Badgerstoke on Sexuality

A couple of weeks ago Mr Jones and Mr Chang who live at number 1 announced that they were coming out of the wardrobe and were in fact gay. This was not a great surprise as they’d already told everybody informally two years ago. I think the only reason for the announcement now was as an excuse for a party.

So last Thursday Mrs Badgerstoke and I went along in the evening with a bottle of fizzy wine that my cousin had given me for my birthday. Everyone from the close was there as well as a few others. My daughter Gloria, who lives two streets away, was there with her husband Dean. Gloria is a highly qualified hairdresser and will visit people in their homes and do their hair for a very reasonable price and she cuts Mr Chang’s hair every few weeks. If Mr Jones wasn’t completely bald then I’m sure he’d be a customer as well. It was a surprise to see my son-in-law Dean there as it is normally difficult to get him out of his armchair but I expect that the television programmes that evening may have been not very good.

I must say it was a really excellent spread. There was quiche, sausages on sticks, vol-au-vents, various cheeses and lots more. Also there were open bottles of wine on the table for people to refill their glasses as they pleased. At one point in the evening I made the mistake of filling my glass from the bottle that we’d brought along but when I realised this I disposed of it into a large pot plant when no one was looking.

As Mr Chang is a Chinese gentleman I was a little surprised that there was no oriental type nibbles but when I tackled him about this he said that he actually came from Wolverhampton. I should have guessed from his accent but in the past I had always thought that he must have had elocution lessons from someone who came from the West Midlands. I expect that also explained why there was ELO playing on the stereo instead of something more oriental.

At one point in the evening I found myself sitting next to Mrs Bradley the widow that lives at number 6. She was telling me about her in-growing toenails. The good thing about Mrs Bradley is that she doesn’t expect you to say anything during any conversation you have with her and so you can use the time productively to think about other things. Mrs Bradley’s husband was deaf so in a way they had the perfect marriage. After he passed on Mrs Bradley got herself a parrot as a replacement. I must say it is unusual to hear a parrot say “lumbago” and “bunions” instead of “hello” and “who’s a pretty boy then”.

Anyway as I was sitting there not quite listening to Mrs Bradley talking about her sciatica I started to consider a statistic I’d read once that one in ten people are gay. Well a quick check of the close and I found we had exactly thirty people living there and so there should be three gay people. Well if Mr Jones and Mr Chang were two of them then who was the third?

Later in the evening I was chatting to Miss Dingle from number 13 and I began to wonder if she was the missing gay person as to my knowledge she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Feeling more uninhibited than normal due to the six glasses of wine I’d drunk I asked her about her sexuality. She said she couldn’t talk about it there but I could come around to her house at nine o’clock the next evening if I wanted.

The party wrapped up quite late and we all agreed that Mr Jones and Mr Chang should go back in the wardrobe so that they could come out again next year.

On Friday I told Mrs Badgerstoke that I was popping out for a little walk and went to see Miss Dingle to ask her whether she was gay. I must say she has no idea of punctuality. I got there a few minutes after nine o’clock and she was still in her underwear. It was the sort that Mrs Badgerstoke used to wear only it was much more colourful and it took a lot less material to cover Miss Dingle that it does to cover my wife.

Miss Dingle was also wearing long boots and carrying a riding crop. I’d never realised that she was a horsewoman in the past (I wonder where she keeps her horse?). I came right to the point of my visit and asked her about her sexuality and she suggested that we should go into the bedroom to discuss the matter; I assumed that she wanted to put something on over her underwear. As we went she kept flicking the riding crop in my direction and I had to tell her she could have someone’s eye out unless she was more careful.

When we got to the bedroom I found that Miss Dingle has a most strange hobby; she collects police equipment. Hanging on the walls were handcuffs, chains, hoods and lots of other stuff that I didn’t recognise. She suggested that I might like to try some on but I declined and said I’d only come to talk and she seemed most disappointed. And so we returned to the lounge where I asked her straight-out about her sexuality and she assured me that she wasn’t in fact the missing gay person and she had no idea who it might be.

So I’m not sure who it is but I will keep my eyes open and be sure to let you know if I discover anything.

Badgerstoke’s Tip: Gay people are just ordinary people who happen to be gay. So they can be just as annoying as everyone else.