In Britain, Sir Elton John, George Michael and even the likeable Coronation Street character Sean benefit from the tolerant attitude towards homosexuality that has prevailed for several years. In France, no one bats an eyelid that the mayor of Paris and top male designers at the fashion shows are gay.
Back in the 1960s, though, the only political correctness was that men who fancied men were queers, bent, poofs (though I think the word we used then was actually puffs). It didn't matter that surveys occasionally estimated one British male in five to be homosexual or, indeed, that some of our Continental neighbours considered this statistic on the low side.
I shall call him Ernie, not his real name but borrowed from the only other man to make advances to me.
Christmas was a grand time to be a paper boy, the time that made all those early rises on bitterly cold County Durham mornings seem worthwhile. It was the season when people tipped the lad who delivered their Northern Echos or Daily Mirrors just as they tipped the milkman and postman.
The paper rounds from the newsagent's shop in Church Street (view of street courtesy of Ken at Shildon.net), paid reasonable money all year round, thirty bob a week - all of £1.50 - from memory, and there was more to be earned if you did Sundays too.
It was certainly enough to keep me in clandestine fags and essential trips to Roker Park every other Saturday.
The Christmas boxes were something else.
Forget the more dubious benefit of delivering papers - getting through entire northern winter without a cold - since this also robbed you of an excuse for staying off school. Seasonal tips were the true reward for your child labour. I would have been disappointed if, in the days before and just after Christmas, I didn't pocket £4 or £5 from the kindly folk to whose homes I delivered.
At different times, I had a daily round and a Sunday round. Ernie was on one of them. He lived by himself in one of the streets behind the King Willie pub, was probably then in his late 20s or early 30s and took, I think, the Sunday Sun.
Generally, you could rely on the best returns from the homes with the most gaily arranged Christmas decorations. Ernie was the exception; his house was drab and dour, but he was a rarity on my round as someone who would give the odd tip out of season, only a few pence but welcome all the same. Come December, he was more generous still.
I would have been 14 or 15 when it happened. It was the second Christmas running that I'd had a round that included Ernie's home on my long route to the Jubilee estate, and I knew it was worth dragging out the process of pushing paper through letterbox to make sure he was aware that I was there.
True to form, he came smartly to the door, planting half a crown or three shillings into my icy palm. And then he invited me in "to have a cuppa and warm yourself up". I was sexually far too immature to give a second thought to what may lie behind the invitation, and in I went.
What followed was technically an indecent assault on a minor. As I sat on his settee drinking his tea, he sat down beside me and put his hand on the outside of my trousers crotch while simultaneously guiding my hand to his. Not very pleasant, but also not the stuff, in all honesty, of post-traumatic stress. There was no need for years of counselling.
I was, however, out of his house in a flash (though I suppose I might perhaps have worded that description of my hasty exit with more care).
The good thing was that I still had his tip in my pocket. He demanded no refund as I fled. The bad thing was that he never gave me so much as a ha'penny again. I'd occasionally see him in the two or three years that followed, usually upstairs on the No 1 bus when he was travelling to or from evenings out in Darlington.
For no particularly good reason, even rows apart on the bus, I found it a little disconcerting to encounter him in the outside world. I need not have worried. Immaculately turned out, his hair greased down with Brylcreem, he did not so much look the other way as not look at all.
The real Ernie? A male nurse who let me stay at his flat one night when I'd missed the last bus home from the Britannia pub in Darlington a few years later. The only snag was that he had only one bed. And in the middle of the night, his hand wandered. I did not make my excuses and leave, but apologised profusely that I did not share his inclinations, edging as far away from him as possible as I spoke.
The incident was never mentioned again and we remained good pals until I left the North East. It didn't come close to turning me gay, but nor did it make me homophobic.
Dave Allen was a very funny comedian, but I could never share the sentiments of his joke that went something like: "When I first came to Britain, homosexuality was outlawed. Then they started turning a blind eye to it, and now it's legal. I'm leaving before they make it mandatory."
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