I first went up in 1973 with a colleague, Peter Bevan. I remember the Amadeus Quartet playing Mozart String quintets, the LSO under Previn playing Shostakovich Eight, the third or fourth performance ever of Britten's Death in Venice with Pears, Isaac Stern in the Brahms violin concerto, a company of actors from San Quentin, Barenboim conducting and playing with the English Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven's first two piano concerti, Questors Theatre Company demonstrating coarse acting in The Cherry Sisters, the Hungarian State Opera and Ballet in Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and The Miraculous Mandarin and a student company in Lorca's Yerma and there was an incredible amount more.
We did something like 60 shows in 10 days. And I had the energy for it. I absorbed so much. I can still see Stern turning puce as he fiddled his way through the cadenza. I can see the look on Pears' face as Robert Huguenin was hoisted above him during the dream sequence. I can see the Mandarin's first lithe entrance. I can hear the ferocity of the drums in the Usher Hall during the Shostakovich. And I wanted that sophistication. I wanted it badly. I wanted to be able to walk into a Chinese restaurant like Pete and order and know what I was ordering. I wanted not to be tasting a baked potato at Mr Chuckitaleaf's for the first time. I wanted to be an adult. But I had a secret. I sat and watched Pasolini's film of The Decameron with its acres of beautiful young men and I couldn't, wouldn't acknowledge them.
Then 1975, the year I went with Ross and Jan and Trevor. We toured in my family's van, camping, and also visited Lindisfarne, the Farne Islands, Bamburgh Castle, Seahouses, Hadrian's Wall and Stirling. I have a programme for the Tokyo Quartet playing Mozart, Bartok and Brahms but I cannot remember a thing about it. I know that Ross and Jan went to hear Boulez conduct Mahler at the Usher Hall. We all went swimming in the Commonwealth Games Pool. Ross taunted me about looking at men's bodies. I wasn't ready to hear that and stalked off in embarrassment. I was still in love with him and not with myself. And I was firmly in the closet.
The following year I was back to see my first Parsifal and the only performance I've seen (so far) of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron and Bunraku puppets. I travelled up by train and met Ronnie there. I had just graduated and was about to enter the world of unemployment before I entered the world of work. At the Schoenberg performance, a dour Scot and him wife moved seats from behind me as "The young laddie in front has a head of hair". You can see this from the last photograph of me as a student
1979 and I was through the looking glass and out as a gay man. I went to hear Pollini and Zimerman give piano recitals. I went to both because they are outstanding pianists. I remember the Zimerman because I fancied him like crazy. I also saw more opera with Kent Opera conducted by Roger Norrington giving Iphigenia in Tauris and a Victorian-set Traviata by Jonathan Miller and Scottish Opera giving Rimsky-Korsakov's Golden Cockerel by David Pountney. I also saw the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre Company's production of Chinchilla which was totally stunning and had acres of beautiful young men in it and I could acknowledge them.
Two years later and I was in Burnley at Smith Street. I went up to stay with Stewart in Paisley near Glasgow and we travelled over to the Festival each day. I saw a Zoltan Kocsis recital. He was replacing Krystian Zimerman at short notice and, though good, he was a disappointment. And Stewart and I went to a fringe event which Gill was organising. One night Stewart and I stayed overnight in a Newtown flat having partied at the Newtown Bar and the Fire Island Disco in the West End Club on Princes Street. Whilst we were making out at the flat, Stewart was badly scratched on the backside by a kitten. On the fringe, I was seeking out gay plays and went to see Consenting Adults in Lanford Wilson's The Madness of Lady Bright.
Two years more and I was back in Liverpool at Percy Street and was fully spreading my gay wings. I'd been over to Canada and had visited my cousin Trevor in Edmonton, Bob and Dana from Sun Ergos Dance Company in Calgary and Toronto. I'd shagged Dana on an motel bedroom floor (disgracefully) and also shagged a young American who was celebrating his 21st birthday in a seedy Toronto hotel which had poor air conditioning. Whilst we were going at it, his (more attractive) friend sat in the bathroom as a discrete chaperone. I went to see Bob and Dana at the Assembly Rooms and took in the Opera Theatre of St Louis's performances of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Fennimore and Gerda. I also went to the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre Company's production of Der Rosenkavalier with Australian David and we laughed our socks off throughout. Within 8 years, I was attending a memorial service for him. He died in Sydney of AIDS related illnesses.
There's then an eleven year gap to 1994. Friends came and went and I moved to London to Walthamstow. I met up with Rod on the Internet on an opera Bulletin Board. We got chatting and I was invited to spend time with him and Dale in Edinburgh. I'd just met David. So, I went up and saw an astonishing if bum-numbing rendition of Æschylus's Oresteia directed by Peter Stein and given in Russian, a boring Winter's Tale given in French at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, David Drake's super The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me on the Fringe and a fabulous production from Australian Opera by Baz Luhrmann of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. And I heard some wonderful chamber music and made two amazing friends who stood by me when David was ill and dying and who are with me now.
So, seven visits at seven different times of my life. It's no wonder that I feel as though there's a whole personal history bound up in the place.