thorpe exemplifies the absurdity of the movement’s administration. The ever-expanding offices are crying out for more professional administrators.
‘I have hitherto refrained from publicly voicing my criticisms, because I feared that any adverse publicity might be detrimental to the movement. Now that the Jeremy Thorpe affair has made criticism and condemnation inevitable, I need no longer have any reservations on this matter.
‘On the contrary, Amnesty’s aim is to write about the wrongs of human rights in the hope of rectifying them. Unless its membership is made aware of, and solves, the administration problems, the respect and recognition which has been built up over the years will be replaced by cynicism and scepticism.
Yours sincerely,
George Miller
London SW11.’
Amnesty International wrote a reply to this letter, also published in ‘The Guardian’, which seemed to confirm the elitism and careerism George criticized by unnecessarily drawing attention to the fact that George was their former telex operator. The clear implication was that his letter and views could therefore be disregarded as that of a mere low-grade menial. However, perhaps his letter did influence someone in high places - certainly amid all the controversy Jeremy Thorpe withdrew and never took up the nomination as Director of the British Section.
George signed on at the unemployment office which featured prominently in the last ten years of his life. He only had two bouts of permanent paid employment after leaving Amnesty International, amounting to about three years in total.
In January 1982 we saw several foreign films including the Polish ‘Man of Marble’ and the daring German gay film ‘Taxi Zum Klo’ (at the ICA in The Mall) plus half a dozen other films. The last weekend of the month we had a visit from George’s old friend Marlene and her ex-boyfriend Eric.
The next week, early in February, we had ‘An Evening’s Intercourse With Barry Humphreys’, and on Thursday 18th we heard Ken Livingstone speak at a County Hall meeting on the ‘Fares Fair’ policy, and heard one of his councilors, Valerie Wise, at another meeting the next day. We got quite involved in the militant ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay’ campaign which followed the government’s crushing of the ‘Fares Fair’ policy, and went to see a play by that name on March 1st at the Criterian Theatre.
The day before my birthday, March 19th, we flew off to Athens accompanied by Eric, Marlene’s friend. It was a pretty disastrous holiday, with a lot of rain.
Athens is fine for a day trip, but not much fun for a week. After you have seen the Acropolis there’s nothing else to see or do really. We had a one day cruise round the nearer islands of Aegina, Poros and Hydra in the rain, saw a couple of films ‘Evil Under the Sun’ and ‘Absence of Malice’, and paid a visit to the ruins of Delphi.
Eric seemed to be constantly ringing his mother back home, and was being chased on holiday by a middle aged woman (he has that little boy lost look which makes older women want to mother him). It was, in fact, the last time George saw Eric, for he broke contact with us afterwards. We thought it was over some critical remark George had made about Eric keep ringing his mother which we thought he’d overheard, but Eric confided with me years later, when he got in touch again after George’s death, that he was upset because George had added Eric’s name to a postcard he sent to Marlene from Greece. Apparently Eric was trying to cut contacts with Marlene at the time.
Many photos of this holiday are overcast, but we did have a few spells of sunshine. We found Athens a city of smog and pollution, unappetizing food and wideboys. We walked down a main street and noticed a grubby looking snack bar with a plate of what we took for imitation fried food in the window (a fried egg and some bacon, etc.). We rejected this place, and came to a street lined with restaurants and waiters trying to entice you in - thrusting the menu into your hands on the street and trying to push you into their establishment. Their rivals meanwhile tried to entice, pull or shove you in the opposite direction. Hating all this, we went back to the greasy spoon in desperation, but when they tried to serve us up the plate with the congealed, rubbery fried egg in the window which we had seen about an hour before, we walked out of the shop in disgust.
In the street a friendly man, as gullible Eric and myself thought, said he knew a nice cafeteria which was cheap, and started leading us to one of the main squares. George shouted at us not to follow as it was a trap, but Eric and I were already stepping out lured by the promise of cheap wholesome grub. George could do nothing but follow, and the man led us eventually down some dimly lit sleazy dive with no food in sight and a couple of hookers sitting on stools by a bar. We made our quick exit, and Eric exclaimed in innocent bewilderment:
‘It wasn’t a cafeteria. There was no food there, just a couple of girls sitting at a bar.’
‘Of course not, he was leading you into a clip joint’, said George exasperatedly, ‘and you two followed like two sheep.’ Of course George, being streetwise, had spotted the tout for what he was a mile off.
After a rather miserable week we returned home to London, and two weeks later were on the Easter CND march, visiting the gay Heaven nightclub in the evening. George’s cousin Margaret came down from Scotland to visit us that Easter, according to George’s diary.
On April 23rd we went on a march against the Malvinas/Falklands war, now raging in the South Atlantic. We were both strongly against the war, and wholly in sympathy with the Argentinians. We had no time whatsoever for the British settlers who would not even allow Argentinians to live on the islands which Britain had previously stolen from them. It was as if Argentina had kicked all the British out of the Isle of Wight and claimed it for her own.
I have a very fond memory of George when he and I visited a church in the City of London where Defence Minister John Nott was speaking to the lunchtime City crowd. We mingled with the congregation, and as he started to leave the pulpit we shouted ‘murderer’ and held up home-made paper placards we had hidden under our coats. This was at the height of the Malvinas/Falklands conflict and after the sinking of the Belgrano. George’s placard read: ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, and John Nott remarked as he passed:
‘There’s a difference between killing and murder, dear boy.’ Since the Bible quotation indicated all killing was prohibited, this distinction seemed doubtful and irrelevant.
I was very proud of George on this occasion, and it showed how close we had grown politically. It was a very brave thing to do, and we gave each other mutual moral support for this lone protest. George was also once arrested with me on a civil disobedience demo outside Upper Heyford Air Force base in Oxfordshire protesting against nuclear bombers. After he died, I went on a protest against the Queen Mother’s unveiling of the ‘Butcher’ (‘Bomber’) Harris statue. I also held up a home made placard there calling him a murderer which infuriated some old soldier with his medals clanking. He grabbed my placard and tried to tear it up, and in anger I made a grab for his medals. I was criticized for reacting violently, but I know George too would have lost his cool and done the same and that he was with me on that demo just as he was on those earlier occasions. His sister phoned to say my picture appeared in the Daily Record in Scotland the next day.
On George’s 39th birthday, May 27th, we saw the film ‘Missing’ about an American seeking his son who became one of the ‘disappeared’ in Pinochet’s Chile. On the following Saturday we had a day trip to Brighton.
Every June they used to have free jazz in Battersea Park on Tuesdays, and we went several times, seeing bands like Kenny Ball and Chris Barber. That particular June we also went on another CND march, and in the middle of the month we paid a visit to Glasgow, then went to stay in George’s sister’s caravan in Kinghorn, across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh, which we visited. We also visited Dundee by train, but were not very impressed. This was the home not only of the cake, but of D. C. Thompson, publishers of cartoon characters in the ‘Beano’, ‘Dandy’ and the Scottish paper ‘the Sunday Post’. George especially loved ‘The Broons’ from the latter, fondly remembered from his childhood days.
We returned to London in time for the Gay Pride march, and a birthday party in the evening for a former workmate of George’s at A.I..
.
In August we paid a one day visit to Portsmouth, and no doubt visited George’s Uncle Robert again. I certainly remember visiting Nelson’s ship ‘HMS Victory’ on one of these occasional trips to Portsmouth.
August Bank Holiday weekend we spent in Hastings with our friends Rose and Neil, and while there saw the film ‘That’ll be The Day’ starring Ringo Starr.
September 10th was our 12th anniversary, and we went to see a play or film (I can’t remember which) called ‘Brimstone and Treacle’. On Saturday the 18th we paid a visit to Bath in Somerset, which was very interesting as we’d never been before. We saw the famous spa, the bridge with shops on it and the classical crescent which impressed us by its sheer size (I had to take two photos to fit it all in).
During October we spent a weekend in Paris and re-visited our favorite haunts, then on the last Saturday of the month we helped out at a local CND jumble sale and went to a housewarming party for Lee, Marlene’s ex husband who also used other names. A lot of our friends had pseudonyms, which made it very confusing for my mum and others, especially as many of them crossed genders. Rose, Freda and Lena were all men, and even George was known as Gina when in drag.
Lee came to one of our parties once and brought some of his paintings with him, which he displayed in chairs in our spare room. He then instructed us to announce to our guests in the living room that the artist was now exhibiting his work in the next room, presumably in the hope of selling some of them. I don’t think there were any takers, and Lee certainly didn’t exhibit his paintings at his own housewarming party.
Early in November the BBC put on a couple of Alan Bennett plays, which we always enjoyed very much. On the 27th we paid a visit to Oxford, and I believe this may have been the occasion we looked up Mrs Minnion, an old acquaintance of mine from the days when I worked at CND head office and she was a regular voluntary worker. Her son, John, was a leading light in West Midlands CND.
In December George had the AI Christmas party written in his diary, but I don’t think we went because of the bad feeling over his leaving and the subsequent letters, although a lot of AI staff supported George. The fact that he was out of work and his freelance writing was having only limited success were also factors.
It seems we spent Christmas Day at home on our own, and visited my mother on Boxing Day. We often did this in later years because they took all the public transport off Christmas Day and it was impossible to see friends and relatives unless you stayed overnight for two nights.
We felt very strongly about this - taking public transport off meant people were bound to drink and drive. We felt public transport should be free on Christmas Day, to encourage people to leave their cars at home. Transport operates in other countries on Christmas Day, and always used to here. Now they have stopped it, Christmas is ruined and becomes just a big hassle. How many poor mothers are left alone because their relations just cannot travel long distances Christmas Day due to the selfish attitude of transport workers? When I worked at Post Office Overseas Telegrams I had to take my turn at being listed on duty for Christmas, and it was no hassle as you got double pay and a day off later in the year as well. Since the shift was only about 6 hours, there were always people lining up to do it if you wanted Christmas off. It should be a legal obligation, enforced by the European authorities on all member countries, to provide public transport 365 days a year, and this was the view of both of us.
We ended the year with our traditional New Year’s Eve party.
The year 1983 began with a sad occasion. Freda had been discovered dead in his council flat near Waterloo station. His dog, Sandy, was okay, though Freda had been dead several days when they found him. This was always his greatest fear, that he would die in the flat and by the time they found him Sandy would have also died from thirst and hunger. If Freda ever felt ill he used to open his front door, but the heart attack which killed him must have come too suddenly.
We would miss him at the Porchester Hall drag balls, where he won most of the prizes, and at our parties where he did a regular cabaret act. We would also miss his occasional cabaret spots at the Cricketers Pub next door to our tower block.
We went to the funeral, at a crematorium in Tooting where George and several other friends and neighbors from South London were eventually taken. We met up with Freda’s family at the funeral directors near Vauxhall, and were rather bowled over to discover he had two absolutely stunning relatives, presumably nephews, tall, blond and extremely good-looking. We traveled in one of the cars and said our final farewell to Freda.
In February we saw ‘Privates On Parade’, a very camp show starring Dennis Quilley as an army drag queen. We saw both the stage and film versions at different times, but the stage show was the best.
Also in February was the first of several visits to the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ as part of the live audience. We went two or three times in all. This first show was at a studio behind London Bridge station. We especially appreciated the sandwiches and alcoholic refreshment they provided, but at later recordings they had dispensed with the alcohol and it was soft drinks only. Apparently some of the audience had become rather too inebriated before the program went on the air.
The next day we were off on the big one, a two week holiday to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It was to be the last time we visited the USA together. It was a deal we had arranged independently through a little travel agents in Vauxhall Underground station booking hall which specialized in destinations like the States and Australia, and they had arranged a very good hotel (La Salle) right on the edge of the French Quarter overlooking Canal Street where all the big Mardi Gras parades took place, so we had a bird’s eye view. I had also arranged some hotels and trips in Memphis, Nashville and Natchez for myself, as I wanted to see places associated with my idol Jerry Lee Lewis, Rock’n’Roll and Country music. George was to stay in New Orleans, as he did not fancy being dragged around these musical shrines.
There was snow on the ground when we left Gatwick, but when we arrived at New Orleans, after a change of planes at the impressive Atlanta airport, it was clear blue skies and sunshine.
Our hotel room overlooked Canal Street, and below was a theater where Lena Horne was appearing. George rang our friend Andre from the hotel bedroom, and Andre could hear all the sounds of New Orleans over the phone. Parades passed by our window almost every day up until Mardi Gras on the Tuesday. Of course, we went down in the street and joined in the fun, trying to catch the ‘favors’ thrown from the floats. These were colored plastic bead necklaces, coins, cups, etc., and we brought back a whole bagful. The thing to do was to shout: ‘Throw me something, mister’ as the floats went by, and then leap up and try and catch as many favors as you could before someone else got them. It was all great fun, and we had the time of our lives, getting into the spirit of things by buying Mardi Gras hats. George’s was a bowler covered in gold glitter, and I had a mauve and yellow Austrian Tyrol style hat with colored feathers in it. George also wore his Hawaiian shirt, and a gold eye mask. Everyone was dressed up in outrageous style.
The floats and parades were very ornate, and once you’ve seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans you are spoiled for any other parades. This is the big one, and it goes on for days, culminating in Mardi Gras itself on Shrove Tuesday.
The day before, St Valentine’s Day as it happened, we went on a Mississippi River cruise on the paddle-steamer ‘Natchez’. It all sounds very romantic, but in actual fact the section of the Mississippi we saw resembled the Manchester Ship Canal. Instead of cotton fields, bayous and alligators all we saw were industrial warehouses and cranes on either side. Still, it was an experience, and whilst on the boat a plane flew over the city and wrote ‘Welcome’ in a vapor trail in the clear blue sky.
A middle-aged couple overheard George’s accent, and told him they did so admire The Queen and the Royal Family. If they thought they were speaking to one of her loyal subjects, they got a rude shock when George snapped back: ‘You don’t have to pay for them.’ George and I were both ardent republicans, and had no time at all for the Royal Family.
We enjoyed New Orleans very much, especially the French Quarter. We sometimes used to have our breakfast in Woolworths, where a big black woman behind the counter asked us: ‘Y’all want grits?’
We had heard of grits, but after trying it once decided it wasn’t for us. We also frequented a diner just across the road where we got a great bacon and egg breakfast for about a dollar. We found a self-service restaurant the other side of Canal Street from our hotel, where we ate our main meals. We tried gumbo, the traditional soup of Louisiana, and became hooked on it.
Our hotel was on a corner of Canal Street near the Bolivar statue, and just around the corner was Louis Armstrong Park, which we also visited.
There were one or two unhappy moments. One night we were in the French Quarter, George wearing his gold glitter bowler which he had just bought, and we ended up in a gay bar. Anything goes in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras, so it was pretty wild. We went out on to the typical first floor New Orleans wrought-iron balcony, and George struck up an acquaintance with a guy from Chicago who was hooked on John Cleese in ‘Fawlty Towers’ and had all the videos. We then went inside the room above the main bar, where everything was happening. We joined in, but something George saw in there upset him, not so much what I had done, but another person was performing a big exhibitionist number which George felt was humiliating me and a lot of other people around me.
George was a bit quiet when we came out, but pointed out something in a bar as we walked down the street. I looked in the door, and became enthralled with two male go-go dancers on a small stage, or the bar-top, I’m not sure which. George looked in, and that was it. He stormed off, very upset, with me following him. He said all I was interested in was sex, sex, sex, and that I was ruining his holiday. I protested that he had wanted to go to the gay bar as much as me, and he had pointed out the go-go dancers. He replied he had been pointing out something else entirely (I forget what now), and had not even seen the dancers.
He sat down in a side street in tears, and I put my arm around him and tried to console him. Eventually he seemed to recover, and admitted to me it was the incident in the gay bar we’d visited which had really upset him. Of course the real reason for George’s outburst was that the effect of the amphetamines were wearing off and he couldn’t handle anything sexual once this happened.
There was one other unhappy incident, shortly before we returned to London. We had gone to Lake Ponchartrain in the suburbs of New Orleans, and on the way back we walked through a park. Suddenly we came to a busy freeway, and it was a tiresome diversion to a pedestrian tunnel to cross it. The fence was broken, and obviously many people had crossed by that route. So I foolishly suggested we cross there, but we got to the central reservation and were stranded for quite some time as traffic sped by at alarmingly high speeds. It was quite frightening, because of the sheer speed of the vehicles. Finally there was a gap and we just tore across as fast as we could, praying we didn’t trip and fall. It was like haring across the M1, and George said it was one of the worst moments of his life, and had ruined a good day out.
There were other minor mishaps. We went to a film in one of the shopping malls across the River in the Algiers district. There were few cinemas in the center of New Orleans, and you had to travel to the suburbs to see recent releases. We went by bus, but when we came out at about 6pm we were amazed to discover the buses had finished for the day. New Orleans is not like New York City, where public transport runs all night. I started shouting and raving at the cinema staff, complaining I’d never been in such a crazy city where public transport finished in the late afternoon and how did they expect us to get back to our hotel after the film had finished. George said I was showing myself up and becoming embarrassing, and clearly the cinema staff thought I was a raving loony in a city where only the poorest people used public transport and you were considered eccentric if you didn’t have a car.
We walked down a slip road from the shopping mall complex, and found ourselves in the poor, black residential district of Algiers. Oblivious to the dangers in this part of the city, we found a bus stop where a timetable showed the local buses were still running, so eventually we got back safely to the French Quarter.
While I was away in Tennessee and rural Louisiana, George visited another cinema (to see Paul Newman in ‘The Verdict’ I believe) in a similar complex north of the city, and had to walk home maybe ten miles. I would have been extremely worried if I’d known beforehand. He walked along the busy road which encircles the city, till he came to where most of the graveyards of New Orleans are located. There is an intersection here, with a road leading straight down into Canal Street. George saw a big black woman approaching, and asked her the direction. She said he could keep right on to the intersection and turn right, or take a short cut through the cemeteries, but she added that he may not want to do that at night. George replied it was the living he was scared of, not the dead, and he said she rolled her eyes and guffawed with laughter. So George went through the cemeteries, and eventually arrived back at the hotel.
He said he enjoyed himself whilst I was away, especially slipping out about 3 a.m. in the morning to visit the local 24 hour A&P supermarket, and then buying a whole roast chicken on his way back to the hotel, which he ate piping hot in his hotel room (George was always one for midnight snacks.) He also saw a production of ‘One Mo’ Time’ at the Toulouse Theater, which he liked very much, and he visited the Museum of Modern Art and the flea market among other places.
We both took the St Charles streetcar to the Garden district, with its fine houses. We also had ourselves photographed by a streetcar named Desire, which unfortunately no longer runs. It has been replaced by a bus called Desire, which doesn’t have quite the same Tennessee Williams ring to it. Buses and trams in New Orleans were all identified by their destination, not by numbers at that time, and Desire is a district in New Orleans. There was also a bus called by the less romantic name of Cemeteries.
We both saw the Dustin Hoffman film ‘Tootsie’ together, in which he convincingly dragged up to play a woman in order to further his career. We also visited Preservation Hall and were very impressed by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, who were all musicians in their 70s or 80s. One of the tunes we both fondly remembered was ‘Where The Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day’ sung by a little old man. It was a lovely experience, and very inexpensive, but it is a tiny venue and gets extremely crowded, so you only stay half an hour or so at a time, to make room for others.
The day after Mardi Gras I went off on the Greyhound buys to visit Nashville and Memphis in Tennessee, and Natchez, Mississippi.
In Nashville I saw the Ryman Auditorium (original home of the Grand Ole Opry), the Country Music Hall of Fame, and attended a performance of the Grand Ole Opry itself at its new home in Opryland. In Memphis I hired a car and drove around to see Jerry Lee Lewis’s current and former homes, including his ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi about 10 or 15 miles out of Memphis. I drove right up the driveway of the ranch and knocked on the door, and his housekeeper, Lottie, answered. She said Jerry was resting having just come out of hospital the day before, so I didn’t get to see him or the inside of his ranch on that occasion, unlike other fans who seemed to manage to see him, sometimes stay a week or so, and then stay with his sister in Ferriday. I had no such luck. I gave Lottie some of Jerry’s favorite Cuban cigars, took a few pictures around the grounds, and drove back to Memphis, pleased I had at least seen the ranch. Whilst in Memphis I also visited the famous Sun Records studios, where Elvis, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and others started out, and ‘Gracelands’, the former home of Elvis Presley, whose grave is in the grounds.
I was not very impressed with ‘Gracelands’, which is like a cottage with a neo-classical pillared entrance much too ostentatious for the size of the house. I thought Jerry’s Nesbit ranch was at least as impressive, with its large lake in the grounds. I got sick to the teeth of ‘Elvis, Elvis, Elvis’ in Memphis. At the time I was there everything seemed to be run by the Gracelands Corporation, including the Sun Record Company tour and the studio itself. You rarely heard a mention of Jerry Lee Lewis or any of the other rock’n’roll stars who started their career at the Memphis Sun studio. There were one or two photos on the wall in the studio of Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash, etc., but all the records on sale were Elvis’ RCA Victor stuff, not even his Sun recordings. It was very disappointing, but I’m glad to say things have improved since and the Sun Studio is no longer reduced to an Elvis record shop, and the Sun tour is now well worth doing, with tapes of the music recorded there and staff who really know their stuff. Memphis had a statue to Elvis, and a major road named after him, Elvis Presley Boulevard, where Gracelands is located. When I mentioned to one of the Elvis tour guides that I’d like to hear a bit about Jerry Lee and some of the other Memphis rock’n’roll pioneers she looked at me as if I was mad. Perhaps she’d never heard of them, since she was too young to remember the era herself.
Anybody going to Memphis expecting it to be a haven for rock’n’roll would have been disappointed at that time, though things have now improved with rock’n’roll and blues museums honoring the city’s musicians. When I went in 1983 the people who met me at the bus station to take me to the hotel were only interested in Benny Hill, and kept asking me about him because of my British accent. Sun records were virtually unobtainable in Memphis at that time (though reissues could be bought in Shelby Singleton’s revived Sun label premises in Nashville). There were no memorials or streets in honor of Jerry Lee, or any of the other rock’n’roll stars, as far as I could tell, just a statue of bluesman W. C. Handy (although now Jerry Lee has his handprints and his name inscribed in a musical note laid in the paving stones of Beale Street). I always thought Elvis was very overrated, certainly as a rocker. He was in my view a second or third rate rock’n’roll star, coming way behind Jerry Lee, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Nearly all Elvis’ rock’n’roll recordings have been done better by other people in my opinion, and some of his cover versions (such as Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’) are very inferior. Elvis excelled in ballads, and should have been called the King of Pop or King of Ballads, but never in a thousand years King of Rock, which he abandoned in 1958 for the army and then a string of mundane movies with mostly mundane songs. He included his early rock’n’roll numbers when he started live shows again in the late 60s, but quickly became grossly overweight and more of an all-round cabaret entertainer than a true rocker. He was in any case too much of an obedient Establishment figure under the control of his manager Colonel Tom Parker to be a true rock’n’roll rebel, unlike Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry, for instance, the two real bad boys of rock’n’roll who continued to represent the anarchic, rebellious nature of rock’n’roll, cocking a snoop at society.
After Memphis I headed south, changing buses in Vicksburg, and finally arriving in Natchez, Mississippi for a one night stay. I wanted to hire a car right away, as I was visiting nearby Ferriday, Louisiana (birthplace of Jerry Lee Lewis) next day. However there were no places open where I could hire a car. I rang Hertz, and they said their nearest branch was Biloxi, hundreds of miles away on the Gulf of Mexico. So I had to grab the only taxi in town, which already had one passenger and was hanging around like a vulture for any other stranded bus passengers. It was driven by a decrepit old man, with his wife by his side. We set off, and came to a busy intersection where he sailed across right into the path of an oncoming car. We narrowly missed a disastrous side-on collision which would have killed us all, but the loyal wife consoled her visibly shaken husband by saying: ‘It wasn’t your fault, honey.’ Of course it was as the silly old fool tried to cross a major road without even slowing down or looking to see if the path was clear.
Thankfully I climbed out of the taxi at my motel, a Best Western which had excellent food. The weather forecast that evening on TV was very depressing. They warned of flash floods for mid-Louisiana and the Miss-Lou area where I was staying, and advised against driving anywhere. In the event this was just alarmist exaggeration, and all I had to put up with was a persistent drizzle, which was nevertheless very annoying. We’d had beautiful sunny weather the rest of my stay in the South, yet the one day I got to visit my idol’s hometown it was raining all day. Return trips to Ferriday in 1997, 1998 and 2002 also brought wet weather, so the ‘cool, Louisiana rain’ Jerry mentions in one of his autobiographical songs seems to be all too frequent.
I hired a car early the next morning, and saw most of the places in Ferriday I’d wanted to see. I ran into a former teacher of Jerry’s, Martha Paul, working in a service station shop, and she came with me to try to locate the house where Jerry was born, but we couldn’t find it and she said she thought it might have been demolished. She then rang Frankie Jean (Jerry’s sister) and told me where she worked, but by the time I got there Frankie had made herself scarce. (On my return in 1997 I did indeed visit her house, then partly given over to a very interesting Jerry Lee Lewis museum since it was also his childhood home, and met Frankie on that occasion and others.) I visited the nearby family cemetery where Jerry’s two sons, mother and father plus many other relations were buried. I only found this thanks to instructions from Jerry Lee’s former wife, Myra (the child-bride of the 1958 scandal) whom I’d met in London a few weeks before promoting her book ‘Great Balls of Fire’, later made into the Dennis Quaid film of the same title. Myra had drawn a map for me on the back of a Cumberland Hotel serviette, and given me precise instructions, but I still had trouble finding it and had to ask directions at lonely farmhouses, half expecting some redneck hillbilly to shoot me for invading their property. All I found was very polite, helpful Southern hospitality which eventually enabled me to locate the graveyard.
I also visited the Assembly of God (Pentecostal) church where Jerry first played piano in public, and other places of interest, including Jerry Lee Lewis Avenue, which was little more than a dirt track on the very edge of town at that time, but which was beginning to be developed. I then boarded the Greyhound to travel south past Baton Rouge to New Orleans.
I had kept in touch by phone with George, who was worried about my embarking on such a long trip on my own, and driving unfamiliar cars on the wrong side of the road when I wasn’t used to driving at all, having given up my van in London years before because of expense and parking problems. I thought George was going to be out at the cinema or somewhere when I arrived, so it was a very pleasant surprise indeed when he was waiting for me at the bus station.
I will always remember that happy reunion and his smiling face welcoming me ‘home’, and I know that is how he will greet me when I die. The New Orleans trip is symbolic of our life together: we had our Mardi Gras, we had some ups and downs, then we went our separate ways doing our own thing, but finally we will be reunited when I arrive home on the Other Side and George will be waiting with open arms to greet me. I can hardly wait to see his smiling face welcoming me ‘home’ again at the end of my journey, like that wonderful evening in New Orleans at the bus station. That strange city was ‘home’ because George was there waiting for me.
We departed New Orleans in the early afternoon of Thursday and arrived back at Gatwick at 7.30 a.m. Friday morning. It had been one of our most memorable holidays.
After our holiday we had a quiet month or so. We were in the audience of another ‘Question Time’ in March, and we went on the revived (Jubilee) CND Aldermaston March at Easter. I went to Hyde Park with my local CND group for the start, and George and I traveled to Berkshire for the last lap. We walked all around the Aldermaston Weapons Research Establishment, which covers a huge area, pinning mementoes to the perimeter fence. I left a note recalling Malvin Side, an old campaigner who was on every anti-nuclear demo in the 60s and early 70s. We heard Pat Arrowsmith speaking from a parked truck, almost as if we’d gone back 25 years to the very first Aldermaston March which Pat helped to organize.
On the Sunday we went to the less political Easter Parade in Battersea Park, though it was not entirely uncontroversial. We assisted at our local CND group’s stall in the park. The parade took place every year and was sponsored by the Greater London Council, soon to be abolished by the Tory government. Eventually Wandsworth Council did away with the traditional Easter Parade, which was always free and drew crowds from all over London and beyond. George’s relations used to time their visits from Scotland to coincide with the Battersea Easter Parade. In 1992 the usual crowds turned up to find the traditional parade had been abolished, and instead you had to pay to go in the park to visit stalls, shows, a small fun fair and other typical events held in parks and open spaces everywhere at holiday times. The unique parade which made Battersea special was gone, probably for good.
In April we saw the satirical ‘When The Wind Blows’ about the aftermath of a nuclear war at the Whitehall Theatre. We thought it portrayed the general public as a bit too naive, and it came across to us as middle class liberals patronizing the working class.
Sally, George’s cousin, whom we visited on our Canadian trip, came over to the UK in early May, and was due to be in London later in the month. She arrived at our flat on the 23rd with the rather overpowering Muriel, but they had left their husbands back home in Canada. I’m not quite sure exactly what relation Muriel was to George, but both her and Sally originally came from Scotland. If you saw and heard Muriel in the street you’d take her for a rather loud American tourist. Sally was much quieter, with a Canadian accent which kept lapsing back into her native Glaswegian.
Earlier in May we had gone down to our local gay pub, ‘The Cricketers’, to see drag artistes ‘The Trollettes’ teamed up with Lee Paris. ‘The Trollettes’ later split up and Jimmy Trollette teamed up with Lee Paris more or less permanently, with only the occasional appearance of Jimmy and Maisy as ‘The Trollettes’. Another act we saw at The Cricketers that month was Candi Dubarry.
We were hoping to do our own improvised drag act there, as we knew the landlady quite well, and so we re-enacted some sketches we’d done at our parties, added some more, and filmed them on a black and white video camera we had. The novelty of the camera soon wore off, as it had to be attached by a lead to the video recorder, so could not be used outside the room. .
We had several routines, and basically made it up as we went along. We were always in drag, and usually I played a lady aristocrat and George played a prostitute, but sometimes we were both old scrubbers or George was a refined Edinburgh ‘Miss Jean Brodie’ type. We made a tape full of these sketches, most featuring both of us, but some solo, and gave a selection of these to the landlady to give her an idea what our act was like. Unfortunately, by the time we had it all organized and on tape, the pub ceased to be gay, and the couple we knew who ran it moved away to another pub. The new managers wanted to discourage the gay crowd and cater instead for the new Yuppie influx in Battersea, which became ‘South Chelsea’ in Yuppie-speak. The pub too changed its name, several times, and a gay tradition going back before the Second World War was never revived. Apart from a brief experiment at the theater bar of The Latchmere up the road and later a pub in Battersea High Street, neither of which were very successful, there has not been a gay pub in Battersea since ‘The Cricketers’ went straight.
I was glad we filmed the sketches, and I have often watched them since George died. They still make me and other people laugh, and it is a memento of our happy times together. Indeed, as he lay dying, George got us to re-enact bits of the scrubbers sketch which we had on video, in a brave effort to cheer me up and make me remember the good times we’d shared together. I like to think that via these videos George and I can still entertain people who may never have met him.
In 1983 George came to several Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament meetings with me, and at one we heard Dr Alice Stewart speak about the effects of radiation. The same day we saw Julie Walters in the film ‘Educating Rita’, which we both found very funny.
On May 21st we went to a birthday party for Sheila Cooper, a friend of mine who used to work at CND head office when I was there. Sheila had been to several of our parties, and vice versa. George’s 40th birthday was on 27th, but I don’t think we celebrated. George had a party written down in his diary for Saturday the 28th, but there was a question mark against it and he later crossed out the whole idea, no doubt deciding reaching 40 was just too depressing and the event was best ignored.
On the last day of May we went on a CND direct action demonstration at Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire. It was a blockade of the air base, and George and I both got arrested along with hundreds of others. It was one of the proudest moments of my life, being arrested with George by my side. It showed how close we had grown politically.
A few months later we had to catch an early train to Banbury for the court case. They dealt with everyone very quickly, just a fine each, and I was very proud of George when he stood in the dock. It made us both feel very old when our birth dates were read out and we were both born in the 1940s, whereas most of the others arrested seem to have been born two decades later..
In June there was a General Election, and of course Margaret Thatcher got in again and soon abolished the GLC.
In the evening of Friday 10th two friends, Lena and Andre, came round to see us. Other events for June and July included the Gay Pride carnival parade from Marble Arch to the University of London in Malet Street, and a CND demonstration we went on to help form a human chain linking the U.S. and U.S.S.R. embassies through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.
On Saturday July 30th everything seemed to be happening at once. George’s two sisters, Margaret and Betty, came down from Glasgow to stay for a week, and we had two party invitations. Angie and Dusty, neighbors of ours, were having a rock’n’roll party, and Lena was having a birthday party. I think George may have gone to Lenny’s and I went to Angie’s, because I have an audio tape of George at a party for Lenny’s birthday, and I wasn’t there.
George hasn’t recorded any details of Betty and Margaret’s London visit, but we probably took them around the usual sights. Since they had no children with them, they were happy going off on their own together round the shops most days, even if they did get a bus going the wrong way in Oxford Street and ended up at Shepherd’s Bush.
August 14th George has written down the name of a film called ‘The Group’. This was the one he had gone to see at the Biograph the night we met, and he always light-heartedly criticized me for stopping him seeing the film properly. So I believe we both went to see it again 13 years later without interruptions.
A few days later we traveled up to Scotland, where we were to stay in Betty’s caravan at Kinghorn. We traveled direct from Victoria to Kirkcaldy in Fife, instead of going by way of Glasgow. In Edinburgh on Sunday 21st we saw the Festival parade through the city, and I remember George pointing out a Polish film actress in Princes’ Gardens below the castle. She had appeared in several of Wojda’s films.
That evening we saw a very weird production of Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage’ which was held in a canteen of some sort, and seemed to consist of teenage women in jeans and sweaters crawling under tables and climbing on chairs whilst reciting the lines of the play and shining torches on each other, since this was the only illumination in the room. The activity took place in and around the audience, who sat at the canteen tables.
In the evening we saw a very late evening production called, appropriately, ‘Sheila Staefel Lately’. In this one woman show Sheila sung old Victorian melodramatic songs about children dying of consumption and other tragedies, songs very similar to those of the traditional Country Music idiom which I liked. We loved the performance, but had missed the last train across the Forth Bridge. We had to sit up on the station for an early morning train, and were so tired we both fell asleep and nearly ended up in the Highlands. Fortunately the jolt of the train stopping at Kinghorn woke us up just in time.
On the Tuesday we had a trip to Inverness. It was a nice day out, but it was not as mountainous as I had expected. I always imagined Inverness to be deep in a valley beneath towering peaks, but it was not like that at all, although there were gently curving mountains in the distance.
The weather was slightly better this year, as I at least got down to my swimming trunks on Kinghorn beach. A couple of days before returning home we paid a visit to Glasgow and George’s cousin, Margaret and her husband. We went back via Edinburgh and caught two more Festival productions, about which I remember nothing at all I’m afraid.
In mid-September we went to a meeting organized by Wandsworth Council to discuss the installation of entry phones and new lifts in our tower block. The council announced they were going to spend a lot of money closing in the open ground floor level, so it could only be accessed by a key or via the entry phone system. Within six months the council had apparently realized how much all this was going to cost and had second thoughts. At any rate they announced there was asbestos in the block, and decanted everybody. At further public meetings several people asked to move back into the block after the asbestos had been removed, but the council said it was earmarked as sheltered accommodation for the elderly. This seemed highly unlikely, since a tower block is hardly suitable for such a purpose. In the event it was turned into luxury flats with entry phones, porters, a Jacuzzi a sauna, and a sort of penthouse on what was previously the roof. As Jay Court was named after the former Labour MP for the constituency, this was changed to Park South. Our flat, which we think we saw featured on a local TV news program since it was an 18th floor flat with an identical view to ours, was sold for £150,000. The views of Battersea Park and the more distant Roddy Llewellyn’s Battersea Village restaurant (impossible to see with the naked eye) were advertised to prospective buyers, but not the fact that as soon as you stepped out of the main entrance you were facing the adjacent Doddington Estate, also featured on a local news program as then one of the most notorious estates in London and a mugger’s paradise. The yuppies who moved into our refurbished flats must have been rich pickings. Back in September, though, we naively thought we were going to get the benefits of the planned improvements to our block.
In September we saw some films together, but George went without me to see Fassbinder’s film of Jean Gene’s ‘Querelle’, a film I didn’t catch till after George died.
We paid several visits to ‘The Cricketers’ pub that month and saw Laura Pallas, Millie and The Trollettes recording an album. At one visit we ran into an ex-work colleague of ours, and realized for the first time that she was a lesbian. We also saw Quentin Crisp in his one-man show again that month, though at a more select venue than The Cricketers. He had definitely gone up in the world since George knew him personally, long before he became famous.
Early in October our friend Barbara (whom we'd first met on the Scandinavian tour) arrived from Warsaw for a visit. She stayed with a friend whilst in London, but she always visited us whilst here.
We went down to see Rose in Hastings for a weekend later that month, and we also went on a big CND national demonstration in London.
There were a couple of amateur talent competitions at The Cricketers, but we didn’t enter. We went to a local CND book and record sale in November (which didn’t make as much as their jumble sales, but sounded slightly more middle-class and meant helpers didn’t have to sort those ‘awful working-class’ clothes beforehand). We also went to a teach-in on prostitution, but I can’t remember who organized it. If it had been George he’d no doubt have called it ‘A Prostitute On Every Corner’, his tongue-in-cheek solution to the problem of rape and sexual assault.
Early in December Quentin Crisp did actually appear at The Cricketers pub next door to where we lived. From notes in George’s diary it seemed he was in correspondence with Quentin, evidently hoping Quentin would find time to pop up the tower block and see his old friend when he appeared at the pub. I am sure this never happened, at least not whilst I was there. Possibly George got to have a few words with Quentin in private in the pub. During December and over Christmas the pub put on several Christmas shows, including ‘Cinderella’, starring drag acts like Adrella, The Playgirls and Regina Fong. There was also The Playgirls’ Christmas Show, ‘Robin Hood and his Merry Leather Men’ starring Lick, Stick and Promise, and Pip Morgan in ‘Sleeping Princess’. I think we saw most, if not all, of these productions. There was also a camp production called ‘Boys Will Be Girls’ at the Arts Theatre Club in December, which we went to see.
We heard Tam Dalyell, MP speak at the Royal Court Theatre, of all places. I can’t remember this particular occasion, but I certainly remember hearing Tam speak at a meeting at Battersea Labour Party headquarters in very forthright terms about Margaret Thatcher regarding the Belgrano affair.
There were several political events in mid-December according to George’s diary, including CND direct action demonstrations at the Ministry of Defence and High Wycombe, and we attended one of these. I’m not sure where we spent Christmas that year, but we had a Hogmanay Party on New Year’s Eve.
Our days at Jay Court were coming to an end, and the block was fast emptying. We didn’t want to delay too long as robberies were becoming more frequent in the half-empty block. So in January 1984 we paid a visit to the Kambala Estate near Clapham Junction to view a council flat we had been offered.