I am intentionally launching this blog on the eve of World AIDS Day 2025, when the WHO website states:

“On 1 December WHO joins partners and communities to commemorate World AIDS Day 2025, under the theme ‘Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response’, calling for sustained political leadership, international cooperation, and human-rights-centred approaches to end AIDS by 2030″.

Fat chance for any of that, given that #Felon47, aka Donald Trump, has de-funded AIDS research, prevention, treatment and care – with world wide impact – and also stopped US government officials and recipients from officially commemorating World AIDS Day. Damn that felon, I say!

Anyway, back to June 2025. As I walked out from the UK AIDS Quilt memorial exhibition, hosted at the Tate Modern, I was thinking back to people I knew living with HIV in the 1980s and 90s. One name came to mind immediately, even though I hadn’t thought about him, or heard of him, in decades, was Dietmar Bolle. I sat down outside the Tate, and I Googled his name. I found that he had collaborated on a book, Wise Before Their Time, telling the real-life stories of people living with HIV in those early 80s and 90s. I bought the book on line, there and then, and read it from cover to cover, over 3 days of its arrival.

Wise before their time & the ENB 934

Dietmar had taught on my ENB 934 course, the specific post registration learning for nurses and midwives in the late 1980s and beyond, on ‘the care and management of people living with HIV and AIDS‘. ‘ENB’ stood for the English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting, and the course was #934. My very first teaching post was as a lecturer practitioner in HIV and AIDS, at the Middlesex Hospital.  It was a two-year fixed term contract that I left a little bit early, for an upwards move at St Thomas’ Hospital as HIV Clinical Training Officer. I held the lecturer practitioner post from April 1990 until about September 1991. During that time, I was based at John Astor House, the post-registration department of the Bloomsbury College of Nurse Education, later renamed the Bloomsbury and Islington College of Nursing and Midwifery.

Dietmar taught on the first couple of HIV courses that I ran; providing ground-breaking education, to the end. Sadly, Dietmar died in January 1991. Dietmar’s contribution to the world of nursing and, most especially, to empowering people living with HIV, was second to none. He was one of those early pioneering AIDS activists, the likes of whom changed the medico-scientific and patient landscape irrevocably, for the better!

Rest in peace, dear Dietmar, and shine in the glory of what you achieved back then, for people living these thirty-plus years later.

Another person who taught for me on those early courses, obviously in the times before current day successes in HIV treatments, was a mental health Clinical Nurse Specialist called Nick. Like Dietmar, he was an ardent AIDS champion and advocate. Nick led the way in mental health nursing, especially challenging multiple stigmas and breaking down barriers in care. He was passionate about improving the knowledge-base and clinical ‘up-skilling’ of mental health nurses, who were – back then – expected to take over the brunt of HIV client care. It was generally anticipated that most, if not all AIDS patients, would have organic, as well as psychological, challenges during their HIV illness careers.  There were fears of an impending deluge of people with brain problems, including KS (Kaposi’s Sarcoma), CMV (cytomegalovirus), toxoplasmosis and – usually critical at the very end stage of life – Progressive Multi-focal Leukoencephalopathy (PML). I cared for a number of people at end of life, with PML. Fortunately, HIV didn’t end up going down that anticipated, and feared, route.

Nick was also a champion for mental health service users who had the intersecting stigmas for being injecting drug users and wider substance users, especially coupled with commercial sex work.  Nick was of the generation, like the clinic just around the corner to the College, in shifting the discourses for people who inject drugs, from a medical “abstinence-only” model, to one of “harm minimisation”.  This was ground-breaking at the time, and so controversial; it was equally multi-professionally and legally transgressive!

Adonis champions mental health

Nick used to come into class looking like a body-beautiful Adonis, replete with skin tight jeans and a bulge difficult to take one’s eyes off! The female nurses on my courses were not the only ones to swoon, and maybe blush, of course. Nick and I would laugh once we saw the penny drop! Nick didn’t bat for their side! Haha! Equally, most of these nurses were so new to HIV studies, that few, if any, would catch on that the “birthmark” on the side of Nick’s nose was actually Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), his first AIDS defining illness, and, sadly for him and us, the beginning of his health in decline.

I walked up and down each and every aisle, and read every last quilt. I read not just the names, but the personal stories, too. Neither Dietmar nor Nick’s names were on the quilts which I spent hours poring over, on that day. It would have been so fitting and moving for me had they been. I spotted a few famous names, such as Denholm Elliott and Freddie Mercury. As I walked down one of the aisles, a young woman was comforting an older one, as they stood next to a quilt of a baby who died a few months after birth. The older woman was sobbing, and clearly would have been of child-bearing age when this baby died.

Here’s a brief video of my visit

Then, to my surprise and joy, I recognised one of the volunteers at the exhibition.  Andy and I had never met in person before, but we have chatted on and off, over a number of years, on Twitter (before it became the negative platform, X).

There were a number of quilts from the mid-1980s, then most of the others, it appeared, from the early 90s, when my clinical engagement in HIV client care was declining for my educational and academic roles.

My timeline in direct HIV client care

• 1991-93 HIV clinical training officer, St Thomas Hospital, London
• 1993 January – March, locum HIV lecturer, The Nightingale School of Nursing, Guy’s Hospital
• 1993-98 Senior Lecturer in HIV Counselling, at the famous North West Thames Regional Health Authority AIDS Education Unit (NWTRHA), Riverside College of Health Studies, Charring Cross Hospital, which then transitioned into the then named Thames Valley University
• 1997 completed an MPhil by research, at the University of Wales College of Cardiff (Now Cardiff University) on The psychic shadows of HIV and AIDS, and the role of social representations in post registration nurse education
• 1998 – 2008 Freelance Consultant in Sexual Health Education, including numerous HIV teaching programmes, in the UK and a few in Germany, and some major contracts with the Royal College of Nursing.

It was through my 15 years of freelance work that I was honoured to co-author the 2001 RCN Sexual Health Strategy – guidance for nursing staff, then to manage, develop and run the RCN Sexual Health Skills course, still the biggest distance learning course the RCN has ever had, to date.  The course had academic credits granted by the University of Greenwich, hence my gradual transition into Greenwich as a full-time member of staff. Over the decades, to focus on HIV in nursing education shifted; it broadened out into wider elements of sexual and reproductive health, too.

NHIVNA Patrons

As an aside, the NWTRHA AIDS Education Unit, at Charing Cross Hospital, had been founded by the inspirational and late Professor Robert Pratt, CBE, FRCN.

Robert was the first nurse teacher to set up an AIDS course, which then officially became the first designated ENB934. He was also a co-founder, with Carol Pellowe and others, and first Patron of the National HIV Nurses Association (NHIVNA), still today, the UK’s largest organisation for nurses in HIV client care. In 2025, NHIVNA kindly offered me the role of one of its current serving patrons, a role which I willingly accepted.

The image shows Robert, Carol Pellowe and myself, at the British Council “AIDS Education Course” at the Arabian Gulf University, Bahrain, 1995.

Remembering those not on the quilts

Some other stories I’d like to share, here, are for some particular people who didn’t have a quilt, well, not one that was visible that day, at that exhibition.  I am hoping that the reason there was no quilt for them is because they are still alive.

My thoughts go back to when I was going through some psychologically traumatising times, as a young priest, in two of the three parishes I served in. I would visit my mother most Mondays, that being my one day off each week. Frequently I would go shopping for her in Cardiff city centre. She loved the spicy foods I would buy for her in the famous Wally’s Delicatessen; a real treat for her.

After shopping around the city centre, I would pop into the King’s Cross pub for a drink. Across a number of decades, the King’s Cross was one of the two main gay bars in Cardiff. On some of those Mondays, I would recall seeing a young man, around my age, drinking there. When I – infrequently, it must be said – went into the gay bars, I would love being by myself and just reading the numerous “gaypers” (gay papers). It was always a good time for some people (men!) watching, too. This man and I gradually got to chat, and eventually we would informally plan to meet up at the Kings Cross, on a few Mondays thereafter. I was never dressed as a priest on my days off, and I felt no need to tell him what I did, just as he told me no personal details about himself, either. Don’t Ask! Don’t Tell!

The story I am recounting here is very similar to those told in the moving book, Wise before their time, by Ann Richardson and Dietmar Bolle (1992 / reprinted 2017). Ann and Dietmar tell of so many fears that people had, especially facing hostility from the unsympathetic masses, or of the media hypocrites, who would dig out any HIV ‘stories’ that they could salaciously peddle, just to sell more papers (and destroy innocent people’s lives). In fact, in relation to fears about being out / outed about anything considered stigmatised or stigmatising, back then, some years later I wrote a book chapter on the “concealability and course of sexualities“.  The edited book was called Stigma and social exclusion in health care (edited by Tom Mason, et al., 2001). The concept of concealability – or hiddenness – and its course, or outcomes, clearly played a role in my story of meeting this man in the gay bar.

Sometime around chatting to that guy in the King’s Cross, I was asked by a social work academic, involved in HIV service provision, to visit a Catholic woman and her little child, in the neighbouring parish to where I was serving. The woman was nervous for her own parish clergy to visit, just in case it set tongues wagging. Sadly, such was the fear of being outed about HIV (or AIDS, as many people called it), back in those days! 

This woman and her daughter lived in a house supported by the local social service department. The house was converted into flats, but with shared kitchen and communal sitting room. I was one of those trendy priests who wore his clerical shirt open at the collar, with a little bit of the white plastic Roman collar pushed through on the side, with just enough showing. Working with this woman and her child were such happy days for me, building a relationship with these two wonderful people. Over a decade later I bumped into her, when I provided some HIV training for an organisation in London. She looked so amazingly well.

I went to visit her one Monday (my day off, remember, as the parish priest I was with at the time was a psychopathological control freak, and I just couldn’t get out to visit her any other time of the week). Sadly, he was the second freak I lived with. The first parish priest I lived with would / should probably be classified with narcissistic personality disorder, but I didn’t know that at the time.  Sadly, from what I’ve heard since, his seven years at Her Late Majesty’s pleasure didn’t sort that out!

Anyway … back to the story. One Monday, I went to visit the woman and her child.  I rang the bell and the door opened, guess who was standing there opening it to me? Yes! The young man I’d been chatting with on numerous occasions in the King’s Cross pub. We both laughed so loud, at our serendipitous ‘coming out’ to each other, not as gay – we obviously knew that of each other – but him living with HIV and me living as a Catholic priest!

Some of my other related pages

My Professorial inaugural lecture Still speaking of sex; Still challenging the limits of language; World AIDS Day 2021 (three years after my appointment to a Personal Chair!)

Trilogy of a beautiful Princess, my experiences of World AIDS Day 1989

TV Interview: Princess Diana and HIV – spotted by documentary film makers, from these WordPress pages

Compassion in nursing care: we are nothing without it – the 6 Cs of nursing, and HIV patient care

Hoc est corpus … hic est sanguinis – Cosmo was a patient on the same (HIV) ward

About me – Thank you for visiting this site. About me has links across my various WordPress sites