Category: Armed Forces

LGBT Armed Forces Memorial – No More Shame

Last month, His Maj, King Charles, dedicated the first national memorial honouring LGBT armed forces personnel, 25 years after the ban on LGBT people serving in the military was lifted. Before this, those who were – or who were thought to be – gay or transgender were subjected to interrogation and discharge, a brutal and utterly needless witch hunt that ruined countless lives. Ironically, in the past when the nation faced an all-too-real existential threat – a couple of world wars – the top brass didn’t care less where you stuck it so long as you kept your mouth shut and didn’t frighten the horses. We were all cannon fodder back then.

The memorial in bronze, at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, takes the form of a crumpled letter featuring words from those affected by the ban, with the words ‘pride’ and ‘solidarity’ highlighted.

Here’s what the Beeb had to say about it…

The memorial is especially poignant for me, not just because I’m an ex-forces brat who was born in an army barracks, or that I am a great believer in natural justice and fair play for all. It’s also because, in the early nineties, I met Duncan, a dashing young former naval officer who was forced to walk the plank simply for being gay; another irony given the senior service used to be described as ‘rum, bum and the navy’. Even Churchill said something similar.

Duncan didn’t take it lying down. Oh no, he joined three other ‘dishonourables’ and took the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights. Against all odds – including a hostile press and the pissed off powers that be – they won. Soon after, much to the horror of a few fuddy-duddy generals and bearded rear admirals, the ban was overturned.

Here they are then and now, with Duncan on the left…

Of course, it wasn’t just the four gay crusaders who made it all happen. There was a small army of supporters bringing up the rear. And the rest, as they say, is LGBT history. My history.

The Canterbury Tales

A family wedding took us to rural Kent, the so-called Garden of England, with its rolling downs, dripping orchards and bountiful fields. We padded out the nuptials with a good gander around pretty Canterbury. The city has ancient roots – think Celts, Romans, Jutes, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans and Huguenots. Canterbury’s city centre was flattened by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, but unlike many other British towns and cities, it was sympathetically rebuilt. Today, Canterbury is a university city and a huge tourist draw, principally due to the vast cathedral – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – which dominates the skyline. The largely pedestrianised cobbled streets are charming, if a tad Disneyfied (no doubt to keep modern-day pilgrims progressing).

Without a doubt, the cathedral gets top billing and is not to be missed. Despite my dim view of religion in general, I love a big holy pile, and they don’t come much bigger or more holy than Canterbury Cathedral. There’s been a house of God on this site since 597, after Pope Gregory sent Saint Augustine over to save the heathens from their evil pagan ways. What visitors see today largely dates from the 11th and 12th centuries.

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The Cathedral’s fortunes really took off after the murder of Archbishop Thomas Beckett in 1170. Beckett had become a right royal pain in the arse for King Henry II, who threw a queenie fit and exclaimed (allegedly),

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Some knights took Henry at his word and martyred Beckett in the north-west transept. Like you do.

The posthumous veneration of Beckett transformed the cathedral into a major centre of pilgrimage and a money-making machine. And then came Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The rest, as they say…

Canterbury is also famous, here at Pansies HQ, as the birthplace of one Jack Scott. Dad was a soldier and I was born at Howe Barracks in married quarters on Talavera Road – number 24, according to my birth certificate. The barracks are long gone, replaced by a new housing development, though Talavera Road remains. That’s my Canterbury tale.

The Only Way is Essex

Essex, the home county to the east of London, has the reputation of being, well, a bit chavvy. But there’s more to Essex than big hair, gaudy bling, fake tans, assisted tits and impossibly white tombstone teeth – and that’s just the men.

Beyond the faceless towns of the commuter belt, Essex is a green and pleasant land, and its county town, Colchester, has ancient roots. Although not officially awarded city status until 2022, Colchester can reasonably claim to be Britain’s first proper city, sitting as it does on top of Camulodunum, the first major settlement of Roman Britannia and the province’s first capital.

Even before the unstoppable Romans slashed and burned their way through village, forest and field, the settlement was already a centre of power for the locals, including King Cunobelin – Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. When the Romans displaced the tribal huts with their first legionary fortress, it was like saying ‘we’re top dogs now’.

Following the Boudican revolt of AD60, when the seriously pissed-off Queen of the Iceni slaughtered everyone and burned everything in her path, a defensive wall was thrown around the town in an after-the-horse-has-bolted kinda way. Not long after, Camulodunum lost its status as provincial capital to the better-placed Londinium but continued to thrive as a garrison town, something which continues to this day.

We’ve passed through Colchester many times – it’s on the mainline from Londinium to Norwich – but we’d never stepped off the train for a gander. So, we thought, let’s give it a go, and we stayed overnight. The main event for us was Colchester Castle, which sits in a pretty park populated by picnickers and grey squirrels. The park also contains remains of that post-Boudica Roman city wall – the earliest ever constructed.

The castle keep is eleventh-century Norman, built on the foundations of the massive classical temple of Claudius the Divine; Roman emperors just loved to be worshipped. The castle is now a rather splendid museum dedicated to the long history of the city. Roman-era relics are what really draw in the punters. We were lucky enough to avoid the modern-day legions of over-excited schoolkids in hi-vis jackets screaming their way through the exhibits.

Museum’d out, we took a slow stroll around the ruins of St Botolph’s Priory, where Liam caught forty winks; then we withdrew to a local tavern for a bottle and a bite.

Our bed for the night was at the historic George Hotel, along the High Street. We chose well. Behind the hotel’s Georgian façade lies a timber-framed building said to date back to the fourteenth century, although the hotel’s extensive cellars may be older and feature the ruins of a Roman gravel pavement. A few years back, the hotel underwent extensive renovation and refurbishment. We fell for the lavish and distinctly quirky style.

I posted this image on Faceache of little ol’ me in a funky, over-the-top, oversized wing-back chair. It prompted this response from an old mucker of mine…

PUT THAT CHAIR IN YOUR HANDBAG AND STEAL IT FOR ME *NOW* PLEASE! 

If only I had a handbag big enough.

A Right Royal Do

My dad took the King’s shilling in the late forties and made a career out of soldiering for the next twenty-something years. Despite swearing allegiance to the monarch, Dad was a soft leftie, voting Labour all his life. He liked and respected the Queen but he didn’t think much of the motley crew of incidental royals – the  ‘hangers on’ as he called them. My mother, on the other hand, was a devoted royalist and had a picture of Her Maj hanging on her bedroom wall.

In my adult years, I’ve always been conflicted about the entire notion of a hereditary head of state. My head questions its relevance in our modern, more egalitarian world but my heart tells me different. I was genuinely saddened by the Queen’s death. I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s my age. And when I look around the world at the assortment of elected nobodies, ne’er-do-wells and nasties, particularly those who would sell their children to the Devil to cling to power, I think, well, if it ain’t broke…

Today, we have the right royal do of the Coronation with Charles and Camilla riding the golden Cinderella coach to their ball at Westminster Abbey, the venue for such rituals for nearly a thousand years. The Crown Jewels will be dusted down, oaths will be sworn, heads will be anointed. And yes, we will be joining the locals at our local for a glass of bubbly to watch the fairy tale on the big screen.

Across our twin villages, the streets are decked out in fluttering flags and bunting of red, white and blue, and shops have gone all out to put on the best stately display. Here’s a taste…

And tomorrow, our villages are throwing their very own right royal do with a big Coronation party. We’ll be joining the festivities because let’s face it, we could all do with a party right now.

A Trip Down Malaysian Memory Lane

In 2016, I wrote a little piece about my semi-colonial life as a forces child in Malaysia back in the swinging sixties. The post – Reflections of an Army Brat – featured a blurry old black and white image I found online of Mountbatten Primary School, the school I attended. It started quite a conversation between ex-pupils, a conversation which continues to this day.

The post from way back also took me to a Facebook group called  ‘We are Terendakians’ – Terendak being the name of the army camp originally built for the 28th Commonwealth Infantry Brigade which consisted of soldiers from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The Facebook group is a place to reminisce and interact. And reminisce and interact they do with some wonderfully evocative pictures of a bygone era. Sometimes it even gets up close and personal.

This might be me aged around 7:

And this is almost certainly my mother on the ladies badminton team:

And this is definitely my brother:

A bit spooky really.

It’s My Birthday and I’ll Cry If I Want To

I’m now officially old and young people in shops call me sir. I’d like to say 60 is the new 40 but who am I trying to kid? Gravity is taking its toll, my bald patch is getting bigger and my pubes are turning grey. Looking on the bright side I now get free prescriptions and free eye tests, potentially saving me a queen’s ransom as, health-wise, it’s only downhill from here. I also get 25% knocked off fruit and veg every Tuesday at the local farm shop.

To paraphrase an old saying to bawdy effect…

You’re only as old as the man you feel.

Well, I’m feeling a 59 year old so that really doesn’t help.  

I was born on a Sunday 60 years ago in utilitarian army digs in Canterbury and according to the nursery rhyme…

…the child who is born on the Sabbath Day is bonny and blithe, merry and gay.

I guess that makes me a handsome, carefree, drunken old poof. Well, if the cap fits…

So there it is, my card was well and truly marked from birth. No wonder I developed a liking for anything dashing in a uniform. Now I’m official past my use by date, I’ve decided to become a grumpy old git and shout loudly at the telly whenever someone says something stupid. That’ll keep me busy.

We’ll Meet Again

We’ll Meet Again

This year, Liam and I jollied in London for our birthdays. A state of the art, hi-tech micro-room in St James’ was the perfect base for our foraging. We arrived on Remembrance Sunday and the centre of town was buzzing with blazers, badges and bling under a canopy of Christmas lights. It was fun being tourists with time on our hands to roam and drink it all in, something we rarely did when we were worker bees on the treadmill.

Talking of drinking it all in, no trip to the West End is quite the same without a jar or two in a local hostelry. As seems to be our habit these days, we ended up at Halfway to Heaven, a gay bar just off Trafalgar Square and the splendid den of iniquity where Liam first caught my roving eye 13 years ago. Quite by chance, we arrived just in time to catch their annual Remembrance Day show.

Image courtesy of Boyz Magazine

The pub was rammed with military veterans – men and women, young and old, straight, gay and everything in between, all in their Sunday best – enjoying a convivial mingle with the regulars.

Halfway to Heaven has become something of a safe and welcoming place for ex-military LGBT people. Who knew? But it was a wonder to behold. When we were at the bar ordering drinks, a middle-aged woman was chatting to the manager.

“Thank you for being so nice to my dad and his husband,”

she said, pointing at two old soldiers in the corner.

It made my heart melt.

Next week: more jolly news

We Have the Stars

We Have the Stars

I’ve moved a lot in my time – more than most, I reckon. I dropped from the womb in utilitarian army digs in Canterbury then on to a central London military tenement, lots of fun in the sun in tropical Malaysia, down with a bump in damp and grey Hounslow (west London) and onwards to civvy street Wandsworth (south London). And all before I could vote. My flight from the nest took me on a swinging tour of London postcodes – W6, W14, W4, SW19, SW18, E7, E17, interrupted midway by a five-year residency in royal Windsor with a moustachioed man called Mike. Then came the Turkey years – Yalıkavak and Bodrum – before finally wading ashore in old Norwich town. I’ve done old build, new build, Charles the First to Barratt box. When Liam and I embarked on the latest move – my nineteenth – it was a fond farewell to the flash city centre micro-loft and a nervous hello to the village micro-cottage. As Liam said, paraphrasing the indomitable Bette Davis in Now, Voyager,

‘Oh, Jack, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.’

Say it again, Bette.

Those stars better sparkle!

Thursday’s Child Has Far to Go

Thursday’s Child Has Far to Go

Once upon a time a long time ago, a pretty girl from a small Ulster town was swept off her feet by a dashing young squaddie in a smart uniform and a devilish twinkle in his eye. Army life on the move quickly followed with babies dropped in married quarters here and there – Ireland, Germany, Malaysia, England, Malaysia (again). Sadly, her military man died young – way too young – and the pretty girl soldiered on alone as a single mother. She recently turned ninety and we had a bit of a do. Apart from being a little mutton and frail, Thursday’s child has still far to go. As they say in the Emerald Isle…

The older the fiddle, the sweeter the tune.

I inherited my Father’s devilish twinkle. I just hope I’ve inherited my Mother’s genes.

  • The kids
  • The grandkids
  • The great grandkids
  • Husbands and partners
  • Wives and partners
  • Old friends

The Day the Rot Set In

The Day the Rot Set In

On this day fifty years ago, the Sexual Offences Act received Royal Assent. The act partially decriminalised male homosexual acts. I say partially because the repeal only applied to rumpy bumpy between men 21 and over in England and Wales. It excluded the rest of the UK and those bastions of red-blooded machismo, the Merchant Navy and the Armed Forces. The ripe phrase ‘rum, bum and the Navy’ must have seemed even more ironic to randy sailors on a long and lonely tour of duty. By contrast, girl on girl action has never been illegal, perhaps because the (almost exclusively male) elite were rather titillated by the thought of it (well, those who weren’t fiddling with the altar boys or servicing the groom, that is). Reform-wise, the Scots didn’t join the party until 1980 and the Northern Irish brought up the rear in 1982. This may explain the over-representation of ginger queens on the pink streets of London during the seventies and eighties.

If the holier-than-thou pulpiteers, tight-arsed little Englanders, mighty-mouths down the pub or queer bashers on the streets thought the 1967 act was the one and only concession to be made, they were in a for a nasty surprise. It was a call to arms. The eighties and nineties brought the darkest days of AIDS and many hoped we’d all sashay back into our closets and die. No such luck. Despite the violence, the ridicule, the outraged press and pushy coppers in rubber gloves, a growing band of brave souls kept the rainbow flag flying higher than ever. Direct action and the outing of mitred hypocrites became rather fashionable. And it worked. One day, the walls came tumbling down and what followed was a bonfire of the prejudices.

The age of consent was reduced (first to 18 then to 16), the armed forces ban was lifted, the offence of gross indecency was repealed, Section 28* was abolished, gender re-assignment was recognised, fostering and adoption laws were liberalised, employment protection secured, civil partnerships were introduced and, by 2014, full marriage equality was realised across Britain. Then came the royal pardon for past deeds no longer illegal and, in time, so too will come the official apology.

On equal marriage, only Northern Ireland is still holding out, with some dour old dinosaurs desperately trying to hold back the tide, Canute-like. Their days in the sun are numbered, despite their last hurrah propping up Chairman May.

Rainbow Copper

The gestation of the 1967 Act was a long one. It was the Wolfenden Report of 1957 that recommended the decriminalisation of certain homosexual offences and concluded:

“…unless a deliberate attempt be made by society through the agency of the law to equate the sphere of crime with that of sin, there must remain a realm of private that is in brief, not the law’s business.”

Some still get hot under the collar in matters sex and sin, stoked up by bigots from across the religious divide. The issue even hit the headlines during the recent general election. Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats and a devout Christian, was repeatedly harangued about whether he thinks gay sex is sinful. The poor man squirmed and wriggled presumably because in his heart of hearts, he probably does. After the election, he resigned because of it. I don’t normally feel sorry for politicians but even I thought it was all too much. I’m well-acquainted with oppression by the majority and it smacked of bullying. And I don’t like bullies whatever their persuasion – left, right or centre. Mr Farron’s personal religious beliefs are his own business and, to paraphrase the Virgin Queen, I have no desire to make a window into anyone’s soul. Mr Farron can think whatever he likes as long as he doesn’t move to impose those beliefs on others. And as far as I know, unlike the orange relics and meddlesome priests of the Emerald Isle, he never has.

So I celebrate the day the rot started to set in. It eventually brought the whole edifice of hypocrisy crashing down. Now we can live happily ever after. Or can we? For some in our sceptre’d isle, life is still a little bit shit – bigotry can lurk just beneath the surface and the pendulum never stops swinging. And what of rainbow life beyond our shores? You only have to look around to see how really grim things are for many – the recent roundup and torture of young men in Chechnya is a case in point. And Allah only knows which way the wind will blow now Turks have foolishly voted sweeping presidential powers to an autocrat with a messianic streak. As for Saudi Arabia and Iran, the sword and the noose are kept on standby just case anyone dares poke a toe out of the closet.

*A shameful and largely symbolic law banning the alleged ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools, as if sexuality were a choice.