Gay's memories of Manchester's Grass Roots bookshop, evokes a colourful world of squabbles, protests and galvanised women marching united to 'Reclaim the Night'.

This short extract features Gay, a woman who lived in Manchester in the 1970s and 1980s.

Coming from a non-conformist and socialist background, Gay was politically engaged in issues like CND, the Northern Ireland Peace Movement and feminism, and worked at Manchester's feminist bookshop, Grass Roots.

She shared a house with several gay people who had similar political beliefs but still felt sexually uncertain and unfulfilled herself. However, two years after moving to Manchester, she met a woman who took her along to some Gay Liberation Front meetings. They also started a relationship that lasted nine months.

Gay recalls that the Grass Roots bookshop, where she worked, was a good collective overall, but it became marred by rows and squabbles. She recalls that people were becoming too fundamentalist in their opinions, becoming incapable of listening to counter-arguments or ideas. Despite these factional rifts, Gay says that protest campaigns like 'Reclaim the Night', organised to highlight male violence against women on Britain's streets, were valuable and had a strong visually and dramatic impact - especially when they were held at night.

Gay also talks about the growing lesbian night-life in pre-Hacienda Manchester, recalling the famous Polytechnic Student's Union disco, with its sticky bars and even stickier floors; the Rembrandt, one of Manchester's oldest gay pubs and the rougher lesbian pubs which the more middle-class, activist feminists, feeling out of their depth, generally avoided.

Gay was born in the late 1940s to a couple of teachers who were both non - conformists and socialists. She had two older brothers. She taught music for a while and began a four - year relationship with a man she almost married.

Invited by a gay male friend to a Gay Liberation Front meeting in 1971, Gay became politically active. Two years later she enjoyed her first lesbian relationship, which lasted nine months.

She worked in Manchester's feminist bookshop, on the city's Oldham Street. There she would become involved in many campaigns and demonstrations, especially those that sought to make the streets safer for women at night.

She would meet her current partner at Grass Roots and, together, they would move to Plymouth, in the early 1980s, where they opened their own bookshop.