Seasons in the sun...

I went to Swansea today to visit my mum and my brother. Despite it being only some 40 miles away, I hadn't been back in quite some time. I was brought up near Swansea on the northern side of the Gower in a small village on the Loughor Estuary called Penclawdd. I spent the first 21 years of my life there and with every year that passed, the urgency to leave grew more intense.

For me that urgency stemmed, in part, from the fact that I was gay and living in a fairly traditional, white, welsh, working class community in the 1970s. Swansea in the late 70s was not the most liberal of environments. It's a place that doesn't hold good memories for me; I always found it to be such a narrow minded, intolerant, unsympathetic and fearful place. I felt like the proverbial square peg.

My aspirations (sexual aspirations, career aspirations, indeed, my whole outlook) seemed beyond what Swansea was capable of giving me. My last few years there, as I battled my way through puberty and beyond, were like one long stifling gasp for breath until I eventually escaped in 1983. This is why I always feel a little apprehensive whenever I return.

However, prior to the onset of puberty, in that child's world of innocence and blissful ignorance, growing up where I did was like living in the Garden of Eden. I was surrounded by countryside, by nature, by safe places to play. For me the summer of 76 started in 1968; there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

When I got back from Swansea tonight, I had a look at Penclawdd on Google Earth and I could pick out the rivers where we used to go swimming, the trees where we made dens, the orchards where we nicked apples and the fields where we helped the farmer bale hay.

I can still hear the soundtrack...