Hebden Bridge in the early 1990s

TRANSCRIPT

STEVE: Thinking back to the cottage days, when we were living, you know - we moved as two gay men onto a hillside in a detached cottage, and there was a big house next door, and they were university lecturer-types and doctor-types, first. On the other side were kind of ex-farmer-stroke-now-builders, with JCBs, chainsaws, the lot.

RICHARD: That was frightening!

STEVE: They were a little bit homophobic. And then, the other side of them, another two gay men moved in!

[Laughter]

RICHARD: They were surrounded!

INTERVIEWER: They loved that!

STEVE: There'd been that bubbling out in this area for a long time.

RICHARD: It's just classic Hebden and we – the place that – [where] we flooded, we ended up with two women moved in next-door to us. And then when we'd moved to escape the flood…

STEVE: We bought from two men.

RICHARD: …we bought from two men, next-door to two women [laughs].

STEVE: And you were in the middle of nowhere there!

RICHARD: Gawd, it's Hebden Bridge!

STEVE: You'll move out here one day.

INTERVIEWER: It's lovely. This is the first time I've been.

STEVE: Really? You should go out and about. Go up to Heptonstall, there's a LOT of gay… That’s the thing – although Heptonstall folk don't get involved, which is only like a mile up.

RICHARD: They don't. It's the oldest village, it's older than Hebden Bridge, it's just up on that hill and we live just outside Heptonstall. But it's got its own micro little thing up there. They don't come down here!

STEVE: More men than women up there.

RICHARD: More men than women, yeah.

STEVE: I think, yeah.