Re-reading them after twenty years I felt an almost Proustian rush seeing a mention of the gay travel guide Spartacus, which once graced the coffee tables of more affluent friends and the shelves of Waterstones’ ‘Lesbian & Gay’ section, becoming a digital-only publication in 2017. Other stories are a reminder of how far we’ve come. If we were to set them in the present day, some of the characters living with their ‘special friends’ might now be living with husbands or long-term partners or boyfriends, without the need for euphemisms.

I first read them around the time I came out to my immediate family, which I can only describe as a beautiful anti-climax. I’d been prepared for them to cut me off, to banish me from ever darkening their doorstep again. To my pleasant surprise my parents said they already knew, and my then-teenage brother said, ‘Tidy.’

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I grew up in a place where gay men were ridiculed and despised in everyday speech, even by the occasional school teacher. When I was outed in my last year it began months of insults, culminating in one changing room fight and a later punch in the face from a complete stranger. In reading these stories from our recent past we can only hope things in Wales have changed – and continue to change – for the better.

In that sense, these stories are unavoidably of their time, but read with all this hindsight what struck me is how fresh they feel. In Sharks on the Bedroom Floor we’re reminded of the slate industry’s historic ties to slave plantations in the Caribbean, a point that resonates in the age of Black Lives Matter and the downing of statues. The theme of family recurs throughout, and the domestic scenes are beautifully observed, even when things are almost unbearable, as in The Wedding Invitation, its protagonist Seth experiencing the opposite of Hiraeth. I am fairly confident that whatever your age, you will recognise relatives, friends and maybe even lovers in these pages.

In many stories Welsh identity is as important a theme as sexuality. Characters to-and-fro between north Wales and the cities of northwest England, each hinting at something more than simply ‘home’, ‘freedom’ or ‘escape’. Others return from further afield, like California’s Bodega Bay, or are bound for the continent, to Etienne and the Ligurian coast.

Another motif I noticed while rereading these stories was that of myths, legends and storytelling. A gay uncle’s reading of Prince Caspian turns a bedroom carpet into shark infested waters. Elsewhere there are references to the Mabinogion, while Fishboys of Vernazza adds a strange and sexy slice of magic realism to the mix.

Language and landscape run through this collection like an interwoven thread. Language – English, Cymraeg, and even Castellano – can be a means to keep secrets, or the way in which a secret is discovered, and Jones has fun throwing mono- and bilingual characters into a room, with all the tender intimacies and interpersonal conflicts that ensue.