As I passed Prowler on my way to Tesco – for those of you who don’t know, this is where the discerning shopper can purchase a select supply of literature, calendars, greetings cards, videos and sexual aids of a, shall we say, left-handed nature - and thought, ‘what the hell, why not?’ So I walked in (and they were all wearing eyepatches), had a very nice chat with the quite civil and intelligent middle aged homosexual behind the counter, looked idly round the shelves at what the sisterhood of today were buying, and left.

The look I got from that old woman as I left the shop.

At first I thought she was going to fall to her feet there and then and pray for my eternal soul. But then I realised it wasn’t disgust in her eyes as she stared, more wonder. It was almost the same expression Linda Hamilton had when she first saw Robert Patrick pacing towards her in Terminator 2. As she gazed at me, mouth agape and eyes wide, it occurred to me that the reason for her quite apparent surprise was perhaps rather because I wasn’t dressed in a tight white T shirt, with tight three quarter length jeans or sporting a bleached blond Tintin quiff. Nor was I flouncing my arms about like a little Miss Mimsy, or waddling down the street like I had a walnut clenched between my buttocks.

And then I knew why. I looked normal. I was, as far as she was concerned, the new insidious line of homosexual, the one that can blend in to any background - into any shop or street. I watched the horror spread across her face, turning slowly into terror, and then into near panic as the thought took firm hold in her brain. ‘They could be anyone!” I could see her thinking. “They might even take the form of someone I know! They might even be in my family!”

I gave her a quick smile and a chirpy nod, and then skipped down the road to Tescos. “And you’ll never guess what,” I imagined her saying to her sober faced friends at over tea the following morning, “he was dressed exactly like a normal person, just like anyone else here!”