I don't remember anything definite
about this family home as I was only two-and-a-half when we moved on. My
parents bought the house for £800 and sold it for around about £2,000.
My mum's dad was gobsmacked. He'd never dreamt of such riches.
This is the Entrance Hall to some stuff about some of my favourite places. Some are places where I've lived; some are places I've visited. Click here to return to the WebLife Homepage.
I've lived in and around Merseyside for the majority of my life.
Liverpool is my home city and still feels like big mother to me. When I was younger, I also spent a lot of time visiting Chester close by. I liked the way that the buses in the area had different liveries; bottle green for Liverpool Corporation, sky blue and cream for Birkenhead, pea green for Wallasey, brown for Chester. That was the 60s. Later, of course, transport moved out of public ownership and local identities were lost.
I remember a particular school trip to Chester when I was 12. I loved the city walls, the towers, the Romans remains, the Viking artifacts, the Medieval buildings and the legacy of the Civil War battles.
Liverpool meanwhile gave me access to the Industrial Revolution, the mercantile past, the Victorians, slavery, the Great Strike, World Wars, the May blitz, industrial decline and the Militant tendency.
Between the two cities, I developed a sense of the breadth of English history and a feeling for the Land that was with me even when I didn't know it.
I was born in the back bedroom of Wensley Road on 19 May 1954. I am therefore a Liverpudlian rather than a Scouser having been born within the city boundaries but not near the City Centre.
It was, by all accounts, a difficult birth but I'll spare you the details. My parents bought the house when they got married four years before I was born. They were told by their own parents that they were mad to buy a house and, rather than put a millstone round their necks, they should think of renting a council house as the previous generation had done. But my parents were part of that Post-War generation that believed in Labour's Land Fit for Heroes and they grasped the opportunity to change classes.
Apparently, my mother had a nesting fit shortly before I emerged four weeks
early into the world and painted the box room, which was to be the nursery,
bright pink, which obviously didn't get me off the best start possible.
I don't remember anything definite
about this family home as I was only two-and-a-half when we moved on. My
parents bought the house for £800 and sold it for around about £2,000.
My mum's dad was gobsmacked. He'd never dreamt of such riches.
We only lived for a few months at my dad's parents' whilst we were in between houses. I only mention this in passing since I have one of my first definite memories from this period. It is of the front room in the house. It is a very dark room. It probably faced North. The main thing that I remember is the sound of a clock ticking.
What I didn't realise at the time but have heard since is that, while we were there, my grandfather, who had stopped a bullet in No-Man's Land at Passchendaele in Flanders and, consequently, had a hole the size of a fist in his left thigh, was recuperating from a massive stroke that had left him paralysed down his left side and without speech for the remaining thirteen years of his life. In later time, I remember him communicating through a series of gestures and articulations that sounded like "Iz, iz, iza bommen ay chiz". What tickled him most was that my sister, Linda, and I, in our infancy, used to understand perfectly what he wanted whereas the adults didn't.
In total contradiction to contemporary practice, he was prescribed utter
rest and peace and quiet. This was a strain with a hyper-active two-and-a-half
year old in the house. Apparently, my mum used to take me for long walks to
play on the swings in the park - whatever the weather.
Hazel Grove was my childhood home and, for the most part, I can honestly say that I had the happiest of times. Yes, the transition from child to adult was problematic but, in terms of the circumstances in which I grew up, I couldn't have wished for anywhere better.
When I came to University in London, I spent my first year in this newly opened self-catering hall of residence. Actually, when I came to London I didn't know it was self-catering. I just knew it seemed to be cheap. And I couldn't cook to save my life. I learnt fast. After the first term, I ended up sharing a room with my best friend at the time, Ross.
This was the venue for my final two years as a student. I lived there with Ross, his girlfriend, Jan, and another student by the name of Pete. It was the usual sort of student household with all that that implies.
I left Crowlands Road under a cloud, having had major rows with Ross, and moved, via a brief stay at my friend Henryk's flat, into this bedsit in Highgate. Here I experienced the joys of unemployment. For example: it's the day before my dole cheque arrives. I have enough money to heat the room of have a hot meal. What do I do?
Living on my own in bedsit land did not agree with me and, along with the emerging sense of my own sexuality which I had kept bottled up for too long, contributed to my falling apart in the summer of 1978.
So, I ended up back with my parents (who had by this time moved) for an extended period of sick leave and rehabilitation.
Eventually, I got my shit back together, got a job, started the process of coming out and took the plunge of moving on so as to get on with my life. For well over a decade Gill's house was one of the most important places in the world for me - as a home, as a meeting place, as a love pit, as a jumping off point and, when I went freelance for a while, as a working place. Gill made a very special place and, for those of us who passed through, it was a privilege. It was my 28 Barbary Lane but it was real.
Work took me to East Lancashire for two years. I bought my first house there and, as such, it was a great source of joy and pride to me. However, apart from the work which I also loved, there was very little else to recommend this period of my life. Quite simply, I did not fit in with the general milieu and spent lots of time feeling really brassed off.
I bought Egerton Street from my friend Jacinta in 1988 and lived there til 1993 when I came to London. I met Richard just when I was going through the process of buying the house. He tried to persuade me to give up the purchase and move in with him. We'd only been going out for a couple of months at the time. I refused his suggestion. In retrospect, it was a very wise move.
Later, I met Keith and he moved in to live with me there, bringing Cyril with him. We lived together there for about six months before Keith moved to Bristol to take up a job there. You can find out more about that story elsewhere. Other people who lodged at Egerton Street were Fiona, who lived out of the second bedroom and the very cute hettie boy Andy, who lived out of the attic.
When I came down to London, I lived here for a short while with my good friend Colin.
This was my fabby house in North East London. I found it on the Sunday that Keith and I split up. It should have been our house but it wasn't to be. Instead, I lived here through the trauma of David's illness and death and then began my relationship with Ross. He moved in at the end of July 1996 and we lived together for over eighteen months. After Ross developed ME, he spent some time at his parents and then, when he returned to London, he moved into his own flat. Through that, we stayed close to each other and re-built a relationship.
Once again when I made a major move in my life, I dossed down with my good friend Colin and his cats.
This is my home in the North West. It is near the coast on Liverpool Bay just up from the mouth of the Mersey. Ross came to join me here in December 2001. Since then, we've set about setting up a home together as well as hosting two cats, Nutkin and Jemima.
This trip to Egypt was one of those holidays of a lifetime. I went for a cruise down the Nile from Luxor to Aswan with Robert and I can honestly say that I would go again as soon as I had the chance.
Nothing captures the essence of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. You get a sense of the scale from the little person at the bottom of the photograph but even films like Death on the Nile which include scenes here can't capture the numinous atmosphere. Actually, I like the way that Death on the Nile plays foot loose and fancy free with the geography of the region so that they characters travel from Aswan to Karnak via Abu Simbel.
I holidayed in Berlin in 1993 with Keith and loved the city. By clicking on the links, you'll find images of the Reichstag with me in front of it, Berlin's homo-monument to the thousands of lesbians and gay men who were killed by the Nazis and Keith and I offering a full obeissance at Marlene Dietrich's grave (which is also a sort of homo-monument).
I went on holiday down the West Coast of America in April 1996 staying with Rod and Dale, who live in Seattle. Clothing is considerably cheaper in the States that in the UK. There are retail outlet malls which sell stuff cheaper again. I went into shopping frenzy.
We did a lot of travelling during the four weeks I was there. This is the magnificent Pacific coast at Newport, Oregon. I dipped my hand into the ocean and sang along with Ella Fitzgerald whilst walking in the rain along this stretch of shore. We also went to San Francisco and I have the joy of walking along The Castro, gayest place on earth and a real spiritual home.
I also met up with my friend, Chris, in San Francisco and later visited my cousin, Trevor in Victoria on Vancouver Island.
I returned to San Francisco and Seattle for a holiday in 1999 and finally got a photo of me and the Golden Gate Bridge.
I've visited Barcelona five times so far in my life - the first when I was a marketing consultant back in the early 1980s. It's one of my favourite European cities.
Ross and I went for a holiday in Sitges in 1997. We took trips into the city to look around, visit the Fundació Joan Miró and the Museu Picasso and follow the Gaudi trail.
In the autumn of 2001, Roland and I went over by Easyjet. We did a bit of tourism like visiting the Museu d'Història de la Ciutat as well as eating a lot and attending two performances by Opera North at the Liceu.
I returned there with Roland in October 2003 and in November 2005 with John.
Roland and I visited Amsterdam in October 2004. I don't know that I'd race back but then the Rijksmuseum was closed and we didn't go to the Van Gogh Museum so maybe one day Ross and I will go there.
In July of 2006, Ross and I went on a P&O cruise round the Baltic. It was truly one of those once in a lifetime holidays as it celebrated ten years of us knowing each other and his thirtieth birthday.
We visited a lot of places including:-
Of them all, it would be any of the three Scandinavian capitals which I would willingly re-visit. However, in 1974, I said that I wanted to return to Florence but I have yet to do so.
Having my bag stolen did not actually colour my view of Madrid when I visited in March of 2009 with Roland. I had already decided that I did not like the place. And having visited the Prado and seen Guernica, I feel that I've done all that I want to in the city.
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