I fell in love with Birmingham
1979
Bill came out in 1979 having been previously married with a family. “I discovered what they called in those days ‘latent homosexuality’. After an amicable divorce I went in search of another life. I met my partner of the past 25 years, David Jilkes, who lived in Birmingham, so I moved down from Glasgow in 1980. I first came to England in 1969 (from Scotland) when married, and fell in love with Birmingham, so came back second time round as a different guy. David was an only child, and his parents knew he was gay, so we very classically had their spare room until we bought our first house, they kindly helped us decorate at the weekend and we ended up picking them up every weekend for fifteen years. Eventually they stayed with us for the last ten years of their life until they both died, in our granny flat. So David as a partner was a ‘package deal’.”
Contributed by: Bill Gavan, 56