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jbjb Hello. My name is Peter. I was born in nineteen sixty-two. Er, I came down to London
in eighty-three, when I was twenty-one I suppose the CV reads: I er, joined a software company
and, which was great fun and er, two years later, I joined the BBC, which was very interesting.
I stayed there and then worked for a large film company, travelling the world which was
very exciting. And unfortunately my, my fortunes changed em, in two thousand and two, and that
s where, roughly where my East End story starts. There, the overlay on that is em, actually
came out when I was twenty-two, so it was the year after I came down to London and was
very fortunate to have a six year relationship with the very first person that I slept with.
And that kind of, the, ran it s course after six years and again, I was very fortunate
to meet em, another person who, again we had a relationship for about six years. That really
came to grief because I was spending an awful lot of time outside the country, em and also
the, the, the pressures of work were getting quite severe. So that caused us to, to er
part the ways. Em, I was living in South West London at the time, in Earlsfield and so we
had to sell the place we were living in, very nice place, and I moved back to South East
London. There I, I began to feel that things weren t quite right and it turned out that
I was having a very bad depressive episode. So those things, combined, put me in a very
dark place. But, I found a new place to live in this fabulous area of London called Bethnal
Green which was great fun. Er, and actually, I ll tell you how I came to, to come there
though was a group of good friends, we used to meet virtually every day er, and 79CXR
on Charing Cross Road and we always used to, he, stand around a little table called the
Round Table. So we even had a little plaque there The Knights of the Round Table . It
was great fun. Every other Sunday there was a, a great pub down Bethnal Green Road called
the *** and Comfort, which is er, as you can imagine, was a gay pub. It s now called
the Star of Bethnal Green so, I think that s the, the place check. Er, but they were
renowned for doing huge Sunday dinners for, you know, basically, more than you can eat
for a very reasonable thing and silver service and all the rest of it. And I, I got chatty
with the, the landlord, was looking for somewhere to live and er, I was saying, as I really
didn t know the area. Keith, where s a, where s a good place and found this one here. He
goes what s the nearest pub and I go Oh, dunno. And that s, we, guided me to and how I began
to find out about the East End. And that was good fun. So anyway, I moved into this place
in nineteen ninety-nine. Again, life was going brilliantly and it was to turn darker. It
was in two thousand and two, the depression got so bad that the company, had to let me
go, em, which put me even, slightly more of a mess really. But in the, those couple of
years, the er, the pub I adopted as my local was this er lovely little ***, down Hackney
Road called the Joiners Arms, and I became good friends with the, the owner, a fellow
Northerner whose birthday is exactly eight years before mine. That was a curious turn
of fate, and, lovely bloke called David Pollard. And er, he d been there since nineteen ninety-seven
and er, it was em, it was going though a bit of a tough time at that point, but he took
me on as a barman. Er, my first day on the job was their fifth birthday party, in May,
two thousand and two, and er, I sort of helped out behind the bar, of doing bits and bobs
of David s, and er, started sorting out his er paperwork, and the the finance stuff doing
the payroll and that kind of thing and em, I stayed there for seven years and saw some,
you know, changes to the area, and that, that job kind of run it s course by that point
so I er took up the offer of a, another job as finance manager for em, a good friend of
mine down at the Sun Inn. And unfortunately, the economy turned a bit cold and er, he had
to let me go. So that brings me to, to where I am now As far as the East End and how it
s changed, I think we were pretty much a backwater in terms of gay pubs and on this side of Tower
Hamlets, I mean you ve always had, em em, Backstreet which is fairly niche kind of market
and the White Swan down at Limehouse. In those days, there was also the Royal Oak on Columbia
Road which was gayish. And, and there there was a period, because of the, the quirks of
the old licensing laws, it had a market licence which meant that it could open very early
and you used to be able to do a circuit of, leave the Joiners at after closing times of
twoish on a Sunday morning. Go down to the Spiral Staircase which is now called something
else in Shoreditch High Street. Er, you get kicked out from there, you can either somebody
s and chill out for a couple of hours and, and then, if you really wanted a drink at
that time of morning you could go down to the Royal Oak. The very early, sort of, stages
of this going out from Saturday of, going out on Friday night and carrying on partying
till Monday morning if you really wanted to er mean they do that all the time down at
Vauxhall these days of course, but it was quite fun in those days. And, so, yes, it
was em, say gay, more gay then mixed shall we say in those days but Shoreditch, em, certainly
in the last three or four years has I think, become a lot more mixed er, that a word that
I m not particularly fond of, is more metrosexual males and that kind of thing. Certainly the
fashion industry s had a big influence around here. And, some extent music, but certainly
a strong creative current and er, so certainly places like the Joiners have become a bit
more, er certainly a bit younger or maybe it s just because I m getting older. I don
t know. But em, yeah, it was, it s it s different, I mean it s it s fun then and it s fun now
but with, for a, a new generation of people if you like. Em, and certainly even sort of
places like er, the Sun and the Star. Again it suits a, a younger crowd. Fairly mixed,
but the, if you like, sexuality is less of an issue which is a good thing these days.
Bit different from when I first came out which was er, still I can never remember which way
round it is, Clause 28 or Section 20, Section 29. Em, I did my bit for the age of consent
and that by sitting down in the middle of Trafal, well, not in the middle of Trafalgar
Square but on the approaches to it and being ushered away by policemen. It s er, you don
t really get that kind of thing these days, so it s a personal view of mine. I think that
you hear so many older people going, Oh, they don t realise what we did for them. In our
day I think there is a perception that the battle for equality er, is won and it s done
and dusted and I, I m not quite so convinced about that. PAGE PAGE &`#$ ELOP 1 Office 2004
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