Behind a prominent display of
newspaper front pages, features, photographs, headlines, articles, cuttings
covering the last ten years of his work, Narvel Annable was chatting to
visitors and signing his various titles at Nottingham Pride on Saturday, July 28th, 2007.
Picture by Paul Hunt at Pink
Picnic
Next day, the same activity took
place at Huddersfield's
21st Pink Picnic at Castle Hill Fields.The August edition of SHOUT! Magazine featured several photographs of
Narvel with visitors and leading entertainers at the event.These pictures, taken by Paul Hunt,
include the Fabulous Pride Sisters and PC Mark Carter of West Yorkshire Police,
better known as Mr Gay UK.Please
visit www.shoutweb.co.uk
The author will also play an active
part in the 'Four Days of Fun and Frolic' which is the essence of Bradford Pride.Narvel and his partner Terry Durand will
be staying at the Holiday Inn at the Bradford Leisure Exchange from Thursday,
September 6th to Sunday, September 9th.
Narvel will be a guest speaker at
the West
Yorkshire Inaugural LGB Council Employee Group Meeting -
Thursday, September 6th, 2.00 to 5.00pm at the Equity Centre, 1 Longlands Street,
Bradford.On the same day he will
join authors VG Lee and Linda Innes at the Pride Arts & Enterprise Launch to be
introduced by Paul Hunt at 6.30 in the Conference Suite in Bradford's NationalMediaMuseum.Narvel will be reading extracts from Lost Lad and Scruffy Chicken, followed by questions from the audience at 7.30pm.
Fast forward to Saturday, September
8th, 8.00pm at Candy, Sackville
Street, Bradford.Amongst other attractions and events,
Paul Hunt will host a Mr
& Mr / Mrs & Mrs Competition which will include Mr Annable and
Mr Durand.
The Leeds Gay Community have invited Narvel to be their
guest speaker on the Friday evening of September 21st at 60 Upper Basinghall Street, Leeds.HUGG - Huddersfield Gay
Group have also asked him to talk about his work sometime in October at a
date yet to be fixed.
Photograph courtesy of Derby
Evening Telegraph
GAY AUTHOR TO ENJOY A VERY CIVIL WEDDING
Tom
Cooper, of the Belper News, announced that on July 14th, 2006, Terry Durand
and his 'long-term partner' Narvel Annable will be 'tying
the knot'. In Ripley Town Hall, after nearly 30 years
they were legally united in the Grand Council Chamber
in a Civil Partnership Ceremony. They first met September
3rd, 1976 in Jasper Wormall's little cottage on Becksitch
Lane in Belper - enjoying his hospitality happily munching
on cracker biscuits and drinking tea.
At
the present time Narvel is working on his seventh book
Secret Summer - A Derbyshire Mystery set in 1966.
GREAT BRITAIN:In a quaint old library deep in middle England,
a coming of age story is unfolding casting light in some dark corners of the
gay world.I’m leaning
forward in my third row seat at a special presentation marking gay history
month. And, once again, on this year-long overseas adventure, I’m
reminded of home.
The lone Canadian in a small audience that includes a former
mayor and the head of the local gay and lesbian organization, I am struck by
the similarity between this English Midlands sexual adventure story and my own
experiences in Vancouver.
The tale being told is sad, sometimes cruel and oftentimes
laughing out loud funny. Local author Narvel Annable,
a retired school teacher, is creatively portraying characters from his most
recent novel-
Scruffy Chicken -which is inspired
by his own story.For the most
part, we’re listening and watching the reenactment of Annable’s
sexual awakening some 40 years earlier.
The big picture is about a wide-eyed teenager guided on an
erotic adventure tour of Turkish baths and active toilets by a series of
unlikely hosts, discovering along the way how discriminatory attitudes have
driven some gays to despair and isolation.But Annable also chronicles discriminatory
traits within the gay community itself, including gay-on-gay abuse in which
elderly and unattractive gays are targeted.
It is a study of contrasts, old versus young, pristine
countryside beauty versus smelly toilet-side fixations and beautiful bodies
versus stooped, toothless, lopsided forms.
Annabel’s gift is that he shows pain through his
writing and acting while cleverly retaining a comical edge, showering us with
unforgettable characters such as the Toad of the Toilets and local drag queen Becksitch Betty.
The story begins days before the assassination of John F.
Kennedy after the young Annable – the scruffy
chicken called Simeon in the book - moves from Britain
to join his sister in Detroit.
However, the action begins when the young man returns to the green hills of
Derbyshire on a lengthy vacation and develops relationships with sexually
obsessed, often cranky, older gays.
Tonight the small crowd at the Derby library is mesmerized by Annable’s acting ability. By turns he is an
adventurous chicken, ugly troll, vicious queen, and an arrogant, upper- class
pretender.
He tells how elder gays are cruelly mocked by controlling
players in the local gay social scene. An arrogant snob with a cut-glass
English accent is the villain in Annable’s
piece.
But the most interesting characters are the tormented,
unattractive gays encountered during the young man’s travels. Keen to
experience everything possible about the sexual side of gay life, lifelong
friendships are forged with personalities locally known as toads, goblins,
gnomes and bitchy queens. It’s not that the young traveler is
particularly generous or well meaning.He simply sticks around long enough to get past physical appearance, along
the way reaping personal benefits from the oral sexual expertise of his
extraordinary new friends.
In the voice of one of the characters featured in Scruffy
Chicken, Annable relates an experience of a feisty
fellow known as the Toad of the Toilets in an account about cottaging
or washroom sex.The character,
Audrey Pod, misses his annual summer vacation at the beach after discovering an
active cottage along the way.
“I can
always tell if a cottage is ticking.The atmosphere is perfect – dirty, dingy and just two sit-downs
– no problem with the competition. There was a hole between as big as a
dinner plate!It was three
o’clock and I sat there until nine when starvation forced me out.”
Explaining his failure to show up at his usual haunt at the beach,
Pod notes, “Why should I suffer annual abuse from those nasty young
queens in the dunes, when I can get real men in a toilet.”
Annable finds that the gay social
set – though also sexually active in all the same venues- is harshly
judgmental of the sexual behaviors of the physically unattractive, a prominent
snob describing this elder cottager as “a piece of vile slime creeping
across the ground”.
It’s tempting to dismiss the harsh attitudes and the
internal and external community prejudices as hardships of the past, notions
and attitudes that we have grown beyond in the modern gay experience.But have things really changed that
much?
I’m reminded of the ongoing debate in Vancouver of the
prominence given the beautiful and the young in gay publications and social
events.Old and young, played off
against each other, sometimes exploiting common needs and interests while the
unattractive of all ages too often suffer scorn and/or neglect.
Annable’s story illustrates
the painful consequences of our attempts to mirror the pigeon- hole mentality of the larger society.How we back ourselves into unholy holes
when we give in to the temptation to hide who we are, hoist certain community
members ontopedestals based
on appearance and material possessions and judge others harshly for being themselves.
The graphic, sexual nature of Scruffy Chicken offends some
in this region of England.
Last year, the women’s auxiliary of a nearby town rescinded a speaking
invitation to Annable after hearing of gay sexual content
in his presentations.“No gay
sex please, we’re the Belper Women’s
Institute,” screamed the front page headline of the village paper later
that week.
But there is no complaining this night of February 21st
2007 at the Derby Central Library.Just enthusiastic applause and the very civilized serving of wine
amidst introductions and handshakes.
Scruffy Chicken – A Mystery set in
Derbyshire 1965 can be purchased at bookshops, or on
author Narvel Annabel’s website:http://www.narvelannable.co.uk/
SHOUT
SHOUT! Yorkshire's lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgendered paper
From Derbyshire to Detroit, author Narvel S Annable reveals to
Paul Hunt a fascinating life journey culminating in Lost Lad, one of the best
semi-autobiographical novels to hit the gay bookstands for years, and its
follow-up, Scruffy Chicken
I have to ask about your name, Narvel -
where did it come from?
Apparently, my mother saw it and liked it.
I have never met another Narvel but I am sure they must exist. I will have to
check it out on the Internet!
You had somewhat of an unconventional
childhood, you moved to the USA,
tell us about that?
My youngest sister married a GI and moved
to the US,
I then joined them in 1963. I actually arrived the day before President Kennedy
was assassinated.
It was amazing to me, cars looking like
they were about to take off, like rockets. I was just eighteen and struggling
with my sexuality at the time. To a young man from Derbyshire, America
was so different. One of the things I noticed was that the men were so macho,
very much the Rock Hudson type, rather than some of the stereotypical
effeminate characters in Derbyshire.
So, were your first sexual experiences,
in the USA?
Well apart from childhood, school
‘fumbling’ the experiences were very different to the ones I would
experience in later life back in the UK. I can remember clearly working
in a camera store and thinking a colleague was gay. I was mistaken, but he told
a fellow worker who told me how sad she was that I was not well, she perceived
it as an illness! But yea, my ‘adult’ sexual experiences were
initiated in America.
Did you long for home?
Apart from one year, during my time in the
USA,
I returned every year. I missed home and the rolling hills of Derbyshire I
suppose. In America every
house was the same and Detroit
was so flat.
You eventually became a teacher...
I studied in America
and spent some time working in a boy’s Catholic school, before returning
to England
and teaching history in a local Derbyshire school until I retired.
On your return to the UK you met your
life partner, how difficult was it to have such a relationship in the early
seventies?
Not always easy. My fellow teachers at the
school knew I was unmarried and that I had a ‘friend’ called Terry
- it was never really discussed. I am sure colleagues would have guessed, people are not stupid and there were a couple of
instances of what would be termed today as homophobia from a handful of pupils.
Following your retirement you decided
to pick up your pen and write. How did that come about?
Having taught history I wanted to write
about the things I knew, my experiences, both socially and the area I love,
Derbyshire. It was not until my third novel that I decided to ‘come
out’ so to speak and become far more ‘autobiographical’. Of
course I had already ‘come out’ to myself in acknowledging my
sexuality, in some ways my first gay novel was a statement as to who I was and
indeed to whom I have been.
Both Lost Lad, your first ‘gay’ novel and
Scruffy Chicken, document gay history, something we have very little of. Was
this a conscious attempt to ensure history was preserved?
Without a doubt, the events and the
characters of the time are very real and the characters, although some names
have been changed, are also very true to gay life in the 1960s. Both Lost Lad
and my recent book Scruffy Chicken are about my life and those people who had
an effect on me during my teenage and early twenties. Not all of it was
positive I hasten to add, it would be a shame not to document history
particularly as very little is written about gay life prior to the early
Eighties.
Some of the response to your novels has
not been as positive as you might have wished, has it?
Sadly no, the local Women’s
Institute booked me for a talk about Scruffy Chicken. I received a call prior
to the date to talk, saying some members would not find the subject
appropriate. Whilst I was naturally very disappointed, the resulting publicity
about the cancellation and the reasons behind it caused quite a stir - local
newspapers and the local ITV news programme, covered
the furore and the publicity did me no harm at all!!
So, what’s next?
Well, I am currently writing another book,
due for publication next year. I hope to mix real life, as with Lost Lad and
Scruffy Chicken, with a mystery. Things are still in the melting pot at the
moment. That said, I am determined to continue to document my history and that
of so many gay people who, without their courage and determination, I am
convinced the changes we have seen in recent years would not have taken place.
Whilst we have many readers in North
Derbyshire, do you plan to visit Yorkshire at
all?
Indeed I do, I shall be at the
Huddersfield Pink Picnic, later this year. Potential readers can sample my work
and purchase a signed copy of any of my books.
To get hold of copies of Scruffy
Chicken or Lost Lad, contact Narvel Annable (see below)
‘If you are a
Shout!reader,’
he says, ‘I’ll happily sign any book purchased!’ Post:
Send a cheque or postal order for £9.95, which includes Postage, to
Narvel Annable, 44 Dovedale Crescent, Belper, Derbyshire ,DE56 1HJ.
Phone: 01773 82 44 83 Web: narvel@narvelannable.co.uk
Narvel Annable has written two autobiographic books about bullying - Heanor Schooldays and Lost
Lad.Librarians say they are popular in
libraries around the country.A
one-time victim, Narvel does not spare himself in either book.Lost
Lad graphically reveals the total horror of his suffering at MundyStreetBoysSchool
in Heanor, Derbyshire, exactly 50 years ago.
Today we have a special name for that particular cruelty and
humiliation which was inflicted upon the author, as a 12 year old, back in
1957.It is called homophobic
bullying.In that rough, coal mining town, with
its unfeeling ultra-macho culture - a boy who would not, could not assert himself with bare knuckles in the Mundy Street
playground - that boy was a constant target.He was seen as fair game by some
pupils.In the case of Narvel
Annable, one sadistic schoolmaster actually encouraged
some of the more savage boys to smell blood.He presided over a culture of cruelty
and urged them to go in for the kill.It did get physical, but most of
the abuse was inflicted in a form of psychological torture which leaves its
mark on the writer to this day.Even his parents took the view that these problems were just a part of
growing up.They were not prepared
to interfere with a 'natural process'.Accordingly, nobody was there to help Narvel.The abuse went on day after day, week
after week, month after month.Eventually, he resolved to self destruct - but - as you see - he
didn't.Eventually he became a
writer.
Even after half a century, homophobic bullying is still commonplace and
widespread.In 1957, most of those
boys had never even heard of the word 'homosexual'.It didn't matter.Boys sense that some other boys are
different.They discern a certain
softness, a tendency to gentleness, a disinclination to join in competitive
sports or engage in rough games.That is enough.It is rather
like the chick in the nest who is seen as different - and is thrown out of the nest.
Lost Lad has been used by several gay support groups for young people such as
Nottingham's Outburst, York's Castlegate and Wakefield's Fruitbowl.
Occasionally, Narvel Annable is called upon to talk about his
work.Since February 2007, he has
addressed Derby Central Library on February 21st, Derbyshire Friend on March 8th and Nottinghamshire Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Group on April
12th.He has been invited to
address the Nottingham Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement on May 11th.
Narvel is also a regular guest on BBC Local Radio.In addition, he was interviewed by Dave
Forrest on BCB's Equity Show on Sunday, March 18th 2007.
"On
this month's show, win an exclusive signed copy of the new
semi-autobiographical novel Scruffy
Chicken by top selling gay author Narvel Annable who joins us for an
interview."
Bradford
Community Broadcasting - 96.7 FM - www.bcb.yorks.com -
radio@equitypartnership.org.uk
Sept.10th. 2007
The Editor
Telegraph and Argus
Bradford
Dear Editor,
I've just returned from the 'Four Days of Fun and Frolics' which was Bradford
Pride.And
what a pride it was!The Bradford gay scene is distinguished by its own unique personality.It does its own thing, is marked by its own distinctive individuality.As a Gay Pride (and I've been to a few) believe me, this was
different.
As with other prides, we all enjoyed a feast of diversity.We had stalls, exhibitions, local artists, the illusion of drag - in fact
- a whole orgy of resourcefulness and enterprise which had on it all the
fingerprints of lesbian and gay ingenuity.But Bradford went that extra mile.To kick-off, on Thursday, entertainment was blended with education.At the National Media Museum we were enlightened (yet horrified) by a
harrowing journey through newspaper articles and photographs illustrating the
dark homophobic days of the 1950s and 1960s.This was followed by readings from three very different lesbian / gay
authors.I feel privileged to have
been one of them.The evening was
beautifully rounded off by 'Gay Abandon', a first class LGB choir.
On Saturday, at Candy, we were treated to a gay version of Drag-On's Den and a
Mrs and Mrs / Mr and Mr Competition.My partner Terry and I were pleased to be a part of the fun.Sunday concluded with a 'compulsory fresh air' gay walk, free food and a
film.
I'd like to pay tribute to all the months of planning, all the imaginative hard
work from Rachel Nauwelaerts of the Equity Centre and Paul Hunt of Bradford City
Council.Over the years, these good
people, Rachel, Paul and their energetic cheerful team of organisers, ancillary
workers have been busy fighting my
battles.They have made it possible
for me to record the joys and sorrows of a gay life inscribed within the pages
of Scruffy Chicken.Without their bravery, that book and, for that matter, this letter to a
city newspaper would have been utterly unthinkable.
With gratitude,
Narvel Annable.
Narvel S Annable
Gay History
Month:February 2007
Narvel Annable
has been invited to address an audience at Derby Central Library to talk about
his work.It's on Wednesday, February
21st at 7.00pm.The usual format for
this type of occasion is readings / reaction / questions / comments for about
an hour, followed by a refreshment break and then a second hour.For further information call - 01 332 25 53
91.
He has also been
invited by Nottingham City Council to host a similar event which will take
place on Tuesday, February 6th at County Hall, West Bridgford, Nottingham -
12.00 to 2.00pm.For further information
call - 0115 9 77 39 47.
The national magazine BENThas given Scruffy Chicken an
excellent review in their December edition of 2006 on page 17.
