00:02 Kate Genever: This is Kate Genever recording Mindy in her house in South Manchester, it’s February the 13th, uh, 2026, and we are recording for the Scene But Not Heard project. So Mindy, would you start from the beginning, [Mindy chuckles] wherever you want that to begin [Mindy laughs], I’m gonna just put that there.

00:27 Mindy Meleyal: Oh, right, so yes, the beginning. In the beginning, I was a women’s lib-er, when that was the word for it.

00:36 KG: Always?

00:37 MM: Yeah.

00:38 KG: Yeah. 

00:38 MM: From the 1970s, um, and what happened was Hull City Council ran into financial difficulty, and cut all their night classes, and this was at a point where when I was trying to get pregnant, I was coping with the pain of my life by going to adult ed night classes, and then there weren’t any, and that summer I was helping out at Spring Street Theatre in the children’s summer things, because Brian Toza, as the potter, and Sally Toza, his wife, she did the women’s things, so I was there, and I met Heather, who was apprentice potter with Brian Toza, and she went to Hull Women’s Centre, and they had a theatre group called the Shameless Hussies, so come that September, there’s no adult ed to go to, and I am trying to cope with my own mental health, um, so I went on to the Women’s Centre. Sorry.

01:45 KG: Which was where?

01:46 MM: Down Middleton Street, then. It was a delightful condemned building, where the women in the street used to throw mud at the doors, and we had to have broken glass on the wall round the back because people would climb in, and I sat there, and I had this sense of, well here we are then [she laughs]. Just that, um, and after the meeting, we went to the Polar Bear, and I’m stood there talking to people, now I’m four foot eleven, so, and I was used to being pretty much in a man’s world where I had to stand and look up to talk to people, instead, I’m stood looking people straight in the eye and thinking, “I kinda like this.”

02:30 KG: Women, this is? 

02:31 MM: Yeah, yeah, other people who were my height, [she laughs] um, that was … So that would’ve been the September, um, and could be about a couple of years later, this was, uh, that was mid-’70s, my husband and I went to Morocco on holiday, and you know how on these group holiday, you get kind of paired up with people? We got paired up with  a couple from London, two women, and one of them, Doreen Murphy, played football for Chelsea Ladies [she laughs], and the other one, whose name I’ve forgotten, shame on me, but anyway, we got on with them, and they were kind of asking me about the Women’s Centre. Now, I didn’t clock that they were lesbians, so when they’re asking questions about it,  ’cause they, one, I forget which one said, “oh, do any lesbians go to this Women’s Centre?” and I said, “why shouldn’t they?” [she laughs] full of defence, you know? Eventually, um, she hit on me [she laughs], and, uh, in the spirit of those times, I mean, I look back now, this is not one of my proudest moments, I just said to Mark, “I’m gonna go for a walk on the beach with her,” and, uh, she kissed me, and didn’t go any further than that, and it was like, nah, so I went back to our little grass roofed hut it was one of these ‘camp Africa’ holidays, they were lovely,  and I went back to the hut, and he said, “well?” and I shook me head, and he said, “you just don’t fancy her,” [she laughs] so that was then, so probably about a year later before I came out. I mean, we’d been having fertility treatments and it was going nowhere, and then there came the point where Mark said, “what is the point of us trying to have kids when our relationship is in this state?” and one of the most ignominious points of my life, I contemplated trying to stay married long enough to get pregnant, and that was a real shit thing, that would’ve been shit had it worked. Anyway, the summer of … That was thirty, so it’d be 1981, that was when I walked out of the house, I went and told Jo Breen, who went home and told her, came out to her husband, it was like a domino rally, um, Jo and Carol and I ended up in a house together on Victoria Avenue, and then by that point, I’d met Lel, I was going out with Saffron, we’d met Alphie, ’cause we were doing an anti-NATO demo in, on Victoria’s toilets in Hull, um, that’s how we met Alphie, and things in the house that I was living in, it was just fractious, it just didn’t, you know, we were not enjoying each other’s company, so I decided I was gonna move out and live with Lel and Alph and Saf, and we saw Boulevard, and as you know, I went … If I’m keen on something, I’m quite determined, we looked around, the estate gave us the keys, it had been empty a year, the architecture student who had lived in it had just gone and left – this desk that we’re sat around now was in my attic bedroom in that house [she chuckles]. Anyway, we looked round the house, and I just said, “we’re having it,” it was £12,000. Before we took the keys back to the estate agent, we got keys cut, I was that determined, and I think there was something iffy going on between the estate agent and someone that was gonna buy it, because they were not communicating with the family, we couldn’t find out who actually owned it, so we went back in, and we collected the things like credit card statements, stuff that the guys who’d lived there had just left, and from them, with the phone books, we worked out, you know, “is this your child? Can we talk to them? We’re trying to buy that house, are you interested?” we did the legal work on the house ourselves, and then we moved in and did things like replacing floors, ceilings, fireplaces, the lot, so that was that, but in that point, um, as I was leaving the house in Victoria Avenue and moving into Boulevard, it was that summer that I found out I’d got cervical cancer, so that was the kind of you think you’re gonna get pregnant, forget it, and that was really tough, um, the night before I went in hospital for my operation, Lel and I slept in Boulevard in a, in what was effectively a semi-derelict house, but that was where I wanted to be, um, so that was that, really. That first winter there, I really struggled, you know, depression, I mean, I’m not the kind of person that’s prone to suicidal thinking, but I actually lay in bed writing lists, pros and cons of killing myself, knowing all the while that most people’d dismiss this thoughts of hand, um, so had some therapy, had some pills, we had a life … What happened that went wrong with Boulevard [she sighs] was actually about sex, surprisingly, house full of lesbians, the sex gets in the way, how does that ever become a thing. We met Denny, all of us met Denny, and it was Denny’s birthday, and I slept with her, and I remember Lel saying, “it’s not fair, I saw her first,” [she laughs] well, if I had been any wiser, I’d’ve gone after you, because that woman was a nightmare, and I’m sat here now and this is like a long time ago we’re talking about, and I can feel the churn in my stomach. Um, we were naïve, I mean, at the point when she told me how she’d seen her army records that described her as a psychopath, I thought, “oh, what a mean thing to say,” um, she told me that her previous girlfriend had got up in the middle of the night, got dressed, got out the house, put the keys back through the letterbox, and disappeared, and I didn’t stop to think, “why would a person do that?” after a while, I kinda got the hang of why that would happen, but that is my part of what went wrong there. Yeah. So that … And I’ve never said that out loud before, so that’s kind of a thing.

09:45 KG: Talk to me perhaps about, can you tell me some more about the, this, well, the sex within a lesbian community at that time, ’cause there, it was a, it’s … yeah. Talk about that kind of-

10:03 MM: [she laughs] Nonmonogamy. Nonmonogamy and neuroses go hand in hand, as was written on the graffiti wall in the, in Victoria Avenue before we decorated, and the other one said, ‘monogamy leaves a lot to be desired.’ [she laughs] But at that point, in the early ’80s, there was a lot of stuff about dismantling the family, the married state penitentiary, who wants to live in a … Yeah, marriage is a great institution, who wants to live in an institution? That kind of thinking, and I’m just trying to see if I’ve got my drawing, uh, from that, I might still have one of the, um, drawings from, I mean, I had, we had it on the wall, uh, a woman’s face looking out through prison bars of the married state penitentiary. Oh, this is some of my stuff from the Hull Women’s Collective Newsletter, some of my cartoons. It’s all just drafts of the same one, ’cause of course, in those days, you didn’t do it on a computer. [she laughs]

11:03 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative), so the politics of, or the feminism of that time was-

11:08 MM: Was about-

11:10 KG: Not … yeah.

11:10 MM: It was dismantling … Well, look, in retrospect, it was kind of, I suppose Marxism was part of it, that some of the kind of, God, what was her name, Schulman, some of the kind of academic dykes that were in the other house in Albany Street were, in retrospect, they were trade unionists, they were academics, and I think that a lot of the kind of political discourse came from there. The other thing was, of course, we’re watching what’s happening in America, and it would go from America to Leeds, and Leeds lesbians were scary, [she laughs] and it was kind of like, you heard what was happening in Leeds, and then it was kind of coming our way, like separatism.

11:55 KG: Do you want to say more about that?

11:56 MM: Well, separatism, um, it’s a case of it’s women only, and that was [she sighs] we were never that tight on that one, actually, we said we were, we said that it was a women only household,. and of course, we told the gas board they couldn’t send a man to read our meter, but we were fixing the meters [she laughs]. So that was that, you know, but the idea, at that point, if you look back at mainstream culture from the 1970s, you would see why, in the 1980s, we had such bloody sharp elbows, because it was necessary to make a space that was defined by us, it was, you know, feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice, why are you sleeping with the enemy? That’s how it was, that was the underlying thing, the fact that in our house, we had male friends, and actually, I’m still in touch with the guy that would’ve been my sperm donor if I hadn’t had a hysterectomy. He got back in touch during COVID, he lives up in Scotland now, um, but yeah, separatism, and that … There was a … One of the posters we had on the turn of the stairs in Boulevard was this massive one with the big hands doing the vagina sign, and it was from Robin Morgan, saying that one of the things that the women’s movement had given her was not being afraid of being wrong, and I remember looking at it and thinking, that is actually not the case, because there’s a lot of ways of being wrong, a lot of ways of kind of oh, you know, I’m, I remember getting picked up for saying gay men and lesbian women . I’d get picked up for adding the word ‘women’ after the word lesbian, because lesbian’s it, um, and all the debate about being born or chosen, now, I believe that the vast majority of people, in a world where gender politics are not as they are, the vast majority of people would take it on a case by case basis, the vast majority, but the fact that in our world, it is a political stance to be a lesbian, as well as being an emotional choice, a sexual choice, all of that, um, you know, that I think that if the world was different, the barriers would, you know, that would just fall away, people’d go, I dunno, you know, next! [she laughs] um, but the thing about being a real lesbian or not a real lesbian, I’ve fallen foul of that one, because I had been heterosexually married, and that is, actually, where Denny comes in. That’s her.

15:14 KG: Tell me why. Why does…?

15:16 MM: Because one of the … Being in that relationship was a bit like hare-coursing as it is experienced by the hares. I knew that, like, the great crime that I’d committed was that I’d ever been heterosexual, um, and what I, you know, what I’ve realised since is like, never apologise to the person now for what you did before you met them, never, because it was none of their damn business, but I had to feel shame and apology. Now, she talked about wanting to have a sex change, and I truly believe, what I knew for certain at the time was if I’d’ve ever said, “yeah, go on then,” she’d’ve gone, “I knew it, you were straight all along,” so I was stuck with, “no, but I love you as you are,” that is the kind of dilemma, um, God, I thought about running away from her, but she had been, when she was in the army, she had been in contention for the Mexico Olympics as a sprinter, like, you’re thinking about running away? [she laughs]

16:44 KG: So this person brought up lots of issues, politics, reflections on your marriage? Like-

16:54 MM: Yep, and then-

16:54 KG: -you were divorced by then?

16:55 MM: Oh, God, yes, yeah. Yeah, so I painted my, I pasted my decree absolute on the wall at Boulevard, and then when Linda and I got civilised, had to send off for a duplicate, but it just shows how things have changed, that when I pasted that on the wall, it, there was no question then that there might be a possibility for a legal, formal relationship for two women, but I had to bear the shame of having been heterosexual, and I think what, I think for a lot of butch women then who felt like they had no choice, and I’m not saying this just about Denny, but in general, they had no choice, is looking at the privilege that women had that could actually jump the other bus, so to speak, and I kind of get it about the kind of lack of safety of that, of being this person that has no choice, when you watch somebody else with a choice, you know, like, you could just walk away from this, I can’t, which is part of what I wrote the play about, was about that difference, um, I have heard rumours since that Denny has transitioned, I’ve no idea if that’s true or not, but I do know that her background was horrendous, she’s one of the few, very few Black families in Hull, and this is what, like, 18:33 through all I work with trans people, this is, this conversation now is the first time I’ve ever connected my abuse survival, her race, and her trans stuff. It’s, that is the bit that’s been locked, is locked away in this, because somebody could wrongly use her race or the transness in relation to the violence, um, I reckon that I would forgive her when the last bruise faded, which was only about five years ago, this is from the ’80s, thumbprint bruise on my arm just there, um, I’ve no idea where she is, no idea, um, she was a scarily attractive woman, do you know, I’m sat here now, my stomach is shaking from talking about this, this is a, not an area of my life that I have talked about for a long, long time. I’ve told people I’d been in an abusive relationship, but I’ve never said who the person was, I’ve said it was a woman, because it’s very easy to say it’s just men, and I have to say the only person in my life that’s ever physically hurt me was another woman, um, so, I’ve … In a sense, I’ve kind of protected her identity, I think.

20:21 KG: And lesbianism.

20:21 MM: And I think … Well, yeah, yeah. You see, this is the thing, when you, you know, if you were in a stigmatised minority of any kind, you don’t air your dirty linen in public, because people go, “oh, it’s ’cause it’s yours, that is,” um, so yes, that’s-

20:41 KG: And also, I guess, how her … This is … It’s brought to the end a very incredibly important time.

20:50 MM: Yes.
20:52 KG: You know, tell me some more about Boulevard and the women that were there.

20:56 MM: Oh, God, oh, it,  every, oh [she laughs]. Things like finding that somebody’s borrowed your vibrator and flattened the batteries and put it back and not told you, mention no names, but Alphie, that was you [she laughs]. Um, did Lel tell you about the self examination night?

21:15 KG: But tell me.

21:16 MM: Yeah, fine. After I came back from the States the first time, I brought back a speculum, ’cause we’d been reading about self examinations, so Saturday night, in our living room, bike lamps and mirrors and cushions, Sandy had to go to the pub first ’cause she was scared [she laughs], but between us there was such differences, because by that time I’d had a hysterectomy, Lel had had a pregnancy with Cesarian, Alphie and Sandy and Janine none of those, but, you know, laying on your back with your knees in the air with your best friends hung on your knees pointing at your bits with a speculum and a bike lamp is a rare experience, not many people have done that, as far as I can gather [she laughs]. What else did we do?

22:08 KG: Who did you welcome in? Maybe…

22:11 MM: Everybody.

22:11 KG: ‘Cause, are you from that area? Were you, where did you-

22:15 MM: No, I was … When I was … I was, when … We moved to Anlaby Common when I was two and a half, me parents had been in the displaced persons’ camp on Priory Road, because they’d been given a deposit for a house, then me mum got pregnant, and they couldn’t keep up the mortgage payments, and the house got repossessed, so then the DP camp and got us council housing on Anlaby Common. When I was nine, me dad went into business on Beverley Road in the garage next to the Haworth Arms, and then we moved, from there we rented a farmhouse near Leconfield for a year, then we moved into the Avenues, so I was brought up, from being thirteen I was living in the Avenues. When I was married I lived in Salisbury Street, just near Jack Kay’s shop, um, so I guess the Avenues is my kind of, the most of my childhood. My parents were working class, me dad was a panel beater, me mum was a hairdresser, but they went into business, so we went from council house very quickly to Park Avenue, house that cost 2,700 quid. Just what is that, monthly rent now? [she laughs] Um, so the shift in class position happened in my childhood. I was the first person in my family to go into tertiary education, um, my … I’ve done my DNA stuff, and my family, my DNA is all English, Scottish, with about like two per cent Scandinavian or something, but we always thought there was something that me dad was …  family was 24:03 … me dad was illegitimate, and his dad’s name was Simonite, so we always assumed he was Jewish, you know? A gentleman’s clothier called Simonite, what is that gonna be? And because me dad had, and you’ll see from photographs on the stairs, was dark, he was seen, like when my mum began going out with my dad, she bumped into her boss in town, and her boss said, “Nancy, I didn’t think you’d go out with a half-caste,” so always, I’d had that attitude that, well, clearly somebody was stupid, because that was my dad, whatever it is that he is is fine, so I think that issues around race and class I was kind of a bit, didn’t get them, I didn’t buy into them. My mum’s family, me mum’s dad, was a real, he was a chauffeur to one of the big, um, trawler owners, and he was a real forelock tugging kind of guy, he didn’t  like my dad because my dad was an artist and didn’t wear a tie but did wear collared shirts, 1940, isn’t this, you know? So the sense of my family’s being what was disapproved of, of being the kind of we can see clearer than the people that judge us, I think there’s a really nice message to get, and I mean, I’m in that fortunate position that my parents absolutely adored each other, they both of them thought the other was the best bargain you could get, and I know from working with people all my life that that is a kind of security that if what you have is, as when I worked for Women’s Aid, little boy was saying, “it’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not my fault me dad’s a dickhead,” that’s different, that’s a very different base state of being, so all of that and then my parents were keen on folk music, so we were in a quite alternative, radical kind of space, um, and of course I left all that behind when I found lesbianism, because I’ve been to a whole different world [she laughs]. Um…

26:25 KG: Was it that different?

26:27 MM: Um, probably not actually, in the sense of having a whole gang of people, a whole points of reference, endless parties, I mean, Boulevard, it was like if you didn’t know where the party was happening by Wednesday, you’d decide, that’s how it was, and we just moved around from house to house with the same people, I can remember one party in, um, Barbara and … Oh, God, I’m terrible at names. Barbara and her girlfriend, whose name I ought to remember, their flat, first floor on Prince’s Avenue, and we were still dancing, and the curtains were open, and it had got light outside, I remember looking out and there’s a bus full of people looking at us and we’re kind of semi naked and dancing [she laughs], yeah, and I should remember the partner’s name, because she was one of these women who she hit on everybody, you know, that’s how you keep your batting average up as well, you know, you keep at it. [she laughs].

27:33 KG: Yeah. Can you talk to me then about the fact that you had Boulevard as in HU3, which is Docklands, and then you’d come from the Aves, and there was this, there was a commune on, women’s commune on the Aves, and then yours on-

27:49 MM: Yeah.

27:49 KG: Tell me what was the-

27:50 MM: Well, it’s Albany Street, off Spring Bank, not quite Avenues, but-

27:54 KG: But-

27:55 MM: -yeah, those kind of people. One of whom I had an affair with, Carol Holmes, she’s lovely. Carol would say that as was. Now, her girlfriend at the time, um, is an author, who lives, now lives, Nicola Griffiths, now lives in America. They were in the band Jane’s Planes, um, what did I think about that? We, I just said we are the fun loving branch of the women’s liberation movement, because they were a bit po-faced, and we ‘ad a good time, and I do think we were more welcoming, I mean, like, Angie, she came to the party in the summer and stayed, and other people … We always used to joke about how there were always more toothbrushes than people. The toothbrushes were in a jar stood on the toilet cistern, and I … Lel might’ve told you this story about the toothbrushes? No? We’re all sat around and Alphie comes in and says, “Lel, I’ve gotta tell you something, I’ve gotta tell you something, it’s awful, you know, come here,” and Lel’s like, “oh, go on, go on, tell me, then,” “well I can’t, I can’t,” “oh, go on,” “alright, right, okay, I dropped your toothbrush in the toilet,” ” ‘s’alright, just get me another one,” “no, I did it three weeks ago,” [she laughs]. So that was, you know, that’s how we were.

29:32 KG: And there was, I mean, from the photographs, there’s people like Pammy, Pam.

29:36 MM: Yep. 

29:37 KG: The boys in the garden.

29:39 MM: Yeah, whose names I don’t recall, Sandy might know them ’cause they were her friends.

29:41 KG: But talk, tell me who were these, because this was very not, this was very welcoming of people that maybe the HU5ers-

29:52 MM: [she laughs] No. Yeah. Pam we used to call Pam the P, because she worked as a street prostitute, but she was good at her job, and she, um, paid cash outright for her house after six weeks’ work, which not many people can do, um, the boys, they were friends of Sandy’s, ’cause Sandy came from that side, so she was … See, the word Pimp doesn’t quite do it, because pimp, for one thing, has American connotations, I have never known a prostitute in the UK who had a male protector, never. Every prostitute I ever met, it was a woman that was their … and it, you know, and as I said to you, it was a bit like they had those toy Poodles, and the women, the workers, it was kind of like, yeah, this is the one that I’ve got, and they were a bit of a showpony thing, but Pam put Sandy through college working the streets, and, you know, I just think you have to be proud of that, you have to be proud of making a living how you can, the fact that Pam, I don’t know where Pam is now, she’s, um, long since gone. She left Hull, rumour was she went to Leeds, um, oh, I don’t know who they are, it’s just a nice poster.

31:36 KG: Tell me what you see in the picture.

31:39 MM: Two women, one’s saying, “my mum’s not gay and that’s okay,” the other, “my daughter’s a dyke and that’s alright,” this was, I can tell you this was stuck on the wall, on the toilet wall, can feel by the stickiness of it, and that one is “join lesbians united,” yeah, that’s Women’s Press thing, um, this Serious Pleasure, I have a story in that.

32:10 KG: This is a postcard for a publisher?

32:12 MM: Yes, Sheba.

32:12 KG: Sheba.

32:14 MM: Serious Pleasure, the UK’s first anthology of women’s erotica, and I’ve got a story in it.

32:22 KG: So you were writing…?

32:23 MM: Yes.

32:25 KG: So tell me what you were … So, yeah, explain to me your daily … Talk to me more about what you were doing for a job, what was happening to you that-

32:34 MM: I was a schoolteacher. [she laughs]

32:34 KG: Yeah.

32:36 MM: I was a schoolteacher, um-

32:37 KG: Where were you a schoolteacher?

32:38 MM: In East Hull, various places, um, various primary schools, and then after I had cancer, um, I was going back … I … This, the year that I had the cancer, I would’ve been going back to school in the September as acting deputy head, however, I got cancer, I was off two terms, ’cause it really did my head in, and before I went back to school, Sandy who you see in the photograph, who I was legal guardian to her kids, she was a colleague there, and she was like, “I’ve got to warn you about this, when you were in hospital, and the school secretary was in the opposite bed, her husband clocked your visitors and outed you to his mate who had a kid in the school,” and that man tried to get me the sack, and the headmistress said, “I will not put my relationship with the parents at risk for you or anybody else,” so I got a transfer, I got to go to West Dock Primary School then, and then I was doing, and [she sighs] then I did my MA in Women’s Studies and my Documentary Photography course, and I was doing that, a bit like I was doing the Adult Ed classes, [she laughs] keep yourself sane, um, you have, when there’s something that you badly want and then you know you’re not gonna get it, you have to stop wanting it, and one of the ways of stopping wanting it is finding something else to want instead, so that’s what I did, so I did my MA in Women’s Studies, um, and that’s when I became free to speak, and I real … and that was sometimes working doing, like, odds and sods of supply teaching, different schools, West Dock Primary School closed down, um, oh, I’ve gotta show you that in a bit, an edition of Wires, women’s information, referral, and enquiry service, um, show you that in a bit. Sorry, I’m, as I’m talking, I’m looking through a heap of stuff including Northern Dykes Writer’s Group [she chuckles], which had its first meeting in Boulevard, because Nicola set it up, but we were the biggest house, biggest lesbian house in town, so that’s why she invited me. Um, so where was I? Yeah, so I was doing odds and sods of supply teaching in different places, and then years after I’d met Linda, so this would be about ’92 or 3 maybe, maybe ’92, I’d bumped into the woman that I’d worked at West Dock with, who’d actually been deputy head at a school where I’d applied for a job and not got it, and she said, “Mindy, I’ve got to tell you this, it’s awful, but there’s nothing I could do,”  she said, “you were on the shortlist, but when I took the list of names into the staffroom, one member of staff absolutely damned you to Hell,” and she said, “I said to them, that’s, Mindy’s not like that, she’s the only supply teacher those children remember from last year,” and she said, “but Mindy, you would never have had a chance, I’m really sorry,” so I said, “thank you for telling me, because my belief is the accurate information on which to base your decisions is what you need,” and that’s how come I moved to Manchester, and so, I sporadically thanked that man, he didn’t mean to do me a good turn, but look at my life now. You know, since then, I’ve, and I’m now pointing at a photograph on the wall from a photo thing that I was involved in at LGBT Foundation in Manchester, in which I talk about dancing on the Nile Maxim, a cruise boat on the Nile, as being a lifetime peak experience, which I would not have got if I hadn’t moved to Manchester, so, to that homophobe, I say thank you.

37:11 KG: Um, was … So yeah, at the same time you were … Talk to me some more about the homophobia then that you’d experienced on that area, because as women in that house, you were clearly known.

37:24 MM: Yes, yes, and there’s … Mandy Precious, who is an artist at, uh, lives down South now somewhere I think, her mum used to work in the chippy across from us [she laughs]. Mandy Precious was one of the actors in my play that I put on, because she used to live in Manchester, um, and she said, she introduced me at, um, Common Word North Gay Writer’s Group in Manchester as being “this is one of the women my mother warned me about,” [she laughs] because her mother could see our house from the chippy and used to warn Mandy about us as being iffy women, I mean, yeah, we were not unknown in the area, but we were so oblivious in our little bubble, it kinda didn’t matter to us, I mean, we were naïve, when we first moved in, we saw women stood on the corner outside our house like, what we now realise they were bobbing for cars, you know, like, sex work. We were just thought they were waiting for taxis [she laughs], and then it was like, “oh, it’s the same woman back again,” so it took us a few weeks for to dawn that, so that was what the area was like, and I think there’s something about in that kind of area all kinds of things are accepted if you’re accepted, but not if you’re not. 

38:50 KG: Talk some more about that.

38:51 MM: Um, I could draw an analogy, I went to a funeral in Duckinfield, near Manchester, just this week, and the afters was in a pub, the pub that the family used, and I’d walked up to the pub, I looked at the Union Jack outside and thought, “oh, shit,” because I’m wearing my pride rainbow jacket, because the dress code had been bright for the funeral, and I walked in there, and I realised that on the one hand, if your face fits, or if you’re somebody’s kid or somebody’s cousin or somebody’s got you in, you’re in, but you can easily not get that. If you’re an outsider that crosses the wrong person, you’ll be shoved out, so I think it’s a … It’s an acceptance that’s based on largely indifference to other people, I think, they’re kind of not thinking about what other people are thinking. You know, it’s like the … and some real slippages, like back in the day, it wasn’t rare for a Black man to be called chalky by his mates, without any sense of how that might be difficult, but then the same person would say, “I wouldn’t want my daughter going out with, even though he’s my mate and I know he’s decent,” and I think all [of] that is why that, I mentioned the thing about my dad being seen as half-caste, turns out he wasn’t, because if he was, it would’ve showed up in my DNA check, but the fact that we always thought that was the case, there was some other thing that wasn’t standard Hull [she chuckles], and I think as well, when I look back, because Hull was such a white city, I think that the vast majority of people in Hull has, did have very small horizons, you know, the next nearest big town is York, for goodness’ sake, [she chuckles] and that is not big and it’s not near, so the sense of isolation of being just us, I think, has people have no idea about what the issues might be about class, race, and ethnicity because they just don’t crop up, you know, you, in a town where you can tell the difference between a West Hull accent and an East Hull accent, and it’s that narrow, I don’t know what it’s like now, I’d gather it’s different, ’cause I haven’t been back since my mum died, really, um, but I think that that, that kind of lack of having something presented as an issue to think about can look like acceptance, but actually, it’s not anything. Does that make sense? Um … It’s a difficult one to untangle, because you … Like I felt in the pub last, after the funeral, kind of like, they could all be Reform voters in here, and yet people are being smiley and friendly, and I’m thinking, “are you being smiley and friendly ’cause you have no idea who I am?” [she chuckles] and that, of course, is a thing about what’s visible and invisible, which is a thing about passing, or not passing, if you can pass as … If you are passable, you get one set of problems, you know, I’ve, Denny’s family, some of Denny’s family looked completely white, and they would’ve heard racism different to a person that’s visibly Black, where people might think, “oh, I’d better not say that here,” so I think there’s something about what we pass as and what we don’t pass as, and you have to bear in mind, thinking about the early ’80s, Jimmy Savile  was still alive and kicking, there was an awful lot of things not being seen, and early ’80s was when, and it’s by and large it was lesbians begun raising issues about child abuse, it was very much in our world of politics that that came up first, and people didn’t want to know, um, I mean, back in the ’70s before I, when I was still straight, I went to an early Women’s Aid conference up in Jedborough with my friend Janet, who’d moved up to Hartlepool and was, got involved in Women’s Aid, so I go to this Women’s Aid conference in a school hall in Jedborough, and this is about you go on the invitations, I’m sat there thinking, “there are enough women in this country who’ve experienced domestic violence to fill a school hall,” [she laughs] and I’m like, “that many?” ’cause I knew nothing about it, so then on the Monday back at school in our nice little East Hull suburban school staff room, getting talking about what I’d done at the weekend, and one member of staff says, “well, if my Alan so much as laid a finger on me, he’d be out of here,” and I just opened my mouth to say, “I don’t think it’s quite that simple,” when, in unison, the headmistress, and another senior member of staff said, “that’s why I’m divorced,” this is in a staff of six, and you’re going … So I’ve gone from “how many people?” to …

44:50 KG: Half of us.

44:51 MM: Yeah, and then in the not-too-distant after that, I’ve been in meetings where I have been the only woman in the room who had not been subject to abuse as a child, you know, it’s, but if you think about the early ’80s, all that stuff was still kind of under the counter, whereas nowadays, I mean, my, you know, social media has … It’s like landmine after landmine, isn’t it? And a lot of it goes back a long way, I mean, Johnny Rotten, the Sex Pistols, they didn’t get to be on Top of the Pops because of what Johnny Rotten said about Jimmy Savile and everyone knowing about it. That was the ’70s, so it was all kind of bubbling under the surface then in lots of ways where keeping things how they looked right was still a thing that mattered. I mean, in the 1970s, the school I worked in, um, the headmistress didn’t allow the women to wear trousers. In the ’70s, I went to the bank near the school I worked in to open a bank account, and the bank manager said, “do you have your husband’s permission to open this account?” [she chuckles].

46:12 KG: And how did you buy Boulevard?

46:14 MM: Well, by that point, we’d bought, got it on a mortgage, but we’d … Because we did the legal work ourselves, we saved a lot of money-

46:21 KG: But in terms of getting permission to get the money?

46:23 MM: Oh, how did we do that? Well, I was working, and I was teaching, so I had a proper salary, so it was kind of … I’ve forgotten how we, d’you know, I can’t remember, now, how we did all that. Lel might remember.

46:39 KG: I think Lel talked about how she’d had money out of the divorce.

46:44 MM: Might well-

46:44 KG: Put some, I think, towards it.

46:45 MM: Yeah, yeah.

46:48 KG: But yeah, I mean, but also, this idea of passing makes me think about the butch/femme thing that you talk about that’s-

46:54 MM: Yes.

46:54 KG: -very of that time, also?

46:58 MM:Yeah.

46:58 KG: Do you want to say something about that?

47:01 MM: Yes, that back then, women found it was safer to pass as a male because of the cursory glance you’d get spotted in the street, and I think that, um, in some ways, it’s harder now, because people are more visually tuned, and it’s more in the world, people get seen easier. That’s another story that I wrote, was about that issue, I’ll have to, um, I’ll send these to you.

47:27 KG: Yeah, nice, yeah, yeah, definitely.

47:27 MM: Yeah, um, because, yes, it’s a poisoned chalice, passing as something or not passing as something. I’d say for the interview, I out myself, even, for all these years, I still out myself all the time. As you see, I’m wearing my larry I’ve earned the right to wear this, you know, and I out myself hard and fast anywhere new that I go, and my argument for that is if I say it now when I hardly know these people, if they don’t like me, they’ll move away, and I’ll never notice them. If I leave it ’til people have kinda figured that I’ve been a bit shady about something about my life and then it comes out like it’s a confession, then they feel stupid because they’ve been wrongfooted, and then they don’t like you, and they think, “oh, shit, you’re a lesbian,” [she chuckles] that’s how I see it, and I could be wrong, but if what happens is that you meet somebody and things are not quite congruent, then you find out, oh, so that’s what it was about them, that was the thing, it shapes it differently.

48:43 KG: But I also wonder if there’s something in relation to being outed in such a dramatic way.

48:52 MM: Well, the recognition that it had been done, and that it had been done some time, you know, months before I found out, yeah.

49:00 KG: By a man.

49:01 MM: Yeah.

49:04 KG: That’s not gonna happen again, by a man.

49:07 MM: No. 

49:09 KG: So, can … Would you talk to me about St. George’s, and going to see, ’cause we’ve got in front of us [Mindy laughs] Polaroid photographs of-

49:16 MM: Oh, yes.

49:17 KG: -Bobby Mandrell?

49:17 MM: Yes, yep.

49:19 KG: Will you talk to me … Going to … I mean, did you go, where did you socialise? Tell me some of the places when you were at Boulevard that you might have socialised.

49:24 MM: Um, we went to the Spring Bank Community Centre to the once a month lesbian line disco, I mean, that is so not aspirational [she laughs], and we used to go home afterwards and have better times at home. We went to, um, Women’s Self Defence Network events that we went out to London and all sorts, um, we went to the St. George’s, um we went to the Polar Bear, um-

49:51 KG: Would these have particular nights on? So would this be a lesbian night, or gay discos, or?

49:57 MM: No, no, no, the Polar Bear, we had one corner, one corner of the main bar, um, and I remember one time, I was at the bar gettin’ the  drinks, gettin’ the three pints, I had three pints in my hands, and I could hear this woman behind me talkin’ to these two men about how she didn’t mind the fact that there were lesbians in here, but as long as they didn’t try and hit on her, so as I turned round with my three pints, I said, “speaking on behalf of the lesbian nation, can I say, wearing that colour you are never gonna get asked,” [she laughs]. It was hideous [she laughs]. I mean, talk about asking for it, you know, like [she laughs] … and the St. George’s, well that was owned by Clarice, who was as … queer accepting as they come, like, I think she was a lesbian. I know there was a bloke whose name also escapes me, her bloke, but, um, you know, she didn’t treat him very nicely, and he was once rude to Linda, my Linda, and Clarice turned around to him and said, “do you think I’ve got cunt written on my head?” [she laughs] like, told him off for … But yes, I think, unlike most pub landladies, Clarice forced you to stand on the furniture. When Bobby finished his act with There’ll Always Be An England in his Union Jack kaftan that ‘e flipped up, like the thing in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, like this one here that’s sparkly, same thing, and he’d stand there, lip-synching to There’ll Always Be An England, Clarice’d be like, “gettin’ up!” I mean, she had hands like this with massive rings on with, “gettin’ up!” and we’re like, “whoa,” [she chuckles] you know, me who would sit down through the national anthem when it was still played in cinemas stood on the chairs for Clarice ’cause you’d like … don’t be stupid, and that was, and it was in her pub, where Izzy did the trick with the ten pence piece and a pint pot.

52:02 KG: Do you want to say that? 

52:03 MM: Yes. Izzy, a remarkable woman, very much a cultural icon, I think, um, and it was to, this was to celebrate the fact that she’d been going in that pub for maybe twenty years, so something like that, she’d been going there a long time, and she was there in her, you know, three-piece men’s suits, so-

52:27 KG: This is a lesbian?

52:28 MM: Yes, oh yes, Isabel, and she would, she dropped her trousers and her Y-fronts, and clenched a ten pence piece between her buttocks and shuffled round the pub all round the ground floor, came back to the main space in it, squatted over a pint pot, and dropped the ten pence piece into the pint pot. Now, how much practice do you have to do to be good at that? Nevermind why. So that was the kind of milieu [she laughs]. I mean, you couldn’t be po-faced in a place that was like that, and like, as I said to you, Izzy, if I went out in a dress, she’d kiss my hand, if I went out in jeans and me leather jacket, she’d punch me on the shoulder. I have no idea how she thought gender in her mind. No idea, but I think it was confused. [she laughs] So yeah, photographs of Bobby.

53:34 KG: So what are you-

53:34 MM: The duplicates of these-

53:35 KG: Do you remember going to see him and what-

53:38 MM: Yeah.

53:38 KG: -like, as a femi[nist] … I mean, talk to me about-

53:42 MM: I’ve got-

53:43 KG: -seeing drag.

53:44 MM: I’m not a massive fan of drag, as a kind of, I can intellectually understand it on one level, can’t be arsed to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, ’cause they are just so tedious, performing themselves to an unreasonable degree [she chuckles], um-

54:04 KG: So what was it, what, intellectually, explain what you were doing.

54:05 MM: So this, this was … I think it’s ’cause it was a place that was ours, I mean, there is a lot of misogyny in drag, a lot, you know, back at these times, gay men called women fish, and they didn’t mean it as a compliment. That’s, you know, um, so there’s … I mean, I have had gay men say to me that drag is actually an homage to women, that they really admire women, but I don’t entirely buy that, um, and it was just, it’s what there was, it’s what was there, and I think, in that sense, this is about the fact that against being a lesbian separatist commune, pursed lipped-lipped, percy-lipped, percy-lipped, [she chuckles] we were also very kind of game for a good time, because the critique of it was one thing, but the going out on a Saturday night, it was a laugh, it was a pub, it was where people were, so I think that, you know, like many of these things, you have your contradictions.

55:22 KG: And would you have laughed at it, at the people-

55:25 MM: Some of it, and I cannot honestly remember any of it now, I mean, this character here, you know, this character that Bobby is playing here in the frumpy dress, this is Mrs. Brown’s Boys territory, isn’t it? Which I think is deeply unfunny and tedious. I can see why the desire for the glamour, I can understand that … Now, that’s a nice photograph of Clarice, isn’t it? And then, and I liked, and against the other people that I knew, other men that I knew that did drag, Bobby did this, stripping off to being a pudgy, middle-aged bloke, and I thought that was really, that was quite poignant, that one, I think, that face. That, you know, that bit of it, I can kind of sympathise … I think that might be Clarice’s girlfriend sat next to her, but I’m not sure. Um, I don’t know where the negatives are, here, and then he’s got the shirt on, and he just … and I think that was … I think it was because of that bit, that’s why it didn’t bug me, because he showed this is performance, this is something you put on, something you take off.

56:51 KG: And questioning identity.

56:53 MM: Yes, yeah, so that side of it, there were loads and loads of copies of the same things that I would, if you want, you can take a set of everything, that would make sense.

57:05 KG: I also realised what the tattoo is, this is interesting, I’ve never noticed.

57:09 MM: Oh, oh the cherub, yeah, go on.

57:12 KG: Well, just, it’s a, it’s two cherubs.

57:17 MM: Which means? I dunno.

57:18 KG: Well, I would read it as a metaphor, you know, like-

57:22 MM: A bit like, I know, two women symbols, could be, could well be, I never thought of that.

57:27 KG: Never asked him.

57:28 MM: Well, now you can. There’s some more here that I didn’t take prints of, but on the contact sheet.

57:35 KG: So talk to me some more about the, yeah, I mean, so you’re seeing this person change before your eyes-

57:40 MM: And this was, he’s always done this.

57:42 KG: -was everybody, were all the feminists with you happy to be there?

57:46 MM: I don’t know if any of the other side of the tracks feminists were with us, I don’t think they were.

57:53 KG: What do you mean by other side of the tracks?

57:55 MM: The Albany Street, the literary lesbians, the academic lesbians, I don’t think any of them went to … ’cause this was us, us, we lived on Boulevard, so-

58:07 KG: And you were accepted in this space?

58:09 MM: Yeah, yeah, and like, when I got to know Linda and discovered that she already knew Bobby, she is completely not in the political [phone makes a text noise] background of the women’s centre, the Women’s Centre, I guess that would’ve been the other side of the tracks, but it was the Women’s Centre, which is where I first met lesbians, and I remember when Lel began coming to meetings, and she might’ve told you this, we sat in the pub after, and she was asking me about, she was still married, and I was out by this point, and, uh, she was asking me what it was like, and I said, and she said, “isn’t it hard?” I say, “yeah, it’s really hard, there’s a lot about it that’s scary, just so much fun” [she laughs]. I don’t know if she said that to you as well. Yeah? [she laughs] I mean, that has been one of the weird things, knowing that we were gonna do this is, would my recollections fit with the recollections of the other people, or would they go, “no, no, that’s not what happened.” [she laughs]

59:19 KG: They’re very similar. 

59:20 MM: Oh, that’s good to know. 

59:22 KG: Um, yeah, so tell me about the photographs, because we haven’t talked about the fact that you were documenting, you had a darkroom, do you want to say something about that?

59:31 MM: Um, yeah, I was doing the photography degree, and-

59:37 KG: At Hull?

59:37 MM: Yes. Um, and I was doing landscape photography, so, I mean, I haven’t dragged any of that stuff out, and it might be that if I looked harder, I’d find a box of all the negatives somewhere, in which case, that would make sense to pass them on, um, ’cause I did take photographs of the area as well as the people. So that’s all, oh that’s the lesbians in Women’s Aid album in there, that might be fun for you to look at whilst I see if I can find the..

1:00:18 KG: So you were doing photography [phone makes a text noise] as a degree?

1:00:20 MM: Yes. I didn’t actually finish it, I just ran out of time. 

1:00:28 KG: And you had a darkroom?

1:00:29 MM: Yes, I had a darkroom, and that was-

1:00:31 KG: In Boulevard?

1:00:32 MM: Yes. Yep. 

1:00:36 KG: And you would set up, develop, you would develop there, and you would print-

1:00:40 MM: Yep. 

1:00:40 KG: -prints?

1:00:40 MM: Yes.

1:00:42 KG: And that’s where all these are from? 

1:00:45 MM: This is … we had to do 36 heads and shoulders of strangers, which was an interesting thing to do, so I don’t know if you want to ‘ave a quick flip through-

1:00:56 KG: So when would be that, when would this be, what year are we talking?

1:00:59 MM: Well, my year one would’ve been, what year was that, 1985 was year one of my photography degree, that’s in there. See what I’ve got in here.

1:01:20 KG: Um, and why … Because a lot of the other people we’ve talked, I’ve talked to about the commune, the photography was really important.

1:01:29 MM: Right. That’s interesting, ’cause that was a, I guess that was a thing that I brought to it was that I showed people how to do it.

1:01:37 KG: The fact you showed it, but also you’d documented it at a time when, perhaps, we weren’t documenting things as much.

1:01:45 MM: D’you know what? I’ve thought about this since talking to you and thought, “I didn’t self consciously document anywhere near as much as I should have done,” um … Oh, that’s a nice one, Princess Dock. [she chuckles] Yeah.

1:02:15 KG: Um, talk some more about that, about…

1:02:16 MM: Um, I remember when I first met Janine, and I took … I mean, that was a thing that, ah, that’s my job, there’s Jenna D. I took Janine out taking photographs, and we developed a film, and then we printed, and as, you know, you slide the paper into the tray, and the image begins to appear, she said, “it’s like having a baby!” [she laughs] Yeah, so I didn’t do any kind of sorting of these before you arrived, ’cause I only got back from Egypt last week, and I’ve been hectic ever since. Oh, here’s some more! 

1:03:07 KG: So what are we looking at?

1:03:09 MM: Sue Griff, [she chuckles] there’s one of Sandy’s exes, Lel…

1:03:16 KG: This is all at Boulevard?

1:03:18 MM: Yep.

1:03:18 KG: What’s Lel doing in the picture?

1:03:20 MM: Oh, she’s digging, digging in the garden, we didn’t know there was a path in the garden, the garden was, like, shoulder high, um, here is a disco at … oh, God, I don’t know where that is; and there is Ben, Angie South’s son. Alphie in the garden.

1:03:55 KG: Can you tell me about Alphie?

1:03:56 MM: Yep, she’s, oh, Alphie, is sadly dead. She, um, she’d got Huntington’s Chorea, that photograph is lovely, she’s sat on a pile of stacked bricks in our garden, it was … She was, um, yes, she died not that long ago. Um, that is Sandy with my American girlfriend at … Flamborough, that will be, ’cause Flamborough’s one of my favourite places, and that’s me and Renee on my, I met her on the MA at York. 

1:04:44 KG: So, education has been an important, has been important. Talk to me … So you went to do your MA, um, and then what have you done since as your, for your career?

1:04:55 MM: Um, I worked in adult mental health when I moved here, I did, I was a housing manager. Oh, a friend made that! Her brother-in-law was in David Bowie’s band, the Spiders From Mars people. Loads of photographs of Hull here, bridges, that’s, I did a project on bridges for my photography degree. Since then, what have I done? I’ve done my … I’ve done counselling training, I’m a counsellor now, I mean, I’m retired, I did all the NVQs that you have to do to work in adult mental health, and to be a mental health, an NVQ assessor in adult mental health, um, I like taking photographs of people and really boring things I’ve realised [she chuckles]. Um, and I was an off-site practice teacher for social work students. That was on a photography trip down to London, that’s irrelevant. This is on the MA in Women’s Studies. Ah, here we are, here we are. Contact sheet of Angie, Ben, and Denny. And women playing pool. 

1:06:44 KG: And you’ve written?

1:06:46 MM: Yes, yes, I had a short story … Oh, there’s, oh, these are some of the lovely ones of Ben. How old is Ben now?

1:06:59 KG: When would this be, ’80…?

1:07:01 MM: ’86 or 7ish.

1:07:02 KG: So maybe forty.

1:07:05 MM: [she laughs] Yeah, and that’s Denny working on our car. That’s me and Renee in my 1980s Vibe. Now that, I have to say, I think is a lovely photograph. Photograph of Denny holding Ben. 

1:07:47 KG: I mean, I look at these photographs and I realise how empowered, empowered or empowering it must have been … Were you, did you feel … Do you consciously remember that?

1:07:59 MM: Um-

1:07:59 KG: Of being in Boulevard as a group of women-

1:08:02 MM: Yes, oh, God yes. Yes, we did, I did some silly things, like showing off writing ‘these women are lovely cunts,’ backwards in the condensation on the front room window upstairs, well, of course, when the sun hit it the next day, it was completely legible from the outside [she laughs]. There’s Lel’s dad brought Billy back, yeah. Um, yes, 1989 was when Serious Pleasure came out. Oh, God, that’s me going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, that’s irrelevant to our discussion but… [she chuckles]

1:08:45 KG: I’m not sure it is because lots of, um, I’ve just recorded a gay, uh, somebody for the archive, who talked about how important dressing up for Rocky Horror was in their journey towards becoming a drag act-

1:08:58 MM: Oh! Yeah?

1:08:58 KG: So this idea of, well, I guess it’s kink and all sorts of things, isn’t it? [Mindy laughs] The idea of being able to dress in this way.

1:09:08 MM: Yep. Yep, oh that’s, you might have, you might not have seen them, fish city dykes.

1:09:16 KG: What am I looking at? Tell me more.

1:09:18 MM: You are looking at a banner for Pride in London, and it says fish city dykes Hull-o mum [she laughs].

1:09:27 KG: Can you remember the song? Angie knows the song.

1:09:31 MM: No, can’t, I just, I can probably tell you who’s…

1:09:36 KG: It says on the backs of those.

1:09:39 MM: Oh, there’s Den, Susie, Zayna. That’s Ali, that’s Sue, that’s Gail Bell, forgotten her name, yep.

1:09:55 KG: Talk to me about what you did, then, you went…?

1:09:56 MM: We went to London on the Pride march, I mean, I wouldn’t, I haven’t been to London for the Pride march for years, because we don’t need to, ’cause we’ve got plenty in Manchester, um, so that, yeah, that’s a nice … That was after I left Boulevard, actually, because I can tell by who’s in it, and I know that that was after we kind of … ’cause Lel and Alph and I fell out badly, very painfully, um, this was after I’d escaped from Denny and got back into our world again, so this is after Boulevard days, which is where, and that photograph is after Boulevard days, and look, ’cause that one’s here, it’s after Boulevard days. And this is my friend, the tall one is Marion Alton, the small one is Mogs, and they were singers from Birmingham that I knew through writing, ’cause Marion Oughton was in the Northern Dykes Writers with me, and they came up to do an event at the, oh, at some, the pub opposite the Polar Bear, or the hotel.

1:11:20 KG: The one on the corner? Mm-hmm (affirmative).

1:11:21 MM: Yeah, and that’s Sandy being a DJ in that very place. So and I think now we’re kind of getting onto, um, more Manchester, I think. Oh, God. I abseiled down Wallacey Town Hall. 

1:11:43 KG: In a rather spectacular outfit, I must say.

1:11:45 MM: Yes, yes, a belly dancer outfit, yep, and deely-boppers on the crash helmet. 

1:11:49 KG: Why, why? 

1:11:51 MM: Madness. [she laughs] Just because I wanted to. I was working for a learning disability charity in Liverpool at that point, um, called Personal Support Services, thing like that, um, and it was a fundraiser, so I got a chance to do it. The women’s cabaret was a stop the clause thing. Oh, I’m so glad I’ve found these, ’cause I’m seeing Marion in a few months, they live in Wales now, Liz and Marion-

1:12:26 KG: So talk to me about the clause.

1:12:27 MM: Liz and Marion … Stop the clause, Clause 28, it was what was kind of getting in the way of being a decent teacher at times because you couldn’t say who you were, you couldn’t say what you were, but by that point, you know, I was already so far outed that, and didn’t know it, that by the early ’90s that’s where I was.

1:12:49 KG: So this is the wider political context of this time, so-

1:12:52 MM: Yes, yes.

1:12:52 KG: -Section 28, Clause 28.

1:12:55 MM: Yeah.

1:12:56 KG: Do you remember … I mean, this is … could you talk some more about the impact of that as an act?

1:13:04 MM: [she sighs] It meant that … I realised that when I’d been a straight, married woman, I could challenge things about misogyny, I could challenge things about the status of women, and once Clause 28 was in place, as a lesbian, I was silenced. I was under threat. The fact that threat happened anyway is kind of by the by, I suppose. Um, oh, God, that is me the day after a launch of Serious Pleasure. [she laughs]  Me in glasses, man’s waistcoat with all me badges on.

1:13:43 KG: And the tattoo is?

1:13:44 MM: And my tattoo, is a labrys, um, and I got that done in 1985 as my birthday present to me, because by that point, I’d decided that four years into being a lesbian, I was never going to back away from saying who I was. It’s on my upper arm, because at that point, school teachers didn’t have tattoos, so it was somewhere where I could cover it up if need be. So that was then. Yes, I … It’s so, so strange seeing these. Oh, that’s a nice one. Pride ’93, and that would’ve been the same year, I imagine. So that was after Boulevard, but part of, like, the wider context. 

1:14:38 KG: And, um, do you remember going to the Prides, the first Prides?

1:14:41 MM: Oh, yes, yeah. The first one was in, um, was it Kennington Park? I don’t know where that is, somewhere in London, I mean, we … But before that, I’d been going down to London on anti-Nazi League things as well, you know, sleeping rough in London parks ’cause that’s what happens [she laughs]. Oh, International Women’s Day, sometime, when we were in Boulevard, that woman there is Katherine Clarricoates, an academic who has written at length, um … God, I’ve got some of my Greeman Common postcards here.

1:15:28 KG: So you would’ve visited Greeman Common?

1:15:30 MM: Oh, yes, yes, we went to the, we were at the encircling of the base. So, I’m not gonna try and show you everything ’cause there’s so much here. That was also 1980s.

1:15:54 KG: What can I see in this picture? 

1:15:55 MM: You can see a bunch of women, this would’ve been International Women’s Day events, there’s women singing, women with a, there’s one with a guitar. As I said, I heard about, um, the Shameless Hussies theatre group, but I never actually joined the theatre group, I did everything else, I repaired the roof, I spray painted, I postered, I campaigned, I did everything else, apart from joining the Shameless Hussies, and I once asked Heather, ’cause the two of us that joined the Women’s Centre on the same night, and years later, I asked Heather how come she talked to the other woman and not me, she said, “well, I thought that you were interested in the Shameless Hussies theatre group and I thought that she was interested in me,” [she laughs]. See, it’s sex was the thing, and not so long ago, in Manchester, I met a guy, who, back in the day, was the partner of one of the women who was in the kind of the outer circle of our lesbian world, and he said the thing that he remembered most about all of that, that early ’80s stuff was about how much sex there was, how it, everything was about sex [she laughs].

1:17:23 KG: And would you agree?

1:17:24 MM: Yeah, like, pretty much. So there’s nothing else in there that’s really … That’s me gettin’ my, on me graduation from the Women’s Studies MA. That is Sue, who was the person that I was going out with that had friends, Debbie and Linda. And that was Linda’s band, Tinker, so that’s in, that was in Manchester, the, that’s like later. 

1:17:54 KG: So if we, uh, reflect on, um, all of this that you’ve shared, the photographs and stories that you’ve shared, and you look back, what do you … What does it make you think, reflect, consider?

1:18:21 MM: It just makes me want to laugh, ’cause I was thinking, “did I do all that?” [she laughs] Because all of that was before I moved to Manchester, I’ve been here thirty years now, and here, I have a big world. I have lots of friends, I’m involved in the LGBT Foundation, where I’m part of the counselling team, I’m in the Pride in Aging project, which means that we manage the Derek Jarmon Pocket Part Garden at the art gallery, and we do stuff to do with research and campaigning, um, I’m involved in the Centre for Aging Better, which is a London-based charity, and I’m one of the Age Without Limits champions, and, um … Says she ruffling through bits of, heaps of paper. Somewhere, somewhere I have … Yep. I’m so chuffed with this. You can have one of those. Photograph of me in my red leather jacket as part of the Age Without Limits campaign. 

1:19:33 KG: And what does it say on the card?

1:19:35 MM: It says, “being told, ‘you shouldn’t wear that at your age’ isn’t part of aging, it’s ageism.” So I do that, and then of course, there’s the whole world of belly dance. I knew that Egyptian dance existed in Manchester before I moved here, um, I first saw it on TV in the 1950s, the Bob Hope Bing Crosby movie, Road to Morocco, and, uh, so I always fancied doing it, I’ve loved dancing all my life, you know, I did ballet and tap as a kid, all that stuff, and so when I moved here in late ninety, September ’94 I started working here, we bought the house in December ’94, and I began looking for a class, and I found my first belly dance class May 1995, and since the year 2002, I’ve been to Egypt at least once a year for study and travel and all the rest of it, and that’s where I’ve just got back from, so I have this whole other world now, so, like, looking back at this stuff it’s like a completely different category of life, you know, um, I’ve really appreciated having this chance to do this, because I haven’t thought about any of this for years and years and years, it’s just there, and to the point where I thought my box of diaries was up there somewhere, yesterday when I was gettin’ ready for this, I kind of climbed up on the chair and I’m like, “what?” I had to go up in the loft to find this box that contains … Shall I move these out of the way? I mean, I’ve tended to be an appointments diary person more than a journal person, although there are journals. Ooh, God. Going, I’ve got my 1980… what’s my coming out year? And when I realised that I had these kind of quite turbulent feelings about all this, I decided that I wasn’t going to look at these until you were here, because I wanted this to bean honest experience, rather than me starting to curate a … Okay, so, let’s see, where are we? My birthday, 25th of July, um, yeah, Sandy and, Sandy’s kids Neil and Donna were staying with us, me and my husband, that is, um … Somewhere in here is the day that I … Oh, God, yes, the 3rd of August, I began painting the outside of the house that Mark and I lived in. I finished painted it before I left, as I left, I, the last few days of painting, I was staying elsewhere and going back to finish painting the bloody house. He’s sat watching the cricket. Oh, and the, I went to SisterWrite a bookshop in London, yeah, yep, discussion group, self defence meeting. Ricky and Mark coming round. We’re getting, it was somewhere around there, Mark’s, oh, God, 14th of August, Mark’s ultimatum day. That’s it, that’s the date. [she sighs] That was when I decided to leave, Saturday 15th of August, it’s there, that is the actual when it happened, [she chuckles in my big, red diary of utopias, that was 1981, so I’ve got 1982.

1:23:45 KG: Which is a spare rib.

1:23:47 MM: Spare rib diary. We’Moon Almanac 1986. NUS pocket book 1991, in which I wrote, “I cannot live yesterday or tomorrow today. I cannot live any life other than my own. The only moment in life I have is now.” And then these, these look more like journals, there’s the same thing written in the front. Oh, God. Now these, I can’t decide whether or not I should do this, hand them over unread, or I need to read them. Stuff in there about Shona, who was the woman that I completely fell for, that was, oh, 1979. I mean, you know when you, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but you are living in life like you’ve got blinkers on, and you’re not looking. Mark and I used to go to, we used to go camping a lot, and I would get Shona to come and babysit, look after the cats, so while we were away camping, I’d go and find a phone box and phone home to phone Shona to talk, make sure the cats were okay, and then was the date in May 1981, thereabouts, party at Jane’s flat, and it was a mixed party, so I was there, we’d been in the Polar Bear, I was there with Mark, my husband, and Shona was meant to be there, and everybody was meant to be there, and Shona wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the club, and I’m saying to Carol Osgovy, someone else that was in the first lesbian house that I lived in, and was sayin’, “Shona’s not here, where is she?” You know, just like, “we’ve got enough beer, I’ll go and call for them and she can share ours,” and Carol said, “she might be with somebody,” and I was like … That was a thought that had not crossed my mind, but oh, did it land. Anyway, so I didn’t go round to her flat near the Polar Bear, [she laughs] did write poetry about it, but there you go. Um,  so at the party, dancing away, and Shona walks in, and it was as if the world had gone [makes sound effect], like, the merry-go-round had started, the lights, colour, movement, like [makes sound effect], I was completely floored by it, so anyway, a bit later on, Shona and I are dancing to Joan Armatrading, Show Some Emotion, and I said to Shona, “you know, I’m awfully fond of you,” I think it was she said, “oh, cheer, mate,” and if she didn’t, she said, “I know.” What?! [she laughs] So, we went and sat outside, it was an attic flat, so we went and sat outside on the stairs for a bit, and she just said, “take all the time you want,” so anyway, back into the party, and, like, Mark’s there, and I’m dancing with Shona, I see him over her shoulder, you know, not proud of how I treated the man in any way,  ’cause, you know, he didn’t deserve that, um, so it was time to leave, like, this is, I know it was May, because it was bright daylight when we left [she chuckles], and the three of us left the party together, and Shona lived in the street opposite the Polar Bear, whose name escapes me now, and so she peeled off that way, and we carried on walking, and Mark’s mother, widow mother was staying with us at the time, she just needed a holiday, and I just said, “can we just walk through Pearson Park first? I need to talk to you,” and I said to him, “look, something’s happened, and it’s too important for me to just turn the back on it. I’m really sorry, but I’ve no idea where this is gonna go,” and he said, “I just want two things, honesty and punctuality. If you go out, you go away, say you’re going and you come back at the time you say you’re coming back,” which I think was a very decent offer, and it was twelve weeks from that point ’til I left. [she sighs, then laughs] Oh, talk about making your life difficult. So we’ve got 1985, 1979… Women artists 1987. Salisbury Street.

1:28:49 KG: But looking back-

1:28:50 MM: ’79-

1:28:50 KG: I mean, you … There’s something about you’d lived until that point within convention …  was it convention? 

1:28:56 MM: Well-

1:28:58 KG: How would you talk about that?

1:29:00 MM: Have you ever had that thing where you say something and the fact that you say it, you realise it’s true, because if you’d’ve thought about it first, you’d’ve censored it, but it’s come out of your mouth before you stop yourself? That happened. Jill, who was  a good friend of ours, like, Jill and Mark and I had hung around together a lot in the folk world, and she was living in Saudi with her husband there, and she was home for a holiday, and we were all going round the dress 1:29:33 in Top Girl, I think it was called, we’re like, I remember my fingers walking round the hangers, and she was, she said, “um, since you got married, do you ever, um, like, fancy anybody else?” and I said, “no, it’s more likely to be a woman these days,” [she laughs] and she was like, you know, and that was before the Joan Armatrading episode.

1:30:02 KG: But had you felt pressure within the family, within  your parents, was there some-

1:30:07 MM: Oh, yes,  oh, yeah, my dad was, you know, full on, um, he, like, he wouldn’t join a union, he was self employed, he was completely individual, when he worked for somebody else he said, “if I want a raise, I’ll go and argue my case,” that’s who he was, completely individual, bit of a homophobe, [she laughs] which is not surprising for a bloke born in 1925. Now, I … After my, my dad died when I was in my twenties, I think that made it easier, and years afterwards, I’m trying to think of when it would’ve been, probably after we moved to Manchester, so a long time after, I was in the car with my mum, and I was saying, “do you know, I’ve always wondered whether my dad would’ve loved me enough that if I’d’ve come out when he was still alive ‘e’d’ve said, ‘that’s my daughter and I love her,’ or not,” and I said, “I’ve always wondered,” and I wanted my mum to say, “oh, he loved you,” and she didn’t, she said, “I wonder too.” So I, you know, as  a counsellor, I get it when people struggle with coming out to their families, because I don’t know whether I’d’ve come out if my dad had still been alive. I think the weight of his displeasure would’ve done it, I think, and I think that’s the kind of thing that, as a therapist, you use whatever you have, and amongst the things that are … do you want to have a look at any of … There’s a whole … if you, you know, if you recognise your own struggles, the things that you could and could not do, because, then it helps you with other people. D’you know, I’m looking at this, 11th of September, and I don’t recognise any of these names. Oh, yeah, I was in the States then, that’s why. That’s who they are, yep. [she laughs]   I’m just, I haven’t looked in these boxes for ever.  

1:32:46KG: Yeah, so, you’d’ve, I mean, I think it would’ve, is an interesting idea, this, yeah, the fact that you’ve, uh, had these experiences and allows you to support all sorts of people. I mean, I’m also curious about, if you could talk some more about the idea of women and lesbians in relation to gay men of HU3, and those, and that time.

1:33:12 MM: Yeah. Well, there were two very different factions. There were the misandrists [she chuckles], men-haters. I don’t know if it’s a real word, but it’s the word that I use, I invented for myself, like misogyny. Um, there were people who, for whom no man could ever do anything right, and that, and my view was if no man could ever be a decent human being, then what do we have to do? It’s genocide time. Just keep a few for stock purposes, and get the shit of the rest. It’s clearly not gonna happen, but you know, but if what we say is men can be decent human beings, then that allows us to hold to task those that are not, and that is more use, that’s how I see it. Does that make sense?

1:34:15 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

1:34:16 MM: And because I’d been heterosexual and my ex-husband wasn’t horrible, he wasn’t violent, he wasn’t abusive, I mean, he let me work through some stuff in a very decent way, the fact that he ended up in hospital having a panic attack twice after I’d left him was, you know, I’d, it’s like, I’m not proud of how I treated him, and one of the things that happened, oh, God … Shona moved down to London at some point in all of this, and I went down to visit her, Shona was the woman who … but there’d been other people in between, ’cause that’s what it was like, really, um, and she was living in a commune, a squat, and there was a young woman there who had a twelve, thirteen month old baby boy, and I said to her, “so what’s gonna happen to your little boy as he gets older? ‘Cause this is a women only house,” and she said, “well, hopefully, by the time he’s old enough for it to matter, there’ll be men’s communes he can go to,” and I just thought, “what?” that is a … That is not okay, you know, that is a very disturbed way of looking at things, um, and I believe that we have to say, you know, all the -isms are about things that we can’t control, we have no say over being born into our family, our street, our year, any of it, all of the -isms [are] about those things, none of us are guilty of being ourselves, and that’s how I take it, and it’s like, if somebody has the misfortune to be born into a male body, you know, I’m so glad that wasn’t me, because I wouldn’t be able to be a lesbian if I was. [she laughs] I mean, there’ve been times where one of the few privileges of being a lesbian was that you could go to the Monday night lesbian line disco at the Hull Stevedores and Dockers Club [she laughs]. That was a peak experience, going there. So, like, the gay disco was on a Monday night, and I remember-

1:36:47 KG: Just for women?

1:36:49 MM: No, I, actually, I think that one might have been … I’m saying lesbian line, but I think it might have been gay switchboard as well, ’cause there was, that was in a house diagonally across the street from  the Women’s Centre was the gay switchboard house, gay men’s house, um, and I can’t, I cannot remember if it was women only or not, but I’m dancing with a woman to Soft Cell Tainted Love, and I touched her face, and if I think hard enough, I can still remember the burn of the … and I’m just, and, I’m kind of stood there stopped, and she said, “what?” and I said, “your skin, it’s so soft,” and she said the hottest thing ever said, she said, “we all are,” I was like, I was a puddle on the floor by that point. [she laughs] 

1:37:43 KG: But you’ve also talked about how, earlier you talked about how gay men would refer to women as fish.

1:37:52 MM: Yep.

1:37:54 KG: Can you maybe talk some more about, because clearly, you were entering spaces where there were gay men, there were mixed nights, Bobby was performing-

1:38:02 MM: Yep.

1:38:02 KG: -they’re pubs that took anybody-

1:38:04 MM: And drag queens use women’s toilets and hog the mirrors, and they, to my mind, they bring some of men’s sense of entitlement with them, just saying. Yes, it’s a thing [she laughs], um, I guess that I couldn’t, I felt I couldn’t be a purist separatist, because I taught children, and I had to give each child in my class the same best tat I could give, so that didn’t, you know, that was against the kind of women yes, men no, which is, of course, you know, nowadays, is such a binary way of looking at things, it’s ridiculous, you know, the fact that nowadays, people are expressing such different understandings. I suspect it might all settle down in thirty years’ time, but right now, there’s, in the same way that lesbian feminism exploded when it did, and pushed out, um, made things like women’s spaces by being bloody obnoxious when necessary, this, you know, that happened, and I think the same thing is happening in the trans world now. So then a bit of me just goes, “it’s their turn,” and as it’s very young people, teens, twenties, thirties, it’s that it’s not about me, you know, it’s not my business, and really, why does it matter if somebody wants to call themselves this or that or the other, for their understanding, that it. I mean, before Mark and I got married, we’d been kind of casually sleeping together, and I’d been sleeping with other people as well, it was just, like, casual, and at one point, way before we became a thing, we’re talking in the kitchen of the house that I shared with Janet then, and I said something about the fact that I would like to have a relationship with a woman because I wanted to know about that side of me, and I said that some time in, like, 1973 or so, you know, um, you know, what, you know, and again, it was that thing of, it was out of my mouth before I could stop it, and so I know it was true. As a child, you know, sexual exploration with other kids was always girls, but you, and you could read that as being that’s what’s available, or something else. You know, um, so I don’t know, I mean, for the most part, I think we just make it up as we go along, and we try and make sense of it as it is now, I mean, I’ve now been a lesbian for coming onto 45 years [she chuckles], way longer than I was anything else. Way longer than the twelve weeks of the bisexual solidarity group, otherwise known as a big, silly git [she laughs]. Um, and there’ve been times and that where it hasn’t been easy, and I think, “well, I didn’t go back in the closet, even though I knew the closet was available, so I guess…” the whole thing about being a real lesbian or not a real lesbian is really irritating. I don’t know if it’s still a thing now, used to be- 

1:41:55 KG: I’d like you to talk some more about this, because I think it’s all part of second-wave, it’s all part of that particular time, so could you talk some more about, uh, yeah, those, the kind of, well, it seems to me, quite strict-

1:42:14 MM: Hierarchy, yes. If you weren’t, you weren’t a real lesbian if you had ever had sex with a man, and Heaven forbid that you should say you enjoyed it, and of course, that, from a generation that grew up in the 1950s and ’60s that went, “nice girls didn’t like it anyway,” was, there was that to it in a way that I think if people nowadays thinking about it wouldn’t get that, but we were brought up that sex outside of marriage wasn’t a thing, the Magdalene laundries were real, in, you know, in my adolescence, so that sense of who you really were, what you chose to be, it was such a radical step to say I’ve got a choice, and that’s why I’ve always stuck with I’ve chose, because I think making a choice is more radical than going, “I can’t help it.” Now, I’m holding up a book that has two titles on it, Lizard Spring, and When You Know, stories by me. In Northern Dykes Writer’s Group, we did a publication called Quincunx (means the notional 5th intersection at the centre of a rectangle) and When You Know is about a lot of those issues, so I’ll give you that, you can take that away with you, um, so that thing about being a real lesbian, or a wannabe, and I get it, that the women who’d been betrayed and hurt by women that just dipped in and out, women got their feelings hurt, but that went into being quite a bullying thing, I think, about not being a … and that could be ’cause of my personal experience because of Denny and how scared I was, um, so I don’t know if other people would’ve experienced it the same, but that sense of something being immutable in you, or variable in you is quite an interesting topic, and it’s live again now. I will stick with the, for most people it’s immutable [she chuckles], um, the, when  I did my research on boundary issues in lesbian relationships for my MA, [she laughs], um, yeah, so I did that, because I thought, “God, why does this hurt so much?” [she laughs] Um, when I did my research asking around and actually there are very, very few women that have no experience of sex with men, not commenting on the quality or choice in it, but very, very few had none. Um, and you know, I’ve had a man say to me, “oh, you know, I could convert you,” and I’ll say, you know, “I’m more man than you, I’ve locked in, I know what I’m choosing.” [she laughs] Um, but that idea that there is simply innate or not innate, I think, is really dangerous ground, because if you go down the route of something, of it is innate to be of this sexual orientation, this gender presentation, it’s, well, I think it’s intellectually flawed, and politically dangerous, two separate issues, but you can’t look at  a baby and know, and let’s not even go there about the number of intersex conditions there are, which makes it really plain that there isn’t just an A and a B type. You know, binary is good for computers, but little else, the way I see it. So, when people … [she sighs] There is an idea that we continuously co-produce our identity in relation to our world, if you think about it, when you fall asleep, where are your memories, where is your personality? It’s intangible. You wake up, and it all comes back online. Where from? It comes from the, in your environment, and on every level, that, I think that idea of your personality, your identity being co-produced in relation to your world is the only one that makes sense, and on that basis, you cannot say, given, designated, blah. It doesn’t make sense, and to, but to then have a hierarchy, and I think that the, that some of that hierarchy stuff is to do with the fact that we’re in a patriarchy, it’s like here we go, second-wave feminism in again, don’t we? In a patriarchy, men are more valued than women, so when, ’cause back in the day, butch dykes were higher status than femmes, where does that come from? It comes from the patriarchy, which is why I stuck out for wearing frocks [she laughs], because anybody can be butch in a leather jacket, it takes real class to be butch in a cotton frock. [she laughs] I think what I’m saying is I’m quite contrary. I don’t mean, I don’t intend, I don’t, no that’s not true, I do sometimes mean to be-

1:47:56 KG: And always have been.

1:47:58 MM: Yes, and that that I get from my dad, who really believed if you’re walking in step with a beat, if everyone else is walking out of step with the beat, you don’t join them. You walk in your belief, so against the fact that he would’ve, I believe, shunned me for being a lesbian, he actually set me up for it [she chuckles], and I think one of the things is because I’m an only child, I didn’t get a gendered childhood in quite the same way. If I’d had a brother, things might’ve been shared out. I mean, I remember being seven or eight, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a ballerina like in my comic, or a panel beater working a garage like me dad, and I didn’t see there was any kind of distinction between these two things, and nobody said to me, “don’t be ridiculous, you can’t do that,” whereas, I think if I’d had a brother, there might’ve been some clearer division. Are you a sibling?

1:49:07 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

1:49:08 MM: Did you get treated different?

1:49:10 KG: I’m a … There’s three girls, we’re three girls.

1:49:12 MM: Ah, ah.

1:49:13 KG: All treated … I come from a farm.

1:49:16 MM: Uh-huh (affirmative).

1:49:16 KG: So we all work on the farm, so actually, there was, we were never considered to be male or female, it was just you could work. 

1:49:24 MM: Yes, and isn’t that an asset?

1:49:24 KG: So I had the … Yeah.

1:49:25 MM: Yeah.

1:49:26 KG: Yeah, yeah, yeah, a level understanding of, different understanding of-

1:49:31 MM: Yeah, my parents were both self educated, they left school, my dad was in the Fleet Air Army in the war, my mum was at school in the war, but you know, they both had very truncated education because of poverty and circumstance, so they self educated, they went to night classes, they joined societies, we did archaeology, they did geology classes at the university, they did that, but they, my dad especially, really despised the kind of academic that was incompetent at practical things, so I was brought up within a world where things got built, things got repaired, the first car we owned, my dad brought home a low loader, it was a chassis and an engine and a steering wheel, and he’d built it, from that, in the back garden, and of course, this is about the 1950s as well, when there wasn’t anything, so that, I mean, I think that I’m one of the most lucky generation members there is, born after antibiotics, penicillin, NHS, free tertiary education at the point of desire, rising prosperity, you know, my mum was brought up in the two up and two down, and look at what I’ve got. You know?

1:50:55 KG: Yeah, and in a way, that curiosity for life and understanding, I mean, that’s the most gorgeous thing that’s been passed on, hasn’t it?

1:51:04 MM: Yes.

1:51:04 KG: And that is, whether that’s to do with learning or who you’re having sex with, you know, that, to be open.

1:51:12 MM: Yeah.

1:51:13 KG: Just, like, a gorgeous thing.

1:51:15 MM: Yes, that is the real gift, that’s what good parenting gives you, and I would say that any relationship in which you feel cleverer, prettier, wittier, all round better is a healthy one to be in. If the relationship has you feeling like shit about yourself, it’s time to leave. You know, um, but yeah, so that whole thing about what kind of lesbian are you, and I don’t think, is that still a thing amongst young people?

1:51:48 KG: I guess so. Where do you fit, who are you, what does it mean?

1:51:52 MM: And does it become the thing that being trans is the higher status butch? Well, I think it would be, and this sounds horrendous, but I think it would be an awful shame if we lost all those gorgeous baby butches. That would be, and it’s about fitting back into the binary, it’s a, strategically a bad idea, ’cause what you should be going is, “a woman’s place is in the way.” I mean, you must know all these slogans, you’ve heard them all a million times, um-

1:52:28 KG: But I wonder if it makes you, um, because I’m just thinking of the literature and the academics and the research that you would’ve been very involved with and reading at those times, all of that, forefront second-wave, and now, and thinking, actually, some of it was rubbish, and I guess you lived out that through Boulevard, and you, the defiance, or the, who you accepted, the fact that you had fun-

1:52:54 MM: Yeah.

1:52:54 KG: All of those things were questioning of that-

1:52:57 MM: Yeah, and that, where they, you know, some of the messages about, you know, you were kind of morally failing if you were not completely man hating-

1:53:09 KG: The fact that you went to St. George’s and watched drag.

1:53:11 MM: Yeah, yeah.

1:53:12 KG: Was probably very anti…

1:53:15 MM: Yeah, yeah, and that comes around to the class thing, because the, um, Women’s Centre, the Hull Women’s Collective was by and large, it was academic background, people from the university, trades union organisers, that kind of thing-

1:53:35 KG: Radical, educated women?

1:53:37 MM: Yeah, yeah. Katherine Clarycose, that I showed you the photograph of, she left her husband and her children for the love of her feminism. Yeah, yes, she’s a published author now, as far as I know, so she’s probably accessible out there, but she used to walk around, she had her thesis in her rucksack on her back, and it felt like she was like, it was like the Old Man and the Sea, it had her in its grip, you know, um, Nicola Griffith, who is now a published writer living in Atlanta, Georgia, she was one of a group of daughters, all of whom were lesbians, of different kinds. She had one of her, one of her big sisters was like a straight lesbian, you know, like the, um, she had bisexuals, sleeping, you know, like, different … Good Catholic family, six daughters, all dykes. [she laughs] So I’m tryna think what else I should show you.

1:54:40 KG: Well, I just, I’m going to finish the recording, so I was going to say, is there anything, yeah, looking back, are you, we’ve talked about a lot of things, looking back, what’s your final reflection on thinking of all of these things?

1:54:54 MM: I think what shocks me when I look back is what a short period of time it was, actually. 

1:54:58 KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

1:55:00 MM: ‘Cause I came out in ’81, and by ’88, that bit of my life was over, and I look at what I did in that time, I just think, like, how did we have time? Um, it was a very exciting time, though, and I, you know, I wouldn’t change it for the world, even though some of it is hard to think about, but it wouldn’t work now in the same way, because the world is different, it was that combination of all the different liberation movements, you know, Betty, I mean,  lavender menace, Betty Friedan saying that lesbians were the lavender menace, that we’re undermining the legitimate demands of heterosexual women, national organisation of women, that kind of thing. That context was about that time and the fact that we had clocked what does this liberation and this liberation … Malcolm X  said the place for women in the Black Power movement was on their backs. Lovely. [she chuckles] And that is the trouble is that if you start gettin’ really tight about your boundaries and your guidelines and you go, “I’m not talking to them ’cause they eat meat,” actually, she’s wearing leather shoes, that’s not good enough, you know, that you can get into a very small, there’s one of the things that I felt was if you’re not careful in the very heady atmosphere of that politics, you could end up only talking to people that you already agreed with, and that way is how you get into fascism, so that is, for me, part of why the, you know, move away from that. One of my closest people in the art group is a gay man who’s our age, and we both said, because we’ve both been interviewed for various things, we’ve both said, “back in the day, we wouldn’t’ve spoken to each other,” you know, get over yourself [she chuckles], and it has to come down to none of the things that you’re born into are your fault, and if you start from the premise that that, those conditions have to be okay, your year, your postcode, your body, which, of course means your class, all of it, if those things have to be okay, because you cannot be guilty of what you cannot control, you know, you can’t, there’s no point in apologising for things that you had no say over, so I think that that kind of … we just took havin’ a good time, and I didn’t get upset about the misogyny of some of it, it’s just like that’s who they were, you know, some of the drag stuff, you know, I was too busy having a good time to get angry with other people [she chuckles]. 

1:58:19 KG: Could you talk to me about some of the venues that you might have gone, because I’ve just seen in your diary there was the Welly Club, there’s the … Yeah, tell me where you would’ve gone as a group of gay women.

1:58:33 MM: And the Welly Club was bands, that’s where the disco was, it wasn’t the Stevedores and … ’cause it was the Welly Club, that’s where the-

1:58:40 KG: Would’ve been a gay disco?

1:58:41 MM: Yeah, and Monday night, once a month, high status thing [she chuckles], um-

1:58:47 KG: Anything in town?

1:58:50 MM: Well, there was the one down the side of the railway, um, Park, not Park, was it Park Street? Down the side of there, massive lovely building. 

1:59:01 KG: Silhouette.

1:59:02 MM: The Silhouette was on Spring Bank.

1:59:04 KG: And then the later one.

1:59:05 MM: There’s one further down, just where Park Street bridge goes up and over, there was like the  dead end bit there, there was a pub there, um, so, and we went to, um, we went to Ocean Eleven, and … Ocean Eleven and. … Cameo, that were, those were the ones that didn’t have a license. Those, I remember standing, at that point, I had long, permed, curly hair, and I’m stood in the toilets juujing my hair, and, um, this woman, one of the working women, ’cause it was a, in a base camp for prostitutes was that place, was in the toilets as well and she said, “have you got a comb, love?” and I said, you know, I kind of gestured at me hair and said, “sorry, no,” and she said, “nah, the fuckers aren’t worth it, are they?” [she laughs] That was in the place where you bought coffee and you paid for drink that came in bottles under the counter.

2:00:04 KG: And it was for women only?

2:00:05 MM: No, no, no-

2:00:07 KG: It was everyone?

2:00:07 MM: Absolutely, punters, everything. It was, they were real dives. Top end of Holderness Road, just near … which of the bridges would it be? Drypool, maybe, or North Bridge? One of those, just over into East Hull. There were two clubs that were really close together, and you went to one of them, they went on ’til 2:30 in the morning, which was quite a rarity. There was, um K9 It was … the one, it was up steps, not far from the New Theatre, somewhere around there, kind of.

2:00:54 KG: Here it says Piper Club?

2:00:56 MM: Oh, the Piper Club, wow, let’s see. 

2:01:01 KG: You don’t remember?

2:01:02 MM: Piper Club. Oh, that’s on Newland Avenue, or it was. Yeah. It … In an old cinema on Newland Avenue on the east side of Newland Avenue. 

2:01:16 KG: Um, and would these be spaces that … Was this because you knew they were gay friendly, or that you, there were just good places to go? 

2:01:29 MM: Um … I guess there must’ve been places that we knew were okay, um, I mean, it was a standing joke that the Queen’s at the end of Newland Avenue was where people from the Polar Bear went if they were meeting someone they shouldn’t be meeting. [she laughs] It was just, like, a bit more off the beaten track, if you met somebody in the Polar Bear, everybody would know, but if you went to the Queen’s, not so much [she chuckles]. 

2:01:59 KG: And, um, do you remember any, um, gay, oh, I guess, lesbian perform bands? Tell-

2:02:08 MM: Jane’s Planes.

2:02:09 KG: Tell me about them.

2:02:09 MM: That was Nicola and Saffron was the drummer, um … They played at Women’s Day events in the, um, Spring Bank Social Club. There weren’t any others, there was just Jane’s Planes that were, like, a couple … but it wasn’t Saffron, it was Jane that was the drummer, Jane who was an art student who’d worked on Danger Mouse. [she laughs] The random things you remember about people. So, yeah, Jane’s Planes was the local band, and they had, and Nicola was the lead singer, she wrote the songs, um, I don’t know if any of their stuff would be on YouTube, or anywhere, no idea, but this was in the days before you would have anything to record it on, and certainly didn’t make any vinyl, um, there was the Fabulous Dirt Sisters from Nottingham, that I knew people from Birmingham that knew them, um, I mean, it was an amazing year that I went to the States with Renee, who was my American girlfriend off me Women’s Studies course, their local women’s disco had a new women’s, women only music policy, so they didn’t play music that was by men or misogynistic. Um, who did I see? Bands I’ve seen … Hollie Near, she was good. We, I saw, um, Melissa Etherige before she came out, she was at a women’s music festival in the Tennessee/Georgia border and you’re shouting at her from the audience to come out and she did eventually a couple of years later, um, Casselberry and Dupree, have you heard of them? Oh, they were great, I saw them in the States and got the, brought the vinyl home, um, and of course, there was Alice, Alex Dobkin, you know all of that, and you know Lesbian Concentrate, yeah, which sadly I don’t have.

2:04:35 KG: But particular to Hull?

2:04:37 MM: Particular to Hull, nobody.

2:04:37 KG: I guess, would you’d’ve … yeah.

2:04:38 MM: There was, oh, there was Ruth and the Rudens, yes, I’ve forgotten about them, and I need the loo.

2:04:43 KG: That’s alright.

2:04:44 MM: Ruth and the Rude Ends, yes. Old school dyke was Ruth, wasn’t she?

2:05:01 KG: Yeah, I guess it’s because I think there’s, you know, in the archive, there’s a lot of, you know, the document, the photographs are by men, a lot of the acts that we were seeing by, are men dressed-

2:05:15 MM: Yeah, yeah.

2:05:15 KG: -as women.

2:05:17 MM: Yeah.

2:05:17 KG: You know, they’re … Oh, well, we talked about it on the phone, the idea of this history that’s unrecorded, this women’s history that’s unrecorded.

2:05:24 MM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:05:26 KG: That was happening and running alongside and, which is why your photographs are really, really important. 

2:05:33 MM: You know, I’m so wishing that I’d paid more attention, ’cause then I could’ve done a better job of documenting it if I’d been really self consciously doing it, but I was just-

2:05:42 KG: You were just out doing it.

2:05:43 MM: -having a good time. [she chuckles]

2:05:45 KG: Yeah, and I think the fact that there is a, you know, there’s a set of photographs of Bobby in your collection of photographs means that it must’ve felt important enough to document-

2:05:55 MM: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

2:05:55 KG: -or that it was just your life, it was just part of your life.

2:05:59 MM: And I was doing documentary photography-

2:06:01 KG: You were doing documentary photography.

2:06:02 MM: Yeah, yeah.

2:06:03 KG: Who were your teachers on that?

2:06:05 MM: Oh, Rodney Mackey was one of them, um, and I knew him from before, he was a customer at me dad’s garage, so I’d known him from when I was doing archaeology when I was at school, um, can’t remember the other names, um, I basically just ran out of energy on it, and, um, I prioritised my MA over the photography.

2:06:25 KG: You were doing a lot all at the same time.

2:06:27 MM: Yeah. Yes, as-

2:06:30 KG: To cope.

2:06:30 MM: Yes. I applied for both, got both, and that was that. 

2:06:35 KG: Great. 

2:06:37 MM: Yeah.