Discrete about our sexuality in Sparkhill
2007
Gill and Betty live in Sparkhill, a predominantly Muslim area.
GILL :
“Initially we were living in two houses, for a time I moved into
Betty’s because her children were quite young and then when we decided
that the children really should fend for themselves and since they
weren’t moving out we moved in here together.”
G: “We haven’t
really experienced any problems with living in this road. This bit of
Sparkhill is predominantly Pakistani Muslim, but not entirely and we
have got people in this street from many different parts of the world.
The minuses are things like rubbish and noise. The pluses are very
friendly neighbours; people whose commitment is really to their
families and not necessarily to conspicuous consumption.”
Betty: “It’s
quite a safe neighbourhood. There’s people out on the streets day and
night for legitimate reasons. Partly because we have a lot of shift and
restaurant workers but partly because a number of families on the road
and in the area have more than one house within their extended family,
so people wandering up and down the road with casserole dishes and
children and video tapes is quite normal. So there are people out on
foot quite a lot as opposed to a lot of whiter areas of Birmingham
where people come out, get into their car and go away.”
G: “Round
here you couldn’t walk along the street without meeting people all the
time and people are generally very friendly and supportive. The fact
that we were then living between two houses was quite normal for this
street and there are shops open late.”
G: “In many ways we feel
comfortable here most of the time but we have to be discrete about our
sexuality. I don’t know which neighbours know and which don’t.”
B:
“Most of my women neighbours don’t speak much English. The invisibility
that older women have is an advantage and especially older women with
children and so there may be neighbours who are just assuming that it
is two divorced women. In fact I have had neighbours say things like
‘It is good for friends to live together, it is not good for women to
live on their own’.”
B: “Certainly some of the white neighbours
know, a rather bluff sort of man did comment ‘Your kids have turned out
rather well, surprising really’, but that may have also been about them
being adopted as older kids.”
G: “The chap who made that little
speech to me once about there being many different ways to live and not
being into judging was probably significant.”
Contributed by: Gill Coffin, 63, Betty Hagglund, 50