Just the tonic
In Pride month, we visit the UK’s first LGBTQ+ retirement community, in south London, which is providing a blueprint for discrimination-free later-life care throughout the country
by FLORENCE SCORDOULIS
photography GEMMA DAY
It all started when Geoff Pine’s partner Jamie began refusing to eat. Geoff, 77, the founder of Tonic, the UK’s first LGBTQ+ retirement community, recalls, ‘Jamie already knew he was dying, but he got even more depressed at one point and stopped eating.’
Jamie had been diagnosed with a terminal heart condition and was being looked after at home by Geoff and several carers. But it soon became clear that it wasn’t just his illness that was making Jamie feel so upset.
When Geoff asked him what the matter was, Jamie explained that he’d been subjected to homophobic behaviour by one of the carers. ‘Jamie was scared,’ says Geoff. ‘He told me, “I don’t like the woman who comes to wash me. She kneels at the foot of the bed, praying for my condemned gay soul”.
‘I was furious,’ sighs Geoff. He complained and the carer was changed but, he says, ‘The damage was done. It stayed with Jamie. We were on alert afterwards.’
Such discrimination was sadly nothing new to Geoff, who has encountered homophobia through his life, not least because being gay was a criminal offence until 1967. ‘For my generation, it was illegal to be gay, and it’s still in our minds. Even when laws change, attitudes don’t.’