Drew Payne

He's starting to head towards his release but this is all new to him and strange environments change cause anxiety. He still needs the support of his nurses.

He's sixteen now. He's been at Nurton Cross for four years, and all that care is paying off. Plus, he finally has someone in his life who cares about him. Though there are strangers who just stare at you in public.

Mark was sitting at the table in the Visitors Room waiting for him as he always did. But Mark looked different, not very different, but enough to be noticeable. Mark’s hair was longer - it now reached down to his collar and, being longer, it seemed to be pulling it down, making the curls look more opener and shaggy. Mark’s face was different too - his chin and the bottom part of his cheeks were covered in very short but dark stubble, as if he’d missed a day or two shaving. He was dressed in a ba

Thank you. This is why I wrote this. A year ago, I saw a documentary about Ireland and the only mentions of Drew were about his death, and they called him Andrew and not Drew. I wrote this so something different would show up, on a Google about him or Ireland. Unfortunately, I just did not know him well enough. He was a friend-of-a-friend. I wish I had known him better, I wish I could write more about him and the man he was. Maybe, someone who knew him better will do that.

Thank you.

I want those Evangelical Christians, who shout hate at LGBTQ events, to be treated the same by the police as other protestors. They are so often given such an easy pass. At this year's Pride, the police had created a special area where they could shout their hate from. I don't like Just Stop Oil, they're self-indulgent and self-righteous middle-class people, who think they are "doing their part" in fighting climate change. Their "protests" aren't directed at oil firms and the politicians supporting them, they don't glue themselves to the doors of oil company HQs. Instead they disrupt ordinary people's lives by blocking roads and such. They need to read the Act-Up handbook of civil disobedience, you don't piss off the public. I agree with them being prosecuted but the sentences handed down to them are unjustly extreme. They were sentenced to four to five years in prison, the same sentence as for violent disorder, and they are not the same. Their protests certainly got out of hand but they were poorly policed and allowed to do so. No disrespect to your husband, but the London Met Police are crap and just keep failing. I support the right to protest against injustice but not to disrupt people's lives or to target and persecute minorities. Act-Up were the past masters of it, I just wish people would learn from them.

Last year Just Stop Oil disrupted London's Pride March, before that we had TERFs disrupting it too. It makes me so angry when they do this because they are ignoring the history of London Pride. For so many years, in the 1970s and 80s, we had to fight to have the march, and the police presence was so heavy as if we were a danger to the general public. But Evangelical Christians, screaming their hate, really get to me. They want to strip us of our hard won rights and they want us to cease being - their conversion shit. Yet they are still tolerated and allowed to shout their hate by the police. They get a free pass on their hatred. Hate breeds hate, and I want that we stop tolerating and making excuses for it.

He was the first Englishman I met who was also called Drew. I had met several men called Drew when I visited America, but he was the first other English Drew I met. Growing up, I hated my first name, and the very common abbreviation of it, which people frequently called me by. I felt trapped by my first name and dreamed of when I could be old enough to change it, though I had no idea what to, my choice of name would change almost month from month. Then, in my middle teens, I read an American novel where one of the characters was called Drew. At the end of the novel I found out that Drew was a different abbreviation of my own first name. Drew was different, unusual and I really liked the sound of it. I wanted to be a Drew. When I came out and later moved to London, I decided to change my name to Drew. I was entering a new life, a life were I would finally live as my real self, so I needed a name that was my name, a name I liked and was comfortable with, a name that suited me. Drew was that name. In Britain, Drew is a rare name, I’d not met anyone else with that name, it made me different and more memorable. Drew would help me be different and to embrace my difference. I’d been known by my new name for eight years when I met another Drew, during that time I’d not met any other British men with the same name as me, so meeting Drew was a surprise and a delight, finally someone else shared my name. We weren’t close, I didn’t know him well. He was a friend-of-a-friend. He was a friend of my friend Tim and Tim introduced us one Sunday night. I often went with Tim for a drink, at the South London gay pub The Two Brewers, and Drew was part of Tim’s circle of friends. He just seemed to appear one Sunday evening. He was tall, thin framed, with short, neat dark hair and an equally short, neat moustache. His plain featured face always seemed to wear a serious expression, his lips held together in neither a smile or a frown, and his dark eyes seemed to watch everything before him. But when he smiled, which wasn’t often but worth it for those moments he did, his whole face lit up with that smile. He was the tall, quiet man who stood at the edge of the group. I liked him but I wasn’t attracted to him, but if I had been I would have kept my feelings quiet because Tim was very attracted to him. I could see that in the way Tim behaved towards him, how Tim showered him with happy attention, but Drew didn’t return Tim’s feelings. He wasn’t nasty or standoffish with Tim, as I had seen happen before, he was friendly and warm towards Tim, but he just didn’t return Tim’s affection. I’d seen this happen before, Tim always seemed to fall for men who weren’t interested in him, and it was all so sad. Tim was a good friend and I hated seeing him chasing after affection that was never returned. Tim deserved a boyfriend of his own. Then one Sunday evening, Drew wasn’t at The Two Brewers pub, but he hadn’t been there other Sundays because of his work, the way I missed some Sundays because of my work. The following Thursday I met Tim and he looked terrible. I asked him what was wrong. Three days before he’d spent half a day in a police station, making a police statement. I was shocked and asked what about. He said Drew had been murdered and he had been the last person to see him alive. That weekend, London’s two gay weekly newspapers contained stories of Drew’s death, calling him Andrew Collier. Over the following weeks, the mainstream newspapers also reported Drew’s murder because it was the fourth one by the serial killer Colin Ireland. Ireland’s three previous murders, all of gay men, had been unconnected by the police, so he killed Drew to make the police take notice of him. He wasn’t caught until he’d killed for a fifth time. Drew’s murder was caught up in all the press coverage of Ireland’s killings, Drew himself being left behind. Drew’s murder shocked me, so sudden and so cruel, but the aftermath of it shocked me more. Tim was so hurt and brought low by it. I watched his grief and it was so unpleasant to see. Tim didn’t wear his heart-on-his-sleeve, no public displays of high emotions from him, but I saw how much it affected him and it was hard to watch. Up to then I had read a lot of detective fiction and fancied I wanted to write detective stories. But the plots I created saw murder as little more than a puzzle, the character’s murder having little to no emotional effect on the other characters, no one really mourning or shocked with grief. Drew’s murder showed me how messy and horrible murder is, how it effects and hurts the innocent and, in Drew’s murder, the guilty showed so little remorse. Tim showed me how a murder disrupts and hurts the lives around it. I felt guilty and shamed for wanting to create silly puzzles from something so painful and disruptive. I abandoned that stupid idea. I didn’t go to Drew’s funeral, it seemed prurient and voyeuristic to do so, I hardly knew him, he was a friend of a friend. I don’t know if Tim went, I don’t know if he was even told when and where it was, I didn’t ask him, I didn’t know how to. Back then, I didn’t know what to do about Tim’s grief, I just didn’t have the skills. I lost touch with Tim twenty years ago, when I moved from South to West London. It was only a short move in distance but was such a big change in my life, and Tim was lost in that change. A stupid loss. Drew was murdered in 1993, he was 33, six years older than me. His death left such a deep effect on me, such a pointless and horrible death. He was a gentle man, a warden in a sheltered accommodation scheme, he had a cat, he was tall and dark haired, he had a smile that lit up his whole face, which he used sparingly. In the years since his death the person he was has been forgotten. Now, if he is remembered, it is as passing reference in a true crime podcast or TV series, that dwells on the gruesome nature of his death, but makes no reference to his life. It is so unfair. Drew

"Jonathan and David" is my way of showing that Pearl has a deep Christian faith, but she is still a very skilled nurse who delivers unprejudiced care. She doesn't buy into some Christians' homophobia. She's based on someone I used to work with. The important people, Aiden and Janet, know all about Liam and Ed's relationship and they are encouraging it. It is important to both boys.

I love using flashbacks, in my writing, and I love playing around with linear narratives. Ed and Liam are two damaged souls who have found something in each other that really helps them. They need each other.

Sorry I didn't reply to you straight away, I've been having problems logging onto GA in the last couple of days. But I was also very humbled by your feedback. Thank you for it. I do worry that my writing isn't working and such. Your feedback has done me the power of good, especially as I'm in the final stretch of this story. There are only a handful of chapters left to write. I'm sure, from previous comments, you've seen that I once worked in an Adolescent Forensics Hospital, for a short time. I based so much of this story on that experience and the people I met there.

Yes, his release is soon(ish). Though he has to wait until he's eighteen, as per his sentence.

The shirt hung on the end of the rack straight in front of him, and it was beautiful. It was a pale blue cotton shirt. Its small collar was held in place by a button at each corner. The front of it was held closed with small white pearl buttons, so smooth and bright. Its full, long sleeves had their cuffs buttoned closed with the same pearl buttons. Slowly he reached out and touched one of the sleeves. The cotton was smooth, soft and gentle under his fingers. It felt so fine. So different from t

Thank you. I started writing my story when I saw that fundamentalist Christians were still using the same tactics today. My story happened forty years ago, it should be history, no longer happening now, but it still is. I am so angry about this, these people are still preying on vulnerable people.

"Everyone's happy, everyone's just joyous to be here," Pumper, club member of Sapphic Riders, at this year’s London Pride March. The sun was bright and hot, the crash barriers were all in place and the pavements were filled with spectators, as the 2024 London Pride march slowly but brightly moved through the capital. Yet, at the beginning of the march, was a small but noisy group of bigots trying to shout down the parade. Eight Christian protesters, stood at the beginning of this year’s London Pride march, surrounded by several police officers in a fenced-off section next to the parade route, shouting abuse at the marchers. Their banners’ proclaimed: “Men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet” and “be not proud for the lord hath spoke… a man’s pride shall bring him low” (??). As, a man in the group, using a loudspeaker, shouted at the people in the parade. Their presence wasn’t warmly received. Marchers, as they passed the bigots, they flipped their middle fingers at the group and drowned them out with chants. Why where those people there? What did they think they’d achieve? Did they really expect marchers to turn away from their “wicked ways” and join them in their protest? If they wanted people to hear their “message” and become Christians, why where they being so offensive and rude? Shouting homophobia at a Pride march is no way to persuade people to join your religion, so why do they do it? Every year, the London Pride march has a group of bigots, standing somewhere along the route, shouting abuse at the people marching by. At last year’s march, Pride 2023, the cast of Heartstopper, from their float, flipped the middle finger and shouted back to anti-LGBTQ+ religious protesters, to the delight of other marchers. But why do these Christian homophobes do it? What do they think the result will be? All they do is make marchers angry and hurl abuse back at them. But is that the point? When I was an Evangelical Christian, way back in my teenage years, Christian leaders and ministers repeatedly told me the world hated me just for being a Christian. It was such a bunker mentality; we were “hated” because we were right. The more we were “hated”, therefore the more we were right. It ignored the fact that maybe people hated us because we had deliberately upset them. I was repeatedly told the story of the early Christians being thrown to the lions in the ancient Roman Colosseum, for the “entertainment” of the Emperor. The story was, those early Christians had such strong faiths that they were changing the Roman world, and the Emperor and the pagans were afraid of them, that’s why they were being thrown to the lions. There was no mention that they were easy socio/economic scapegoats and even easier victims. But this victim narrative was very strong, if non-Christians dislike you and are angry at what you say then you are a strong Christian. I knew Christians, back then, who would say deliberately offensive and upsetting things to prove how strong their faith was. This seems to be the mentality behind these Christians, screaming their homophobia to Pride marchers, showing “the world” how strong their Christian faith is, how they are not afraid of the lions heathens Pride marchers. It certainly doesn’t seem to be any attempt to convert any of the marchers. Their hate-filled shouting and truly obscure and nonsensical banners don’t present them as an attractive or even welcoming religion. Their behaviour is 100% off-putting. Those homophobic protesters are the pimple on the bum of London Pride, the annoying little voices trying to ruin a wonderful day. But there were only eight of them, compared to the approximately 1.5 million people who attended this year’s London Pride and the 32,000 who took part in the march, so why worry about them? Because their homophobia is still tolerated, even allowed in public, and homophobia doesn’t end with just shouted words and poorly worded banners. During this year’s Pride month, we saw numerous acts of homophobia. Pride flags, painted on the pavement in Forest Gate, East London, were vandalised and completely painted over with red paint. A banner advertising Pride in Luton was ripped down and destroyed three times (7). Homophobic and Transphobic violence stands at a five year high. I am not saying those eight people were responsible for all these acts of homophobia, but their words certainly encourage them, whether those people will admit it or not. Such loud and public displays of homophobia will only encourage others who want to act upon it. Why do we allow this public display of hate at every London Pride march? We wouldn’t tolerate bigots shouting racist abuse at Notting Hill Carnival. We certainly don’t tolerate antisemitism. Police previously removed far-right protestors from challenging a march against antisemitism. The police have dispersal powers were they can remove people causing an offence or nuisance from a certain area, for up to 48 hours. They were very quick to use these powers on antimonarchist protestors at the King’s coronation, and they were only holding up placards saying “Not My King”. If I stood outside the Evangelical Christian Spring Harvest festival, with a megaphone, shouting at people about their homophobia, I am sure I would be quickly removed by the police. Why do we still tolerate bigots shouting homophobia at London Pride marchers? Why do we still give Evangelical Christians an easy pass on their homophobia? Drew.