'I decided not to hide it': LGBTQ people return to their home towns
Criccieth is a proud sort of place. Locals call this corner of the Llyn peninsula the pearl of Wales, on account of the beach sweeping across to Snowdonia. In one of several tea rooms, the coasters read: “New York, Tokyo, London, Criccieth.” Peter Harlech Jones embodies this spirit. A small, well-presented 71-year-old, he’s been passionate about Criccieth since childhood, having spent school holidays here with relatives. “I was born and raised about 30 miles away in a village called Old Colwyn,” he says. “I had a strict, Presbyterian upbringing. Here, I felt very much at ease and was allowed to be myself. I could smoke. I could be a bit naughty. I grew up just loving this place. It’s glorious.”
A retired vet, Harlech Jones now lives about 100 yards from where his father was born and raised; the family goes back five generations in Criccieth. But Harlech Jones left 46 years ago, aged 25, because he felt that being gay was not compatible with living in rural north Wales. “I still hadn’t had gay sex,” he says. “I feel very patriotic about being Welsh; Welsh is my mother tongue. But I knew I couldn’t stay around here because I’d have to remain in the closet. We’re talking about 1972 – it was still really difficult.”
Harlech Jones moved first to Liverpool to study veterinary science, then to London, where in the mid-70s he plucked up the courage to go into the gay bars of Old Brompton Road – but only after he’d walked past them several times.
As a young man in Sunday school, he’d quietly tried to pray away his attraction to other boys; now, he found his people in the gay Christian movement. He came out to friends and flatmates, met lovers. He slowly began the process of coming out at work. “I was still scared, but I was ready for it,” he tells me, over coffee and Welsh cakes in his living room overlooking the seafront.
The broad trajectory of Harlech Jones’s early life will be familiar to most LGBTQ people. Leaving home is a part of our story, a chapter we tell a lot. Comedian: “I loved Tasmania. I felt right at home there. But I had to leave as soon as I found out I was a little bit lesbian.”
