22 DAVID HALL

MENTAL HEALTH TESTIMONY ARCHIVE

DAVID HALL

 

C905/22/01-04/01-01

 

Original on DVCPro

Copy on VHS

 

Interviewed by Peter Fleischmann

Camera by Ken Langdown

 

 

Transcribed by Sue Brownlee

January 2000

[Start of DVCPro Tape 1 of 4 – Start of VHS Tape 1 of 1]

[dog barking all the way through]

 

‘Ok, ok, we’re, we’re, we’re rolling, ok David.  Well perhaps you could start off by telling me about your, your early life, perhaps starting with, what kind of person your father and mother, what kind of people your father and mother were?’

 

‘Well, I didn’t know me father, he died when I was ch, a baby.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘My childhood, I think, I was born with pneumonia, double pneumonia and in an incubator, I can’t remember them being there like but, as a child I was always, oh I suffered with debility, so I found out in life, nervous debility.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Used to read the records, when I got a bit older, and I used to have to go for injections, quite often, every week, penicillin.  I suppose I was a timid sort of child, shy frightened of things, the dark.  Then I lost me mother.’

 

‘Right.  What ‘

 

‘Tragically.’

 

‘Right, what kind of woman was your, your mother, what did she, where did she work, or did she work?’

 

‘I don’t know, she, I don’t know that she, she didn’t work, no, I don’t think she worked.  One of me first recollections as a very small child was going shopping with ‘

 

‘Right.’

 

‘In Alberthorpe, which is not far, a little village, just, not far away from here ‘

 

‘Right.’

 

‘ and I could here the kiddies singing at school as we were shopping.  That’s one of me earliest ‘

 

‘Right.’

 

‘memories and then I went to that school.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘But I used to run away a lot, play truant ‘

 

‘Right.  What were you shopping for, can you remember?  Can you remember anything more about that?’

 

‘Just general groceries, to the local Co-op.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘And things like that.  I remember, we had a railway station then, about three or four year old, I used to go into town, Wakefield, to the picture house, which was the Grand Electric now, and, it was the Grand Electric then rather.’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘But they made it into Argos and one thing or another, now it’s entirely different, but, we could go streets, at such a young age, get on there for a penny, on the train to Wa, Westgate Station and just cross up, just walk up the hill, to the cinema.  Used to do that quite regular, and it was safe.’

 

‘What kind of, what films?  Can you remember any of the films?’

 

‘Oh I remember cowboys, the matinee films, we didn’t go out late at night like, which, understandably not, went during the day to the matinees, you know the kid’s matinees, they used to have the local clubs.  ABC that used to be, the Regal where the Beatles made a debut and Cilla Black, and ABC Minders that was called, and you used, it was a club and they used to have features, serials and everything and Shirley Temple films of course and things like that.  They all, mixture of all sorts.’

 

‘Did you have a favourite?’

 

‘A favourite, I don’t think I did then.  I think later on, as I got a bit older, I did have favourites, I’d lots, lots of favourites.  I like westerns, dramas and, I suppose I’ve got, I’ve gradually as I’ve got older, I’ve created an wholesome thing about everything.  You know, I like everything, not just a certain thing, I’ve grown to appreciate lots and lots of different things.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘And different themes.’

 

‘Would you say, going back slightly you said you, you lost your mother as well at, at an early age.’

 

‘Yeah, yeah.’

 

‘Can you say something about that?’

 

‘Actually it was just before Christmas, one November.’

 

‘How, how old were you?’

 

‘I’d be about four and a half.  And we’d been to some relatives, were walking home, on the ice, we’d ice, it was when I slipped, she fell, banged her head, on the pavement there, I had to sort of carry her, we weren’t too far away from home, and I managed to get her home, but then she was, ill and, but in the meantime me mother had married again.’

 

‘Ah.’

 

‘She’d married a blind man, she took him as a lodger but in those days if you had a lodger it was considered ‘ooh things were going off’.  So she married him, not out of love, just because what the neighbours would say, and, I do remember, we rung the doctor, but the doctor didn’t come.  He didn’t come for two days and when he came I remember being ushered out of the house to a neighbours, to a friends.  I heard the doc, one thing that stuck in my mind at that time was the doctor went ‘Oh my God’.  I remember that distinctively, but at that time it didn’t register, and I went to me friends and I remember looking out of their window and saw an ambulance go by and that was the last I saw me mother.  Next thing I knew she was dead.  Peritonitis set in, then everybody were rushing round, after me.  I can’t even remember the funeral, but they were trying to get me sorted out, where was I going to live, I had two aunties, but one auntie where, where I really did have a deep love for, and cared about, I didn’t go there.  They sent me to me, this other auntie who’d got a son about nine year older than me, but I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t happy at all, and then me other auntie took me, and I went there then, and she was the pinnacle and gave me the life that I’ve got today.’

 

‘So, what was it about the other auntie, the first auntie, that you didn’t like?  Can you remember?’

 

‘Well her son, I don’t know, it was weird.  They lived in a back-to-back house, the houses were, like they are now, and sleep in the same room and I think things that I didn’t know then were in me, that I wanted to get out of that environment.  I didn’t know what it was then but probably I do now.’

 

‘What, what was it?’

 

‘You know, sexual, you know, curiosity.  I don’t think it was anything, you know, same as you think of today,’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘ but I think it was a bit, it was curiosity on me, me cousin’s side.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘And I wasn’t happy with it, so I wanted to leave, and I did.’

 

‘Right.  So your cousin interfered with you, or, sexually’

 

‘Yeah, I think something, well no, touching, it was just like but.’

 

‘Right.  But that made you feel ?’

 

‘But that made me feel uncomfortable and I wasn’t happy.  So, I went to live with my other auntie, and ‘

 

‘So, at the time, did you tell somebody about your feelings about what was going on?’

 

‘No, this, I just didn’t understand, but I knew that I wasn’t happy and I think that’s all that bothered me that I wasn’t happy, I wanted to get away from that situation.  Not thinking anything about it at all.  I mean this, I didn’t even think about this until years later.’

 

‘So, but you were able to tell somebody that you weren’t feeling happy.’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

[cameraman - Excuse me]

 

‘Yeah, when I, when I began to feel, in me teens, that’s when it came.’

 

‘So, how long did i?’

 

‘to the surface.’

 

‘How long did you stay with the first aunt?’

 

‘Not long.  I would say months, and then I went to live with me other auntie.’

 

‘And did she have other children?’

 

‘No.  She hadn’t any children at all, but she, she was happily, she married a man older than herself and they used to breed bulldogs.’

 

‘Used to breed bulldogs?’

 

‘And they had a, an allotment, well it, poultry it was, and he used to be in antiques, on the market in, real antiques, and I used to love feeding the hens, the chickens and the dogs with everything, it just, I just love it.’

 

‘Did, did he specialise in a particular type of antique?’

 

‘Oh I don’t know, as I say, I was comparatively young, but there was all sorts of things, you know, everything you could name, it was there.  On the market, he had a special thing on Wakefield market, and, which, well actually I brought some of them with me to me home but they went into Saltwood during me marriage, fighting.’

 

‘What kind of pieces were they?

 

‘We had a very lovely table, I loved that table.  It was in mahogony and it was carved and it, three legs, all carved and it would be, I, I think, whoever’s got it now will have my name written on it somewhere because they, if you wrote on it, even if you had a cover on it, if you wrote on paper it would go through to the surface, and I think whoever’s got it now my name will be on there but, then a, a month later me, me uncle died, and I remember ‘

 

‘How, how old were you then?’

 

‘About six, and I remember seeing him, now they used to lay ‘em out in the room then.  It wasn’t like it is now, sending them to mortuaries and things like Chapels of Rest, things like that, and he was layed there until, I remember seeing him in his coffin, at such a young age, but, it didn’t disturb me.’

 

‘How, how old was he when he died?’

 

‘Oh, he’d be seventy, in his seventies.’

 

‘So he’d sort of had a long, long life.’

 

‘Yeah.  Then things were made ‘ard then.’

 

‘Financially?’

 

‘Financially, for me auntie.  She never, she didn’t work, she kept home and everything and bringing me up was difficult but she told me in life, she says, when I was born, it’s funny, very unique how, how things come about, she says ‘that child should be mine’ when I were born, and how, it worked out, I was, but I could never call her mother.  Not that she wasn’t a mother.  She was more than a mother.’

 

‘What, what was her name?’

 

‘Ethel, and she was the most wonderful woman that I’ve known and she’s made me what I am today.  Without her I don’t know where I’d have been, but she’s the one.  Oh, there’s words, they just don’t ex, ex, you know there were, I can’t express the way I feel about her, and she was like that to, throughout her life to everybody.  She gave me the start, and she did in all her power what she had.  She didn’t have to be a millionaire.  We were rich in love, and kindness, for she’d got me going to church, and everything, and I got every, I never went without because I was her priority.  But I had to learn that things didn’t come easy, the way today everybody just expects this at the drop of a hat, not, not me, I was learnt all, where money came from and how to respect money and, I did well at school, I were, got into acting, even at a very early age.  I used to go entertaining at adult parties.  I used to go to the theatre quite often, I loved it.’

 

‘How, how did your auntie or Ethel make ends meet then, was, I mean, if she didn’t work?’

 

‘Well, she took a job then, when things got difficult, she worked for the Lord, the vicar at the vicarage and, I used, but as I got older into me early teens, I used to deliver groceries, and do paper, a paper round.  Well, I always remember, on a Friday night, there was a special delivery I had to make.  At the Stanley Royd, I used to drop a parcel off there, every Friday.’

 

‘That was the hospital?’

 

‘Every Friday teatime, yeah, at the little gate house, and I remember going there, dropping that parcel off, groceries for somebody.  I don’t know who it was for, knew why I did it, or who it was for or anything, but I know I did that for quite a few years.  So really I weren’t too bad off, I were earning a little bit of money and everything.’

 

‘So did you see any of the, did you meet any of the patients, when you were young?’

 

‘No, I only went to the, the lodge, there was a lodge where there was a gate man and he took everything off.  That, that was the days, it was like then but I’d heard about Stanley Royd and ‘

 

‘What kind of stories did you hear about Stanley Royd?’

 

‘Oh, that’s where they sent all the nutters,  oh, don’t, keep away from there, keep away, and all the bars were up and there were, everything was green, green was a bad colour.  Green was the colour when you were a, a nutter, but funnily enough green’s my favourite colour, always has been, and I like green.’

 

‘So, so were you, were you scared delivering the groceries there, frightened, a little bit?’

 

‘I was a bit apprehensive at first but, not really, terribly scared, no, no, I don’t think I was so scared.  I just listened to stories but gradually as time got on I heard a different, well, that, a different view.  That comes a little bit later actually.’

 

‘Were, were, were any of the patients visible in the town, or ‘

 

‘You used to see them come out, yeah, and there were, people used to make fun of them.  I remember somebody called Irish Mary.  Oh, she was a popular character, and, I used to feel sorry for her, but, all, all people say this and, she’d even have sex with men for a few coppers and I thought how degrading, how awful this is for this poor person, and she had children and, taken away from her.  I don’t know what every happened to her, she just went off the horizon, but things like that.  There were certain characters around and, [sigh] I found it upsetting really.

 

‘Can you remember any of the other characters that were around?’

 

‘Not really, she were the one that sprung, that really stuck in my mind, that, but there were odd characters but I didn’t, I wasn’t, really familiar with.’

 

‘And she, she lived at the hospital, but she also sometimes ?’

 

‘I think she came out, yeah, I don’t know.  I, I can’t really say but they, there was hospital connections that, but they used to let them out and everybody knew where they came from.  You know, we didn’t bother.’

 

‘And there was quite a lot of stigma attached?’

 

‘Oh yeah, quite a lot, quite a lot.  It was quite frightening, the way people used to make jokes about it.  Always joking and I, I’m one that considered people’s feelings and I didn’t like what people were doing and I did, didn’t just go off in a crowd and join in what they were doing.  I do remember one special person now, Billy, as a young lad.  How old or young he were old me.  They all used to make fun of him, but that lad, and funnily, this is how things, so strange.  He came into my life about several years ago, through being mental, and we had such an absolutely fantastic relationship, and he was a gentleman.  He used to, he came in our group, I used to take him on holiday, we used to go to Mallen, Boltbarning[ph] and he was a gentleman.  He would order drinks and I thought ‘Right, if they could see you now, what would they think.  They thought you were nothing, you’d never be anything, never make anything.’  He was slow, but I taught him skills, he worked with me, and, ‘if only they could see you now’, and he was respected, but, he was ill, and he, he eventually got into sheltered housing, where there was someone to watch over him and cook the meals, and I used to go visiting him, and they, we knew them all really well.  But they rung me up and told me that he was poorly, he was going in for, he was being sick quite a lot, and was going in for tests and this kept happening,  and then he had to go in again, he had one of these attacks but he didn’t survive it.  Apparently it was cancer, which was great upsetting at the time for me.’

 

‘Can you, can you remember much about school?’

 

‘Yeah, I used to run away most of the time.  I do remember where we used to have to go to sleep.’

 

‘So you were in a boarding school?’

 

‘No, no you, this is before your time that’s why you don’t know this.  We used to have little camp beds, little coconutting mats, and we were to sleep in an afternoon for an hour, on these beds.  We all had to have a rest period.’

 

‘How old, how old were you then?’

 

‘Bout three or four.  Cos you went to school a bit earlier than you do now.’

 

‘What time?’

 

‘Pardon.’

 

‘What time?’

 

‘Every, after dinner.’

 

‘No I mean what time did you get to school?’

 

‘Oh, nine o’clock, I think the times haven’t fluctuated very much.

 

‘And any time ‘

 

‘And in the afternoon we used to have to go to sleep, or though if I didn’t feel like going I’d go wandering by the beck and take off over the fields, couldn’t keep me, but worst thing was on the, on a night, I hated, and it, when it was dark, and having to go to the toilet.  I re, I do remember that and many time I wet meself going to toilet cos I didn’t want to go, you know.  But that’s one of the things you do when you’re kids, frightened of the dark, but I’ve got used to that now.  When I got older and, didn’t worry me as much.’

 

‘Was your toilet outside?’

 

‘Outside, yeah.  This was at school, by the way, you had to go across the playground and it were a bit frightening.’

 

‘How, how did the teachers react when you played truant?’

 

‘I don’t really know, I never bothered really, we didn’t.  I didn’t get into any serious trouble.  It was nothing drastic but I think they understood that I was, sort of, a nervous child, and, knowing me background and bit of tragedy that I’d been brought up with, but when I got to the age of six or seven things changed.  I got on well at school, I loved school, cos the school was only next door to where I was living, and it’s still there now, it’s a mosque, now, my school.  But I was brought up round this area all my life and there’s things, changes I’ve seen, and the things that are there and I can say ‘Oh yeah.’

 

‘What, what was the school called?’

 

‘St Michael’s Infants, and then I went to the juniors, but, which was all boys school, and then that closed down, and, we went to a brand new school which was just up the road there, you, up Dewsbury Road on, on top of the quarry, St Michael’s school, and I went there.  I enjoyed it there, and then they knocked the other school down after, it was a museum for a short while, Wakefield Museum, and then they knocked it down and a lot more development gone off since, but I do remember St Michael’s, and St Michael’s, the church, everything has been in my life, oh, all my life really, even now.’

 

‘What did you like about the school?’

 

‘I liked the teachers, I liked the activities, the choices, and if they, they took an interest in you, they took an interest in every child if they had a, some sort of talent, if you showed you’d got potential they helped to develop it for you.  Showed you how to develop.’

 

‘Is that, that where you started acting?’

 

‘Oh yeah.  I was in school plays and everything and when I got to secondary school that’s really when I got into it.  I even did a bit of writing with, I had a girlfriend who, we were both interested in this and we did a play together and she was interested in history and sports and everything, and we did it with a historical slant in like a mondern day thing.  And my hero, I liked history too, actually, history was one of my good subjects and I liked the Tudors, there’re my, favourite topic in history, Henry VIII.  So it was based on Henry VIII and what would he’d like.  We made it in, it was called Henry VIII I am actually.  It was just the normal family in those days, and, bickering between husband and wife, going to football matches and things like that.  The usual domestic sort of stuff, how they used [inaudible] they didn’t argue over something massive it was just all trivial really, you know, but they used to argue and she got mad with them one day cos they were going to football match and she wanted them to do something else and they got into a bit of an argument so she, all of a sudden, she just ‘it him with her umbrella and went and walked out.  Anyway he’s sat in the chair, a bit dazed, and all of a sudden then his life transforms, he’s in a dream, another world, a fantasy, and then the play develops, goes back in time to Henry VIII days and he’s Henry VIII and all the, his family come in the house, cos he used to be a thespian, he used to be on the stage, and, all the people come round and he relates to them as people around in Henry VIII.  So you see how that works, the two errors, eras rather, that day, the present and the past, working together, and that’s how it come out with these family and, and he was making them characters in his little world, and it went on.  We had pop music, you know, ‘See You Later Alligator’ all the things that were around then.’

 

‘Right.  What year about was this?’

 

‘It’d be in late fifty, fifties, yeah.’

 

‘And you were how old?’

 

‘Bout sixteen, just before I left school, and it, we toured round with it, we went all over with it.  Oh, it was, we did it for the Festival of Britain.’

 

‘Say, say a bit more about the Festival of Britain.’

 

‘Yeah, there was a big concert.  We did it at school firstly, well we went down a treat we were asked to take it all over, so we did loads of performances.  It was in, big splash in the paper, and then we went to Bisyouth[ph] House right at top of Westgate, the Yorkshire Banks there now, it was a you, where all the youth met.  There was a lot of youth work going on there at the time, and they had a stage and everything, and, we, all groups all around, young, youth groups, did a special thing for the Festival of Britain so we did this play, there, and it’ll, a huge success.’

 

‘How, how, how many actors was it, in the play?

 

‘There’d be about seven or eight of us in the pay yeah.’

 

‘Did any sort of celebrities, or dignitaries come, attend part of the Festival?’

 

‘No, not, not, no, no.  Just a local, nothing extravagant, you know, really, but it were, it made a mark on history.  Suppose it’ll be down in the archives in Wakefield somewhere, or Wakefield Express will have cuttings.  But, funnily enough, of all the work that I did then, I’ve lost, I’ve nothing to remember it by.  Because the photographs that were taken, for costumes, people wanted, ‘Oh can we borrow them’ wherever we went round doing another, I never got them back, never got the script.  And we did a sequel actually, later on.  ‘Jo’s Dilemma’ it was called, but I’ve nothing now of the past.  I’ve just memories.’

 

‘Your Aunt was proud of you was she?’

 

‘Oh very, very, very, very proud of me.  Then I started work, oh, I got, actually I was asked if I’d, something did come about that actually, if I’d like to go, a place at RADA, but I couldn’t afford to go, I thought, well my Auntie’s sacrificed, she’s on her own, and I have got a job, I’d a job to go to, so I, I sacrificed it for that, to work.’

 

‘How do you feel about that?’

 

‘I feel good, feel I did the right thing.  I think that was the right path to go.’

 

‘Just before we go on, just going back a little bit.  Have you got any memories of the war, the second world war?’

 

‘Not a great, I do remember us having a bunker outside, just outside the house where we used to play in it.  I were only young, about, well that’d be 1943 or four, something like that.  I do remember the bunker, and we all used to play in it and, it was brick.  I can see it actually, it were brick, and, metal roof rounds, semi circle roof, that’s how I remember.  We used to play, and funnily enough I’ve always come back to my roots, where, in times, when I haven’t, haven’t felt well and me problem, I used to go walking round and see how it’s changed, and it has changed, quite considerably.’

 

‘Were there any, did you every use the bunker?  I mean, were there, was there bombs?’

 

‘I can’t remember doing, not then, I think the war was calming down over in this area, then, but I remember the ration books and sweets, they used to get me sweets from my rationing book and clothing, and everything, remember the ration books.’

 

‘Were, were they hard times, during the war?’

 

‘Yeah, they were hard times, but you were thankful with an apple and an orange at Christmas, and things like that.  There were pleas, pleasurable things here.  You were happy, people always had a smile on their face, and, the community always used to get together.  There were, you know things were so different then as they are today.  Everybody were happy, enjoying themselves, partying.  As I used to say I used to go partying to the adult parties and, having a laugh, and I remember us playing the games and everything.  It were great, we had great times, and all that’s gone.  All you think about now, going out and have a good time is go to a disco and drink.  Where there are times, you did, you just had a laugh, but I mean, I think really this, you should keep for posterity the good and add to it.  Don’t get rid of it, say it’s obsolete, it’s never obsolete.  If you can make people happy and laugh, that ain’t obsolete.  You keep people going through bad times.  Keep the good, keep that, don’t throw it away.’

 

‘Did religion play, did religion or the church play a big part in the community?’

 

‘Yes, yes.  Made loads of friends through the church yeah.  I was a member of the Anglican Young People’s Association, yeah, and we met people from abroad, all over and go to conferences.  Brought me out quite a lot, meeting people.  I used to look forward to, oh the meetings, I couldn’t wait for them to come, and there were a group of us, quite a lot, young people mixture, and we all got together and do things and have fun.  We didn’t need a lot of money to have fun, but we loved it.  We used to do plays, even in the park, we used to, there used to be a shelter where we used to go.  It’s still there, but it’s not open like it used to be, but we used to go there if it were bad weather and rehearse us plays if we had nowhere to go.  And I always remember, we tried to do the Mousetrap but it was still running in London so we could never produce it, but, we used to read it and that.  Things like that, and we’d go off on a Sunday morning, we’d go to church, go and have coffee, in the schoolroom, then we’d go for a walk round the park and call and have a coffee at the Bon Bon as we called it then, but, it’s gone now as it used to be.  We were real, tradition of every Sunday morning do that and then go home and have dinner and we’d meet again in it Sunday evening.  There were some good times.’

 

‘Did you have quite a strong faith or, or ?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘Yeah, so it wasn’t just a social?’

 

‘Yes, but, it developed over the years, but I never forced it on anybody.  I, I could talk about it but not as a, a Bible Basher as they’re called today.  I just talk about my experiences and that’s for me only and it could happen to other people if they, they like.’ 

 

‘Was there a particular vicar or Anglican priest or some, that, you all looked up to’

 

‘Who made an impression?’

 

‘ or made an impression, yeah ?’

 

‘I don’t really think so.  I do remember Canon Barlow, he’s died now but I do remember him and I do remember one thing about him, that he wouldn’t let me get confirmed, and all, everybody else were getting confirmed but he wouldn’t let me get confirmed.  He said ‘No it’s too early for you yet.’ and I couldn’t understand why and then I did get confirmed, he did let me get confirmed eventually, and, I thought ‘Yeah’ there’s probably a reason and I, but I didn’t really understand the reason but I thought ‘Yeah, I do now, I’m more mature, I’m ready to make a commitment maybe I’d just wanted to do it because everyone else were doing it, but now I’ve made that decision for meself, I haven’t gone with the fashion when everyone else were doing it’ and I think that made an impression on me, and I took things seriously then.  I used to go to lessons and everything, but I’ve made my Bible the Good Samaritan and that means more to me than any, and it’s still to this day.  I wouldn’t walk by and see a lady, no, whoever it was, that were laid on the ground and walk by.  I would go to their assistance, without knowing what that person was, and that is my Bible, and I think if everybody did that, I think there’d be a lot of love and, and not as much hate in the world, and that is what I truly believe and I would help anybody.  I won’t think about ‘Oh well, I’m not going near, might beat me in’t back of head’ and this that and the other, I go straight into it, and knowing that I’m doing the work that God put me on this world to do, and He’s, He’s me strength and He’ll be there for me and guide me and protect me and that’s the way I look at life, and that’s why I’ve come as far as I have.  Because, I’ve got a Guardian Angel, someone weatching over me, what I do, and, I can plunge into anything, I don’t, I’ve no fear, any more about anything, because God has seen me through.  All the difficulties in my life, and there have been plenty, but I can say I’ve overcome it with His help.  It’s not an easy ride, what if God turned his back on people, and people who’s sick, ‘Oh He only goes with good people’.  No He doesn’t, and that, that to me is wrong, and I can mix with people who have done wrong.’

 

‘Could you tell me a little bit more, you mentioned earlier that you were a, a nervous child and that you were given injections?’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘Can you say a bit more about what you remember about that?’

 

‘Well I do remember gradually going into teenager I had to have, had to go regular for checkups, and I used to, the, the old cod liver oil tablets, regularly, and I had to have regularly, regular medicals, for me health.  If I got aught, if I had chickenpox it lasted six weeks, I didn’t just have chickenpox, I got carbuncles and things like that, boils, and I do remember I can not, going out to play for six weeks because I was so ill and things really affected me, see, like that.  But as I got going in me work, this is when I started with mental health problems.  I got a job and I realised I wanted to better meself.’

 

‘Where, where were you working?’

 

‘It was in Alverthorpe a motor, motor body building firm.  They used to make all the mobile shops, and everything.  They were a thing then and fibre glass bodies and everything, you know, and, I loved me job, it were, general office work, I did everything, I liked it, but I wanted to progress.’

 

‘Was this in the fifties, the mid fifties?’

 

‘Yeah, oh it would be going on sixties, call it sixties, early sixties.  So I went to Kennings, the Motor Group.  I got a job there, they used to do all the vehicles for Shelmex, they used to do the petrol, petroleum lorries, dock overhalls.  It was all work done for Shell, contract work, and I got there as accounts, requisitions, doing costing and that.  I enjoyed it, and then things started to go wrong.  We got a new manager, big manager over the whole place, and he was from the army, big man in the army, and he came, he tret you as if you were in the army, you know, and talked to you, look down at you and frightening, very frightening, everybody, he used to have all the girls, office girls, crying because he was so horrible, I remember that.  I just couldn’t stand him and that’s when my problems began to start.  I used to go ‘Oh I’ve got to go in and see him, report to him about this job, he wants to know about this, what am I going to say and, oh’ horrible, and I got where I was walking me bedroom on a night, not being able to sleep, thinking about this man and having to go to work, and, I didn’t know what was happening to me.  I know I wasn’t, I couldn’t eat.  Then that’s when my problems started, no sleep, not eating, stomach feeling butterflies, everything.  I just didn’t want to get up and me auntie didn’t know what were going on, went to see doctors.  Anyway, they recommended me to go to Stanley Royd, to see a specialist.’

 

‘What did you ?’

 

‘Stanley Royd, I used to deliver there, and all these thoughts came back into me mind.  ‘That’s where nutters go, oh dear.’ you know, and, all that came upon me, but then I got where I couldn’t care.  It got so bad that I knew something had to be done, and, the, they wanted to admit me.’

 

‘Can you describe how you were feeling at this point?’

 

‘It was something I couldn’t describe, it was awful, everything that everybody said to me, I used to agree with them, that were, I felt like that.  Because I just didn’t know exactly how I felt.  I knew there was something taking me over, something that weren’t, that weren’t pleasant, I hated, and I didn’t know how to get away from it, and, I went for electric treat, I said ‘I’ll have anything that’ll make me well.’ not knowing.’

 

‘Looking back, would you say that you were, would you describe it now as depression, or, as, I mean how?’

 

‘I would say it was a stage where I was a bit naive, I was a bit downtrodden.  I hadn’t got the voice, I hadn’t got the experience, immaturity to speak for meself, but now, I could, but then, I was dependent, I felt dependent on others.  Other people were controlling my life, I had no control, because I couldn’t get out of this situation.  I was dependent on other people to get me out.’

 

‘Was this the first time that you felt under this sort of pressure and stress?’

 

‘Yeah, yeah.  Stress at work, stress, I couldn’t do me job, I thought I were ‘I’m no good, ‘I can’t do this.  I’m no good, I never be able to do a job again’ and all this were coming into me ‘I can’t do this’ and I kept  going, going over things, dictionaries, words, trying to remember everything, and if people spoke to me, what sort of answer I’d give, a good answer.  ‘What does this mean?  If I said this word are they going to ask me what it means and I’ve got to tell ‘em’.  I were going over and over and this went on and on and on for months, until I just couldn’t stand it, and every two minutes I’d say ‘What does so and so’, if I heard a word, I’d say ‘Oh, can you tell me, what d’you mean, what does that word mean?’ and it were going on, and they got fed up of hearing me.  I knew that, but it were, I couldn’t do anything about it, at the time.’

 

‘And this manager, what was he, what partic, was there something particular that he was doing, that was bringing all this up?’

 

‘Oh I don’t, oh it were just like being in the army, you know, he make signs to you to come to him, and, and everything, ooh, his face, oh, horrible.  Anyway’

 

‘Does he still, scare you now, or ?’

 

‘I don’t think he’d scare, I think he’d be dead now actually. ‘  [both laugh]

 

‘But I mean the thought of it?’

 

‘The thought of it, yeah, no I mean, I’d like to see him facing people now, today, what they, how their reactions would be.  He wouldn’t get away with it today.  Things, we’ve progressed since then.  Anyway, apparently I had to go in hospital, they did this electric treatment.’

 

‘Right.  So, you were admitted voluntarily to ‘

 

‘Yeah’

 

‘to Stanley Royd?’

 

‘Yeah, voluntary, but what, they, I had fears, oh the fears of going in there, but, I got where I couldn’t care less.  I thought ‘If I’m going to get better, I can’t go on like this any longer’ and I just thought ‘if I’m going to get better that’s all that matters.  They can do what they like to me’.  So I went in, but, it were awful.’

 

‘What was the building like at that time?’

 

‘There was, on the ground floor there was an EEG at the front.  I used to look through the window and see all these wires, and people used to come in for day, you know, to have an ECG, whatever it is, and I see ‘em all walking about and, there’d be this dining area, then at the one end there’d be a sick bay, they had a sick bay, with all beds lined up like they usually are in a normal hospital, and the same upstairs.  They’d have side wards, and then there was a, a little ward where they used as the treatment room.  That was for, like the ECT and insulin.’

 

‘How, how many people lived there, or how many beds did it have?’

 

‘I should say there were about sixty odd in, in the, in the units.  They had different units like, Leatherfield, Stanfeld, they were all different units.  It’s still there today, the buildings, but we’ll talk about this today.’

 

‘Yeah.  So you went along with your aunt ‘

 

‘yeah’

 

‘ to see a doctor, to see a doctor?’

 

‘Yeah, and they had, said it’d be best if they admitted me.’

 

‘Right, and what, was the doctor a man, or a woman?’

 

‘Doctor White it was at first, yeah, and then they, they put, he was the consultant, then you went under them and they, I do remember one doctor, Doctor Hague.’

 

‘Doctor?’

 

‘Hague, she was a woman, she was, really, really nice, but at the time, you wanted answers straight away.  The patients in there, you wanted something quick, and you’re not getting it, and what you do you keep, new things keep coming, you’re pacing up and down, that’s all there were to do, walk up and down, and if you saw somebody, you wanted to talk to them, and you’d think, you’d a new thing, you couldn’t wait to tell ‘em the new thing and if it would help you to get well.  This went on and on and on.’

 

‘So they admitted you, did they say they were going to admit you for six months or six weeks?’

 

‘No they didn’t say how long, just, told me, until I got better.  I used to come home at weekends, and, the thought of going back, oh, but, then things got really worse.  Things weren’t getting right and I were really ill, I really lost weight, I really went really down to about six stone and then this is where they started to build me up, with the insulin treatment, which is you, they give you insulin, you had a sleep, woke up, give you glucose, had a big breakfast, to get you eating.  Well this went on, but, it were alright for a while and then things started to go haywire.  I really went rock bottom and weak in every respect, physically as well as mentally, and me eyes sank in and they had, eventually they had to put me in the sick bay.  There were all old men there.  Horrible, they were dying, you know, around about you, I were, it was really horrible situation I thought ‘Oh dear, am going to be, am I going to be one of them?’ and I lost the fight at the time, I thought I were losing, I couldn’t fight back, and, oh me auntie thought, this is when her faith started to wain.  She didn’t believe in God anymore, it began to wain, ‘What have we done to, for this to happen to you, and you’ve come through all this tragedy.’ but so what I got up, there was a letter from the job saying that it was, they couldn’t hold me job open much longer and funnily I began to wake up and fight it, and I did, and I went back to work.’

 

‘To the same job?’

 

‘Same job.  I got promoted.  I got promotion and I took a, a step higher.’

 

‘Before, before you go to that, can you tell me a bit more about the insulin treatment, that sounds ?’

 

‘Insulin?’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘Yeah.  Well it’s, it’s when you’re weak, you know, they use in a, for your nerves as well, and it’s, you have a good meal, as you know, you’ve got to eat, like people with diabetic, diabetes, they have to have their insulin before they can eat.  Well this is when you can’t eat, they give you the insulin and it gives you a sort of an appetite to eat, and build you up, physically, and that’s what they did with me, tried, but, it worked for so long, it were swings and roundabouts and then I got into this low where it wasn’t doing, you know, I was ill, so I had to go .’

 

‘So they, put, they gave you insulin which made you go to sleep?’

 

‘Yeah, you go to sleep.’

 

‘For how long?’

 

‘Oh, an hour and a half, or something like that.  You used to have get up very early, for that sort of treatment.  You used to have it about seven o’clock, and have an hour an a half, then wake up and have your breakfast, but you ‘

 

‘Did they explain to you why they were doing that to you?’

 

‘No, they didn’t explain to me, it’s what I’ve learnt since.  Nothing was ever explained.  Nothing.  ‘We’ll do this, we’ll give you these tablets’.  Nothing was ever explained you just went along with it.  You thought ‘Oh they know best.’  You didn’t know you thought ‘You know nothing, you’re nobody‘ and you wanting to get well you’ve got to do as you’re told, and that’s how it was until, I mean I’ve learnt since then, and that’s how, I’ve learnt about what the treatment was that they were giving me, and whether they’d given me any, I didn’t know at the time.’

 

‘And, physically, what affect did that, that treatment have on you, ultimately?’

 

‘It drained for quite a while, and then, began to pick up.  Shock used to work out but, and then I think when I got back into work.’

 

‘Were you, just before you go back into work, I just, want to, ask you some more questions about the treatment ‘

 

‘Treatment.’

 

‘in the hospital.’

 

‘I did a bit of Occupational Therapy.’

 

‘What was that about?’

 

‘Basket work, which I could never remember how to do it, once I got going I could go on, but I when I had to start again I didn’t know how to carry on, and making soft toys, I went into that, and there were, there were some of the staff there that were quite alright, yeah.  They went home.  We used to have movie shows in an evening, also visit the female ward, because at that time, there were more, the wards were strictly male and female, we were segregated, and we used to go for an hour for dancing, like a little bit of a social, on the female ward, and there were quite a few relationships developed there, I can tell you, you know, but ‘

 

‘Anything involving yourself at?’

 

‘Yeah, actually, yeah.  I were involved with an older woman.  I do remember it very well, because when I went back to work she kept ringing me up, at work.’

 

‘Was that your, your first experience?’

 

‘That were my, yeah, my first real experience yeah.’

 

‘Can you tell us some more about that?’

 

‘They called her Doreen, came from Leeds, a lot older than me, I were only in me teens.’

 

‘And how old do you think she was?’

 

‘About fourty, and I used to keep getting these calls at work [whispers] ‘oh don’t ring up’ it got worse.’

 

‘So, you met in the hospital?’

 

‘Yeah, and we danced.’

 

‘At one of these tea dances?’

 

‘At one of these, yeah.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘We got, formed a relationship.’

 

‘Right, and if you don’t mind, mind me asking, where, I mean, where did you get the chance to, you know, get up to things, if you see what I mean?’

 

‘You didn’t really, get up to anything, what they do today, you know.  You’d have to go for walks and things like that, but ‘

 

‘So you, you went for, sort of walks in the grounds?’

 

‘In the grounds and in the, yeah, because they had a, then they used to have the farm that people working on the farm did, different industries going within the hospital because they were long term patients there.  People had been there years, who should never have been there, and they’d a museum.  I don’t know if it’s still there, yeah, I think it is, I don’t think they’ve moved it yet, but there’s quite a lot of things going now in the buildings.  They can’t do anything with them because it’s really hisotry and it’s listed.  But there is a museum and we, I did have the opportunity to look and some of the things that people were put in for, why they couldn’t cope with them, was ridiculous and if even they had a, they were, they had a baby, a daughter had a baby that was a case to go into Stanley Royd, get ‘em out of their lives.  I couldn’t beleive it, and you could see the authentic documents of the writing why they have to go in there, and all the equipment, and even put ‘em in straight jackets and padded cells and things like that.  All that’s there.  I would hate to have had to go in then.’

 

‘mmm’

 

‘I’m glad I was born in the time that I was born in.  I wouldn’t have liked it at all then.’

 

‘Can you tell me some more about life in that, in the hospital that’s ‘

 

‘Well you make friends, but, there were a lot of freindships made, you know, people were in the same boat, in the same boat, and you got on with people, but I found people, me being very young, sort of helped me, you know, they watched over you against the villians, cos there were villians in, you know, and they used to look out for you.’

 

‘What kind of villians?’

 

‘Oh, I think you got all sorts in there, people who, who’d committed crimes, I don’t know what, you know and sect, they’d been sectioned and what-have-you.  You see that was an Admission Ward and if you did anything wrong, they’d section you onto another ward, but that was quite a free ward that I was on where you could move about within reason and have a walk round amd go out, weren’t too bad.’

 

‘Could you have visitors?’

 

‘Oh yeah.’

 

‘So, did you have some visitors?’

 

‘Yeah, yeah.’

 

‘And what, what was that like?’

 

‘Oh it were nice, having things brought to you, I didn’t, I didn’t have a lot of money because I didn’t want money because everybody’d pinch what you’d got.  You’d to be careful, but I used to have cigarettes and sweets brought in to me then, and, me auntie, she brought everything, she come up, and I thought ‘this poor woman, she’s doing all this for me, travelling, and, I were the only thing that she were concerned for.’  I thought ‘I’ve got to make up to her when I get right,’ and I did, I really did.’

 

‘Were there ever fights?’

 

‘Oh yes, there were people going mad with you, breaking windows.  I do remember this young lad who was in then and funnily enough even in, say going back five or six years, I, I even met him again, and I remembered him, and his parents have gone now and he’s set up in his own little place and talk like, you know.  I thought he were a great lad, young lad, but he had, he hadn’t really made a, a rec, a, a full recovery, if you know what I mean.  So I don’t know what’s happened in between, whether he hadn’t had the help, or, whether it’s something more serious, I don’t know, but I thought he would’ve done.’

 

‘So what did they do to him, after he broke this window, the staff?’

 

‘Oh, they’d put him in a side ward, and, and, cooled off, and give you an injection, that’s what they did, what did they call it, themildrahide, or Paraldehyde (?) or something like that, I remember it, I can’t remember name exactly but they used to give ‘em this injection of stuff which quite ‘em down and let ‘em sleep.  Just leave ‘em in side room, locked up, of course, locked, and they used to use these lock ups for alcoholics.  I can remember saying ‘What’s all this booze?’ and they used to make ‘em drink to make themselves sick, to get ‘em off booze.’

 

‘Do you think that worked?’

 

‘I don’t know, I don’t think so.  Well, I don’t know.’

 

‘So they’d actually make people drink until they couldn’t drink any more?’

 

‘Any more.’

 

‘What, what, what drink?’

 

‘I don’t know, I don’t know.  I just saw these crates going in, the, this were all done in side wards.’

 

‘So were the side wards a sort of ?’

 

‘Yeah, for things like that, yeah.’

 

‘So there were all sorts of things going on in these side wards, so ?’

 

‘And they were locked, locked.’

 

‘And when you say a side ward, was it the ward, how many beds were in ?’

 

‘Oh it was, it came off a main ward, it was like a little corridor, like that, just walk through it, and either side there were these side, about two, at one side two at other, were just four.’

 

‘And they’d have four beds?’

 

‘Yeah, just a bed in them, yeah.’

 

‘Were you ever put on the side wards?’

 

‘No, no.’

 

‘Do you think that the doctors and nurses used them, side wards, as a way to control people, the other people in, in your, in your ward.’

 

‘Oh I think probably they did, but, you know, they, I think they were doing what they thought were right, you could talk, you could talk to people, but, I don’t think they really understand because there were moments that I do remember from one nurse.  When I was admitted he had a brother who was the same age as me and the same name believe it or not and lived in Dewsbury Road, and he thought, and we had the same doctor, GP, and he thought it was his brother, and, to see his face, how he panicked, ‘oh no, he can’t have a mental health problem, my brother’ you know.  That showed me how they thought, and that were my first thought, they didn’t want it to be one of theirs, could be anybody else with it, but not one of theirs.  If it were one of theirs it showed.’

 

‘This is, so, so you think they looked down on you?’

 

‘That were my first, that were the first thing that I thought where, yeah, they don’t, they don’t treat you as an equal, it is a stigma, that were what were in me.  They didn’t want their brother to have it, to be stigmatised with having a mental health problem.’

 

‘Did, were you put on drugs?’

 

‘Oh yeah, I were on drugs, but nowt heavy, I can’t even remember what they give me, I just used to take what they gave me, I used to follow the treatment, while I was there, but then when I get, I got this lift as I said, going back to work did it for me.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘And then ‘

 

‘What do you think you would have, do you think, thinking back, what do you think would have helped?’

 

‘A lot of understanding, a lot of care, and talking and, about it, and why it happens, like they would, you know, we all know if we, fall off a ladder we could break a bone, but that can be repaired, but still there’s a healing process with mental health, just the same.  I mean, and that can be helped and healed just in the same compassionate way, we need compassionate care, understanding, and tolerance.’

 

‘And what did you feel you got from the hospital?’

 

‘I feel they were, ‘Oh, just go, just go and sit there, in a corner, watch television, or do something like that.’  But you want to understand why you’re like this, because things are getting suppressed inside, the, the, the real person is being supressed because of all these pressures and feelings and they’re taking over, and they’re coming out in your life, where you’re supressing the real you, and what it needs is for the real you to come back to the surface and get rid of all these feelings, and this is why you need people to help you, who are knowledgeable and are supposed to know about this psychiatries and one thing and another, to know about this, and I think you’d get a better patient doctor relationship if you did,’

 

‘How often did you see the doctor?’

 

‘Oh, every couple of weeks, or something like that.’ [inaudible]

 

‘For how long?’

 

‘While I was in there, I think it, I think I did stay in six month.’

 

‘But how long were the interviews with the doctor?’

 

‘Oh not long, two minutes, wern’t long at all.’

 

‘What kind of questins, what questions did they ask you?’

 

‘Oh, how’re you feeling today? Oh don’t worry about that’, well, things like that.’

 

‘We’re just gonna, we’ve nearly, I think, finished the tape?

 

[cameraman - Yeah]

 

[End of DVCPro Tape 1 – VHS Tape 1 continues]

[Start of DVCPro Tape 2 – VHS Tape 1 continues]

 

‘OK, we’re, OK you were just beginning to talk about seeing the doctor for a couple of minutes and ‘

 

‘Yeah’

 

‘What were your feelings about those interviews?’

 

‘Oh I just think they were, they weren’t making any progress, it was just the same thing.’

 

‘What kind of questions did they ask you?’

 

‘How are you today?  [inaudible]  You knew how you were, you couldn’t tell him how you felt really, no.’

 

‘Did you feel you couldn’t tell him the truth?’

 

‘Yeah, how I felt.  I just used to think ‘Oh, I’ll just tell him I’m alright.  I’m feeling a little bit better’ probably if I do that I might feel a little bit better, and that’s all it were ‘Oh we’ll see you later’ and that were it, and ‘We’ll just alter your medication’ if it were getting a bit drastic, and that’s how it really went on, there were no real help at all.  I suppose, in a way, looking back now in retrospect that, they’d so many patients to see that I, I think it was like a, a repeat thing to everybody, you know.  There wasn’t that personal interest that, which has progressed today, where they do know your problems and the causes of how you’re feeling today.  Then, I think that was, it was just all blocked together, mental health problems were all just one thing, and tablets, take tablets, do this or do the other, nothing, it wasn’t sort of personal like it is more personal today.’

 

‘Did they give you a diagnosis?’

 

‘No.’

 

‘Did they give you any explanation for the way you were feeling?’

 

‘No, not really, not one that you could get anything from.  It was just one of those things, and I mean, at the time, I wasn’t strong enough to ask and say I demand to know because I wouldn’t have been there if I could have done that.  So that’s where you’re, you’re down, you’re just in their hands completely then.  You just do what they say, they know best, you don’t know, you’re just the patient really, you’re the piece of meat.’

 

‘A piece of meat?’

 

‘mm, that’s what I thought.  I didn’t then, but I do now, all me views have turned because I’ve, I’ve educated meself, and found things out for meself, and, I understand now.’

 

‘So how, how, how, what led up to recovery do you think?’

 

‘Well I think in the first instance it was getting back to work and then getting into it again, and then being promoted, because the job I was doing was a tedious job, writing and costing and all that.  When I got, then, you know more involved in the business, I were doing the books. ‘

 

‘So.’

 

‘ sales and purchase ledger.’

 

‘So while you’re in hospital you, you heard that ‘

 

‘Yeah ‘

 

‘ the job might be closed to you, and ‘

 

‘They wanted me back.’

 

‘That gave you the interest to ‘

 

‘That give me shock treatment to say ‘I’ve got to go back to work, no matter what’ and that really did get me out of the rut at that time that I was in.’

 

‘Did you, did you have shock treatment at that time?’

 

‘I’d had shock treatment as well, I, I used to have it mixed in with the insulin, like one session of that and another session of the other, you know in, brought together.’

 

‘Could you describe the procedure for the shock treatment.’

 

‘Well, you just lay on a bed, you had nothing to eat, you didn’t have anything to eat at all and you lay on this bed and they came in and put these teeth in, things in your mouth or something and you’d to grab, bite hold of this metal and, and they just set it off, and, it only lasted a minute and you were out cold and then you went into the recovery room until you woke up and then you’d headaches and, you see, it’s supposed to be, what I understand now, treatment to make you forget.’

 

‘Did ‘

 

‘But I don’t think I needed that treatment, I don’t think that I, I should have had it.  I didn’t want to forget, I wanted to remember.  I wanted to get meself back, what were inside me so I’d thought I’d been repressed, and going away from me, leaving me.  Not wanting to forget.  I wanted to come to terms with what had happened to me, why I were like that.’

 

‘Right.  Did they give you anesthetic or anything?’

 

‘I think they, I don’t know, I can’t remember, I think they must have given us an injection or something to make us go to sleep.  I don’t know, I can’t remember, that’s something I can’t remember.  I would never go through it now.’

 

‘And it, they put two electrodes on, each side of your head?’

 

‘On your head yeah and then switched the power on and put, you bit on a metal bar.’

 

‘Can you remember anything else about the, that procedure?’

 

‘I know there was all these people were around, I did notice that, but as I say, it didn’t last very long.  It was only for a few, well, you were out really, and then you were knocked out and then all of a sudden the nurses’d be coming be round wakening up, you know, like normal, if you had an operation, but you felt groggy and you, tired and a bit, you’re loss of memory, yeah, loss of memory, did you that to you, but after a while I just, I didn’t want that treatment and I went mainly on the insulin treatment then.  I never had it again, I’ll never have it again.’

 

‘How many times did you have it?’

 

‘I think I might have had six or seven, I don’t know, I can’t be sure.’

 

‘And you’d have them once a week or once a day?’

 

‘No, not once a day, I think you had it about twice or three times a week.  You see, I were on alternate, one morning it was insulin then shock and going like that, that happened for five days, you just got the treatment five days a week, not on Saturdays or Sundays or anything like that.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Just five days, but it didn’t seem to work on me there really well.  As I say the main thing was the shock of me may having, losing me job, that what .’

 

‘So how did that, the way that you were treated make you feel?’

 

‘Oh, down, with headaches.  It didn’t seem to lift me or make anything any different.  It seemed to make things worse, did the electric treatment, but then with the insulin and medication it did give me a little bit of light hearted lift, but after I got over the really sick scare, when I was in the sick bay where I couldn’t eat and I was on that treatment which, I had to build meself up and that, I think, really I did then.  I got to some level by then I thought it’d happen.’

 

‘So, you, you made a recovery to a certain extent, and then you were invited to go back to work?’

 

‘and I went.’

 

‘What was the attitude of your, your colleagues at work?’

 

‘Oh they were fine with me, they did everything for, they sort of welcomed, made it quite easily for me to go back into work.  They didn’t make any song and dance about it, because while I was off they, they, they sent me a  hamper of groceries for Christmas.  I always remember that, bottle of wine and everything, and I thought that were a marvellous gesture and I got on really well with me colleagues, and there’d understanding.’

 

‘So they were quite, they were very ?’

 

‘They were quite understanding.’

 

‘Did any of them come and visit you?’

 

‘No, not in the hospital, but I got cards, letters and things like that, but they didn’t come to the hospital, no.’

 

‘And the, this manager who was the ?’

 

‘Oh he didn’t bother.  It wasn’t, it was the workers, not, not him, no.’

 

‘And he was still there when you got back?’

 

‘Yeah, but what happened then I got promotion, I got on with the job.’

 

‘So you were, you, were you, you weren’t under him any more?’

 

‘Oh, he was still around, be was the general manager, yeah, but I just, I think with doing a different job, a lighter job, not as tedious, it seemed to help things, on it’s way a bit, I enjoyed it, it were lovely.’

 

‘What, what ?’

 

‘Doing something different, I were,  and I were communicating more with people because I were, I had got a better job where I wasn’t the junior doing all the hard grafting.  I were doing something more important and I were talking to people, I could talk about accounts and everything to other people and things like that.  That broke things down a bit, broke the monotony.  It made a change because I wasn’t doing the same thing all the time.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘And I met people, I used to go out to Social Clubs, and even got a relationship going with another girl in the other office, at Shellmex, who we worked for, she always used to ring me up and I invited her to our dance, and ‘

 

‘And was this woman Doreen?’

 

‘Pardon.’

 

‘Was she keeping in contact or?’

 

‘Yeah, she, Doreen, oh I let her go eventually, and Doreen went out of me life then.  I just got fed up and, and it just fizzled away like things like that do, and this girl, she sent me a Valentine’s card that, what they did, Shellmex, they used to have all this publicity, but it was so lovely.  It were done in a little booklet, all with the Shell antidotes, you know that, Shellmex you know, ‘Drive Shell, Shell, Shell’, and all that and ‘Will you be my Valentine?’  It were in a little booklet and it were gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.  We had a little relationship, and I took her to the Mecca Ballroom, we had, you see we always had two do’s, we had a soc, the firm’s do and we had a social club do and we used to have one at the Mecca and one at Reeds[ph] in Clarkeaton[ph] and invitees.  You could always bring a partner with you so I were never without a partner then, and I took her and we had a nice time but then we realised that she’d got a boyfriend as well, so, while she was seeing me so that fizzled out eventually but we were friends and that’s how it went.  And then, with progress, I, I got a bit maturer, and I found new horizons.  I went in for a new job, and got a new job in Wakefield, the ABM Moltsters[ph] Group Company.  I enjoyed it there, it were lovely, that were the best job I had in my life. That was the beginning of it, I mean I could have been there for life there.  I loved the job.’

 

‘What were you doing there?’

 

‘Accounts, coding and everything and I got, this is when computers were beginning to come into things and we had to code everything, everything were coded then.  So I enjoyed it there, but it was centralised and that was a central zone, one of the zones, it was done into zones, north east, south west, whatever, and they decided to centralise it all into one zone and that was down in Newark.  So I didn’t want to leave, so I stayed and I looked for, I got another job straight away.  A new company, Craneforth[ph] Trailers, the accountant, I got the accountants job there.  I were there for seven or eight year, after that, doing well, and then pressures started to build up.  You see, in the meantime, I went to Austria, I was twenty-four, at the time I got this new job and the girlfriend, I was still on and off with this girlfriend who I told you about previously while we were at school and writing plays and things like that and we decided to go to Austria together.  Well while I was there I met another girl who I were really, we really fell in love both of us.  It were a fairy-tale story really.  We just did and she was a southerner, London girl from maybe Walton-on-Thames and funnily enough she was related to Jack Hawkins, the film star, and she was engaged but we got off and I’d a wonderful week with her, she were having to go home and then we were .’

 

‘And what happened to your other, the, the woman that you went there with?’

 

‘Well she got going with her boyfriend, you see.’

 

‘Oh I see.’

 

‘When we came home from Austria we decided that she’d, they’d come to see us, so they came and stayed and the, we’d a friendship going and relationship and he’d walk my girlfriend home and I’d be left with her on us own you see and it was, and there were problems, she didn’t know who she was going to marry, she didn’t know whether to get married or not and this built up after a time and she decided that she were going to get married and she invited me to wedding, I wouldn’t  go, I didn’t go, but I went soon after wedding to see her and when I went down there, there were a bridesmaid there, a friend of hers who were the bridesmaid.  She told me, she said ‘She doesn’t love him, it’s you she wanted’ but things had got so far and we’ve communicated for twenty odd years since, always, and just recently, since, last couple of, I’ve lost all her address and everything.  I don’t know where she is or anything now and I can’t get in touch.  That is one thing I would like to have, really, really like to get in touch with her because where she won’t know where I am, she won’t know that I’m living here, ‘cos I’d offers to go and, well I was married meself, to go and see her, but she was me first real, real love, who I still care about, and I think about her now and she wrote and told me when things were going wrong in her marriage, but I was married then.’

 

‘How did you meet your wife?’

 

Oh, how did I meet my wife, right.  Well I’d been down to London to see this girl.  I’d just finished with another girl, who were in, I were in the theatre by this time remember, I went into the theatre, through this illness, when I got back to work, I were, I went into theatre work, and that helped me considerably [interviewer speaks - inaudible] get back, yeah, I’ve missed that little bit out actually and put it in it’s right context, and that, I met quite a lot of people through the theatre.’

 

‘So what were you doing, tell me about that?’

 

‘Acting, me first production, they wanted somebody for a show, I hadn’t done it for quite a while and I said I’d been ill and there were this play they were doing ‘Rattle of a Simple Man’ and it was at a holiday period when it was hard to get cast because they were all away, and there were one spot.  It weren’t really my part, I just thought, ‘Right, in for a penny, in for a pound, I’ll try and get back in somehow’ and I went into it.  I got awful reviews, terrible.’

 

‘You, you personally or the whole ?’

 

‘Yeah, there were only three of us in play.’

 

‘Oh.’ [laughs]

 

‘And I did get a, a bit of a hammering.  Anyway that didn’t deter me.  I auditioned for the next production.  I thought ‘Right’ and it was Semi-Detached, and I got the part that was more suitable for me.’

 

‘Semi-Detached was the name of the play?’

 

‘Name of the play.  It was about a family living in Midway, going up, they called ‘em, the name, and they were going up in the world they’d a kitchen dinette and all this and all things, they were going up in the world.  This is how it were, and I played the son, Tom, which was just up my street, he worked in a zip fastener factory or some-at, zips, but it were a lovely apart and he got the, this, girl pregnant who were, who the boss of this firm was interested in and it were really good and I really enjoyed that.  I loved it, and it came in me reviews.  I had a heading all to meself ‘Transformation’ you know, a fantastic report, you know, and it give me a bit of ego going then  ‘We’re going to see lots more of this young man in the future’ and that boosted me ego and I went on and on and on from there.  I didn’t care about what critics say, that’s only one person that says that.’

 

‘So was this, were you being paid for this?’

 

‘No, it were amateur.’

 

‘So there’s amateur productions?’

 

‘Amateur productions, yeah.  But it was the life, you got all over, you got to see premiers and things like that, late night premiers.  It was a new hope, new life for me, and I enjoyed it and I did quite, quite a lot of work, we worked for a little theatre.  It’s still going today and then I went into pantomime, did a bit of pantomime, comedy were my forte actually, I loved it.  But, I did a bit of straight stuff as well, but comedy is what I like.  I do remember ‘Present Laughter, Noel Coward, that were a good part.  I was an author or something, artist or something in this and everybody adored this, he was a natural whatever he was and all the girls and all the men, everybody, were round him, you know.  You know the Coward sort of material and I took Roland Mall, I took the Richard Briers role that Richard Briers took off and this bloke he seen me, he always mentioned me, he couldn’t say owt good about me, I were never born to be a part like, he couldn’t say, but he couldn’t resist talking to me, about be, and he says the only good thing in the play were my, when I came on stage, I laughed,  and he couldn’t.  But then in every newspaper the Yorkshire papers, I got fantastic reviews, but I did it until I got married and then that, I decided where me loyalties lie and that I couldn’t cope because you were out six weeks rehearsing and then you were committed for a fortnight before the production went on and you, I mean it were, you come home from work, had a meal, and were straight out.  There were no relaxation or anything, you know, it were really hard going and I, I just couldn’t keep up to it when I’d got a family.  Now going back to the point where how did I meet me wife.  Well I’d been to London as I said previously, fallen out with the, this girl and came back and met another girl, a Canadian, and we got friendly, just platonic, she was in the theatre, what we were doing an’ that, went out.  One day, I have a friend who was in the Navy and they were coming up for Christmas so she says ‘Oh, I’ve got a friend, shall I, blind date, you know, fix ‘em up and go out.’  So we met under the clock and ‘

 

‘Under the clock in ?’

 

‘Bus Station, that were our meeting place.’

 

‘In Wakefield?’

 

‘In Wakefield, Bus Station clock.  It’s going to, their going to knock that Bus Station down shortly, it’s been up quite a while.  We went out and had a good night out and funnily enough going home it just happened that we started talking and I, me interest changed and that’s how it were.  We were married two year later.’

 

‘Right, and where did you go out on that first date, what did you do?’

 

‘We went to a pub which were my local, it wasn’t a local pub, but I always used to go into town and it were a friendly homely pub.  They called it the Twenty Volts and then it became known, later known as the New York Bar which was gay and it’s been all sorts and I think it’s like, it’s up for sale now.  They don’t know what to do with it, they even had lap dancers there and everything and charging, and since they did that, ten pound to go in that’s when you know it sort of fizzled out and lost it’s interest, and, but, yes I have fond memories of that pub.  I’ve been in since and they’ve done it all out, it’s the New York Bar, done in New York style with the Statue of Liberty and everything and that, and I remember the little seats where they used to sit and everything and see how different they’ve made them, all the changes and I’ve tried to imagine it back as it was in the happy days.  It were a lovely pub.  Met lots of people, made lots of friends and there’s people I still bump into today that remember it.’

 

‘Why was it called the Twenty Volts?’

 

‘I don’t know, I never, I don’t really know, I don’t know, haven’t a clue.  It was a Bentley’s Brewery but they went out.’

 

‘What kind of beer did you all drink?’

 

‘BY, they used to drink Old Timothy, I couldn’t drink very much then by the way.  I can drink a lot more now than I could then.  Some people say when they get older they can’t but when they’re younger they can knock it, but there, I couldn’t.  After a couple I’d be under the table, you know.  But Old Timothy it, it was a, like a Newcastle Brown really, barley wine type of drink and it were lovely Old Timothy.’

 

‘And what did the girls drink, did they drink?’

 

‘Yeah, lager and what they usually do today, whatever the mixers were, Babycham and brandy, that were a popular drink.  You don’t hear of it much today Babycham and brandy, Cherry B and things like that.’

 

‘Sorry?’

 

‘Cherry B, Cherry B.’

 

‘What was that?’

 

‘It was a red drink wasn’t it, a, we give it a kick, they used to sing on’t advert ‘Cherry B, Cherry B, is the only drink for me’ something like that, you know, adverts.  But it used to knock the women out, a couple of them and they were anybody’s you know.  Funny how the drinks have all changed, they’re all bottles now, Hooch, Bicardi Breezer and Fosters, all this sort of thing.  But I can drink now, I like John Smith’s Smooth, I love the taste of it, lovely little drink.’

 

‘So, what was your wife’s name?’

 

‘Marion.’

 

‘OK, and you were married a year, a year later?’

 

‘Couple of years later.’

 

‘Couple of years.’

 

‘We got engaged and then married a couple of years later and we had us first child.’

 

‘Was that a boy or a girl?’

 

‘Boy, Mark, Mark David, and he’s a grand lad, and during all this, the auntie, we’d problems, there like, one, the other auntie that I told you about, going back, who I, I went to live with, she was poorly and her family couldn’t cope with her and they sent her to us, so she lived with us, and we hadn’t, no hot and cold water or anything and she was ‘

 

‘Lived with you and your wife?’

 

‘No, I’m going back,’

 

‘Oh you’re going back, you and the other auntie?’

 

‘I’m going back to before I were married.  Me other auntie who’d brought me up.  This is before I were married.’

 

‘Right, yeah, yeah.’

 

‘And she came to live with us and she was a real handful, I mean they are, they all thought it was cancer see, made her give her home up thinking that she won’t be here for long, but it was hardening of the arteries, going senile, a bit, having mental problems, but we understood and we didn’t care, with no hot water.  And this is what I’m telling you that this woman, my auntie, who brought me up, cared for her and it made her ill and this is im, very important part of my life, she had a nose bleed.’

 

‘Which aunt, the, the, Ethel?’

 

‘The aunt that, yeah, that looked after me, and I had to make a phone call, drastically, because it wouldn’t stop bleeding.  I rung the doctor on call and that doctor on call was the doctor who didn’t come to me mother, so, I was speechless for quite a while and everything flashed back in me mind and that were going back, and I composed meself and thought ‘Well there won’t be a repetition here’ and it didn’t as it, fortunately as it was, it didn’t.  Got her into hospital, Claydon[ph], and we found out that she’d got heart problems.  So I had to look after her.’

 

‘Did the doctor ever give an explanation for why previously he’d taken two days to come?’

 

‘No.’

 

‘Did you ask him?’

 

‘Well, I mean it were a bit too late twenty year later wasn’t it really.  He wouldn’t even remember me, I don’t think.  I just put that down to experience.  Anyway, she had heart trouble and things were getting.  All she wanted, to see me settle down.  That was her main wish in life, with a family, and that happened.  She saw me wedding everything and that were it, and that’s what I wanted, and she was so happy and then we gave birth, me wife gave birth to us first child, just before Christmas in 1970 and I thought ‘Oh this’ll sort of be a tonic for her a grandchild and she loved it, and I could see things were getting, she were getting tired.  She used to say ‘I’m tired’ and she saw me grandchild, she didn’t see him christened but she got him a little christening gown but she didn’t live to see him christened but she saw him and I, I used to take him as often as possible and she went to sleep.  She died in her sleep and I thought ‘Well, she’s got happy memories, she’s seen it, had a good life and she wanted, she’s got what she wanted, she were too tired, and she carried on right to the bitter end.’ and I’m pleased.  I talk to me kiddies about her, now, they know her, and they’ll know that’ll be never, never another a woman as good as she is, was, ‘cos she were marvellous.  She were very placid, wouldn’t argue, shout, anybody.  If only people were like that today there were a lot of [inaudible].’

 

‘Did her and Marion get on well?’

 

‘Yeah.  Well Marion used to come every morning for me before I went to work, before she went to work, they did get on.’

 

‘Did you get your own place with Marion after you got married?’

 

‘Yeah, came and lived here, been in this house all me married life.  You see I wanted somewhere near to where me auntie lived so as I’d be on hand and I was, but, this house, I loved it, I loved living here, and it’s a lot of happy memories.  I mean now, they’ve gone now and I want to move on.  I’m, I’m ready to move now, I’m ready.  I’ve always been a person never wanted to get me roots that set you couldn’t uproot me but now I’m thinking a bit differently and I want to move on and build another life and go down another avenue, I don’t worry.’

 

‘So, in you early married, I mean after, sorry, after your auntie Ethel, when she died, I mean, was that, how did that affect you emotionally?’

 

‘It did affect me a great deal and that’s how things began, I began to get the feelings I had when I were younger, like when I first started being ill.’

 

‘How many years later is this?’

 

‘Fifteen or sixteen, fifteen years later.’

 

‘Right, and you were, were you in contact with hospitals or doctors during that time?’

 

‘Oh no, no, no, no, then it’s, we’ve had a new child, with all the tragedy happening and then me auntie dying and everything and all responsibility of that, the pressures of that, the pressures of having a baby, working, keeping a job and married life, and that began to bring some of the old feelings back, symptom, and I thought ‘Oh my God am I going back to that’ and that was happening again and then it affected me work, like it did before, unable to sleep, bringing work home, anxiety attacks, well I was anx, it would be anxiety, I didn’t panic, well I suppose I did panic but I didn’t know they were panic attacks but it was anxiety caused with the stress of everything in me life and I could feel things going again and this was a traumatic period for me, then with all these problems and I was having medication.  I didn’t go into hospital that time.’

 

‘You’d seen or been in contact with the GP.’

 

‘I was in contact, no I went for hospital treatment, to see the doctor at the hospital.  I went  in but they let me home, I didn’t, I think I went in for three week on medication and then I became an out-patient but I was still under the hospital care like.

 

‘How did your, that admission compare to the previous admission?’

 

‘Oh it was a lot better.  I felt there was improvement.  I think things had moved on a little bit and they were a bit more understanding.  The interviews got a bit longer, they weren’t pushing you out sort of thing.  I thought I were being listened to a little bit more and actually I didn’t stay there.  I got another job, straight away again.’

 

‘Were the wards mixed by then?’

 

‘Pardon.’

 

‘Was it, was it, was it mixed ward by then?’

 

‘No.’

 

‘No, still ‘

 

‘Still the same.’

 

‘Is there anything that stands out about those three weeks?’

 

‘I felt, I seemed to lift, when I got rid of the feelings, those feelings seemed to go, quicker than did before because the medication slightly helped to suppress them and let meself come back a little bit.’

 

‘Can you remember what medication it was?’

 

‘Amitriptyline, yeah Amitriptyline and I don’t know if I had any other tablets but, yeah it was amitriptyline because I went into work, I went back to work and I thought ‘Oh this job it’s too much for me’ I had to get another job.’

 

‘Were you under a lot of pressure at work again?’

 

‘Oh yeah, yeah, and the, the people who were in other departments, they weren’t, weren’t helping, if you know what I mean, they were pressure, I were having to, to get the work flow, keep progressing, I had to keep pushing and all the others were just playing about and it, I just had enough and I had to give up, but they were very good to me as well at work.  Anyway I went, left, and I got another job, Appleyards, and while there symptoms were coming back.’

 

‘Were you still taking Amitriptyline?’

 

‘Yeah, and oh, same symptoms, it were work and I do remember this particular day, it was Saturday, I were working, six days a week.  I came home and I just said ‘Oh nothing’s changing here and I just took, I remember coming in, finishing work and I just took some tablets, I took seven Amitriptyline tablets, I thought ‘They’re not working fast enough, if I take seven it might work a bit quicker and that, it might be ‘

 

‘Were you, were you experiencing any side effects from Amitriptyline?’

 

‘No, I’ve never ever experienced side effects from tablets like people say they do, you know, it makes your eyes go funny and things like that, nothing like that at all, but ‘

 

‘What dose were you on, can you remember?’

 

‘Amitriptyline.’

 

‘But, how many tablets?’

 

‘Oh God, I don’t know, I just took ‘em.  I weren’t, I were on one three times a day I think, twenty, or were it fifty milligrams I don’t know what grams, milligrams it was.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘But I took three a day and then there were some that, a sedative I took at night to make me sleep, which I don’t know, Chlorpromazine I don’t know what it were, hadn’t a clue anyway, and I just took these tablets thinking it might make me feel better quicker and see a bit of light at end of the tunnel but it didn’t.  I took them and then they called ambulance and I were in hosp, I were in Pinderfields for a week being pumped out.  But to me that was a cry for help not, not a suicide attempt.  I just thought the tablets, taking extra tablets might have been, made me a bit, feel a bit better quicker, not that I wanted to end me life.’

 

‘So you took seven tablets and that was ‘

 

‘That was the, that’s what they said at, because Amitriptyline are quite potent.  I didn’t know that, nobody tells you about that.  They just give you the tablets and that’s it, they didn’t tell me, until then, and that’s what happened to me.  Then I came back, and I looked at me life and I thought ‘Well, I’ve got to get on, I’ve got to make something now’ and I did.  I went into a different line of work, care work, in the, I was going to go to the County Hospital, as a porter and I, I would have got the job but the firm wrote and told them I tried to commit suicide and that lost me the job, but I did get the job at the Stanley View, old folks home, which is adjacent to the hospital.  They’re right next door to each other and share each other’s mortuary and they set me on for a couple of months till a vacancy arose and I was in the garden, doing the gardening with two other guys and they said ‘You can go, give you employment there, doing the garden’, and I loved it in the potting shed drinking tea then doing the gardening and I got interested in gardening.’

 

‘When you were moving around from job to job, what, what did you say about the periods that you’d spent in hospital and places?’

 

‘Oh, I told them the truth, I think, I believe in openness.  You don’t hide it under the carpet, I said ‘That’s who I was and it lasted and I got over it’ and, and I used to say like ‘I can’t say whether it will ever happen again or not it just depends.’  You know, I cannot say what’s going to happen to me in me life like anybody can’t say but I, I’m frankful, I’m open and I am uwend[ph] you know and that, I never had any problems getting a job, never, I always got back into work and I got in this job and enjoyed it, I loved it.  I was apprehensive about my first, first person dying on me and having to prepare them for the mortuary but I did it and I got through it.  I used to have a different approach, I could see there with that with people being old.  They used to treat them differently and I couldn’t do that and I cared, I genuinely cared and I tried to bring a bit of happiness into their life knowing that they were stuck there in this home and I tried to make life pleasant for them and I got on really well but you see then it creates jealousy with other members of staff because if you’re prepared to do things for people and others aren’t they resent it and there was a lot, a lot of resentment in that.  Anyway I stayed there for about two and a half years and then the place was closing down there were transferring them all over.  So, in the meantime, I got a job in the, in another trade, decorating merchants and there I remained for up to ten years ago and I loved it there, but that were a pressurised job but I loved it.’

 

‘What were you doing there?’

 

‘I was the man, I got to be the manager event, in the time I was there but when I came there I was an assistant doing paint, learning the paint and decorating business, but the person I were there was an elderly chap and I think it had not, he was deaf and he was the old school, real old school, you don’t get ‘em like that now.  You know swap you this for that and all that but, you know, helping one another.  Well, it wasn’t the thing to do and he was a grand chap and we got on really well but I used to carry him, I helped him along, you know, because there were only two and a half of us, but it really accepted me eventually I know and I became part of his in school with him, was classed as one of the gang sort of thing.  Whereas now they have the cool itfus[ph], we cannot let him our little syndicates and one thing and another what they do but anyway I became accepted and we became very good friends and his wife, he was married to a Dutch woman, and his wife didn’t, wouldn’t allow him to work with women.  Well we had a woman working with us and he was ever so funny.   I had to, he used to fill me in and I used to have to cover up for him and all, ‘and don’t let Mary answer’t phone, don’t let her do this if she rings and all that.  It were quite funny actually.  We had some really happy, happy times but he was in the old school.  He hadn’t moved forward.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘But, he used to write things down on bits of paper ‘Oh yes you can have that’ and you know, look out for it sort of thing, he wasn’t the one who could manage as such and that’s where he fell back on me and then I got his job ‘cos he was ill, I knew it were making him ill, and he were really ill.’

 

‘Physically ill?’

 

‘And he had, he had to have a long time off work yeah and I took over and then I began training other people for job.  They pensioned him off actually which was best thing but we kept in communication and my depot just rose.  The turnover trebled and after all that, what, that’s what they wanted, they wanted more and more and by the way this time me family had increased as well and I’d got three children then.’

 

‘Right, were they boys, girls?’

 

‘We got another boy, he’s living with me now and then me daughter and she’s married and in Stockport in Manchester, having a good time, she’s doing well for herself and well everything were going great.’

 

‘How, how was the relationship with your wife Marion?’

 

‘Why, it was alright, well we’d got the kids and everything.  It’s only in the past six years that things you know really began to change.  She was ill, she’d problems with her back and I used to, I mean she were in bed for quite a while and when the children were in their teens, early teens I had to look after her she’d back problems and one thing and another but they could never understand, her family could never understand mental health.  That’s one thing, even before we got married, her mother went to see a doctor about me having mental health problems and would they last for life.  They never wanted, they didn’t want us to get married because of that, but we did.’

 

‘So did you get married against their wishes.’

 

‘Not against their wishes, they, they just like wanted her to change, they let her, they agreed to it, no it wasn’t against their wishes, but they would rather that she hadn’t have done, but they didn’t put a spoke in it and say you mustn’t.

 

‘But they were, they were suspicious of you?’

 

‘But it was there, we didn’t a problem, we didn’t really got on very well because their sort of family life were different to mine, upbringing.  Mine were more a caring and theirs were the domineering sort of situation.  Two different lives.  We were two opposites really.  Anyway went on and got the job and I were doing well and as years got going they expected more and the changes, they kept changing things, kept change, taking over, doing a face lift on the whole shop and everything and I had do the shop fitting, be the manager, do everything, stock control, the lot, and do the training for them even.  Well, I carried on and on and on and on until I dropped.’

 

‘You had another breakdown?’

 

‘Yeah, carried me home and this is when I went to see the doctor at the hospital that referred me to Doctor, a Doctor Throstle[ph] she were nice, she did talk to me.’

 

‘Is this Stanley ?’

 

‘She came to see, actually she came to see me the, yeah.’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘She came to see me in me home.’

 

‘The psychiatrist?’

 

‘The psychiatrist yeah, came to see ‘

 

‘And what, what kind of sit, what kind of state were you in then?’

 

‘Oh way out.  I were exhausted, with the anxiety, stress and everything I was just absolutely exhausted, with the work I’d put in, I just couldn’t do another stitch I just flopped and she came to see me and asked me some questions and she, this is the beginning where she pointed out.  She said ‘No, you’re alright you won’t be a manager.’  She were point things out to me.  ‘Other people see you differently than you see yourself just at the moment.  It’s all this pressure that’s built up, that you’ve carried on and on and on and it suppressed the good things that you feel about yourself.’  She says ‘You know what day it is today, you know this, and they would not have employed you if they didn’t think you were good enough to do the job’, and they, they put respect cycles any good in me I thought I’d failed.  She said ‘No you haven’t failed’ and she got a nurse coming out to me.  This is how the care had changed and I had a nurse coming out to see me, she were lovely.  Talked to me about everything and got on really well.  Things were developing and we were getting alright.  Then they went and I thought ‘ Well I need more than this, this is nothing, just somebody coming to see me once every so often’ and I got to know about the Day Hospital and she says ‘Yeah that’ll be good for you.’

 

‘By this stage were you, were you still working?’

 

‘No.  I’d given up’

 

‘You’d, you’d given up your job.

 

‘Oh I went, I tried to go back to work again.  I did try to go back to work but I was left all on me own again, back in, and every, all the pressure, they were all coming and there were only me to handle it.   I, I’d done it, I went for three weeks, I did three weeks and then in the last week everything went to pot.  I was left holding the baby and everybody pressurised me and I just couldn’t go on, and then that’s when I decided to call it a day.  I got some lovely correspondence from them.  ‘That’s it, you’ve tried’, I said ‘Now, just at this moment I’m a carp[ph] and then the personnel department down in Amersham, Surrey, he got me some money, that I was in this scheme, he said ‘I might be able to get you insurance because I was in pension scheme’ and he did, and I got all, all the time I’d been off work back.  That’s how I bought me television and things, and he did that for me and he says ‘You’ll get this, it’s an incapacity payment’.  It’s a premium like that when we’re paying into this scheme you get it if you’re unable to do the job that you were paid to do, and he says ‘That’ll go on until you retire, whenever you can’t do that job, you’ll get this payment’ and I’m getting it.  I thought ‘Oh OK.’  in that respect so then that came out but I’ll go back now, go back to Day Hospital and I went back to Day Hospital, been, which were great, things had changed there were dancing teacher, there were all these things going on, activities, I liked it.  Got mingling again like, socialising with people and there were some people there that, and we did anxiety management.  This is new, something we’d never done before.’

 

‘What did that involve?’

 

‘How to cope, learning how to cope with stress and anxiety.’

 

‘It was a group or ‘

 

‘Assertiveness, yeah a group therapy.  This is something I never, and relaxation, relaxation, that came into it.  All this, this was new.  We did, we did things like that and I enjoyed it yeah, loved it, and dancing, got me into me dancing again and we’d Rose and she’s a wonderful person I’ll think about her. She made a big impact in my life, such a wonderful person.’

 

‘Rose.’

 

‘Rose.’

 

‘Who was she?’

 

She was the dancing therapist and did, she did do other things besides but her thing was, she was a professional dancing teacher, but she used it in her work, ‘cos she was an occupational therapist and she were wonderful, wonderful person and that is when I got a taste that people really were different, looking at you in a different way.  You were a normal, you were one of them, and she made you feel that way, you were special.  You were a person, nobody were any different and she’d helped you to learn to dance to give you new, new social life because you need dancing if you like dancing to go out and meet people, ask somebody for a dance.  I mean they do it today this, always done, you know and that.  She changed my life.  I could dance, I learnt all these tangos and mambos and saunters and everything and I loved it.  I looked forward to her day, then things began to brighten up for me then and I didn’t worry about a job any more, rushing back into work.  I said ‘No, get your life together now, this is the opportunity, you’ve gone through all that and rushed back into work and put your job on the, before anybody else, put yourself first now, and your family and everybody around you, friends, and don’t let this happen again.’  So I did, I got into everything and enjoyed it and friends with people and we had a little social gathering, but then I began to think ‘I think this isn’t going to last forever, we’re going to move, what we going to move back to, us own little circulation where we came from and things are going to be different, only that we’re feeling a little bit better, but we’re going to go back to the same environment.  That’s wrong, we’re going to lose, we’re going to go back to it.  We’ve found somewhere in between that we, we feel good and we’ve got something new and we’re just going to cut that away.  We can’t do that.’  So that’s when I began thinking about groups.’

 

‘Right, so how many days a week were you attending the day hospital?’

 

‘I used to go about three.’

 

‘And you’d spend all day there? and would you have a meal there?’

 

‘Oh yeah, yeah, we had a meal.’

 

‘Could, could you describe a typical day that you’d spent?’

 

‘You’d be there for ten o’clock, we’d all sit in the foyer and all chat to each other.  Then, we’d have a cup of tea, then we’d go into us work room and what group we were doing or whatever we were doing, relaxation first in the morning, that were good.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Got you relaxed for the day and art, we did art.’

 

‘And what, what did relaxation involve?’

 

‘Sort of going through every part of your body from toe to top, with music and somebody speaking.  Oh yeah, there, it was a speech first going through it and then afterwards when you were so relaxed you had some beautiful music and you had about ten minutes of rest, pure relaxation, and you relax and feel oh a lovely feeling, warm, and she let you know the different between tension and relaxation so you got to know the different what it was like to be tense and what it was like to be when you relaxed and you learnt the skills of how to do it.  How it, to begin it, you know, because you made the tension more prominent, severe, and then you got, you did the relaxation to unwind it and you felt the difference, and that, it lasted about forty minutes.’

 

‘And how many of you were in the group?’

 

‘Well, eight or nine, something like that, each time you used to lay on the floor or in a chair and have your feet elevated and I used to do that at home, when I felt tension coming on, which was the beginning of the new therapy that I’d learnt and then beyond there, as I say, this group, we got this group, we all thought ‘Oh we’re going to miss each other, we’re going back and we’re going to lose contact because we all developed round one another, we all helped one another.  We, we shared each problems and helped each other and people forgot their own problems and began looking out at other people with problems and helping them and that’s how we formed the group by that and we thought well it’s a shame to go back and, we may even be back here in a couple of month’s time.’

 

‘How many months did you spend there, going to the day hospital?’

 

‘I spent quite a while, about six or eight month.’

 

‘And during this period you were building up quite strong relationships?’

 

‘Strong relationships, yeah, and then we did that, we used to go to the theatre, some people, there were agoraphobic people, never been out, daren’t go out, they can go in a taxi, and we got people like that and we used to go to the theatre and do things what they didn’t.  Then we got, a new centre was developing, things were changing, I was changing, and there was a new centre opening for mental health, people with mental health problems and we were, and actually the person who run it she’s a fabulous character, Margaret Amos, and she used to be a customer of mine when I were in the paint shop and I met her, we knew each other and we got to know each other and she says ‘How would like to have rooms here in the evening, because we weren’t ready for going to Garden Street yet and she offered us a base where we could meet and have a social gathering and we did and it were brilliant and people learnt new skills and we developed from there and we, we were fund raising, going off Mystery Tours, going to a pub for a meal.  Doing things that people had never done in their life before, mixing with people and everything and it got so great everybody loved it.  Then we thought ‘Oh we need funds, don’t we, give us fifty pound to start with did Social Services, they give us a grant of fifty, fifty pounds.’

 

‘Right, shall we just wind up there, then we’ll, we’ll keep our, keep going on that after lunch.’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘OK.

 

[End of DVCPro Tape 2 – VHS Tape 1 continues]

[Start of DVCPro Tape 3 – VHS Tape 1 continues]

 

‘OK, Dave we were, just before we broke, we were talking about your experiences at the day hospital.’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘Would you like to go and say a bit more about the day hospital, what you found ?’

 

‘The hospital.  Well I, the day hospital were good because it gave us some new, new things to think about, new ideas, but like it all then, they start running things down and it were, there were changes approaching, and as I mentioned we, we thought people, yeah, you can’t be there for long, they want to get rid and send you back out into the old big bad world or whatever you want to call it.  Anyway, this is how we began to form us group and I was telling you a bit about we got together, to keep together, and go out to theatres, socialise and that and we got a base at a new centre which was opening, which was called the Garden Street Centre and the coordinator there offered us a base.  So we took that opportunity and took it.  I did, I believe I told you that we grant to set up, fifty pound, and we had social evenings, bingo, everything, dancing, everything, trips out, going out to pub meals and everything, theatre visits, and we began even raising funds actually.  Like for, there was, we thought we’d have a sale, you know, sell of work whatever, a spring sale.  So we invested and bought a bit of equipment and began to make things.  We got people who’d got skills in sewing and knitting and we encouraged them and brought their skills out to put to use, which was very successful.  We did art and craft and all sorts of things that people never knew they could do, but we were helped through, within the centre as well, because most of our members were then transferred from the day hospital to this Garden Street Centre and things were great.  You were encouraged and everything in anything you wanted to do, there was the staff, they were there, they encouraged you, worked with you, support you, it was so refreshing and you felt relaxed and everything and we began.  They accommodated us really in, and we began making things for a sale.  Well this was, everybody, they used to get lots of visitors, social workers, all sorts of people come in to the centre and they saw we created an image.  People saw what was going on what we were doing and it was self help and they were ordering things.  So we were very very busy because before we could make the things there were all people wanting them and were making their orders beforehand.  So, it took off and then, we got a new idea, why not help people to do things and make, sell things for the Centre so’s we could have opportunities to go on holidays, socials, go to theatres, go to pubs, have meals and all the lot and it’s also developing something within a person that may help them to get a job and we thought about the employment aspect because there’s not much opportunity if you say ‘I’ve got mental health problems’.  I mean that is a non-starter in most cases.  So we thought, well we’re, we’re going to prove that people with mental health problems can get over this and, and can do things just as good as anybody else, even better, and we began doing this and it was going on and on and on.  We passed the sale, made money from the sale and we were carrying on and it went on for years did this, doing all this sort of work and we had a display like a little, for all the products that we did at the Centre.  People come in and just ordered them and took them away, and we got onto stained glass.  We started with gnomes at the beginning.’

 

‘Like garden gnomes?’

 

‘Plaster-cast models and painting and things like that and that were ok but then we thought, ‘We’ve got to do something different, we haven’t got to put us eggs all in one basket.  This is just a novelty for now but we want to do something unique and then we began stained glass, ‘cos we had a stained glass tutor who came there every Thursday and we had a day session.  So that she learnt us our skills in glass work and was so interested in what we did she helped us.  It was genuine that was really genuine because she wasn’t a, a worker sort of in the mental health/’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Clinical, or anything like that and she learnt me to and a few more to do glass work and it was very very good and we did some marvellous as you can see here I’ve done quite a lot and we sold quite a lot and people were ordering.  I even did a nativity set, something that was really good.  I had a go at leading but leading isn’t my forte.’

 

‘Leading?’

 

‘Doing leaded windows.’

 

‘Right.’

 

“I’m not right keen on that, I prefer the decorative thing to that.  So I thought, well, I’ll stick at that.  I need a, a lot more skill, somebody to help me to do that, I can’t do that, you know.  So I concentrated on doing stained glass and I loved it and it helped me through and what I could do and that.  It were just marvellous and as things go on and on and on they were getting bigger and bigger and bigger and we had to open a bank account because we’d so much money and we used to hire mini busses and go all over.’

 

‘How, how was it organised, I mean, how, what, did you have like a Chairperson and a Treasurer and that sort of thing?’

 

‘Yeah we had a committee, yeah, secretary, yeah, everything yeah.  Done with people with mental health problems and we run it.  It’s very very successful, very very successful and we had co-operation from members of the staff who were at the Centre and they were, they were absolutely marvellous, they encouraged us to do this and even, there were schemes where we used to, we used to go to the professionals on courses, they used to give us a fee for doing it.  To go and speak at these training sessions while they were training people to let him know how we felt as the, on the other side of it and we what we expected and how we felt and that was a great opportunity that helped me a lot.  But, then I was asked if I would like to join, there was starting a new Outreach, going out into the community, but it wasn’t all in mental health, it was everything you know and I opted for the elderly which I had some connection previously with elderly and I joined in that to set up this, training the professionals and I were, there were, I was asked if I’d like to go on a course.  There was a ten week course coming up for basic mental health, on basic mental health, which I did.  I loved it, enjoyed it, I went, it were great.  It was as if you were working and people related to you and you were on the other side but with the experience I’d got by help, by helping others in the same field I took things out to them, to the elderly and they got elderly doing things and they weren’t, I used to do a craft session with them, made, doing the gnomes from what I’d gathered from there and help, helping them to paint gnomes and things like that and do little, we had plastic, we used to make key rings and all sorts of little things and it were great, just working with them and we got, got friendly with quite a lot of people and they used to relate to me and it, it were great I loved it and then from there on I got back into me, because things were developing now on the circuit of getting us own premises.  Just to, forming a group, a proper self help group without grow, because there was nothing else to go to and we, we got the, a development worker, the help from a, a voluntary, from the voluntary sector to help us to develop and we got a grant, of £3,000 from the mental health, MS, were it, MSCG or something, I forgot what it means.’

 

‘A Mental Health Specific Grant was it?’

 

‘Specific Grant, Mental Health Specific Grant, that were right, we got 3,000 to get a bit of equipment and plan a business plan and we were successful in doing, well I, I showed you, you’ve seen the business plan, part of it anyway and we got £20,000 from David Hinchcliffe there was a European Fund where there was so much for mental health and we got this amount of money to set up in a derelict ‘

 

‘Who was David Hinchcliffe?’

 

‘He’s the MP for Wakefield, still is, good man.  He’s worked in ment, social services and mental health.  He, he thinks highly of it and he likes people with initiative and motivation who are, are going to do something for like you know.’

 

‘So he supported your application?’

 

‘He supported us all the way yeah and we got that but we had a lot of problems.  People lose interest, they just think that, ‘Oh we’ll give them money, it’ll keep ‘em quiet.  It doesn’t matter if they, they don’t make anything of it’.  You know, they, and they didn’t sort of have the faith in you and we’d lots and lots and lots of problems but we overcome them.’

 

‘What was the money, what was the grant actually specifically for, to get premises?’

 

‘To get premises, equipment and develop basic equipment and to develop really but we, we had a full plan of what we wanted to do but we couldn’t do because we were let down so many times by people you know in the, oh, the money wasn’t forthcoming.  Oh they give you the money to set up but you need running costs and things like that and that wasn’t there.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘You see this is where it comes in, ‘Oh give ‘em the money, let ‘em have a go’ but we did the best that we could with what we had and gave what we had and but we wanted to do more.  I mean even Yorkshire Television we were shortlisted for the Action Time which if we’d have got that, that’d have been all us worries sorted out but later on, the, we were on the, there were just two groups, similar groups that were going to be picked, it was us or another group.  Anyway unfortunately for us we had to take second best and it was the other group, but the other group got it and they were the NSF, and they took our idea, I’ve never said this publicly before but their idea was ours.’

 

‘Why?’

 

‘And they took it because they were a professional charity and they got the Action Time.’

 

‘What is Action Time?  Is that more money or is that ?’

 

‘That Action Time, you know idea, Anneka Challenge, ‘

 

‘I don’t.’

 

‘Oh you won’t know it, this is a local thing.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Similar to a, the national Anneka Channels where she goes talking all about helping good causes and doing it in a certain time.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Well Action Time do a projects on the, it’s on the Tonight programme, Yorkshire TV.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘And they do an action time where they help a society to get, and all the people from out, donate, companies and everything to help them to get what they want.  They plan and set it up and this is what we wanted but the others got it and it was our idea and I mean there’d been bits, and NSF were involved with us because they were looking after the money.  We had, they caused us a lot of problems but they took the idea.’

 

‘Oh, I see.’

 

‘So you see the professionals, they always come first don’t they? and they can take other people’s ideas.’

 

‘So how did that make you feel?’

 

‘Bitter but not, for a little while.  Well, it’s expected really.  I thought ‘It’s not going to worry me, it’s not going to deter us, and they’re not going to bring us down.  We’ve come so far.’

 

‘So did NSF set up a workshop then?’

 

‘In Rotherham, I think they did, yeah.’

 

‘Similar to the one you, that you managed.’

 

‘Yeah, similar to what we did and they got the help, the money from Action Time where we would have got it, but we didn’t, we carried on, wouldn’t let that deter us and carried on but things, we applied to Lottery for, one of the projects was Artistic Point of View, because we had professionals with us as well, but we lost the money.’

 

‘Lost it?’

 

‘We lost it because we didn’t put the bank details down on the application and they were, it would have covered us for that, but we couldn’t get the money from elsewhere.  So you see we had a lot of downfalls but we still kept going and going and going, until quite recently.’

 

‘So during this period were you actually, I mean, did you have a name for the group?’

 

‘Yeah, we changed it.  We, when we were at Garden Street we called ourselves Garden Street Enterprises.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Then when we got our new premises going, independent, self help we called ourselves Creative Caring.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Which is the whole point of understanding mental health and everything and ‘

 

‘And when, when you were Creative Caring, did you, had you become a Company or a Charity or something?’

 

‘No we didn’t get that far, we were thinking, thinking about becoming a, a registered charity but things became, as problems happened, things weren’t going as well as they were going when we were in sheltered accommodation, if you’re going to call it that like.’

 

‘Right, right.’

 

‘We were in, we were at Garden Street because we’d had, people, we’d all, yes they were all behind you but then when they see a little problem they don’t want to know.  They don’t help you to over come that problem and give you support.  That’s when things were going wrong.  The people who could have helped didn’t believe.’

 

‘So you felt that, that the professionals who’d previously helped ‘

 

‘Began when things were going wrong they took a step back, but there was always someone had faith and that’s Christine Ewart[ph] who trains all the people in mental health.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘In the Wakefield District.  She believed in me and then ,well she wanted me to go on this course, an intermediate course on mental health, and I was working with all professionals in the same field and that is when I began to understand more about mental health and everything about it.  I did everything on it and even role play where you had to, like schizophrenia, and how would you, yourself, what it’s like for the person who’ve got it, hearing voices because we used toilet rolls and then one person being the positive side and one the negative and there were having a fight and you were in the middle and someone were interviewing you at the same time and it give you that feeling of hearing these voices and how, what it must be like for people who have voices talking to ‘em and telling ‘em what to do and things and I found that really, really good and I began to cope with it when these voices were working on me I just ignored them and went on to the positive, the good things and started to talk about positive things that had happened in me life and what I’d enjoyed and I began thinking about all the good that were going to come and that could go and got rid of it and we did essays and case studies and everything.  To have that opportunity that was, it were marvellous and to get the respect of people and be thought of in high regard.  I was just one of them and I, I loved it, and that’s what sort of developed me to get me on the right road and I never looked back since, because I understand now about everything, aspect in life, anything you can throw at me now I can deal with through that, through people letting me understand what mental illness is and the approach to it and how to deal with it, in a sensitive caring way.’

 

‘And how should you do that, do you think?’

 

‘Well you don’t put anyone down at all.  You don’t, if somebody tells you something you don’t say ‘Oh that’s silly, pull yourself together, don’t worry about that.’  No, you ‘You see that you’re feeling like this now.’  Yeah, because you, you find out why, what environment their in, what’s brought it on and then you find they have a problem, you find out why this problem’s occurred and then you go on to how to get rid of the problem, and in a, just a holistic approach and what, and you know, you just help them along and if they’ve go the help they want and they cope with it and how to cope, learn how to cope and get out of where they’ve been and then they know that this is not going to last forever because the time when you get something strange happens that you don’t understand you think this is it.  You don’t ever think there’s going to be daylight again and this is what you’ve got to be encouraged to do and you’re going to get little feelings like I’ve spoken to you many a time.  I’ve thought, symptoms are coming back, feelings, but I haven’t let those feelings worry me too deeply now because it gets better and better as it goes on and you began, begin to deal with it and just say ‘Oh this is normal’.  It’s like if somebody has a, just something as a illness and they know what to expect, the effects, and then they’re going to go away.  Like when you have an infection, it’s going to be painful and sore and, for a while, but when you nurture it, put medicine on it and do what you have to do it’s going to get better and heal, and I look on mental health like that.  If you follow the right path you come back to the end of the tunnel and see the light.’

 

‘What do you think triggers those bad feelings for you?’

 

‘I think it used to be pressure, pressure was my main, that I couldn’t do what I, what I wanted to do and it used to set me off with anxiety, because I couldn’t do.  I wanted, I was the type of person who wanted to get a job done tomorrow, not today.  I wanted to, to get the job done before I’d even got it, know what I mean, always in a hurry to get things finished and get on with next thing ‘cos in me jobs I’ve always, I’ve always had, been stressed, there’s always been pressured, you’ve had so much to do that when you finished one job there’s the next job and you never sort of have a, any space in between to relax.  You’ve always something to do and you keep going and if, if you get a, a break in that cog you know you’ve to catch up with all that and carry on.  I want a job done before I’d even started because I’d another job to do and that’s what I’ve been like most of my life and that is my problem.  I’ve now learnt to lay back a bit and relax and say ‘the job will be there tomorrow, I’m not fussed it’ll be there tomorrow, but the job will be, it doesn’t matter, who’s more important my health or that job’ and I’ve began to put myself first, and when you do that, that is when you learn to live and that is what I now do, put myself first, when I put everybody first but not any more.’

 

‘And why do you think, why do you think you didn’t put yourself first in the past?’

 

‘I don’t know, because I’ve always cared about others more than myself.  I’ve always cared about other people.  I suppose it’s been me upbringing really that I, I’ve had a bad childhood and always taken, and my life could have been a really tragic childhood but it wasn’t.  Someone was there and cared and I suppose when I see people who are in these situations I think back to meself.’

 

‘So you, you feel the point strongly?’

 

‘If there’d been no-one there for me where would I be now?  And I look back in my own children, what if my children had lost their parents at a young age and who’d have been there for them.  And that’s the way I look on things, on life, and if I can just be of help and, matter what, to help a person to make their life any better I’m there and I’ve been there all along and I’ve put, I’ve put everything, I’ve risked me neck quite a lot, even with me family, you know, putting them out with the work I’ve done but I’ve done it because I believe in it and I think you’ve got to do.  You’ve got to have your beliefs and do what you think is right, not, I don’t want to hurt anybody but I try and explain that to my family.  But me family says ‘You shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t have done that’.  They don’t understand, I says ‘Look, I am who I am and if I didn’t do this I can’t help being me who were born and created to be, to do this, like you are who you are, because if I walked away I, that wouldn’t be me, I’d be the wrong person altogether and you wouldn’t be where you are today if I weren’t me, ‘cos I wouldn’t care about you would I?  I’d go out and done me own life, oh they’re only kids, but no, they’re not kids, they’re part of me and I’ve got a responsibility, not just when you’re little children up to when you’re being sixteen and then it goes away.  I’m here for life, for the journey you’re going to take when you come in and be in a situation that you may never understand.  You’ve got somebody that’ll be there for you, to help through, no matter how old you are, or whatever difficulties you have.’ and I have been there for my family, and I’ve helped me son.  Me son, down in London, he says ‘Dad, you’re my hero, you’re my role model, what you’ve taught me’ and he’s never forgot who I am and what I’ve done in me life and that made me so happy with a son whose twenty-seven year old, he come round and he turned round to me, he says ‘Dad I don’t know you coped.  How you brought us up with the money you had and you worked like you did and we’ve got us own home and we never went short, went on holiday.’  I says ‘Yeah, because you came first and I had to do that’.  What, you don’t need a lot of money to get on with your life.  Everything, the best things in life are free, which they are.  There was a film and I remember that when I were younger and I believe it.  The best things in life are free.  You don’t pay for fresh air, you don’t pay for friendship, or some people might do but it isn’t a friendship if you do.  People like you for who you are and you make friends with people like that and that were a really touching moment in me life when me son said that to me, and he said ‘I’ll never be able to have a family, we can’t cope and we’re both working’ and they’ve both got jobs.  He says ‘and the wife earns more than I do but we’ll never have, be able to do that because it’s so dear living down in London’ and then the next news is I’m going to be a granddad in two weeks time actually and he, he’s gone about, I’ve given him advice, I says ‘Look, you have a family now, you’ll get through’ and so he has done and I’m going to be a granddad so I looking for a little grandson, I’ve got a granddaughter who I absolute, me other son who I idolise, she’s beautiful, and we have access, the marri, the relationship went wrong but he’s never neglected his duties.  She’s number one in his life and he’s, and I’m there to help him and that’s how we go on.  She comes every week and she’s absolutely gorgeous, and I, I feel that I’m helping her because I look at her situation, she’s part of a broken home.  I’ve got to do my best I can to bridge that gap and I can do that and make her feel wanted and loved and that she’s a family, and two homes the questions that she comes out with are very funny but I, I don’t talk to her as a child I talk to her truthfully and in a nice sort of way, you know, like you would to your grandchildren, you know, I don’t play pop with her.  I just say I were three you know, I’ve been three and four and mischievous and I try to teach her by saying ‘It isn’t, now what, would you like me to do this to you’ if she does something wrong you know and I use that approach and it worked and ‘Oh Granddad’ she’ll say ‘oh no I don’t want that to happen to me’ and you get a response to her.  Oh she helps me do baking, she loves to come and bake when she comes here ‘cos she doesn’t get a chance at home ‘cos there are three other kids to her, her husband you see.  But the one good thing about it is, her ex-husband and my son are friends and the kids have brought us all together so it’s like another extended family and we help one another which is, is good because I mean my granddaughter she didn’t know, ‘Why do they call you Robinson and why do they call me Hall?’  I try to explain to her and she has me playing games.  She says ‘It isn’t pretend games’ she says ‘We’ll pretend now’ she says ‘I’m, you’re John and I’m Julie’ that’s her mum and dad.  So she uses me as a dad, fatherly figure, and she takes her mother off in the games we play and it’s so lovely.  It’s nice that you can do that.  But one night she wanted to bake and we were baking away.  I mean I didn’t care if she messed place up.  She just wanted enjoying herself and she were, and I were looking after her on me own.  There were only me and her together enjoying it, me son and his fiancé were out and they didn’t know how I would react like with having her but she were ok with me, she didn’t bother.  So we were baking buns and cakes and everything, flour all over’t place, then she wanted to dust and this were eleven o’clock at night.  She says ‘I’ll dust now’ she gets furniture polish out and goes around dusting, but that’s the sort of relationship I’ve got, and I think, money can’t buy that, no amount of money and I’ve got a life now.  I’ve got me family, I mean, me marriage, I mean I’ve been married twenty-nine year, it were a shock.  I didn’t get to know, well, new year.’

 

‘Would you like to tell us what happened?’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘Just keep it rolling Ken, [cameraman - ok] ‘Ok.’

 

‘As I say, about three, well it would be three and a half years ago now, with the group starting, we started in new premises.  We did meet a lad who was destitute and ill and always committing suicide and everything and eventually he came home with me and, it was late one night we came home, ‘cos he used to go out.  I didn’t go out very often just now and again and me wife came down.  Anyway there was a friendship that developed between the three of us.  I felt sorry for him ‘cos like I’ve spoke earlier if I saw somebody who were in trouble I’d be there to help ‘em get, do what I could and I knew he’d got problems and he was always committing suicide and everything and we became friends, included him in me family and everything.  This is when me wife developed a relationship with him.’

 

‘How old was he?’

 

‘Well I’ll tell, he’s thirty now, he’d be about twenty-seven at the time.’

 

‘Right, did he come and stay with you?’

 

‘Yeah.  Because he were always, he needed me because I was always at the casualty department, with him taking overdoses and things like that and one thing and another and he needed somebody to keep an eye on him, but we developed a great friendship and this great friendship developed where he were taking over me life.  He were going beyond the barriers of that he should have been going and I even, he was even the key worker in the group, and, as I say, with doing this mental health.’

 

‘He, he was the key worker?’

 

‘He was one of the key ‘

 

‘People in the group.’

 

‘Yeah, I got him involved.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘And with doing this course work I used to go out all over the place, different venues, didn’t stick with one type of people.  I went all over, because people have mental health problems whoever they are.  You don’t have to be a certain category to have mental health problems.  So I began going in gay bars ’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘and realising people with mental health who went there and I could relate you see, I could relate to anybody and I, this is what I picked up from the course work that I were on, because I did get quite a lot of literature going to a gay meeting, they just asked me to go there which I never did get the opportunity, I did, I never went, and I, that triggered that off and one would discussing it in the group, therapy work.  So I used to go, I used to go there.  I’d never been in one before but somebody who was an [inaudible] a girl she were telling me and she say you want to go down sometime so I did.  I found the people alright, didn’t hurt me, but I found they’d problems and they, they were quite decent and it’s like mental health gay stigma all the way around, even if you’re coloured and everything.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘and prejudices.’

 

‘What, what were your feelings about gay people before, before you went on this course?’

 

‘I don’t know, I don’t think I, I wouldn’t have gone because I mean this pubs been in Wakefield and all and I’ve never been in it before in my life and I’ve lived in Wakefield all me life.  But I would never go in but then when I began to understand the things a better with this course work I began to move around a bit.  I began to tread in different directions where I’d never been before and it give me confidence and I felt well, there’s nothing, they’re the same as me, there’s nothing wrong with gay people. They’re, they’re ok, it’s their way of life, their choice.  So, I used to go occasionally even took the wife and it’s, and I didn’t bare no bones about, I weren’t, I weren’t ashamed.  First of all, when I first went in, I were looking round to see if anybody saw me going in but after that I didn’t care and it, you know, I were quite happy I liked the entertainment that they had, it were breezy, friendly and I thought, ‘there’s no trouble here’.  I didn’t find any trouble, I used to have a good night and I used to go mix with them and enjoy meself with them.  I’ve a lot of gay friends now.’

 

‘Right and did you ever get into, involved in any gay relationships with anybody’

 

‘No.’

 

‘So, and at this same time, this person that you’d asked that you’d ‘

 

‘Yeah, I were out quite a lot.’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘We’ll get back to that point now.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘He was always with us, I was out with it, threesome going out.  There were three of us everywhere we went three of us, and, I’m getting up to Christmas, November.  Like the group wanted to, now what do I want to do now, yeah.  We were having a charity do as well we planned that to raise funding ‘cos there were two gay friends of mine who I met and got really friendly with.  I showed them around Wakefield where they wanted to go and everything we really, we really became good friends and they were people from professional jobs, really top jobs, who could help and they were so interested, I were telling them all about what I was doing with me life and they became, they wanted to be involved and they did help and we organised this charity do at one of the local pubs and we raised quite a bit of money and this chap he wanted his name on the list to say he were going to be this that and the other and he wanted his name on the cheque book and on the other account which I’d nurtured from Garden Street days and we’d quite a lot of money.  That was a back, a back up so if we needed any money then we could fall back on it and he got his name on and I found out what he’d been doing.  He been going running to the back, I thought he’d, we had to have two of us to sign out our money but apparently it were two signatures but one could have signed to get money and since he did that he absolutely drained the account, and that’s when me problems really began.  Because, earlier on, the, started not this year, year before I had quite a few accusations made about me, and a few tales had been going round which were absolutely untrue and I got, Christine got someone in to do a report to clear the name because it could have repercussions on my leadership in a group if he, they were saying all these things and it was David Cresher, what they call him, David, I think you might know him, David, you might, I don’t know if you know him.’

 

‘Where’s he from?’

 

‘Multi Media, he’s on that, the mental health thing.’

 

‘David’s Crepaykey[ph]?’

 

‘That’s right.’

 

‘He was invited to ?’

 

‘He did the report, to do a report as an independent on all these accusations that were ‘

 

‘Right.’

 

‘being said about me but I, I, I didn’t take legal action, I wish I had of done actually.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘That seemed to be the start of my downfall and Christine, I confided in Chris, I told Christine straight away and the people involved he came to see us at the group meeting and all the reports were ridiculous it were just somebody that had done this before in another area.  It was either sex or money and she’d done it before, for power, it was a woman that had done this.’

 

‘Done what, made accusations?’

 

‘Made accusations and stirred trouble up if she couldn’t get her own way and she was well known for it.’

 

‘What accusations had she made?’

 

‘That I was chatting up these lads, young lad, he, one lad came in and he was having problems with money I put him onto Richmond Fellowship and she come up with such a tale, it was unbelievable, that I was coming on to him and one thing and another.  It was absolutely untrue and it was, must of, it was sort of cleared ‘cos he came and did a report and everything.  But we couldn’t get the money to give him because we were going to pay him some money for this but we never did because all these troubles happened with all the money being taken out.’

 

‘Right.  By this other fellow?’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘So this was all a bit of a , let me get this right.’

 

‘So, and he had a part in it, he was saying things, but he denied it.  He was stirring trouble because this was the part, I was the leader and I was well respected.  He had to bring me down to get in.  So this was part, to me, I can’t say it’s positive but the way it looks to me the idea was get him down let me get in and I can get on with what I want to do.  But it hasn’t worked that way for him.’

 

‘How much money did he manage to take?’

 

‘Oh about, well all, all in told I think there’s over a thousand quid gone and we’re in the process now of a, a court case which is committed to Leeds Crown Court next year so I’ve got to go as a witness to that.’

 

‘That’s a criminal case?’

 

‘Yeah, March, criminal case but and this is how things led up to it.  At the charity we went as friends get dressed up, you know, for the New Year’s Eve do.  So I said ‘I’m not getting dressed up and being dressed up at all and he says ‘Oh you come as one of my scrubber nurses’ you know so I had a silly old black wig on, one of these scrubbing things, black tights and I was like a pantomime dame actually you know, funny make up and everything.  I felt uncomfortable and they all went dressed up as someone, one went as Mrs. Doubtfire, oh dear, what a life, anyway it were a bit of fun.  But, this other lad went as a glamorous woman and me wife went up as a fella and they were snogging all’t time together.  So me, I’m having a bit of fun you know like you usually do, with some of lads in there ‘Give us a kiss’ they say, you know, and you, we started having a bit of fun.  Apparently me wife didn’t like it and when it came to New Year, twelve o’clock and it was time, she said I didn’t kiss her till quarter past twelve and that took the huff and she started some’at then with me and all these, we were having this bit of fun and two days later she were packing me clothes.  I said ‘aye up’.  So I were a bit stunned because I’d got me granddaughter here as well and we’re arguing and I didn’t want that.  So I left the house, me friends, everybody knew about him, me, but me.  I were left here like a used lemon on Saturday she goes to her mother’s and I’m left here and they’re all plotting against me.  She takes boyfriend down to her gran, to her mother’s and they’re plotting to get rid of me, they all know it.  She’s rung me friends up saying that they’re going to get rid of me and they rung me up and told me, come and fetched me and took me to their house and I stayed at their house that night but I never slept and I were feeling really, really down.  I thought ‘what’s going on here’.  Twenty-nine years I’ve stuck with her thick and thin for me family’s sake and I thought this is a new year over some’at stupid and I couldn’t talk to her ‘cos she were besotted with him and he’d brainwashed her, but then gradually I began to put the whole story together when I found out about this money ‘cos me son saw him coming out of bank ‘cos I put a stop at other bank.  I found out that moneys were going quite frequently and we’d no idea where this charity money had gone to and I thought ‘Right yeah they didn’t want me to go to the Centre in the New Year because all this were happening, build up to it and they didn’t want me to find out and they thought I wouldn’t do anything and be as quite and calm about it all.  But when I got to know I wasn’t.  I says ‘what’s the right thing to do here?’ and I did what I thought was right and I’m positive that I did the right thing and I realised what had been happening and I got support and people knew and they were behind me all the way.’

 

‘So this guy was taking money out of the account at the same time as having ‘

 

‘Yeah’

 

‘an affair with your wife?’

 

‘Yeah, yeah.’

 

‘And how long had the affair been going on, do you know?’

 

‘About eighteen month.’

 

‘Previous to that, to the New Year’s Eve?’

 

‘But, it, it was way, it was way yeah, and then that were the crunch.  He used to say to her ‘If you don’t leave him I’ll kill meself’ and I’ve got wit, you know there’s quite a lot of witnesses to that and it’s gone through all that, and things like that, blackmail, emotional blackmail and she’s, she’s now with him, she’s lost, lost her family.  I’ve got ‘em.  She tried to poison the daughter, me daughter against me but me daughter has realised the truth and the only way you can find out the truth today is not by hearsay, by finding out for yourself, not just believing what people say.  You’ve got to find out the truth for yourself.  Not just say if somebody tells you this believe them, investigate and find out, and that’s the only way that, and me daughter knows that.  Don’t judge by what other people say make your own judgement of what you see in black and white and I’ve got me daughter.  She hasn’t, she don’t want anything to do with her.  But they say I’m the one to blame because I took him in.  I didn’t take him in to do that and if he chose to do that well fair enough.  But in the meantime I developed diabetes about ten year ago through stress and I could never sort of get it under control but now I went for me review a fortnight ago and the doctor says ‘Your blood sugar levels have never been better.’  I says ‘No, I’ve got rid of the excess baggage.  I’ve no stress.  I’m not worried about anybody else.  I’m looking after number one now’ and I’m relieved I’ve got a new life.  I feel a different man.’

 

‘So your relationship with your wife, was that, I mean how would you describe that over the previous, you know before all this happened?’

 

‘Well it was not what it should be because, it wasn’t the same, I knew that.  I could, if I did anything I had to, I were under’t thumb, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do, you can’t go out’ and while this were going on I, I did go out, occasionally, I know I went, they said I went frequently but I didn’t I went occasionally, to get away from this atmosphere that I were living in because somebody else had control.  If I wanted to watch a programme on television he’d switch ticket, turn it over.’

 

‘She would?’

 

‘No he would.’

 

‘He would?’

 

‘And she wouldn’t say.’

 

‘How long did he live with the two of you?’

 

‘On and off for two year.’

 

‘Right.  I was just thinking about the, your previous years of marriage before?’

 

‘Oh yeah before that it weren’t too bad.  I mean I’d a good relationship with a young lady who, lot younger than me but I didn’t go and have an affair with her.  We got on, we were friends, we could be friends and we worked together we were good together but everybody used to think we were having an affair but we weren’t and they realise that now and I just couldn’t sense but I tried talking to her but I couldn’t [inaudible] ‘who’s going to look after him and who’s going to do this for him, he’s nobody’, he’s somebody if he wants, he just wants attention.  I realised then that you get people that do it, who are wanting the attention all the time and I began to distinguish the facts because he was never going forward, he was always, anything that went wrong he was in the same middle of the road and then it would be suicide as an excuse, tablet if everything went wrong, to do this and blackmail people.  I didn’t.  I said ‘I’ve got to get out of this and do something about it if I can and I tried to put him on the same road that there’s always somebody worse off than yourself and you’ve got to go forward and not go back and learn how to deal with what your problems instead of just make, laying excuses we could all let ourself go and steal and do anything we, easy way out, easy option and just let your illness be an excuse for what you do but it isn’t.’

 

‘So what kind of terms are you on with your wife now, your, your ex-wife?’

 

‘I’m not on any sort of terms.’

 

‘Are you in contact with her at all?’

 

‘No.  I just cannot, what she’s done and the scheme, well I won’t go into everything but there’s quite a lot gone off and I could not be that, that person isn’t me and I didn’t marry that person who would do things like she’s done.  I know it’s not her but she’s been brainwashed I think and I think that person is after everything I’ve got because I’ve done everything right, provided, and he’s just, after, through her to get my wealth and I don’t like that.  I’m not that type.  I could have put this house in me son’s name where she wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t have had to leave, but I didn’t do that, I’m not that type of person and I look upon it that she’ll always be me children’s mother.  She’s going to be their mother for life, not because we’re divorced, she’s their mother.  Maybe the relationship isn’t good with the family at the moment but there’s time will tell if the children come round and I’m not going to be, say ‘No you don’t have anything to do with your mother’.  If they want to when the time’s right for them that’s it for she’s still their mother.  But at the moment she’s just not interested, she couldn’t care about her children, her grandchildren or anybody over this bloke and she’s lied, she evidently was a liar but now I know and me family have found her out that she’s the biggest liar under the sun now.  She’s a different woman, she’s not the woman I married so I mean and I’m free, happy and carefree and do as I like.  I’ve got a new life and I’ve had help, the psychiatrist counselled me, to go and talk to her.  I’ve had loads of people to go talk to and the psychiatrist has been wonderful but I haven’t really needed them and that’s been a good thing I think because I’ve coped on me own.’

 

‘So during this very stressful period, I mean, unbelievably stressful period ‘

 

‘Unbelievably.’

 

‘You, you’ve managed I mean you’re, you’re, obviously you’ve gone through some hard times but you’ve managed without having to go into hospital or without ?’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘Why do you think, why do you think that is?’

 

‘Because I underst, I’ve learnt about life.  I learned this is normality in life.  It’s not abnormal and I mean you’ve, you could cope with it and accept that it’s not going to be pleasant and there’s going to be hardship and you follow it and do what you can but better things will come when you’ve got rid of the bad part of it, there’s a better side to it.  I mean that’s, it’s balance is life in’t it altogether, good, bad, bad things, good things and you’ve to balance them together, put them in perspective and realise that this is reality.  It’s not abnormal it’s what happens in real life.  People go through this and just because you’re going through a bad bit ooh you can’t just throw a wobbly and flop you’ve got to have the strength to build up and cope and life goes on, and I’ve got me granddaughter to think about, I’ve got me sons and me daughters, I’ve all the, I’ve everything and I just, I’m young again.  I missed out so much in what I sacrificed in me youth and I, I’ve found I’m never to old to enjoy it and I’m enjoying me youth again if you want to call it that, a new, reborn, and I go out and enjoy meself and come home when I want, do as I want now, make a meal when I want, invite who I want home and that’s what I’m doing.  ‘Cos I’m, as long as I’ve, I’ve got a happy medium and I’m not hur, harming anything, doing anybody any wrong or anything I’m happy.’

 

‘Right and how long is it since your wife left, left, or since you ’

 

‘Well she was stayed in this house up until February and it was getting a, a bit of a problem because she was staying in house, I was in that lounge or, the other room there, locked, on a sofa bed while she had the main bed and room and one thing another and they tried provoking me.  One day I came home and, provoking me, all about this evening when we were in this pub and saying things like, so we had a bit of a heated argument and she came at me and put me arm up to stop her and like she caught her leg on the bath which is a flexible bath and she goes in and she tripped and she said I’d got me arms round her and I’d tried to strangle her and he’d been putting her up to this, me daughter’d been telling me.  ‘Get him, goad him into hitting you and then you’ve got him ‘cos you’ve no grounds for divorce whatsoever.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Until then, and then it started, this were afterwards and I had a court order against me saying that I hadn’t to touch her and one thing and another.  I thought ‘Oh this is alright’ but they weren’t, they quashed it in court.  They didn’t entertain it, threw it out, so it didn’t come to anything and I’d just got to keep away from her for so many days and not intimidate her, argue or anything.  So, how am I going to do that when she’s under my roof.  So eventually me, it got where I had to sell up, clear off and as is, I think you, you, because she was only coming here late at night and going early in’t morning.  What were the point of her being here.’

 

‘Could we just take a break, just, just there, we’ve just got to change the tape.’

 

 

 

[End of DVCPro Tape 3 – VHS Tape 1 continues]