How it started
2004
Trevor talks about the Mature Gay Men's Group. “We had friends in Bearwood and we used to go to town a lot but really there was nothing for us, most of the gay crowd from my day had stopped coming into town, it was all kids, all loud music, we used to chat, ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to start a group for mature gay men?’ and we used to say we should do that, for four years and didn’t do anything about it. So one day someone said ‘We’re going to start’. It was nearly Xmas time – we put an ad in the paper, and got to know somebody who had a friend who owned Fonteyns, a bar in Thorp Street opposite the Stage Door of the Hippodrome, and they would give the upstairs room free if you had a group. It started in December three years ago (2004) and got about 8 people, and we carried on, it started to swell then it went down a bit, but one time we went and he’d double booked so we were squashed into the bar so we said ‘Sod this’ and went down to the Wellington and said ‘Can we come here?’ and from there it’s took off, we’ve got 60 odd members and it’s absolutely lovely, they all know one another, they’re all friendly, they’re not all my age, there are people in their forties come who are fed up with the gay scene and want something different.
We decided to have a membership fee of £6 a year which keeps us going, and we have a raffle, go out to the theatre, been to Benidorm for a week’s holiday and Palma; Torquay, Bournemouth, we’ve had a lovely time. We went to the Fox and Andy (King) gave us the pub and gave us a BBQ in the afternoon, it was lovely, he made us most welcome, we left about 7.00. So things like that, we are trying to do for the more mature gay, who has a lonely life and sits at home on his own. We do reach out, we advertise in the Zone (Midlands Zone) – you have to go to the gay bars to pick up the Zone but there’s no other way of doing it is there. Word of mouth and I do get a lot of phone calls asking for information, we’re now having some leaflets printed that explains us and we’ll give those out and put them in the pubs. …… We’ve got a website.”
Contributed by: Trevor Hall, 76