It was whilst Terry and me were disconsolate and going through a bad time with each other that I met Mike McKenzie. He was in the Criterion Bar in Portsmouth one warm sunny afternoon and we left there and walked down to the adjoining coastal town of Southsea together. We just wanted to leave the gay people behind and get to know each other better.

Mike, a Yorkshire lad, was a year older than myself, about the same height and build though he was slimmer than I. He was wrangling in his mind with his sexuality and feeling very much confused and stigmatised as many gay men were in those days. He believed he was homosexual but was finding it difficult to accept this. He had not had a physical relationship with anyone yet and he was longing to find out how he would cope with this. He seemed to me to be excited at the prospect of yet daunted by the possibility that it would reaffirm in his own mind that he was different to the majority of the male population.

Unfortunately I have no photographs of Mike from that period. This shot was takenin my garden in London, 14 years later in 1977. Continued