Hiding lesbian magazines

TRANSCRIPT

R: And in Spare Rib there was an advert for a magazine, like, um, I don’t know what it was but anyway I sent for that, and I told my mum and dad that it was a prospectus for university, that I’d be getting some prospectuses but actually it was this lesbian magazine [laughs].

So I’d rush up, when I, you know, ‘oh it’s a prospectus for a university’, ‘Oh can we have a look?’ ‘No, no, I’m just, I don’t know which one I’m looking at yet’, and it was this – it was full of lesbian poetry this first edition. And I kept it for years, I think I’ve still got it somewhere. And so that was my first, like kind of, lesbian magazine, I suppose. And it had pen friends in and things, you know contacts that you could write to. So I used to write to some people in the oldy-fashionedy days.

INTERVIEWER: And do you still speak to those people?

R: Sorry?

INTERVIEWER: Do you speak to those people, or did you ever know where people were?

R: No, no I didn’t. No it was just pen-pals, kinda thing. And of course I lost interest because I didn’t really, I didn’t know, they were too far away, or and then when I went to poly, I decided that, because I was very right, uh – I was very left-wing when I was at school, and I decided that I wanted to go to a univer- I didn’t want to go to a university because it was too middle-class, right. And I had this thing about – I went to an ex-mining college in Wales, because, you know with a gritty kind of, um, a really stupid reason now to go. It was for this certain course and it was only in three places. One of them was in Wales at this ex-mining college, so I went there: Poly of Wales, Polytechnic of Wales.

INTERVIEWER: What did you study?

R: I studied communications, which is like psychology and linguistics and media. But it was quite a new course then, in the ‘80s. And there was only – I think there was one in Keele, or somewhere like that, and I didn’t really wanna go there. And weirdly, my sister was living in Cardiff then, so I thought, ‘oh, I’ll be near’. And in a way it was quite a long way from home cuz I wanted to get away from Halifax.

I mean Halifax was to me, then, it was a dump, you know. I just wanted to get out of it. It was covered in soot, you know. There was nowt going on. And I didn’t really – I just wanted to get far away as possible. I shouldda gone to Leeds University or I shouldda gone to a city, you know. I couldn’t have picked a more quieter place to come out than a tiny mining village in Wales, do you know what I mean? [laughs]

And also I had a really thick Yorkshire accent and I just didn’t dare open my mouth. I was totally shy, you know. So even lecturers, I thought they were all really posh. So anyway I made a group of friends and everything and then I saw a sign saying ‘Lesbian and Gay Society’ and I thought, ‘oh wow’. And I’d come out sorta to my friends maybe in the second year, really. Not so much the first year. Or was it the first year? I can’t remember. But I saw this sign and my friend said she’d give me a Cadbury’s Creme Egg if I went along [laughs]. So I went along and it was a total disaster. The guy who was running it was straight, and nobody else turned up!