This is the title story from the collection Dancing in Heaven, published by Reconnecting Rainbows on 1 December 2025.

It was 1984 and I was 18 years old. My A-levels and a pre-nursing course done, I got my first job at Guy’s Hospital. And so. There I was. The beginning of my new life as a nurse in a busy London hospital. I was so excited.
 
The placement in the infectious diseases ward brought me back down to earth with a bump.
 
Until then, I’d never even met anyone gay – well, not that I’d known, anyway. All I knew about that muttered word ‘homosexuality’ was what I saw on television or heard on the radio. Mr Humphries in Are you Being Served, Julian and Sandy in Round the Horne. Liberace. Danny La Rue. And the words whispered at my all-girls school. Shirt lifters. Benders. Poofters. All said in a way that made being gay seem like the worst thing possible. But I didn’t see anything to hate.
 
The world was waking up to a new disease that was hitting gay men. The tabloids were shouting it, and I saw some truly awful headlines. The worst – the one that still sticks with me – was 'I'd shoot my son if he had AIDS, says vicar' in The Sun. I hated that paper long before Hillsborough.
 
The infectious diseases ward was full of men wasting away. We were given no warning, and the first time I stepped through the door, I had to clench everything not to react. Boys my age, barely out of school. Young men like my big brother. Older men who could have been my father.
 
At the time, all we knew was from the BBC documentary The Killer in the Village, and that wasn’t much. Eventually they called it AIDS, but some of the nurses still called it GRID[1] or ACIDS[2]. Or 4H disease, because it affected homosexuals, Haitians, heroin users and haemophiliacs. I couldn’t understand why it affected those disparate groups, or what they might all have in common. I heard the older nurses whispering in corners, wondering which of the Hs the patients were. Judging them. Splitting them between the innocent victims and the guilty ones.
 
We had to do full barrier nursing – we were gloved and gowned and masked. The older nurses were the most afraid. So, us student nurses were sent in. Fed the patients. Washed them, talked to them. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. Afraid I might catch it. We didn’t know anything about it – the virus hadn't got it's proper name by then and it wasn’t clear how it was passed on. But I got on with it. Got to know them as real people. And their friends. Their friends were amazing! Flamboyant. So colourful in a time and place that felt like nothing but grey. They were like no-one I had ever met before. They opened my eyes to a whole new world, especially when they took me and the other young nurses to the gay club Heaven in Charing Cross. As well as the music and the noise and the dancing, it was the first club I'd been to where I didn't have to queue for the ladies.
 
We treated our patients as well as we could. But there was no cure for the virus, and it tore their immune systems and their bodies apart. Cancers. Infections. Wasting. Skin breaking down despite all our precautions. Memory loss and dementia. Tremors. I wrote letters for some of them when their shakes got too bad to be able to hold a pen.
 
We took it in turns sitting with distressed and dying patients, giving each other a break when we could. It was so hard to watch young men die – I remember hearing one of the more experienced nurses saying it was so much harder for them because their hearts were young and strong while their bodies were weak.
 
John. John, I remember so well. As the AIDS patients were in single rooms and he had few visitors, he had no one to talk to. And so, we made John laugh. The cleaner and I danced around his bed with string mop wigs on our heads and brooms as our partners. The junior doctors called in and told really bad jokes.
 
Our uniform was lilac and white pinstripe with a lilac collar. It was a colour that had never suited me, but I did like the short navy cape with a red lining that we wore in the hospital, and the long cloak and bonnet that kept me warm on the bleak winter walks back to the nurses’ home. The bonnets made us look like we were in the Salvation Army, and an old man gave one of my friends half a crown for the Sally Anns one night. Goodness only knows how long he'd had that in his pocket.
 
We used to wear the short capes reversed at Christmas when we sang carols on the wards. I have to admit I got a fit of giggles when we were asked to sing Away in the Manger in the maternity ward. The bit I really hated was the hats that needed a handful – no, an armful – of white hairgrips to keep them on. We had to make them up from a semicircle of starched white linen, which was stitched across the bottom with a drawstring thread to pull it into shape. The semi-circle had to be folded in these neat little pleats – either eight for the eight Beatitudes, or twelve for the twelve disciples – I can’t quite remember which! We would get told off if the pleats weren’t perfectly equal, and I was all fingers and thumbs. On nights when he couldn’t sleep, John and I would fold a stack of them together. He showed me how to use a thin sheet of card inside to make the front stand up and keep everything tidy. He also taught me how to darn the heels of my horrible grey uniform stockings without leaving lumps that would cause blisters, and how to use soap to stop a run in my precious nylons.
 
I'd come from a girls' school to a hospital ward. I'd never seen a naked man before. And now I was seeing them pretty much every day. They had tattoos and piercings in places that I had no idea you could even have pierced. We had full and frank conversations, John and me. He was so open and generous with me – a silly little girl who knew nothing.
 
I'd also never seen a dead person before.
 
I laid John out, and it was – surprising to me – a beautiful experience. Quiet and serene. It was just me and him, and it was the last gift I had to give him. I kept my cool for the rest of the day, but inside I was broken. I sobbed myself to sleep that night, and when I walked in the next day and saw his empty bed, it was all I could do not to cry. But the bed was soon filled again.
 
Too soon.
 
We had mums visiting but almost no dads. Mums who were broken. Mums who were stoic. Mums who were furious at their dying sons.
 
Telling John's mother that he had died was the hardest thing I had ever done. She didn't even know that he was in hospital. Like so many people at the time, he kept his sexuality and his illness a secret. So not only was I telling her that her beloved boy was gone, but I was also telling her that he was gay. I held her hand and we wept together.
 
We were surrounded by hate. I had people wait for me as I left hospital, asking how I could work with sinners. That God hated me for doing what I did. That AIDS cured poofs. That it was nature and the wrath of God getting rid of the aberrations. The only one that made me laugh out loud was 'God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve'.
 
But we were also wrapped around with care. Not all parents rejected their sons. Some of them healed divisions and said goodbye with love. Some stayed on after losing their sons to befriend the boys who had lost their families. Some became activists. Some were there for us nurses, too. They brought us flasks of tea and soup and hot chocolate, and little wrapped packages of home-made biscuits and cakes. And best of all, they gave us hugs and held our hands at the end of the heart-breaking shifts.
 
You know what I remember most, though. Dancing in Heaven, sweat running down our faces, surrounded by beautiful boys in leather and lace and feathers, singing along to Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat at the tops of our voices.


[1] Gay-related immune disease

[2] Acquired community immunodeficiency syndrome

Marrying a woman blew my cover.

We bisexuals can hide in plain sight, camouflaged by our opposite sex relationships. You might spot us by our bi flag laces, or the pins on our jackets, but we can so easily be mistaken for straights. Now I’d shed my carapace, and I was out in the open. Vulnerable.

I thought it might be time for a fresh start for me, for us, a whole new life. And this ended up in North Yorkshire. By the sea.

My memories of the seaside are of childhood holidays swimming in the sea until I was blue. My mum warming me up in a towel scratchy with sand. Hot terracotta tea out of a tartan Thermos flask.

My first sea swim as an adult was Druridge Bay on our honeymoon. As I walked into the water a drift of swans flew along the beach, their wingbeats throbbing in the air. I wore a cheap wetsuit that left me bobbing on the surface like a discarded plastic bottle, and I giggled like a fool for the rest of the day.

As part of my new life I decided to go sea swimming with the Whitby Wild Swimmers.

I am so nervous when I turn up with my bag and my costume and a towelling robe. I hope that I have found the right place, brought the right kit. I walk down the steep concrete steps to the beach and there they are. My new tribe, resplendent in bright dryrobes and woolly hats.

One woman – we are mostly women of a certain age – explains about walking in steadily until you get acclimatised. Another warns me about the sand bank part way out that means you can unexpectedly step into nothing. A third offers me coffee because my flask, full of ginger tea, is still sitting at home in the kitchen, next to the kettle.

Sea swimmers are so welcoming. They don’t care if you are straight or queer, fat or thin, emblazoned with HRT patches or covered in tattoos, a long-distance swimmer or a splasher in the waves.

When we swim together, we lend each other swimming gloves, boots, hats and towels, talk about where we’ve got our gear from, laugh at each other's stories. Share hints and tips – clean dog poo bags on your feet help neoprene socks come off more easily, a folding Styrofoam mat protects you when you sit on the cold concrete to change and a hot water bottle on a belt around your middle is a gamechanger.

We tell each other about sea conditions, strong currents, jellyfish and weather changes. Joke that ocean warming is caused by all the menopausal women easing their hot flushes in the sea. Show each other pictures of our dogs and cats. Talk about anything, everything and nothing.

Sea swimming got me back in in touch with myself. How I feel about my body – if it's strong enough to swim in the North Sea in winter it's doing okay. That no-one cares what you look like when you are standing on one leg to put your knickers on. Trying so hard not to flash the beach dogwalkers on a breezy Wednesday morning.

How all the pieces of me – my age, my sexuality, my mental health issues, my spicy brain, all fit together to make me who I am.

I learned so much. To be aware of the afterdrop – the chill after I’ve started to warm up that usually hits a few minutes after I pull away from the beach. To read the sea. Recognise the oddly inviting flatness of a rip tide. See what the waves and the swell tell me. Know the turning of the tide. Be aware of the cleanliness or not of the water.

Though I do still make mistakes.

There was the day that the waves threw me under like a washing machine, three times in a row and someone kindly, tongue planted firmly in cheek, said – we knew you were okay as we counted and you came up the same number of times as you went down. The day that the wind changed and the stiff offshore breeze made the swim back to the beach twice as hard and even the experienced people got a little anxious.

And the day someone spotted tampons and toilet paper floating on the wave.

I was amazed how fast I got home that day, how hot I could bear the water, and how much soap one middle-aged woman could actually use in a single shower. And furious that the water companies could allow this to happen. All in the name of shareholders and profit. Could take away something as perfect as a Solstice sunrise swim where I floated in the water at half past goodness knows what in the morning, my fizzing brain suddenly and unexpectedly quieted, as a perfect pale-yellow sun edged above the horizon. Or a supermoon swim where the moon hung, silver-bright, between the twin lighthouses at Whitby Pier.

I feel like time is running out. As a woman in my 50s I have more life behind me than I have in front, and I worry that it's the same for the world if we can't fix it. Thinking too much about this makes me feel powerless, so I try to change the little things. Pick up litter when I walk on the beach. Walk and take the bus more and drive less. Generate less plastic. Plant for insects and birds. Write letters to my MP about water companies. Support local sustainable enterprises, like the Whitby Lobster Hatchery. Adopt a lobster and call it Leonard.

The hatchery aims to release 100,000 lobsters to combat the losses of larvae from predation and from ocean acidification, warming and pollution and to help to to maintain Whitby's fishing heritage.

When they first hatch, lobster larvae are tiny and cannot swim. Only one in 20,000 will reach the next stage. And only one in a million make it to old age. The hatchery grows the larvae until they are mobile, fingernail-sized versions of adult lobsters. Complete with tiny tails and miniscule claws. And then they release them at low tide to hide, camouflaged, on the seabed.

I think my favourite thing about lobsters is that they can only grow when they shed their carapaces and their new shells are paper-thin and soft. Then, they are completely vulnerable.

I step into the sea and for a moment I don't think I can do it. The water feels icy, and my skin freezes and burns all at the same time. My yellow tow float bobs behind me in the swell, with its little duck thermometer like a bright and cheery tugboat. But then the others join me as the sun sparkles in the waves. We wade in further and shriek and laugh as the sea hits our bits and tits, and then we are swimming. And there's nothing before us but the immensity of the sea, and the blueness of the sky and the common terns hovering and plummeting into the sea for fish. And on the seabed below the tiny lobsters hide, shedding their shells and growing new ones until their time has come. For their fresh start.

Yorkshire Post, 2 September 1936

There’s a lot of sea frets round here – days when you can’t see one end of the street from the other  – and those are the days when the ships run aground. Early this year – January I think– well, months ago, anyway, there was a sea fret and the Heatherfield cargo boat from Liverpool went ashore, and it’s been sitting there ever since. It's September now and its been there so long it feels like part of the coastline, and there's always a line of seagulls across its top using it as a look out, when the salvage crew isn't aboard.

Yesterday I was in my sitting room, waiting for the postman with a parcel from my sister – the one who married a fisherman and went to live in Hartlepool, not the one who went away to London – I must tell you about her one day – anyway, I saw the Harvest Queen salvage crew working on the Heatherfield, getting the scrap iron off.

Something didn’t look quite right, and I saw that the lifeboat, the one they'd been using to ferry them to and from the Heatherfield, had come adrift. Perhaps someone hadn't tied it on properly – they'll get an earful for that. The little lifeboat capsized and got washed towards the shore.

Well, that meant the men on the Heatherfield were stuck. All six of them.

I shouted to Mr George Crabtree, the plumber who was looking at the leak under my kitchen sink, and off he ran to get Mr Oliver Storm, who was on the shore seeing to his nets. The two of them took a motorboat out. They got to the boat, but the swell tossed them about so much that the crew couldn’t climb in.

I could see Mr Crabtree and Mr Storm waving their arms about at each other, and then one of them started tying knots in a piece of rope – there’s always plenty of rope in a fishing boat. They tied up some kind of lifeline – it looked more like a cat’s cradle to me – and four men jumped down into the motorboat. But there were still two left, who had to tie themselves up in rope and be pulled through the waves. They got back on shore bruised and battered, soaked through and shivering – it might only be September but there was a chill in the air.

That wasn’t the only thing yesterday. Some visitors – relatives of the Storm family someone said to me, though the Storms I know would be too embarrassed to admit it. Well, these visitors had walked out to Cowling Scar. That’s the flat rock that goes out to the right of the beach at low tide. The one over there. It’s a fine spot to sit if you have time to do that sort of thing. I hear the views are good, but the tide comes in fast.
Well, the three women had been reading and hadn’t see the waves coming. Someone on the beach ran to get help, and Mr Thomas Storm – that’s Mr Oliver Storm’s brother you know, and there’s many a Storm in this village – well, he and Mr Harrison went out in a boat to pick the women up. By the time the boat was heading back, the rock they were on had been covered up by the waves. That would have given them quite a wetting, and perhaps it will learn them for next time they want to read a book.
​
All in all, it was quite a day. I’ve never known anything like it. My neighbour said that the only thing that didn’t happen to us yesterday was a visit by this sea serpent which is supposed to be off the Yorkshire coast. I don’t know about that, but I do know there’s still a leak under my kitchen sink.
 

Dear James
 
It’s been a long time since I wrote to you and I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know whether I would see you again.
 
Growing up together on your father’s estate, we saw each other every day. We played together. We studied together until I had to go and work in the kitchen. We walked in the garden and talked. And then you went away to war. To France. When you left, we were just children, but when you came home you had become a man.
 
My father told me that I had to keep away from you. That we were both grown and we needed to have friends from our own class. I watched you out with your father from my window in the gatekeeper’s lodge, and you didn’t even look for me.
 
That night you found me. You said that you were sorry. And you kissed me. It was the first time I had ever been kissed. You told me stories of the front, and you cried in my arms.
 
The next day you went back to war.
 
I didn’t have a mother to explain what was happening to me. Your mother’s maid, a girl not much older than me, told me that I was having a child.
 
Your mother found out. Said that I wasn’t to tell anyone. Not even you. Told me that my father wouldn’t lose his job if I married the gardener’s boy and went up to live in Northumberland on your uncle’s estate. Albert is kind. He looks after me and will bring Matilda up as his own.
 
I am making a bodice for our baby daughter from a linen sheet and scraps of lace, and I have sewn your name inside a seam, where no-one will see it.
 
I am going to burn this letter. But I just wanted to have one last chance to write these words. To say, James, I love you. I am ever your Lizzie

You want to hear the story of that Pentecost? It's so many years ago now, but I'll tell you what I can remember. I was a little girl and my father had an inn in Jerusalem – he would grin at you and tell you that it was the best inn in the city. Every year there would be a stream of people who came in on foot and in carts from towns and villages far and wide for the Feast of Weeks, which is the other name for Pentecost. It's when we bring the first fruits of harvest to the temple.

The scriptures say to bring two loaves of yeasted bread made from the finest wheat flour, seven male lambs, one young bull and two rams as burnt offerings, and one male goat and two lambs as sacrifices. The people with money could sleep in an inn and leave their servants to tend the animals. The poor people had to sleep in the street, clutching the lamb or the flour and oil that was all they could afford to bring as an offering.

The main things I remember about the Feast of Weeks – well, the ones before – was the noise. People shouting, laughing, greeting old friends, animals bleating, mooing, sometimes running through the streets with a clatter of hooves. The mess. And the smells through the whole of the city. The mouthwatering smell of bread, the iron smell of blood, the reek of animal droppings, and the odour of burning meat and grain and oil that fell somewhere between delicious and bitter.

That year, we’d been planning since Passover – where people were to sleep in my father’s inn. What we could feed them. How we could make space for everyone. We managed it all, as we always did.

When it was time to go up to the temple, I watched my father disappear into the ribbon of men and animals heading up through the streets to the Mount of Moriah where the temple spread huge across the hillside. My father had told me that it was built on the foundation stone that was used to create the world, and when I was small, I imagined an enormous workbench like the potters and carpenters. I couldn't watch for long – my mother spotted me and pulled me back inside to help her to help her to sweep and clean and cook. I looked out of the window every chance I could, imagining what was going on inside the towering walls and gates, hearing the distant sound of the celebrations.

That was the day that everything changed. All of a sudden, people came running back down from the temple. They poured through the streets. It was hard to understand what they were saying. My mother and I clutched each other – it was all a bit frightening. Eventually my father pushed his way through the crowds. We had expected him to throw the doors open to start serving people, but instead he closed them behind him, shutting out the torrent of people.

He told us what he had seen in the Temple. That there had been a sound like a wind filling the place, and lights like flames of fire on the Galilean followers of the man he called Jesus, and that they started talking about their teacher. And though the temple was full of people from all places, from Mesopotamia, Judaea, even as far as Libya and Rome, they all heard the words in their own languages. One man shouted that they must be drunk, and my father laughed out loud – after all, an innkeeper knew what drunken people look like, and he said they were mothing of the kind.

A man called Peter, one of the Galileans, told them all about Jesus, about how he died at the hands of men and was resurrected, and how he was now the fulfilment of the prophesies and the Lord and Christ. Father said that that Pentecost used to be the first fruits of the harvest, and now it's the first fruits of the spirit. He hugged my mother and I and told us all about his baptism. At the time I didn't understand any of it, but I knew that I had never seen him so happy. And now, looking back, I realise that it was the start of something new.

Door opens but there's no-one there

Lord have mercy on us all – they are going to blow us up. They’ve been and done and put the gas in at the Wesleyan Chapel and none of us will be safe in our beds.

They make the gas from coal, so my neighbour said. The smell – there’s nothing to describe it. The coal cart, with its wheels on skids, comes all the way down the hill from the railway station and ends up at the retort house behind the inn. The boys coming in the fields huddle next to the furnace to get warmed up. 

On Sunday last, Reverend Stokes told us he had raised £8 to fit gas lights and a boy lit them up. There was such a sound of popping that Mrs Hamsey and I ran out in fear, our aprons over our heads. Our Martha came to the house and told me not to be so daft, but you’re not getting me back in that place. Not as long as I live. God will have to find me up the hill at St Stephens. 

​I never quite saw the point of swimming in the sea. And when I heard the story about Mr Landsen from my friend Jane, who'd read it in the paper that she gets from the butcher when she cleans his house – well, that just showed I was right.
 
My friend Jane knew the lady in the story – Mrs Olaf Landsen – May Jeffrey as was. Jane's family were Quakers in Scarborough and May was a Scarborough lady who had met Mr Landsen when she was on a walking holiday in Norway. Jane said that the lady played the piano and the violin most beautifully, and that she would play the violin to the trees and the birds as she walked. Can you imagine that? I wonder if the birds sang back to her.
 
Well, apparently May Jeffrey married this Olaf Landsen two years ago. Some kind of novelist, though I'm sure I've never seen his books at the subscription library in Whitby. Jane was there when they got wed – 1894, that would be. Lovely it was, Jane said – the bride in a white costume and Mr Landsen looking so fine. The Meeting House had been sold and the new one not yet built, so they married in the Registrar's office.
 
But that's not telling you the story, is it. Well, Mr Landsen had drowned, down at Stoupe Beck. It's a week ago now, because the butcher gets the newspaper from the baker, who gets it from the vicar, who gets it from the doctor. But news is still news when you've not heard it before. Jane came round with the paper, and we read the story together.
 
Mr and Mrs Landsen had been staying at Robin Hood's Bay for 12 months, so it said, and they went to the beach near Stoupe Beck to swim. It's pretty there, but the sea round here is as cold as cold, even on a summer's day. And the currents on that bit of the water are strong, so the fishermen say. I go down to the bay to collect the lobster pots for mending, and that's as close as I'm getting to the water. Why go in the sea when you've got a cosy kitchen and a sunny little yard.
 
Mr Landsen went into bathe. He was a good swimmer and went out some distance, but he got into trouble. As I said, the currents can be powerful around here. Jane said she'd heard from the Quakers that Mrs Landsen went in first and then she came out and gave her husband her bathing dress to swim in as they'd only bought one with them.
 
The paper said that there was a Mr Owen on the beach with two other men. He was from some place called Christchurch in Oxford. That's a long way to travel to see the sea, I think. Well, anyway, they heard Mrs Landsen shouting for help. Mr Owen was a strong swimmer, and he was the first to reach Mr Landsen, but the current meant that he couldn't rescue him, and they both sank under the waves. Mr George Hutton, who was driving his horse and cart on the sands, went in and pulled Mr Owen out unconscious, but couldn't get Mr Landsen. They had to give Mr Owen artificial respiration to get him breathing again. Poor Mrs Landsen – she wouldn't leave the beach because she really believed her husband had floated out to sea and reached some rocks, and was just waiting for rescue. I wonder if they've found his body yet.
 
Mr Hutton and Mr Owen were so brave. Not everyone round here can swim, you see. Some of the fishermen see it as bad luck – to be able to swim, that is – because they think it means your boat will sink one day. I think I will just stick to my kitchen and my sunny yard with its pots of lavender and rosemary and mint. And my cup of tea. 

Well. I'm so cross I don't know what to do with myself. You will never guess what that Mr Farsyde has done now. Look! Look at this handbill! He's gone and told the village that after next Thursday – 13 May 1864 that is – we have to ask his permission to dry our clothes at the drying grounds. I ask you.

You don't know what the drying grounds are? Well, you're a lucky one then. Got someone to do your washing for you have you? They do it different in the city I expect. It's where we dry our fishnets, and our washing. And he owns it. We've always used the drying grounds, but now he says it's an 'intolerable nuisance'. But where else can we dry our nets and our sheets? And the baby's tailclouts? Not in the house. There's not the space with me and Alfred and his mother and father. And the damp goes straight to his father's chest.

And if we don't get the special leave and licence he's asking for? He's just going to take all our drying things away. Our clothes, our nets and sails. Our washing lines and posts. Well, probably not him. He'll get someone as works for him to do it. And he says he'll auction what he takes away. Well, I can tell you something. He's not going to sell my drawers and my Alfred's nets. Over my dead body.

And the land where we take our ashes and our night soil – you know what night soil is, don't you?, Of course he owns that field too. We can carry on with that at least, as we've got a long lease on our cottage in Fisherhead. But some folk are going to have to ask now, and what will they do if he says no? Can you imagine.

​I was talking to Mrs Granger at the drying grounds – her brother's got a shop in the village – and she said that he rents from Mr Farsyde and the old bugger wants him to sign a new agreement. And new agreements are never good things. My Alfred said I shouldn’t talk like that about Mr Farsyde. He is Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant, and he owns our house and the drying grounds. So I should hush and do what he says. I don't know about that. But I do know that I don't expect Mr Farsyde ever had to do his own basket of washing. Or dry it neither. Perhaps if he did he might not be so particular.