And it’s probably, I just have got a fiery temper. I’ll take everything and it will be fine, and then all of a sudden, bang. But… but because I’m an extrovert person in that respect, I’ll either scream and shout, or I’ll just smash stuff up and I have to be on my own, I can’t do it when theres people around [laughing]. So, the other day I just took to throwing some of my china mugs around and which… I didn’t really want to do but I just had to do it, you know it just had to happen… because I didn’t know where else to put this anger. So if you can control the anger it can propel you, it can make you do things positive, but you have to sit and think about it because if you let go of it, it can be quite nasty. And it frightens me, it used to frighten me at some, at one stage I remember saying that one day this, these bloody kids up the end of the road a while ago were, I don’t know, there was a dog and it was chasing a cat and this cat was deaf. I knew the neighbour’s cat, it was deaf and I thought, the anger was just so acute.

What was that anger about?

It was just the fact that these bastard kids were allowing this dog to chase this deaf cat and they were laughing at this cat, and I just though, you ignorant waste of skin, these kids.

I don’t know why, but I’ve been the victim of gay-related violence over the last fifteen, twenty years on very odd occasions. It’s not just a physical violence. I think it’s the other violence that gay men and women like, just like black people and other minority groups experience. The prejudice is a form of violence and I do feel that strongly about it. Peoples antagonism, their ill feelings, the snide remarks in the workplace they cause pain in the same way a smack in the jaw causes pain. It’s not the same pain but it is still pain. And it’s… of course it’s still unacceptable and I think once you realise and tell yourself, and tell other people that this is unacceptable, that’s a good step towards being able to handle it. But as well as the shitty and unpleasant conditions in the workplace that I’ve suffered then clearly very much the gay bashings and the aftermath of that have contributed to my depression. Looking back I think they have prolonged it. Not [pause] not made it worse, I can’t see how you can quantify that, but they have certainly extended and protracted the bad days and they’ve also realised that I am also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. And that has been diagnosed by the GP. And again, just to see that in black and white on the medical certificate is somehow strengthening.

Why is that?

Because, very often with depression you think, oh it’s my fault, I’m inadequate, I can’t get, I can’t do this. It’s not that, you’re suffering, one is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because some other twat out there has thumped you.

I didn’t form romantic relationships, although I think with this boy I met at school, I think really well it was intense, you know…

Well, how do you see it now?

There was a lot of love there, but you know, it wasn’t really a physical, it wasn’t a physical relationship.

Do you think in retrospect, did you have sexual feelings?

Yes, absolutely. And he definitely had that for me. Because it started when we were about 14 we went into a new class, we sat next door to each other and he used to squeeze my knee under the table, which I was very shocked about. I mean this was… OK this was Britain in the 60’s, but the swinging 60’s didn’t really arrive in the provinces, you know, for a long time [laughs]. So I mean, I was fairly shocked and we did talk. I can remember we used to have our lunch in the secretary’s office. While she had gone off to lunch we would eat our sandwiches in there and we would sit and talk and take phone calls and that. But we did talk about how we loved each other, but not like ‘those sort of people, you know, I forget what name we used.

Was it queer?

I don’t think we knew queer, I think it might have used poofs, or whatever word we used.

What you had was different to ‘poofs?

Yes, it was different to that, it wasn’t like that, we weren’t like that at all, we just had this love that other people wouldn’t understand. I can remember talking about that. I mean I think now, if it was happening now, we would have just explored things, you know, we were just too shocked by it all.

I was with somebody I had known all my life, and he came out to me, and I came out to him, and we just talked and talked and talked. But I will always remember that night, we were sat in a car, and we just sat and talked for two hours, we just talked and talked and talked and then we met up and then we talked again. Because suddenly, there was somebody else to talk to. But I had just had a girlfriend, he had girlfriends over quite a long period, so we decided we must be bisexual. And I… that’s what I was in my head for a couple of years. And I can remember the next day I had to go to London for a meeting and I was so elated, I can remember walking along the pavement and I felt as if I was 10ft high, you know I felt so happy because I told one other person in the whole world. But of course, as time went on, the implication was, you know, then I would have to tell other people, maybe they wouldn’t understand and you know, and this was like 20 odd years ago, this was 1981 and Britain’s changed a lot in that time.

I mean I think one of the problems is that you sort of lack a kind of middle ground between being kind of really macho and emotionless, and kind of tough for want of a better word, or kind of emotionally constipated which I kind of put together, do you know what I mean? And then the other thing you don’t want to be is a kind of wet bugger, you know you don’t want to be kind of… You know the kind of world I came from was pretty… I went to a boys’ school it was pretty rough [laughs]. You know it had its rough old moments, and it just wasn’t the kind of place you admitted vulnerability.