The Times seems to be on a roll, with some truly excellent writing. I loved a piece from Damian Barr on 23 July, in which he used a word new to me – ‘gaybourhood’, to denote an area with a large gay population. The following extract really made me smile:

‘I first visited Brighton as a teenager in the late 1980s to take part in a national schools quiz competition. Our team didn’t win but I barely noticed as I gawped at the exotic sight of men holding hands – men who weren’t blind and didn’t need help crossing the road. These men looked unafraid. Happy, even.

Our consolation prizes were book tokens, which I immediately spent buying all the Tales of the City books in the local Waterstone’s. I then went gome and announced to my mother… that I was gay. She politely pretended to be shocked.”

I loved ‘politely pretended’, with its implication that she’d known all along. It made me wonder how my parents would react if I explained my somewhat alternative lifestyle – poly and a spanko. Do they already sense that there must be so much more to my relationship with the ‘best friends’ I mention so regularly? Would, given my suspicions about at least my dad’s kinky inclinations, they be at all surprised to know about my interests in spanking?

I rather suspect not. But much as I’d like to ‘come clean’, there’s still a reluctance to be fully open. Poly equals there must be something wrong with their once-divorced son’s second marriage; spanko equals abusive towards women – neither being in the least part true, but I can well imagine them speculating and worrying.

Much as I’d like to be open and honest, if one assesses these things on a ‘need to know’ basis, do they really, given the risks that’d they could end up shocked and stressed? I’m curious to know whether have others crossed this particular bridge – especially if they’ve done so not as a youngster but after years of keeping their true self hidden.