The day began at 6am with a raucous chorus of Elton John's I'm Still Standing.
It came from next door where, presumably, Bev and some friends had returned from a night of clubbing and had decided to continue the party. Bev lives on the ground floor next door with her 10 year old son, Luca, and I just hope that he wasn't around for very much of what ensued.
The noise continued and was so loud that it woke Ross. And it continued and was so uncomfortable that, by 7am, we decided to get up and have breakfast.
We were at a loss as to what to do but we tried to continue on and ignore it. But then the party animals spilled out into the back garden. And one of them, a man, was a very nasty piece of work. At one point, when Ross and I were sitting out having a quiet cigarette together, his very loud and very drunken voice raised itself over the garden wall with the declaration "The word I said was AIDS". And it was quite clear that he was directing at us and that it was very intimidatory.
Last year, we had a similar afternoon when Bev had some male friends out in the back garden. One of them was just as nasty calling names over the garden wall. And the atmosphere was just as belligerent.
I was luckier than Ross. I went out to Quakers and took a trip over to see my parents for Father's Day. Ross remained in Crosby for the whole time and, at one point, he said to me that he felt like a prisoner in our own home. Certainly, the back garden felt like a no-go zone if you wanted to avoid the bullying and threatening behaviour that masqueraded as just drunken fun. Interestingly, neither Nutkin nor Jemima asked to go out of the house all day. It was as though they too sensed that there was a bad and unwelcoming atmosphere outside the back door.
I told Albert and Grace about it all and they were full of very sage advice not to get involved, not to rise to any of the bait, to keep our distance and go out if necessary and leave them to it. My sister, Linda, was appalled also. Her word for the name calling was "cowardly". And Grace paid me a great compliment by saying that I was twice the man that they will ever be. And coming from someone of her generation to a gay man, that was quite something.
Albert and Grace were quite right for us to keep our distance. Come the early evening, there was shouting and screaming from Bev's place. Anger not violence. They'd had no-one else to shout at so they all ended up shouting at each other. It was the only way that the day could end up really. God only knows how much each of them had drunk and/or smoked by that stage. They would have been drinking solidly for nearly 24 hours.
We'd spotted Bev and her mother and Luca and Bev's friend, Chrissie, beating a retreat from the house sometime later. And shortly after that two of the men started pounding at the door. Obviously the womenfolk had had enough and couldn't think of any other way of getting rid of them other than by escaping and locking them out.
I felt horrible throughout most of the day. It all tapped into some of my worst fears about bullying, about losing my sanctuary, about being powerless in the face of malevolence, about nice things being spoilt. My stomach and throat chakras both kicked off. My chest tightened. I found it difficult to eat. It was obviously all very deep and early material that was being released.
But I didn't capitulate completely and even managed to cook a Spanish omlette for the two of us and I even ate up my portion although it took half an hour and tasted like sawdust.
Ross and I saw the evening out and went to bed very early to listen to a talking book, Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray as it happened. It took a while to get to sleep even though I was physically, mentally and spiritually exhausted. But we two boys clung on together and weathered the storm as best we could.