Out in Devonport

         Devonport, the dockside district of Plymouth which, in its heyday, was a major base for Royal Naval assets, the de facto workplace of the surrounding (male) population and the night-time playground of thousands of sailors and marines, has had to adapt over the past forty years or so to the shrinkage of Britain’s military forces. And, since I now live on its edge, I am both invested and interested in how it copes with that process. Fundamentals appear to have been taken care of – the housing stock has been rebuilt or refurbished and important landmark buildings re-purposed with deliberate intent to foster community interests, while employment opportunities are being created outside of HM Dockyard.

          But it is the recent establishment of a new, hip café in one of the many redundant pubs that has made me hopeful that the people of Devonport are beginning to embrace the 21^st century. The café is called Terra Nova – a nod to the native-born Captain Scott of the Antarctic – and its menu is up to scratch with Hackney’s finest, a proud rebuttal of the dismal reiteration of cling-on greasy-spoons that hook people into unhealthy diets and low culinary expectations. I was especially pleased that the new café is on the route of one of my walks since, if I time it right, it is the perfect pit-stop. I sat outside it one sunny day and my coffee was delivered by a young lady with facial piercings, an elaborate hair-do and tight-fitting, leopard skin print trousers. I remarked that I was just admiring the frontage of the Victorian terrace across the road, classically elegant despite the garish shop-fronts at street level. “Yes, they’re lovely,” she said, adding “Take my word for it, Devonport is the next place!” So, there we have it, on the authority of the next generation.

          Meanwhile, there is quite a lot of nostalgia in the air, as we are currently in the middle of the month-long Plymouth History Festival, a series of events and displays that are useful to an incomer like me whose knowledge is patchy and anecdotal. I have signed up to whatever I can fit into my diary. Yesterday, it was a talk given by the curator of Who Am I? – a themed display at the museum. The fact that it was about the LGBT+ community, of which I am not a member, did not disqualify me from attending, which was just as well, since I arrived to find myself an audience of one. The (gay) academic protagonist, Bill, welcomed me enthusiastically and told me the backstory of how he had persuaded the Lottery Heritage Fund to give him money to set up what was lacking at the museum, namely an archive dedicated to the history of his community, the existence of which had never been openly acknowledged – curious, since naval ports have long been associated with homosexual liaisons. But one of the exhibits is a photograph, taken in a pub in 1966, of a sailor sitting on the knee of a local man. The sailor was due next day to be court marshalled for homosexual practices. One year later, homosexuality was decriminalised, yet it seems that public opinion took a long time to catch up: in 1995, a local man was murdered for being gay, after which public perceptions began to shift.

          As the talk formally commenced, we were joined by a latecomer, a lesbian with whom Bill was on familiar terms and whose contributions made the event livelier – and more comfortable for me. Except at the end, when she was so generous as to advise me of the best places to connect with the LGBT+ community. Taken somewhat aback at her apparent misreading of my sexual identity, I thanked her politely but made it clear that my interest was more generally in the city's social history – that and its transition to the 21^st century.