Willow Pattern Requiem

The decorative pottery known as ‘willow pattern’ tells the story of thwarted lovers. The tableau is thought to be based on a Japanese fable called ‘the green willow’, along with its Chinese variants.

I remember as a child feeling upset when my paternal grandmother Elizabeth told me the story behind the willow pattern dinner service in her possession. Elizabeth was a doting grandmother and when I think of much of my early induction into society, it was channelled through her love and attention.

The willow pattern tale of a couple who were killed because of their forbidden love seemed tragic to an infant who was not fully versed with the ways of the world. This fairy tale couple denied union through cultural and class prejudice seemed unjust and left a lasting impression more than 50 years later.

Even at such a young age, when infants enact fairy tale fantasy, I was already aware that I would rather marry a prince than a princess, but I instinctively knew that I should keep such feelings to myself for fear of ridicule or ostracization.  

From my earliest memories I was aware that I was homosexual. These thoughts can be concealed in childhood, but when children enter adolescence, then talk of relationships only emphasises ideas of otherness and often shame.  

In order to feel acceptance as a young gay man, I needed to eschew any sense of shame and, like the lovers in the willow pattern fable,  I had to escape the world of my past to try and find belonging or even love in the future. 

Unbeknown to me at the time, this future would be with Peter, who I met as the 1980s drew to a close. It would have been unimaginable at the end of Margaret Thatcher’s reign that homosexual union would be recognised in law.

The phrase coined by her government when introducing clause 28 was that same sex partnerships were nothing more than ‘pretend family relationships’.

Peter grew up in a time where being homosexual was against the law in Britain. I never thought in my lifetime, or Peter’s for that matter, that homosexual union would gain legal standing.Fortunately, we live in a country where this has come to pass. Sometimes people do get the chance to live happily ever after.