Luckily, Bernard was eventually introduced to a barman whose place of work served as a meeting place for a small group of gay men. “You’d spend hours trying to find somebody, visiting one set of toilets then another, enduring the cold and damp, spending a lot of time waiting for a fleeting sexual experience that wasn’t particularly satisfying,” he adds. Bernard, 74, says he began cruising at a time when the concept of being 'out' didn't exist in its current form