"The pain in my hands and feet were tolerable last night and enabled me to get four or five hours sleep.
Before going to bed I watched the television and was pleasantly surprised to have thoroughly enjoyed the conclusion of 'Man in an Orange Shirt.' This BBC2 drama was part of the BBC'S substantial 'Gay Britannia Season' commemorating the 50th anniversary of homosexuality being decriminalised in Britain. It was written by the novelist, Patrick Gale and is loosely based on the discovery he made about his own parents' relationship. His father was 'Gay' and because one risked imprisonment and the disapproval of society during the 1940's for one man to express love towards another, many gays married to provide a respectable face. This gently wrenching story of the secret romance between soldiers Michael and Thomas, and the increasingly frayed marriage of Michael and his wife Flora revealed both the harsh cruelty of the times and the dilemma a wife feels when she discovers that her husband is not the man she thought him to be.
I must admit that having been brought up in a Roman Catholic household and having always been led to believe that it is wrong for man to lie with man, watching men kiss and be intimately physical with each other has varied throughout the years from feelings of 'disgust' through to emotions of gradual and begrudging 'tolerance', finally accepting the fact of what is and arriving at a greater understanding of my fellow man.
What I can easily accept now which I couldn't previously have entertained, is that a man can truly love another man in as emotional and physical a way as heterosexuals can love, and that to deny that fact is not to acknowledge what is. I can also say that I understand these relationships much better now and do not view their existence as representing anything ugly or unnatural in the men or women who share them.
In many ways, one's age is as great a discriminatory factor in one's judgement as is one's values and that is why the youth of today find it much easier and more natural to accept ways and changing times in a manner that no old man like me, ever could!" William Forde: August 8th, 2017.