We Can See Your Charlie

What did you do in the war father?

Everyone’s too old for that question now.

I used to ask it a lot of my mother and grandparents and always received a robust reply

Last night I was asked by a patient 

How was your lockdown ?

I think she was referring to work and PPE and end of life care.

But a whole kaleidoscope  of memories came flooding back, most funny a few poignant.  

All I could think of were zooms with friends , and 80 ribald gay men each with their own window , of Lyndi’s Charlie and miming at Choir, of kind volunteers leaving shopping on the kitchen wall and of Winifred’s bravura death with her rubber chicken. 

Lockdown was a lonely , awful black time much of it during winter where all I would experience at night working was death and those linked to it, but outside this I’m recognising the humour that lifted many of us singletons through, when we’re we’re home, alone.

Choir continued every week , which is impossible on zoom as you can’t effectively sing together properly.but sing we did, and the tradition of sitting at the laptop looking into each other’s homes grew more and more important than the singing itself. Pets started to infiltrate the cameras with tenor Lydi enjoying our pantomime calls of “ We can see your Charlie!!!!!” When her old lurcher wandered into view. 

I still tear up everytime I hear I raise You Up , the song that we adopted as our LOCKDOWN anthem 

We sang it every week at the end of choir , and waved merrily at each other afterwards in order to keep the spirits up.

The Big Gay Quiz was on zoom every Friday evening, and at its height had well over a hundred queens from all over the world logging in to groan and bicker and chatter and laugh over a pub quiz that was run on military lines by an leather queer with control issues. 

This clip was from winter 2021

“ Face washed ( tick)

Hair brushed ( tick) 

Clean shirt checked for food stains ( check) - there was only one small splash of pot noodle..no one would notice ...tee hee

Background looking interesting behind me ( double check ) 

I was ready.

I squirted myself with a blast of Clinique Happy as a gay moral booster, as if it mattered”

Lockdown meant painting and cooking alongside my old friend Nia  in Sydney and clandestine meetings with Chic Eleanor in McDonald’s car park , where we sat, each in our own cars , chatting a distance chat over coffee

This morning I drove up to McDonald’s to meet Chic Eleanor in the carpark for coffee.

The weather was atrocious but she looked fresh faced and as smiley as ever

“ Darling John..it’s almost like a tryst “ she admitted almost guiltily, pulling a green cashmere scarf tighter around her neck. “ Chin chin “ 

We raised our coffee cups from our respective driver’s seats, our breaths steaming in the cold air

She reminds me of the actress Lee Remick.“ 

Velvet Voiced Linda galvanised the village volunteer group and things never felt as bad or as lonely in the Village after that 

My family zoomed and Sheffield folk I “saw” every week but I do recall one moment that hurt more than anything else and which reminded me I was, very much alone 

When Winnie died, chomping on a rubber chicken with all of the gusto of a Viking chewing a ham, I left her valiant body with Albert and said chicken for an age. She had collapsed behind the kitchen door and I couldn’t get though so had to go around the cottage to move her. 

That is, at ten pm that night

I couldn’t move her

She was just too big, too dead a weight for me to carry

So I knocked on next door and asked Sailor John if he could help

Lockdown meant he shouldn’t come into contact with me, 

But it was something I couldn’t do alone and looking at my red blotchy face and snotty nose he smiled kindly and nodded……

that he would………

My darling Winnie , the Queen of Tonga