On talking to Paul on the phone, yesterday, aka my boyfriend when we were both 17, we shared some stories about a young man we both knew.  I think he was slightly older than us at the time, and he re-named himself “Nap”, short for Naparolla (Some Polari-speak lingo, not doubt).  From what I recall, Nap’s change of name was in relation to being unwelcome to be himself, by his original family of birth.  As the saying goes, Nap was “as camp as a row of pink tents”, an absolute screaming – (literally) – “Nellie”!  He minced, not walked; held court, not talked, and clasped a fag – a cigarette, dear American friends – in the scorner of his lips, whilst wearing blow-in-the-wind chiffon scarves.  I guess he was schooled by Quentin Crip; get the picture?

In those days (mid ‘70s) there were very few gay venues in Cardiff.  Those that did exist were rather clandestine, and clientele would often be in fear of being seen going in or out.  Not Nap!  With the bow of the chiffon on the side of his neck, he would flounce around the streets of Cardiff city centre, not giving a damn as to what people said, thought or did in his regard.  A group of us would sometimes meet up with him for ‘posh’ tea at Circles Café, on the top floor of famous James Howell’s Store (a safe rendezvous place for people like us).

There was one little bar at the top of Westgate Street, near the Angel Hotel.  I remember having to go down a few steps to get in to the place, which was surely not much bigger than the size of ya granny’s front room!  The manager encouraged the punters to write messages, in felt-tip pen, all across the walls.

The then Anglican Bishop of Llandaff was the Rt Rev’d. Eryl Stephen Thomas; check him out in Wikipedia.  “Stephen” was married with a number of grown up children.  Opposite Llandaff Cathedral – the only cathedral in Wales not to succumb to the iconoclasm of that fanatic extremist, the Regicidal maniac Oliver Cromwell [spit! spit!] – was a huge field.  Llandaff Fields stretched from near the cathedral right down to the top of Cathedral Road, near the city centre.  At the bottom end of Llandaff Fields, furthest from the cathedral, was a little public convenience, renowned in those days as a courting venue (!) for many-a-man.  This was a notorious, or maybe I should say ‘infamous’, cottage.

The Ysgob (Bishop, in Welsh) was known to frequent the “ty bach” (Welsh for ‘the little house’, i.e. toilet), and not to preach the Gospel, either.  Bedecked in his Roman purple stock and collar, he would stand there. Apparently, the police – aka “Hilda Handcuffs” or “Lily Law”, as we used to call them back then – had warned him about his behaviour on a number of occasions. Things got too bad, however, and he was arrested.  Needless to say, the vitriol of the hypocritical gutter press had a field-day tearing the poor man apart: a prelate, no less!  What a scalp.  His mental health and well-being took a complete and utter nose-dive. His wife, according to Wiki, always stuck by him, and he did return to the active ministry some time later in his life.

Back to the gay bar near the Angel.  Around the time of the Bishop’s arrest, a few of us were in the bar one night, and lots of people were having fun writing on the walls.  Then, someone wrote:

Many guffawed with laughter, but I was going through one of my rather pious phases (again!) and I remember storming out, in disgust, and slamming the door hard behind me.  (No doubt someone hissed “prissy queen!”)  I don’t remember if it was on that occasion, or another, when Nap and I walked out of the bar, him adorned in chiffon scarf and fag in the corner of his gob, and he minced down Westgate Street.  There was this gang of hunky-looking thugs across the road, and they stared at us and started hurling verbal abuse at us both.  We passed them bye, then Nap just glared back at them over his shoulder, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and screeched:

“Don’t you look at me like that … YOUR brother might be one!”

“Run for your ****ing life, I yelled!”  They didn’t chase us, as far as I remember; in fact, what I do remember – momentarily – was the smile on their smug, tormenting, faces being wiped right off as they just wondered … !

I’m still here to tell the tale, to remember Naparolla, but Paul told me yesterday that Nap died in his early 20s, during the first part of the 1980s.  Yes, HIV, that damned infection that blighted millions and wiped out generations of friends and loved ones.  RIP Nap; I remember you as a person of courage and great fun to be with.

07 May 2018