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08 BOB SAVAGE
BOB SAVAGE C905/08/01-04/VHS 01-01
MENTAL HEALTH TESTIMONY ARCHIVE
BOB SAVAGE
C905/08/01-04/VHS 01-01
Original on DVC-Pro
Copy on VHS
Interviewed by Pete Fleischmann
Camera by Ken Langdown
Transcribed by Julie Sharman
July 1999
[Start of DVC Pro tape 1 – Start of VHS tape 1]
`Bob, I’d just like to start off, just by talking about your… early life, really… perhaps you could just tell me, you know, where you were born and… something about your father and mother?’
`Yes. I was born in 1940, during the war, in Islington, North London. My father was away during the war, in the army. My mother worked in the war effort.’
`Right… and… was your father… did he have another profession other than… a soldier, like…?’
`Yes, he was a newspaper roundsman. Worked for the Evening Standard.’
`Right. And what kind of… what kind of guy was he, your father? What memories do you have of him?’
`Umm… I never saw him very much until I was about five years old, ‘cause he was away.’
`Right’
`But… he could be quite strict, but… he was a good provider… and my mum and dad were quite close.’
`Right… and what was your…what was your mother like?’
`My mum’s a rather sort of timid person, really. Umm… she tends to be sort of… followed in my father’s footsteps. When he said something’s got be done, it was done.’
`Did… did you have brothers and sisters?’
`No.’
`You… you were an only child?’
`Yeah.’
`Right. And…you… did you live in a… in a terraced house or a flat, or…?’
`In a… a house, which was supplied by the council… after the war, ‘cause we were bombed out during the war, and I was sent… I was evacuated for a short period at my aunt’s… and when I came back, my mother had secured a council property… in North London.’
`Right. So, how old were you when you were evacuated?’
`About four and a half, five…’
`And your aunt lived where?’
`In Slough, in Buckinghamshire.’
`Right. And were you… how… how long did you actually spend there, in Buckinghamshire?’
`Well, I should imagine six months, or something like that.’
`Do… do you have any particular memories of that experience?’
`Mmm… faint memories… faint memories. My aunt was very nice. It was nice to be out in the country when you… umm… fields and that to sort of roam around in. Looking back, I realise that during that time I was… when I was manic, and my mother had… a difficulty in handling me. So she send… sending me to aunt’s where I had plenty of space to roam around.’
`But this was a separate time to when you were evacuated… later… later on in life?’
`Later on, yes, that’s right.’
`Right. So you’re… time when you were evacuated, do you remember that as quite a happy time?’
`Yes.’
`Right… Could you tell me a little bit more about your life in Islington, maybe when… once your father had come back from the war, what was it like living in London at that time?’
`Oh, it was all bomb sites and… kids racing the streets and that. It was quite fun actually, we used to go on the bomb sites and play. Quite happy memories, really. School… the school I went to was quite nice… infant school.’
`Can you remember what that was called?’
`Pateman [ph] Street…’
` Pateman [?] Street School?’
`Pateman [ph] Street School in… Holloway.’
`Oh right. Was that an old boys school or…can you remember?’
`Mixed… mixed.’
`Right. And have you got any particular memories of teachers or other boys, or…?’
`Oh, just quite happy memories really, I suppose. No problems there. I used to get in a lot of mischief and that…’
`Can you give me some examples?’
`Oh, I used to sort of… just generally… wear up [???], got in fights with other kids… general misbehaving, you know, with teachers… [voice in background]… my mother was called to the school a couple of times to… see what could be done with me, but, it… never came to nothing.’
`Mmm. Do you… were you… you were quite a naughty… boy then, at that time?’
`Well, my mother found me quite naughty, but some of her sisters says `we can’t find much wrong with him’.’
`Right. Did you… were you involved in anything else apart from sort of fights and that sort of thing? Was there other… you know, other stuff?’
`Not really. I found school quite fun really, at that age…’
` Right. This is infants… this is infant school?’
`Infant school, yeah.’
`Right. And then, later on you went to junior school?’
`Umm… certain… no…yeah, I went to a grammar school after that.’
`Right. What was that called?’
`The Quinten [ph] School.’
`Were you quite bright at school then?’
`I… had my moments, you know… I… had… mixed… periods when I would concentrate… I also had a lack of… trouble concentrating when I was at school.’
`But you passed your Eleven Plus?’
`I passed my Eleven Plus, yeah…’
`Did… did you find that difficult?’
`Not as far as I can remember…’
`And… how did you find the grammar school?’
`Oh, very difficult. I was very unhappy there.’
`Right. Any… was there any particular reason for that, do you…?’
`The… discipline was very harsh…’
`Right.’
`Lots of homework and exams, which I couldn’t cope with.’
`Did they… did they put the pupils under a lot of pressure?’
`I think they did, yeah… it’s a pretty old fashioned grammar school…’
`Right. Was that a mixed school as well?’
`No. All boys.’
`Right… and the masters were very strict, were they?’
`Most of them were, yeah…’
`Was there a particular teacher that you remember being particularly strict, or…?’
`Oh yeah, one of my form masters was very strict. The cane was… used a lot… and slipper…’
`Right. For what kind of… what kind of things would mean that you were caned?’
`Oh, just… bad manners and… laughing in class, or… not doing your homework… things like that…’
`Right. And was that… done by the headmaster or… or…?’
`No, the form master, but if… if it was a more serious… offence, you… you… your headmaster would do it…’
`Right. And was that… in private, or in front of the school, or…?’
`In private, in his study.’
`Right.’
`Going to the headmaster was… was frightening, but this… the… the, the form master, he’d have you in front of the whole class.’
`Right…So how did that make… pupils feel, do you think?’
`Well, some could cope with it better than others… I couldn’t cope with it. I just wanted to leave the school.’
`Right.’
`And then [???] I eventually did, ‘cause my mother took me away… she could obviously see something wrong. So she took me away from a school and… and sent me to a school nearer home… a lower grade school.’
`Right. Was that secondary… a secondary modern school or…?’
`No… what… what they called then a central school… it’s in between secondary modern and grammar.’
`Right.’
`And when I went there I started to sort of take off.’
`Right. What was that school called?’
`Barnesbury [ph]… Barnesbury [ph] Boy’s…’
`Right. And… and you found that… better?’
`Oh, much better, yeah… more normal. [Pause].’
`Was there… particular subjects that you enjoyed?’
`History. Geography.’
`So there’s… there’s… not science… the sort of… art side?’
`Yeah.’
`[Pause]. Did you have… any hobbies as a child?’
`Umm… mostly trainspotting, collect stamps… comics… various things…’
`Mmm’
`Children of my age… that were my age then, in that period of time, the 1940’s… although we were poor we had a lot more going on for us. There was much more to… activity in the streets. You played football in the street, you played cricket in the street… there weren’t so much traffic.’
`Did you have… quite a lot of friends at that time?’
`Yeah… yeah…’
`Was there a particular friend that you used to go trainspotting with?’
`Various ones, yeah… various… it was… we lived right by the railway, so all the kids were involved in it.’
`Right. Which… which station was that? Was that…?’
`Near King’s Cross Station.’
`Oh, I see. What comics were you… what was your favourite comic?’
`Oh, Dandy… Beano… Film Fun [ph]… The Eagle… that was a new comic then. We used to go round the houses and exchange comics in them days, with other kids.’
`Did you go to the pictures as well?’
`Yes, we used to go to the Saturday morning pictures. It cost you sixpence and you’d have… like cartoons and all that, on Saturday morning.’
`Mmm… And…’
`That was… that was quite a nice thing to do. I quite enjoyed that.’
`Right, and was your father around at this time?’
`He was working most of the time.’
`And he stayed with the Evening Standard?’
`Yeah, ‘till he died, yeah…’
`Right. Did your… did your mother work as well?’
`Yeah… my grandma used to look after me.’
`Right, and your mother worked as…?’
`She worked at a chromium plating factory. She used to wire the articles up to be chromed… on a wire… that wire was dipped into a vat, acid vat, and they’d come out chromium plated.’
`And where… where was that… was that local as well?’
`Local, yeah… not far from the house… about… a mile and a half away…’
`Right. Ok. And were you, in… good health, as a child?’
`Yeah, most of the time, yeah… yeah.’
`Did you have any periods of ill… physical illness and… as a… as a child?’
`No, not really… not unless you count [???] my tonsils out, that was about it… looking back, now I understand my illness. I can see part of the manic side of me, in my behaviour when I was younger.’
`Right. Could you give us any sort of… give me an example of that?’
`Oh, I’d go into tantrums and… do things very fast and… jump down flights of stairs that had two… and one at a time [ph] and things like that…’
`Uh huh…’
`Generally always in a hurry…’
`Right, and what sort of age did that… do you think that started?’
`Well, I don’t know… I couldn’t… say four or five years old… as far as I can go back.’
`And did you also like have ups and downs as a child as well?’
`Yeah… yeah, I had low periods, yeah…’
`That must have been difficult?’
`Well I didn’t know what it was at the time, so… I… I just managed to survive it.’
`Did… did other people notice… did your mother notice it…?’
`Yeah, my mother was always saying that she thinks there’s something wrong with me, but no one, including the doctors, would take any notice of her…’
`Mmm’
`’Cause mental health then was in it’s infancy. [Pause].’
`Was there anybody in the area that… any adults that had mental health problems that…?’
`I don’t remember… I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t know… I would… didn’t know nothing about mental health.’
`Or… or any relatives that… you know, friends of the family, or anything like that?’
`No.’
`Did… did you feel quite isolated then, that… nobody understood what was going on?’
`I didn’t understand myself, fully… I was sort of… a little bit conscious I wasn’t, or being good in myself… [ph]… but I just used to sort of like work it off, just like any kid would do, you know…’
`But you managed to keep up friendships with other boys, and…?’
`Oh yeah… yeah…’
`How old were you when you left school?’
`Sixteen.’
`And did you go on to work?’
`I went to work straight away.’
`Where did you work?’
`I worked at an Insurance Company, in the West End…’
`Can you remember what they were called?’
`Eagle Star…’
`How did you find that?’
`It was all right at first, but it become boring… and repetitive sort of work. I got fed up with that.’[Pause].
`Then did you move onto something else then?’
`Yeah, I moved into a couple of jobs after that, but then… then I went into the Royal Navy.’ [Pause].
`Do you want to tell me a bit about the Navy?’
`I don’t mind…’
`Yeah…’
`Well I spent seven years of my life there, so… it’s relevant. [Pause]. I did… sports at school, I was an amateur boxer, at school… the last two years… so when I went into the Navy, I… I was… picked out to represent the Naval Command, virtually… soon after I went in. My career as a boxer in the Navy come to an end when I damaged my right arm, which never seemed to heal up… and err… I volunteered for services… in… in submarines. [Pause].’
`What were your… did you like the Navy?’
`I did… the… at the time, when I joined and a few years after, but like everything else [???]… got monstrous and… discipline was harsh.’
`Did you get into trouble?’
`Not much. Not much really. [Pause]. I got invalided out of the Navy, and I… I… my… problems with my marriage and that, and… I got a… I was… it… I was put into the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth… in Plymouth… and was discharged… on psychiatric grounds.’
`Right. That was your first admission to a psychiatric hospital then?’
`Yeah.’
`Can you… describe the events that led up to that?’
`Umm… I started off… I knew my nerves were bad, and I was depressed [coughs]… I was put on a… course… course of purple hearts… and… I was getting worse and not better, so they sent me into the Royal Naval Hospital. As an in patient.’
`Right, so the Navy… the Navy doctor prescribed you purple hearts, which were… an… an amphetamine? Did that lift the depression or…?’
`A little bit, to start with, but it wore off.’
`Did…did you have difficulty sleeping?’
`I can’t remember really, it goes back and I’m… we’re talking about 19… 63, 64…’
`Right’
`Twenty five… is it twenty five years ago, or more?’
`More… more like thirty…’
`Thirty… thirty… thirty five years ago, yeah…’
`This is… how long did you stay in hospital?’
`Not very long.’
`Weeks or months?[Both talking together]
`Not very long… yeah, looking back now, I remember I went high… got out of depression and went into a big high.’
`What was that like?’
`Well… you just feel… on top of the world again… I thought it was me getting well, and… I’m ready to go now… so… and… what it was, it was the other side of the illness. They should have kept me in there and sorted it… straightened me out properly, not just let… let me go on a high, which has happened before in Chase Farm Hospital.’
`Right. And you were having difficulties with your… in your marriage at this time?’
`Yeah…’
`Do you think that that was what was making you depressed and…?’
`Yeah…’
`How… how long had you been married?’
`Umm… two years.’
`Did you… did you have any children?’
`Yeah.’
`Boys or girls?’
`Boy and a girl.’
`Right. [Pause]. So… so what happened… you spent a few weeks in the hospital and you were discharged from the Navy and then…?’
`Yeah… went to London… London to my mother and father’s…’
`Right, so you’d… you’d left your wife?’
`Yeah, I got custody of the children, because I… I didn’t know what was wrong at the time, but she also had a mental… a slight mental illness…’
`Right. What was her name?’
`Yvonne..’
`And where did you meet her?’
`In Australia.’
`Was she Australian?’
`Australian.’
`And you… that was when you were in the Navy?’
`Yeah.’
`And you came back to England to… to Plymouth, to…?’
`Yeah.’
`And got married?’
`I come back to Portsmouth originally.’
`Right.
`She stayed in London with my people… and so I could get a flat in Plymouth.’
`What kind of person was she?’
`Quite bubbly and… typical Australian. [Pause]. As I say, it goes back so far now, I can’t remember some of it.’
`Well, you just take your time and see if the… sort of… you know… see what you can remember?’
`Mmm’
`Can you… I’m quite interested in your… you know, your first impressions of the hospital, what happened? I mean… was it the army doctor who…?’
`Navy…’
`Dr Davy?’
`No. Navy…’
`Navy…sorry, oh I’m sorry… yeah… he… he… did he suggest that you went to… to the psychiatric hospital or…?’
`No, I was recommended by the Officer on board the submarine depot ship, to go to… the… the Naval Hospital. And then I met… then I met the psychiatrist… there…’
`Right. Can you remember the psychiatrist at all?’
`Yeah, I can remember him, yeah… great big tall man… I think he was a Rear Admiral, or something like that. He had… all gold braid all over him. This [inaudible]… I remember him being a nice chap and sympathetic to what I… the state I was in and…’
`Right, so you…?’ [Both talking together]
`Recommended discharge.’
`Right, and so you’d actually had a breakdown on a submarine?’
`Yeah… which was quite an experience at the time.’
`I’m sure, yeah… can you… I mean could you describe that in your own words, what… you know, to give us a bit more detail about what happened?’
`Err… what, on the submarine?’
`Yeah…’
`Well I… I just… you get like a personality change when you get… when you go from high to low… I had trouble remembering things… [pause]… giving out orders to other… other… other men was difficult, ‘cause I was the… second cox [ph] in the submarine… umm… [pause]. General feeling of… un… unhappy with the situation I was in. Whereas the other submarines I’d served on were quite good. I have good memories of them. This one was a lot of youngsters on board, people younger than myself, and… they had a completely different attitude to my… age group. I was glad to get off there actually. And after a while, though I liked the Navy, I got used to the idea of returning to civilian life. [Pause]. So… [crackling noise in background].’
`What was the attitude of your friends and family, to being… to being admitted to psychiatric hospital?’
`Not many people know… knew in the family, ‘cause most of my family was living in London, and I was in Plymouth, so no one really… no one really knew or asked…’
`So what did you…?’
`As far as I know… I was… I don’t know what my mother and father told them or what…’
`And your… the other people in the Navy… did… did they know about what happened?’
`Some did, some didn’t, because I was taken off the submarine and… went straight into the hospital, which was quite a way away. [Crackling in background].’
`Do you have any memories of the other patients in the hospital?’
`Not much. There was a few comedians in there… I… you… you imagine a group of sailors who got psychiatric illness… all living on a… on a ward, you can imagine the antics.’
`I can’t actually… can you…? Well I can, but… it would be…?’
`In your brains… [???]’
`Right… can you give us any examples of...?’
`One chap, he… he… he used to… refer to mates as animals. Like… if someone, he’d look at someone and say `you’re a tapir’, or `you’re a… this’, ‘cause of their nose, or their eyes, and you… you could see what he meant after time, you know what I mean? Another chap, thought he’d discovered a way of winning the pools. He was having a few wins as well, but not big ones, but he reckoned he was going to have it off. The fun… you know… in the naval… naval hospital, is much different than it is on a civilian hospital. ‘Cause you’re… there’s all sea men and you know… and they’re all… macho, ain’t they? I wasn’t very macho when I was in there… [laughs].’
`Were most people there just for short term then?’
`Yeah…’
`Were… were most people…?’
`I’m not sure, but I think that… I think that if you was any worse, you would… you was transferred to another naval hospital. I think it was called Netley [ph]… where… you was… if you was more long term, that’s where you’d go to.’
`Right. Is… were a lot of people… on their way to being discharged? Did some people…?’
`I don’t know. I haven’t got that many memories of the ward. I know it was wooden floors and fireplaces, that’s all I can remember. Like all Naval institutions, they’re all old… and everything’s sort of… old fashioned…’
`You remember the food?’
`No… I think it wasn’t too bad, the food. The food in the Navy at that time wasn’t too bad actually.’
`Was it staffed by Navy…?’
`Yeah, staffed by all Navy… all Navy staff, except the civilians doing the… cookery and the… washing up and that.’
`Were they male nurses?’
`Yeah, male nurses. They were called `sick birth attendants’.’
`Sick…?’
`Sick… birth… attendants… and the… and the psychiatrists are all made a rank, a naval rank… how you’d distinguish them was, they used to have a red line… parting the… gold braid stripes…’
`And the patients… did they wear their uniforms?’
`I can’t remember, to tell you the truth, whether we was in… I think we was allowed to wear civilian clothes… umm… you just had pyjamas and dressing gown I think. As I say, it goes back a long way, and some of these sort of… [both talking together]’
`I know it’s difficult to remember…’
`…specific details… I’d like to be able to remember, but it’s… not there…’
`I… I think if… you know, the more you talk about stuff, the more maybe… will come…’ [both talking together]
`Yeah, it’ll come…’
`back…’
`That’s the… I was feeling unwell when I was in there so I wouldn’t notice much. When I’m depressed I don’t notice things so much. When I go high I’m in a high state of awareness and… I’d probably now, if I was high, I’d remember more, but at the moment I’m levelled out, a little bit lethargic at the moment, but…’
`Uh huh…’
`Tired…’
`Can you remember… what you did all day then?’
`Sat around and chatted… in the hospital?’
`Yeah’
`Just sat around and chatting generally, trying to sort of… sea men have always got yarns to tell, general mickey taking and all the rest of it that goes on. I don’t think it’s changed much now.’
`No…’
`I watched a film about a… a submarine… and this was a nuclear submarine, a few weeks ago, and… the banter and the general… interaction of the ratings is the same.’
`Did you feel that the… the hospital helped you?’
`Well… umm… I suppose what helped me was when I come out of being low into a high. ‘Cause I didn’t have these pains in my body and… walking around my head hung low… whether the tablets did anything… whether I need different tablets than purple hearts, I don’t know. I don’t know what medication I had… in the Naval hospital… and talking to the psychiatrist… when he recommended that I should be discharged, ‘cause I’d got too much on my plate.’
`How often did you see the psychiatrist?’
`Oh, once a week. I think, something like that.’
`So then you… you went back to London?’
`Yeah… soon after…’
`And… what happened… I mean, what did you do then?’
`I waited to get a flat in Portsmouth, take my wife down there… to be near where… where I was stationed. I was… I was… drafted to another submarine called The Alaric [ph] and she was refitting in Portsmouth, so you’d get home every other night. And she wanted to come down there anyway, so we managed to get a bedsit in Portsmouth.’
`This is after you came out the hospital?’
`Yeah…’
`So you were…?’
`Err… [pause]… no… before I went out the hospital.’
`This is… before you went into the hospital?’
`Yeah…’
`Right.’
`’Cause after that, the Alaric… took to sea, went to Scotland… for about ten weeks, then we came back and went to America… and… my wife just become more ill with depression herself.’
`While you were away?’
`While I was away. But at the time I didn’t realise it. I didn’t even realise I was depressed when I was in hospital. I wasn’t told that `you’re depressed’… they didn’t say anything much really. They just worked on a figure of… you know, getting you out… ‘cause they don’t… don’t really sort of… they don’t want peoples’ psychiatric illnesses on submarines. You’ve got to be a perky, joking, laugh of… knock about person to be on them bloody things…’
`I’d imagine that they’re quite… claustrophobic?’
`Very, yeah… you don’t… when you’re in them you don’t notice it, ‘cause they’re all laughing, joking, you’re busy doing work. When I visited a submarine last year… I was glad to get off… and that was… that was out the water. I thought to myself, `what the hell was I doing on these things?’, and the nurse said to me, in… North Middlesex, she just couldn’t believe it, `how can you be manic… have manic depression, and survive on a submarine?’… well I did. [Both laugh].’
`It must be very difficult.’
`It was difficult times, but I kept it to myself. Sort of joked my way out of it. But looking back, there… there was some quite bad times. I just felt… used to feel really sick. But you can’t… tell other ship mates that… well not in them times you couldn’t anyway. To them, life was just one big booze up. [Coughs]. [Pause].’
`So you weren’t given any diagnosis?’
`No… not as I… not as far as I can remember. I wasn’t… I wasn’t made self aware of what my illness was, because it took years… after… I was in St Ann’s when they realised I was manic depressive. I was in Chase Farm twice and I was let out when I was high. Which was wrong.’
`Right. So how long was it before you had another admission?’
`Another admission, after that… I… had short admissions to different hospitals…
‘cause I was taking overdoses when I was depressed.’
`This is when… where were you living?’
`In London.’
`Right. And were you living near your parents or with your parents?’
`Yeah.’
`With… with them?’
`No… I lived with them for a while, then… my… my wife and I just drifted apart for some reason, and… my parents looked after my children, ‘cause they were quite young, my parents, and… I lived nearby with a… with a… a woman friend… who I met…’
`What was her name?’
`Bernice.’
`She was a… a girlfriend?’
`Yeah. We eventually got married as… as time goes by... when the children were grown up.’
`Right. Were you working at that time?’
`Yeah.’
`What were you… what were you doing?’
`I’ve always been in work, I’ve never been out of work. I’ve periods of sickness, but I’ve never been out of work with the illness. I used to feel low and down sometimes and be… irritable. So I used to go to the doctors and tell him that, and he used to give me some tablets and… I’d be off for a few weeks and… somehow or other I’d get well and go back to work again. If I’d have known, they’d have told me in the first place I was manic depressive, I wouldn’t have been through half as much.’ [Pause] [sound of breathing].
`Were you in hospital… for just short periods, at that time?’
`Short periods… if I’d… I’d overdosed they’d just keep me in over night or a couple of days… and my first admission was in… Chase Farm, in Enfield, in about 1980.’
`How did that come about?’
`Well, I was just… going off my head. People said to me, `you need to go to hospital’.’
`What kind of things were you doing?’
`Oh, I couldn’t drive my car when I was behind the wheel, my foot wouldn’t go on the brake… doing things ever so fast… raring up at people…’
`Talking a lot?’
`Talking a lot, yeah…’
`What kind of thoughts would be going through your mind?’
`Oh, everything… [pause]. Looking back, it’s a bloody nightmare… how… [pause]… ‘
`Did you do anything… you know, especially… you know, people… like, sometimes do…wild things, when they’re…?’
`No, not really.’
`Didn’t spend your…?’ [both talking together]
`Just erratic behaviour and… getting on peoples’ nerves and that…’
`What kind of work were you doing at that time?’
`Well I had two jobs. I was… working for the Daily Mirror, it was only a few hours a night… and I set up a lawn mower business, sharpening lawn mowers and that… [pause]. That was part of my illness, doing that… I set it up when I was very high. Really there was no need to… it was a waste of time.’
`Did it not make money?’
`I think it made money but I used to spend it all. Don’t know about the bills.’
`Did you have a particular… anything special that you spent money on? Was it…?’
`God knows… money used to come into my hands fast, and go… well go out twice as fast…’
`[Laughs]’
`When we was out and… going away for trips for a couple of days and… spending money in the home and oh…’
`This was with… with… Bernice?’
`Yeah. Yeah.’
`What did she… what did she think about…?’
`Oh, she thought the whole lot… the whole thing was crazy, but no one would listen to her… they thought it was good. I’m a very convincing person when I’m on a high. Well I was never… I’d never see much of her really, I was always busy either working at night or working by day. [Laughs]. It’s a wonder I never had heart attack. I could… could work on… say two or three hours sleep, and I could carry on working again.’
`There’s a… a saying in America… employee a manic and they’ll work like crazy…’
`Yeah… that’s right. [Pause]. It all comes to nothing though when you’re ill. Nothing, you know… instead of being successful, it… it appears successful but at the end of the day, when you get ill, it all collapses.’
`So how would one of these short admissions come about that through… that was that… would that be when you depressed and overdosed?’
`Yeah… yeah…’
`And you’d go into a sort of A & E?’
`Yeah… or an ambulance would be taking me down an A & E.’
`Would it be some… Bernice that would discover you?’
`Oh, you know… my son in law discovered me once… sometimes I’d ring them up myself, after I’d taken it. I had various OD’s… I’ve cut my wrists. I was down in Epping Forest by… load of bikers, covered in blood. I once went off a tower block, off the ninth floor… swung over the ninth floor and managed somehow to get down to the eighth… the old bill couldn’t… didn’t… couldn’t… couldn’t believe it… and the firemen. But it happened. I managed to do it. [Laughs].’
`You flew?’
`No I didn’t fly… what I… I’d run through the flats and when over, and then swung round like a pole… knee… when I… must have come to then, then lowered myself down to the eighth floor, because… it wasn’t balconies going outwards, they was in balconies, so it was a sheer drop.’
`Were you being chased at the time or were you just…?’
`No… they gave me… what’s the drug called? I forget the name of it now. But they gave me the wrong drug. The GP gave me the wrong drug. And I was… what he called `pill popping’. When I was depressed I was taking more than I should, but after a few days it sends you off your… off your head, and that’s what… the result was, me going over that balcony. Lucky to be here.’
`Sounds like it…’
`Cor, that was the nearest… nearest I could have got to… nine floors up, that’s some way…’
`Where was that… somewhere… somewhere in…?’
`Enfield. Tower block. The mother in law’s… I was in the mother in law’s flat, staying over night, and I got out of bed, run through the flat, sort… sort of… I don’t know, I sort of hopped over the balcony…’
`In the morning?’
`In the morning. Four o’clock in the morning. They took me to hospital from there. Two days before I went over the balcony, that’s when I was found in… Epping Forest covered in blood when my hands were all cut…’
`And they didn’t… they didn’t hold you over night?’
`No… yeah, over night, that’s all, yeah… St Margaret’s Hospital, Epping.’
`When you slashed your wrists, and then they… they let you go and then…?’
`Yeah…’
`A couple of days later you made another attempt?’
`Yeah… then they put me in St Ann’s. I think I was on a three day section. Had a good doctor there.’
`What year about, was this?’
`I think it was ’88, ’89… ‘
`And how did you find St Ann’s?’
`Well, I was so glad to be in hospital, where I was depressed. Umm… it’s not as nice as Chase Farm, as far as the grounds go… but the staff were good, and Dr Sabine [ph]… was good. And it was there they… they found out one morning, when I’d gone… I got out… out of bed and must have gone into a high, and was charging around all over the place, talking to everybody… generally sort of manic, and that’s when they realised I must be manic depressive.’
`Was that when you were first diagnosed?’
`First time I was manic depressive, yeah… all those… all them years… before they stumbled it. [Pause].’
`So you feel that you were suffering from manic depression for… ? [both talking together].’
`Oh yeah… yeah, definitely.’
`How did it feel to finally be given a diagnosis?’
`A relief… ‘cause I knew.. once I… once you know your illness, you can start reading up on it and dealing with it. You become self aware as well. Self aware of what you… is going on. You know… when… when I was going high before, the… I just thought it was a natural thing was going on. Now, if I’m on a high, I’m aware of it.’
`What medication were you prescribed at that time?’
`Carbamazepine [ph]… that was the first thing they put me on, ‘cause they didn’t want to put me on Lithium for some reason. That wasn’t working so they put me on Lithium. The Registrar, which is the junior doctor at St Ann’s, who was based in North Middlesex Day Hospital… she couldn’t see where I was manic depressive. It took a very experienced psychiatric nurse, at a home I was living in, Windmill it was called, now known as the `Claire Project’ [ph], he went to the hospital and said `there’s something wrong.’ He said, `we… we’ve got Bob here all the time, we can see he’s going as high as a kite’. I wasn’t at the interview, this is just between him and the psychiatrist, or junior psychiatrist, and I… they came out of there and suddenly all of a sudden I was on… Carbamazepine. And as life went on, that wasn’t really working properly, plus the fact I… when I get high I forget to take my medicine.’
`Mmm’
`And eventually I was on Lithium, and I’m… I’m on Lithium now.’
`How many milligrams are you on?’
`1200 today… three tablets.’ [Pause]
`And do you find that’s got side effects or…?’
`Well, I’m… I want to see my doctor. I’m very drowsy these days, and sleepy in the mornings, and… lethargic. So whether that’s got to do with the medication, I don’t know. I’ll be seeing him next month anyway.’
`So we sort of skipped ahead a bit but…’
`Yeah…’
`Going back to… you mentioned Chase Farm?’
`Yeah.’
`What year were you in Chase Farm?’
`1980, and then again in ’81.’
`And for how… for how long?’
`Not very long periods… weeks…’
`What was your longest admission?’
`Oh, later on… late admission was… the last few years…’
`Mmm. Can you tell me about Chase Farm?’
`What do you want to know? [Laughs]’
`Whatever you want to tell me…? What were the…?’
`It’s quite a good hospital. The… I get on very well with Director of Mental Health, Mr Tracy… he’s very… I find him very efficient and caring… Governor of a Hospital… considering he’s… top rate… the cuts and all the rest of it goes on. Quite a comfort… nurses are not too bad. Umm… food could be better. It’s all this cooked chilled stuff. It’s not fresh food. There’s not enough activities go on there… you know, for the patients. A lot of them spend a lot of time in bed. But… as I say, with the cuts and the rest of it… it’s… it’s all about money. The psychiatrists I’ve met there have been quite good… Dr Kenna [ph] was good to me. There’s a charge nurse who used to look after me, Sam Anchor [ph], he’s good… [pause]. Yeah, I’m quite happy when I’m in there, it doesn’t really bother me. My fiancee’s in there, she’s been in there two and a half years. Hope she’s coming out soon.’
`What’s her… what’s her name?’
`Jolene… [ph]’
`And when did you meet her?’
`Oh, nine years ago.’
`In… did you meet her in hospital?’
`Yeah, first… the first time I spoke to her was in hospital, yeah. When we first went out together I was living in a group home in Southgate. I went to the group home from the… Claire Project, or Windsmill as it’s commonly known, where…’
`What… what kind of project’s that? Is that…?’
`Half way house, sort of… you go there… to be assessed and you live there… it’s nice. Very old victorian building… lovely garden. Good care workers… [pause] [background engine noise]. Generally no complaints about Chase Farm except the fact that they was letting me out when I was on a high, but… seeing psychiatry must take some aid [???]… it’s not an easy thing to always diagnose people properly… I appreciate that.’ [Pause].
`How many patients were… were… were… Chase Farm, how big is it… how many beds?’
`It’s about twenty five beds I think, something like that. There’s… there’s never enough room there… there’s more people want to get in, than… than there is beds. The nurses sometimes have a hell of a job making… making it all work.’
`When was the last time you were…?’
`Last time I was in Chase Farm… umm… this year… no… last year. Last year. I got discharged last November and came here.’
`And when was the first time that you were admitted to Chase Farm?’
`1980, but I’ve regular… in… been going… gone in for being high, through the 90’s…’
`So you know the hospital quite well then?’
`Oh yeah…’
`And they… they know you?’
`Oh yes, they certainly know me, yeah… especially when I’m on a high… go around finding fault in everything… [laughs]… and regular liaisons with Director of Mental Health [laughs]…’
`So you were quite… you were quite an active…?’
`Oh yeah… yeah… I thought was at work being a shop steward. [Pause]. The Director of Mental Health, when I’m high, finds me quite amusing. Things I come out with…’
`Mmm’
`I wouldn’t do it now because I’m levelled out. [Long pause]. [Machinery noise in background]. [Rustling noises].’
`What other treatments have you had in hospital?’
`Other treatments, as regards what?’
`Have you had ECT or…?’
`No… purely medication and counselling. I was only counselled once.’
`What did you think of the… counselling?’
`Well I was high when I was being counselled. All I used to do is make the nurse laugh. So… what good that was I don’t know. Shall I tell you my story now, like I am in there… but if you… if you… if I was on a high… you’d be in stitches…
‘cause… all the comedy would come out of her life, you know what I mean. See the funny side of everything. What they call a split personality. [Motor in background] [Pause]. Once I gave the Director of Mental Health thirty… a list of thirty things, wrong with the ward. [Laughs]. And I had a deputy… a man called Tom Bennett [ph] with me… and I tell you… we used to wear peak caps, and… we had T-shirts made, `Enfield Mental Health Users’. We used to make them shudder up there. My mate Tom who was with me, doing it, was an Irish detective, in the Irish Police force. Was he hot?! [Laughs]. They used to panic when he used to walk in the ward. But we got a lot of things done, by being like that. But we wasn’t aggressive and… physically aggressive… we was verbally aggressive and we used to meet the Director of Mental Health and he used to sort of… he wouldn’t find any fault in us, he’d… he used to say, `well I’ll have a look at that, have a look at that…’ and get things done, so in actual fact really, we was doing him a favour. We pointed out these things which are causing… like shortage of milk and things like, and it’s… the patients erupt, you know… they can’t have milk in their tea and… causing rows between the nurses and… we said we don’t’ want that, we don’t want the patients rowing with the nurses. Supply enough milk and you won’t have no rows. For our guilt [???]… more milk. Tom used to walk around with a big briefcase, all full of law books, mental health acts and that… and you should see their faces, as they see him go on that ward. The trouble is, so many times when he used to go up there he used to be drunk [laughs]. Oh yeah, we had bags of laughs at Chase Farm, when I’m high. I tried to look after other patients as well. Have a chat with them and… seemed to straighten them out a bit. [Pause].’
`So you were a bit like a shop steward?’
`Having been a shop steward you… trained to that style of knowledge you know, which is to another section [???]… things are wrong, put them right. People… people are not doing their job properly as they should… see they do their job properly when they’re paid for… it’s our hospital not theirs… we pay for it with our National Health stamp… [pause]. Generally the staff got used to us after a while and realised we was only a… a joke outfit, you know… mucking about… they thought… they used to take us deadly serious, you know… but there again, those nurses that were really doing a good job, we never had… wouldn’t… or we’d write to the Director and say `we… we wish to bring to your notice that nurse so and so is doing an exceptionally good job’… this, that and the other… ‘cause they loved it… a lot of… lot of them at Chase used to love my letters, because I mean he’s… he’s so busy… it’s a fantastic job, he’s got… to get letters like that, it was sort of… a bit of a laugh for him, you know what I mean… and he knew like, I wasn’t a militant, just to be militant. The things I was asking for, complained about, were genuine complaints.’
`What other kind of complaints did you have?’
`Oh, I still remember them… anywhere that was dirty… toilets dirty… toilet rolls… state of the place in general, the paint work. I did a survey, the whole ward… flip board and pencil. The nurse used to see all this, going round with a clipboard and pencil writing all this down… ‘cause a lot of the trade [ph] he told us to do it, but they says `oh, you can’t do it’, I’d say, `well one of the trade’s just told us to do it… he’s the director..’. Time those nurses used to go into a panic. The nurses that… that were no bother, and were doing a good job, we’d recommend them.’
`What did you do to the others?’
`Nothing. Don’t say nothing. I was just telling things that would go on in the ward, like sleeping during the night and all this, and he’d say to me, `give me the names’, I said `no names… don’t give names, that’s your job to find out… we don’t give names…’.
`Ok… we need to take a break, yeah…?’
`Yeah…’
[End of DVC Pro tape 1]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 2 – VHS tape 1 continues]
`Bob, you were just telling me about… representing the other patients on the… ward…’
`Ward… yeah…’
`At Chase Farm and…do you want to tell me a bit more about that?’
`I think I told you most of it really… ‘cause… the… people… people felt on the ward felt better having someone of their own who was already on the ward, taking up their problems or their… the things they don’t like… ‘cause when people are ill they don’t feel like they’re… if they’re in a very depressed state, they don’t feel like going in the office and complaining, but they will relate to another patient… and we used to take that… up… and we were virtually recognised by the nurses after a while, as we was on EMU, En… En… which is the Enfield Mental Health Users… for complaints…’
`So did you help set EMU up then?’
`Err… I didn’t set it up, but I was involved in the earlier stages.’
`So this would be in the 1980’s…? `90’s… ‘
`The early 90’s… and… and why did you decide to call yourselves EMU?’
`I didn’t decide it, they decided it, in… it’s a name they thought up… chaps that… that organised it. There was two chaps, quite brilliant blokes, you know… ex-patients, as well, and they… then it was recognised by the hospital and they allowed a full time secretary. She got… as you know… got… got an office in Lancaster Road. With my girlfriend being ill or myself being ill, I sort of dropped out of the activities of EMU, maybe one day I’ll go back, I don’t know.’
`You and your friend Tom were the sort of… you started off this…?’
`Well, we was… doing things at the… at… at ward level. Where the ad… administrators are doing things at… at… at a… hospital management level, we was doing it in… getting… getting the complaints direct from the people in the hospital, and people out of the hospital that were just going there as day patients. The patients liked it, they thought… you could see, they thought happy… very… when we used to walk on the ward they’d always have a… they’d smile and laugh, you know what I mean… just ‘cause… our job was to cheer them up. If we’d see someone a bit miserable we’d always go up to them and say, `is there anything we can do for you?’, you know… ‘
`Do you think the patients were able to talk to you and… you and Tom more easily?’
`Oh yeah… yeah…’
`What kind of… [coughs]…excuse me… what kind of complaints?’
`Various things… most of them little things, but… to the… to the patient at the time it was a big thing.’
`For example?’
`Well, big changes… attitudes of certain nurses towards patients… general sort of things you get when you’re on a ward.’
`What kind of attitudes did… did the nurses have to patients?’
`It mixed… you get some who are very good at social skills, and some are not. Some tend to be a bit lazy, sit around all day reading a book. We used to tell them, `you’re not here to sit down and read a book, you’re here to look after the patients’. We used to tell them sort of jobs they could do, like comb someone’s hair, brush a woman’s hair, or… peel an apple, and give it to them’, or things like that. Instead of just sitting, dossing around all day. They didn’t like it, but there’s nothing they could do about it. ‘Cause we’d just go straight into the ward manager’s office and tell him. The ward manager knew, if… if… if something wasn’t… action wasn’t taken about it, then we’d go straight to Mr Tracy, who was a Director. They knew that would be the outcome so they used to deal with it. It’s amazing what a bit of pressure can do.’
`You were able to make quite a lot of… have quite a lot of influence then?’
`Mmm. Made a lot of friends, a lot of influence, yeah… yeah.’ [Pause].
`Was there any particular nurses that… I mean, the nurses must have reacted, some of them quite hostilely, to…patients taking…’
`If they… they was hostile then we’d… up the… up the anti a bit more…’
`How… how did you do that?’
`Oh, just generally watch them and follow them around and everything else. Tom would shout at them, sometimes. No one got away with anything. Well they knew… if… if… if the… if it come to anything, they’re going to have to go in front of the ward manager or… and… they’ve got to be reprimanded by the Director of Health. ‘Cause he used to say to them, you know, `you’re going to end up on the dole queue… if you carry on working like that… there’s a big dole queue down the road, major style dole queue… find yourself down there son’. [Laughs]. It used to be comical, you had to see it… in action, with Tom walking around… we used to have them peaked caps like Arthur Scargill wears in our demo… peaked caps, matching T-shirts, and Tom used to carry the briefcase, bulging with books, he was… he could never do the trip up ‘cause there was so many books on mental health in it.’
`[Laughs]’
`He used to sit there sometimes and say, `yes, we can take them to court on this one, yes, they can go to court on that one… ‘, oh, he used to be bringing out… the court book [laughs and coughs]… great times. Wasn’t like actually being in hospital. It was… we used to look forward to every day.’
`So what... what was the ward like. Can you describe the ward?’
`Well, it was nice and light… spacious… [pause] it’s… it’s ok really… as… as psychiatric hospitals go, compared with St Ann’s or other ones I’ve been to, it’s quite comfortable… Chase Farm. Eighty per cent of the nurses are good.’
`Chase Farm is… it’s not a big psychiatric… is it a big psychiatric…?’
`Big… unit, yeah… it’s not like… Chase Farm Hospital…’
`Right…’
`The Mental Health Unit is… is a unit within… inside the hospital…’
`Right’
`And it’s quite big… three wards.’
`Right.’
`One for old… one of them’s for old age pensioners.’
`And have you seen a lot of changes in Chase Farm in…?’
`There is lately, ‘cause money’s being spent. I don’t know where they’re getting their money from but money’s being spent somewhere. Certain things have taken place there… reception… err… place has… been set up, it’s been decorated. There’s probably an answer to that, why they’re doing it, but what it is, I haven’t really found out yet. Something I’ll have to ask Mr Tracy when I see him next… why and how… where’s the money coming from to do this? ‘Cause they’ll be cutting back somewhere else. Money just don’t appear in the Health Service. I think the nurses get a raw deal, and when we used to have it all… pop at them and that but nothing serious, but their wages as far as I’m concerned are bad… they do long hours… you can understand why they get tired and fed up… the way they’re treated… [pause].’
`In… could you talk a bit about St Ann’s as compared to Chase Farm?’
`St Ann’s is sort of a much smaller hospital, it’s like a… long corridors…’
`Is it older?’
`Yeah, you tend to get more trouble there… with arguments and rows… in… Chase Farm… you’ve got more people on… got drug related problems in St Ann’s. I went back there the other day to visit somebody, and I was glad when I come out. Didn’t like what I saw at all… they’ve got a closed ward there… it’s really… like a prison. Yeah, I was certainly glad to get out of there, a couple of weeks ago. But when I was there, it was… it wasn’t … wasn’t too bad. Nice canteen… the staff canteen’s good as well.’
`What… what year were you in St Ann’s?’
`’88, ’89…’
`For… for a whole year?’
`Nnnooo [ph]… not as long as a year, six months I think.’
`Mmm’
`I got transferred to… up the road here to the Claire Project… [ph]’
`Oh, I see…’
`Was… which was called Windsmill [ph], then…’
`Right’
`That’s the old house, it’s been done up. They used to have the dormitories then, used to have… six people in a bedroom, big bedroom, but that’s all stopped now, they’ve… gutted it out… some of it.’
`St Ann’s?’
`No, Windsmill’
`Ah…’
`And… you’ve all got your separate room with a door.’
`Is that better or worse?’
`Oh, well… better, yeah… get people to… snoring in the night… you get six people, someone’s going to make a noise isn’t it… law of averages?’
`Does it remind you about… being back on a submarine?’
`Oh, no… not as bad as that. You’re so tired on a submarine you don’t really care about noises… you just… once you get in your bunk you fall asleep. And you’re younger as well, you can tolerate all that… [pause].’
`You said earlier, that you’d once had counselling?’
`Mmm hmm’
`Where was that?’
`North Middlesex. North Middlesex is a… a day hospital, it… it is… looks after the St Ann’s patients. So when you leave St Ann’s, if you’re recommended to Day Hospital, you go to North Middlesex… where you’re assessed and do occupational therapy and all that, and… one of the nurses or doctors said about having our sessions with Ruth, a nurse over there. Oh, I can remember that, she was always in fits of laughter when I was talking to her… I thought this is a funny counselling…’
`That… what… what year was that?’
`1990 I think.’
`How… how many sessions did you have?’
`About half a dozen.’
`Did you find that was helpful or…?’
`I don’t know really… [pause]… see, at the time I was on a high… everything’s a big laugh, so… it was just an hour… hour and a half of mucking about, about an hour’s… [pause].’
`Is that the only time that you’ve… had any other treatment other than drugs?’
`Yeah.’
`How many… admissions do you think you’ve had?’
`Oh… I’d have to sit down with a pencil and paper and work that out…’
`It’s in double figures?’
`Yeah… yeah, double figures.’
`Twenty or thirty?’
`Something like that, yeah… about as many…’
`And that’s dating right back to… the Naval...?
`The Naval Hospital was the first one, yeah…’
`And then every… would it be once a year, or once every few years?’
`No, I had gaps of… where I wasn’t in hospital. But the… you see, during them gaps I was OD’ing and… doing things like cutting my wrists and that, but wasn’t being admitted.’
`Why do you think you weren’t admitted?’
`Don’t know… just a… to do who the doctor is at the time. It wasn’t on my card as being manic depressive, so they didn’t… think it was that. See, psychiatrists don’t have long to talk to you. You know, you feel as though you’re paying them, when you go in there… it’s all a quick whizz, whizz… `pshh pshh’ [ph], and you’re out the door. They rely on information from nurses and reports that they write out. You’ve really got to be militant with psychiatrists… you’ve got to sort of really stand your ground and… I would do now, but in them days, I’d just accept what he said. They’re like Gods aren’t they? See now I don’t do that. I’m… I’m more about… [???].’
`Do you feel you could have been helped more in the past?’
`Yeah, definitely. I wouldn’t have got in half as much mess and marriage break ups and that, if I’d have been seen to earlier.’
`And what do you imagine… what would have helped?’
`Well I’d have been put on Lithium earlier wouldn’t I, to start with… or Carbamazepine…’
`What other drugs and treatments have you had over the years?’
`I’ve only had… drug treatment. Nothing else.’
`Can you remember all the different drugs?’
`Err… I can remember the recent ones but I can’t remember the ones going back… [pause]. The ones I’m on now are probably the ones I should be on, but the… nurse… the… assistants that are here, the care workers… as I’m tired and lethargic all the time, it may be something to do with the medication.’
`Has your medication recently been changed?’
`Not much, no… just that the Lithium was upped [pause].’
`Were there any other drugs, I mean in the past, that you found, that were helpful?’
`No… ‘cause I was given the wrong drugs. They’d treat me for one thing but… the… the… I’ve got another.’
`What… what did they think was wrong with you?’
`Didn’t say… just depressed.’
`So you’d be… you’d be depressed and you’d… you’d overdose and then… you’d be admitted to a hospital, and then you’d be out…?’
`In a couple of days, yeah.’
`And would they give you some drugs…?’
`Can’t remember [long pause].’
`When did you become interested in politics?’
`1968 [pause].’
`This is a few years after the first time that you were admitted? Or was… was this when you came out of the Navy?’
`Oh yeah… about three years after.’
`Right. Had you thought about politics before though?’
`No… I did an A level in history… O level in history, but looking back it wasn’t the sort of history that was… I want to know about… it’s all about kings and queens and dukes and wars… they told you nothing about your own class leaders. Working class leaders. You have to do that yourself [pause].’
`So what was it that… politicised you?’
`Well, I was a union official, with no politics, and…’
`Where were you working at the time?’
`A book firm.’
`And… and what was your job?’
`I was a full time official.’
`For the union?’
`On the shop floor.’
`So you were working in a… in a book factory?’
`Yeah… yeah… and… I started to attend delegate meetings, up in town… the big meetings.’
`What union was it?’
`SOGAT…[inaudible]… it’s amalgamated now… last time there was a SOGAT [ph] it was at Wapping.’
`What does it stand… stand for, SOGAT?’
`Society of Graphic and Allied Trades. [Pause]… Yeah, I… started to meet political people, although I didn’t really grasp a lot of what they were saying, but… I remember one morning [coughs]… one of the members was… in his… overall pocket he had this paper called The Morning Star, so I’m going to skive off to the toilet for a while, I want a bit of peace and quiet, so I took the Morning Star with me, and when I read it I thought, `Jesus… this is some paper…’ and… I asked him the next day, and asked him how you get it, and I went to newsagents and had to wait three or four days before it would come through, usual… after The Sun, you know can get it, you know, when you like… and I started to read The Morning Star… and… joined the local communist party branch. I’ve not looked back since.’
`Were you involved in… the… demonstrations, then, in 1968?’
`Err… not that much… ‘cause Czechoslovakia was on then. The… it’s… it’s quite a job being a full time union official… the… you spend a lot of time… it was a new firm as well, so…’
`Oh, so you were paid by the union?’
`Yeah… paid by the union and… and the Governor… you’d only get a small fee for the Union, so it’s out of… what you call the Chapel Funds… ‘cause in the… in the print [ph], union officials are called Fathers of the Chapel, they’re not called like… Shop Stewards, you’re known as the Father of the Chapel, ‘cause that’s the old printing days and the monks. But bit by bit I come more and more interested. Haven’t stopped reading since.’
`And you’ve got…’ [both talking together].
`Love it… yeah…’
`Yeah?’
`Love politics, yeah. I watch most political programmes on TV and… Panorama and Newsnight, things like that. I like the comedy as well, I always watch a lot of other stuff on TV beside that, but… I get a good share of… of political debate and… seems to hold my attention. [Pause].’
`So during this period, when you… presumably you went back into hospital at some point? Did… did you look on the…?’
`I was an out patient for quite some time.’
`Right. I mean did you look on the psychiatric system in a different light?’
`I started to, yeah… ‘cause once you become a socialist, everything changes doesn’t it? You see things in a different perspective all together.’
`So in what way did you see the… hospital systems different?’
`Oh, not that much, but it just depended on the funds. It’s the funding, isn’t it, and who’s at the top and… who’s at the bottom. Why nurses… you know, they can’t go on strike… other workers can go on strike for them, you know. I used to have a habit of asking psychiatrists what their policies were when they interviewed me… ‘cause I don’t want to be interviewed by a Tory… I had a Scottish… Scottish Nationalist and a nurse once tried to interview me. I said, `forget it… if your party votes for the Tories, they’ll get rid of the Health Service, so what good are you interviewing me…?’. Mr… Mr Crack… [???].’
`Did you find any socialist… psychiatrists…?’
`Err… if not, they’re left… if not they’re left, really, but…I… I worked… I worked them out, by interviewing them… I worked them out. Asked them certain questions.’
`What kind of questions would you ask?’
`Oh, well you can sort of go… there’s sort of…there’s a sort of secret way of finding out what someone’s belief is, isn’t it? You ask them certain questions, they give you certain answers, you can work out where their… their leanings are, can’t you? It’s not like having a Tory… doctor is it?’
`No…’
`No, you… he’d be biased against me straight away, ain’t he? Human beings are human beings, mate… [long pause].’
`So if you found out that the psychiatrist was a Tory then, did you try and change? Would you refuse to see him or her?’
`No, just give them a run around. Tell them you were a socialist, first… first, let them know what they’re dealing with, then you can go in with what you want after that, and they’re more likely to keep you sweet, ‘cause they’re going to give you want you want aren’t they? If they don’t, well… just report them to the Health Authority. Simple as that, ain’t it?’
`You know, hospitals must have been very different in the sixties?’
`Yeah…’
`To how they are now?’
`They were, yeah… the Naval Hospital was, but I didn’t see much of other hospitals, but… the only other one I went to was Friern Barnet, that was really old… good hospital by all accounts, but it was very old wasn’t it?’
`That’s a much bigger hospital, is it?’
`Yeah…’
`How many patients would have been there?’
`God knows… we got a few of them here. Care in the community. When it shut down they shut them off into these places, don’t they? Cheaper… the property, the land, they’re all supermarkets and… knock the hospital down, smack up a Tescos [laughs]…’
`When were… when were you in Friern Barnet?’
`I wasn’t in Friern Barnet, I was an outpatient at Friern Barnet.’
`And… and what year would this be?’
`Sixties…’
`And… and what was the hospital… what memories do you have of the hospital?’
`None hardly at all… just the corridors… I remember one ward and that, but…’
`Can you remember what that was called?’
`No…’
`Were the corri…?’ [both talking together].
`Didn’t go there long enough to get acquainted with the place.’
`Did you not like it there?’
`No… I didn’t… didn’t dislike it either, it was all right. I was only go to see an… an outpatients’ doctor. I wasn’t involved with the wards.’
`Is it… Friern Barnet’s one of those… hospitals with a very long drive, is it?’
`Yeah… long, long corridors…’
`And was it a very old buildings?’
`Yeah… Victorian… [pause].’
`Can you remember anything else about it?’
`No, not really…’
`About the grounds?’
`Yeah, I remember a bit about the grounds, yeah… fair bit of that.’
`Well, what can you remember?’
`Not much. I went back there for a job interview, in 1991. This time on the other side of things, I was going to be a… psychiatric nursing assistant. Passed the interview board and all that, but then they asked me to… go for a medical. There’s no problem with me… illness, you know… long as you… you remained stable, but I didn’t remain stable so that was the end of that.’
`Would you have liked to have been a… nursing assistant?’
`Yeah… yeah… they seemed to think I’d be all right… [pause]… can’t be any worse than some of the others they’ve got knocking about. Just come in, pick up a paper and sit in the chair, and that’s it… wage packet… out the door. Then you get some nursing assistants are more like nurses. Very dedicated to their job.’
`How did you find the other staff… in the various hospitals?’
`Find what?’
`Like porters and… people who worked…?’
`Oh yeah, they’re all right, yeah… done all right with all them sort of people. Agency nurses is the ones you have more quibble… quibble with, because… they’re only there for a few hours, and get paid, you got no… you get no holidays, no sick pay, nothing like that… they’re just in there to get the money and out again. But unfortunately they’re not much good to psychiatric patients. They don’t even know who you are when they come in and do a… do a shift… which is wrong. They should staff the place up properly. Proper staff in there. [Talking in background]. It’s all to do with cuts and money, isn’t it, all the time? [Pause].’
`Were the hospitals always staffed partly by agency staff?’
`Yeah, a lot of agency staff were used, yeah….’
`Now and in the sixties?’
`I don’t know about the sixties, I weren’t familiar with the structure. I didn’t know what they were up to in the sixties. But I know now.’
`And the… are there other changes that you can think of?’
`Not off hand. Not much really.’
`Do you think things haven’t changed?’
`Not much [pause]… I think you find out about your illness more, now. And you’ve got the Mental Health Act has changed things as well. The last one. They’re due to have another review now, aren’t they? Having another Mental Health Act coming up.’
`What do you think of that?’
`I haven’t read the… I haven’t read it… it must… must be ok… [long pause].’
`Can you remember anything about ward rounds… in any particular hospital?’
`Not really, ‘cause a ward round’s a ward round, you… you go in there, there’s your nurse, your psychi… your psychiatrist, talk to them… the OT women or men, whatever it is. They just discuss your case, and how you’re getting on… and you’re discharged or you’re sent back on the ward again, for… another week. A lot of patients are frightened of ward rounds, I noticed.’
`Why?’ [Both talking together].
`We used to… write notes out for them, you know, and so when you go in there, ask point one, point two, point three, point four… ‘cause some of the patients would go in front of them and they’d get tongue tied. They’d see the psychiatrist as some big God, but they’re not, they’re only just ordinary people. So we used to write out notes for them, and the psychiatrist knew, that they’d been to us, when they see the note in their hand. [Laughs]. It’s easy… you just say to them, `what… what’s your problem, what do you want to know?’, like, point one, point two, point three… read that… read it off when you go and see them… ‘cause don’t… you haven’t got to use your memory now, just read off that.’ Then he’d have to sort it out. Some people are still… who’d not been admitted many times, were a bit wary… they’re wary of hospitals, psychiatrists, everything. A lot of patients don’t even know what medication they’re on. The vast majority of them don’t even know what’s wrong with them. I said to them, `what’s your illness then?’, `I don’t know’… `well you’re in hospital, you don’t know? What medication are you on?’, `Oh, I don’t know…’. You go up Chase Farm and ask around the wards there, and that’s the answers you’ll get. They don’t know what the symptoms are, what the side effects are… and they should be told that. They should be pulled aside and say, `do you realise you’ve got possibly this or possibly that?… or we can’t diagnose it at the moment. You’re taking this drug to calm you down… this drug for this…’, at least give them some kind of a… there’s not much of that goes on. See, the attitude of staff is, the least you know, the least questions you’re going to ask. Isn’t it? As people become aware, they want to know, so I go in the office… if I walk in that office dinner time, they know I’m in there for a reason, I don’t go in there unless there’s something I want to talk about. And usually something’s been lost or… what’s happening to my fiancee, or whatever. Apart from slinging the socialist worker at them… [laughs]. Now you’ve got to stick up for yourself in there. If you’re just laid back and think it’s all going to happen you’re mistaken…’
`You met your fiancee in… in the hospital?’
`Yeah…’
`Which hospital was that?’
`Chase Farm.’
`You were both patients there together?’
`Umm… I’m not sure… not at the time, no… I wasn’t a patient, I was… I was visiting the hospital.’
`What, as part of your activities with EMU?’
`No… just… come up to see somebody I think. Quite often you… you… we would… we’d sort of say, `well let’s go up Chase Farm for a while, for a cup of tea…’, it’s somewhere to go isn’t it? I don’t mind hospitals, they… some people don’t… when they get out they don’t want to go back. Well I have to go back to see my fiancee but I don’t mind the hospital, I like… to pop in various departments and put my head in the door, hello, and people all ask me how I’m getting on now and all that… do tea for me…[both talking together].’
`So you’re fiancees living…she lives there, in the hospital?’
`Yeah, she’s not fixed abode at the moment. I was hoping to get her here…’
`Will they not let…?’
`They would let us, yeah… no problem… umm… there’s no room here. We’re thinking of getting married soon, and that’ll put a different thing on it. They’d have to treat us as a married couple. That’s the only reason why we’re getting married. We don’t believe in marriage, but it… it has certain advantages… status…’
`They don’t… do they allow you to stay over at Chase Farm, with her?’
`No…’
`Is she on a… a… a mixed ward?’
`Yeah… she could stay here over night if she wanted to, but there’s… we’ve only got a single bed in my room, and… she has to be back for her medication at seven o’clock. She’s done a two and a half year stint in there now, it’s a long while isn’t it? I’m sorry for her, but… there’s nothing you can do.’
`What do the doctors say is wrong with her?’
`Oh, manic depression… err… what do they call it? Umm… tardive dyskenesia [ph]… eating disorder… smoking disorder… drinking disorder… [pause]… but we get on very well. She was all-Ireland dance champion and all-Ireland gymnastic champion… when she copped this little lot…’
`Do you think because you’re… you said you were Irish and she’s Irish, is that one of the reasons you get on…?’
`Yeah, ‘cause we like Irish culture… music… we love Belfast. She’s a Belfast girl.’
`Do you think sometimes in hospitals you get treated differently because you’re Irish?’
`Oh, there’s always a little bit of racism in hospitals, of either way… the patients are racist to the… the… the… the nurses… some nurses can be a bit… hidden, it’s hidden, but the… there’s a little bit of… not much, but a little [ph]… when they’re exchanging words you can hear it…’
`Do you think that’s affected your treatment adversely?’
`No…’
`On occasions?’
`No-one’s racist with me. Wouldn’t be allowed to be. They’d be out the door. You can’t really be racist if you’re a nurse, can you, I suppose… most of them are black anyway…’
`Right…’
`Some English nurses…’
[Long pause] [Breathing sounds]
`God, it’s warm isn’t it?’
`Shall we take a break and start off at…after lunch?’
`[inaudible]…’
[End of DVC Pro tape 2]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 3 – VHS tape 1 continues]
`Err… Bob, you were talking earlier about… being in and out of hospital during… I guess the sixties and the seventies…?’
`Yeah…’
`And I… I was just wondering if you could remember any… sort of a bit… try and remember a bit more about that? That period… ‘cause you were saying that you were working, you know… you were a… shop steward?’
`Yeah… in… in the… in the… in the late sixties…’
`Yeah…’
`Then I went to work for the Daily Mirror…’
`Right.’
`In ’70, ’71…’
`Right…’
`…and I spent the rest of my working time there’.
`What were you… what were you doing there?’
`I was the union’s financial secretary for about three years, collecting union dues, sick club, and all that sort of thing…’
`Right?’
`Err… and then I became a… a… a driver… driving a… Daily Mirror vans.’
`Right. Were… were they still based in…Fleet Street in those days?’
`Fleet Street, yeah… or… High Holborn…’
`Right… and you… did you have admissions during that… that time?’
`Yeah.’
`How…how were your… what were your employers like? Were they…?’
`Well… the… in them days, when the unions had… had power, the… firm was run by the union. The governor had little knowledge of who was out and who was in. Then if I went in sick he would just accept it… and that’s it. I had quite a bit of sickness, time off… for depression mainly…’
`Right.
`I wouldn’t go sick if I was on a high. I’d be at work…’ [both talking together].
`Working like a… manic?’
`But… well yeah…’
`Working like crazy?’
`Working like crazy, yeah… drive the van very fast… slam the brakes on and all that, and… Maxwell never got much out of me…’
`Sorry?’
`Maxwell… Robert Maxwell, the owner, never… could never have got much out of my labour. It’s… it’s a bit of a boring job being there, but… the… the… the union was quite active, although most of the union officials in Fleet Street were… not politically minded, they was in it just to get the extra money they used to get. A lot of ducking and diving went on… and they knew I was against that, so they used to sort of leave me alone. I concentrated on my union activities outside the…the Daily Mirror… trying to get elected to the London branch of SOGAT. The last year there I went to the union conference as a delegate, which was great fun. It was when Wapping was on…’
`Ahh, right…’
`So the atmosphere was good.’
`Were… were you involved in the Wapping… dispute?’
`Yeah… yeah…’
`Sec… as a secondary picket sort of post?’
`Well I used to do the Morning Star down there when I had time… just had the… the rank and file leader was a prominent member of the communist party, Mike Hicks…’
`Right…’
`Who was eventually jailed for a year… and while he was in there they done a deal with Brenda Dean, the woman… general secretary of SOGAT.’
`That strike was quite confrontational?’
`Yeah, very, yeah… lessons learned from that, yeah… yeah…’
`So were you in… involved in… confronting the police and…?’
`Not… not… in… not in the front line, no… not in the front line. I saw what went on down there, the horses… the beatings…’
`Beatings by…?’
`The police… on the pickets. It’s very similar to what happened to the miners, ‘cause the miners warned us that we’d be next… ‘cause Thatcher was out to crush the unions. The militant ones anyway.’
`And SOGAT was quite militant, was it?’
`Yeah… as they go, yeah. The leadership wasn’t very good… Brenda Dean. She let us down in the end, sold out… if it …[inaudible] rank and file, we’d have won that dispute. But they decided to concoct a charge against Mike Keggs [ph], the… rank and file leader. Put him in prison so that the rank and file… lacked leadership.’
`Right… what… what did they charge him with?’
`Assaulting the police.’
`And did you feel that there wasn’t grounds…?’
`Oh, no, definitely not. It’s the other way round, he got assaulted. That’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? He’ll come back though, unions will come back. We’re going through a bad patch at the moment with Blair, but… people will gradually wake up. Look what he’s doing… the country’s got a record of it, it’ll go down and then it’ll sort of come back up again. It’s so far to the right it’ll end up round the left again.’
`So you… you were admitted for… depression to which hospital during that period?’
`Oh… well I was an outpatient at… Friern Barnet… then I was admitted to Chase Farm. They were the only admissions… a lot… lot of the time I was an outpatient.’
`Right…’
`Just be given medication, and go home and rest and all the rest of it, you know what I mean? But they didn’t go into my manic depression, they didn’t bother checking whether I was manic depressive or not… which I… I could be bitter about, but… bitterness just makes you ill. Nothing can be done about it now. It’s too late. Life goes on…’
`A lot of people have… difficult and painful experiences in the… psychiatric system…’
`Mmm… well it’s in it’s infancy isn’t it? It’s… it’s only the last few years you’re starting to get these sort of super drugs… I mean going back a hundred years ago, I mean, you’re… you’re… you’re just locked away and in… into places like Bethlehem and… Friern Barnet, you’re locked away and forgot about. It’s all changing… and they’re changing the mental health act. Just a general attitude change. You’ve got younger doctors…. They’ve had to move with society. Society’s changing so they’ve got to change with it.’
`So would you say that…psychiatry’s improved?’
`Oh yeah… yeah… it’s improved, but there’s still a long way to go. You don’t get long enough with your psychiatrist because they’re short of psychiatrists. It ends up with the same old story, it’s a capitalist system that stops it… the capitalist system stops everything working. It even affects hospitals as we have… we can see. [Car alarm in background]. Psychiatrists are far too over worked… like… in Chase Farm, I’ve known doctors to leave there because of the pressure of work. See they don’t only just do clinics in… the… they don’t… they only just see to patients in Chase Farm, in a hospital they’ve got outpatients clinics around the borough of Enfield. They visit people at home… so they get quite a hefty workload.’
`Mmm’
`I don’t honestly know how they put up with it. How can you see to patients if you’re seeing someone about five or ten minutes… plus the fact the patient… feels uncomfortable sometimes in front of a psychiatrist or a team… the ward round. I mean I like ward rounds, the more on the ward round the better, ‘cause there’s more people to have a pop at, but… a lot of people would rather have one to one, they don’t want a load of people knowing their business.’
`What do you think?’
`I think it should be left to the individual. You have a small ward round, your… your nurse and your psychiatrist, or you want a full round… ward round, you have it. I mean I’m… I would be in favour of… a full… attendance of ward rounds by the staff, because each one there is… one’s a… one’s about medication, one’s about… housing, another one’s dealing with so… social worker problems… so you’ve got the whole team there and you can use them in the ward round, if you use your loaf… you can…’
`Mmm. You were saying earlier that you felt things had improved but they hadn’t gone far enough…?’
`Mmm’
`Or there’s still a way to go, but… can you try and remember what the differences were between the way… you… you’re treated now at Chase Farm and the way you were treated in the past?’
`It’s not that much difference. It ends up, at the end of the day, you talk to the psychiatrist, he diagnoses what he thinks and then you… the… the people that see you most are the nursing staff… and they’re not up together enough, they’re not going to notice it either. Like I was… I was spending some time educating nurses, about psychiatry… ‘cause when I speak to some of them, I thought, well, you’re a psychiatric nurse but we… you know very little about psychiatry… only what you’ve done for your exam. They… the… the nurses don’t seem to get… in… in Chase Farm, any criticism at all… they don’t get involved with the patients enough. I mean by rights, you’re supposed to have so many minutes a day with your… with your named nurse. But that doesn’t come about. Patients have left here with a bottle of pills, a menu, and that’s it. Just sit there until he goes away.’
`And in the past you think it was even worse than that?’
`I can’t remember that… that side of it actually… I don’t think it… I think it’s probably the… was the same.’
`Mmm’
`It’s got worse over the last few years because of the Tory’s cuts…’
`Mmm’
`And now the Labour cuts.’
`Mmm. So there’s quite long periods… of… time that you… were involved with the mental health system that you just can’t remember?’
`Mmm’
`Do you… I mean, do you know why that… why you can’t remember it?’
`Well, because I spent most of the time asleep, or talking to people… I never really… never thought about the… what the… the set up was in the hospital. It never dawned on me to ask these questions. It’s… its… this is one of the things… if you become politically aware, and you’re taught the basics of politics, then you will start to become interested in what the hospital’s doing. ‘Cause you know it… that is part of the system… and if there’s any fault of the hospital, or the nurses, you can always lay it at the door of the government… at the end of the day. They’re working too longer hours, and… the wages are not sufficient. I mean what’s… how can a nurse come and nurse you properly, if she’s worried about her mortgage? Or he’s worried about his mortgage?’
`Mmm’
`Their mind can’t be on the job. They have problems just like you and I. And ‘cause the lack of proper wages…’
`Mmm’
`…for what they do… it’s a strain on them, and nurses shouldn’t be under strain. They should be one of the highest paid professions in… in… in… in the… in the… in the working class… and the rest of the working class should see that they get that, by taking industrial action on their behalf. ‘Cause every worker needs a… hospital sooner or later, sometime in his life… he’s going to need treatment. See with the political awareness, unlike France and Italy, where there is an awareness, you… the awareness is not here… people are not aware. You see them walking along the road, they’re in a dream, in a daze half…’
`When you were in hospital, did you feel like you were in a bit of a daze… some of the time?’
`Sometimes, yeah… yeah… not in the last ten years, ‘cause I’ve been… active, when I’ve been on the ward…’
`Mmm’
`I don’t let things slip, or something… something is wrong and… I know it’s wrong, and can prove it’s wrong, then I’ll do something about it.’
`Mmm… Did you… do you feel that you were mis-treated at any point?’
`No… [pause]. Only in the fact that they didn’t diagnose me properly in the first place. I’ve had no bad treatment in hospitals. I’ve had nurses have a go at me and all that, and…’
`How do you…? I mean, can you explain?’
`You get up in the night and you want a cup of tea and they won’t give you one… you know, and they could do… I’d rare up at them and make, you know… and make them realise it’s much easier to give me a cup of tea or go through the… go through the verbal slagging they’re going to get… ‘cause they’d have the whole ward woken up. Unfair, but my voice is very loud when I’m high and when I’ve got the… when I’ve got the hump, everybody… everybody knows about it. I’ve had the Police in to Chase Farm after me… the nurses couldn’t control my tongue. But then the Police come… arrive and they says `oh, it’s nothing to do with us’, make them look silly.’
`They called the Police just ‘cause you were shouting?’
`Shouting, yeah… threatening them… threatening them… not going to do anything, but threatening them. When you wake up in the middle of the night you should have a cup of tea. If the Queen was in hospital and she wanted a cup of tea in the middle of the night, she’d get one. What’s… the difference between her and me? It’s too lazy [pause]. Though they’ve learned now if I’m in hospital, give him a cup of tea, or a drink… ‘cause he will… will go through all this during the night. See, that… there… there they… they like to sleep during the night, they doze off in chairs and all that. If you want to go to sleep, I’m not… I’m not moaning about you going to sleep, but if I want something, wake up and get it for me, otherwise you won’t be able to go to sleep the rest of the shift, ‘cause I will sit up all night and keep you awake. Simple as that.’
`Can you remember which hospital that was in?’
`Chase Farm.’
`That was Chase Farm?…and were there… were there other things like that that were… quite dis… dissatisfactory?’
`Mmm… I wouldn’t even call the tea business as… as unsatisfactory. I mean there’s a few things that they’ve done, I can’t quite remember at the moment, but… there’s one or two things that they… they don’t do and they should be doing… so we gone to the governor to find out what they should be doing, and he also wants to know why they’re not doing it… ‘cause if they ever see me going into the Director’s office, the word soon goes round the ward, `Savage is in the… in with the governor… having coffee’…’
`Did you try and organise the other patients as well?’
`Most of them were too sick to organise. I used to get back up… from other patients, confirm what I was saying, and… they agree with me… but some of the patients and that, you… we don’t know what’s going on. They wouldn’t even ask for a cup of tea in the middle of the night. And most people don’t ask for it, ‘cause they don’t get it anyway. There when you get it, you’ve got to sort of be militant. Got to know your rights. It’s like… it’s like when you join a firm, you’ve got to know the rules of the firm, and if there’s a union, know the union rules, study the union rules. When you go in hospital, you’ve got to study the patients’ rights, this chart… patients’ charter, all that… and when you’re gen’d up on that, off you go… bang, into them… ‘cause most of them nurses don’t know anything about the patients’ charter, they don’t even know their own rights. You never hear them talking about a union in there, don’t think it exists. It’s got to be some right wing organisation anyway, up there. There’s no… you never hear them talk about conditions, and… they have a moan now and again, but they’re not moaning constructively, they do it as individuals instead of a collective. I tried to educate some of them, and one or two I’ve managed to do, but their… [both talking together]…’
`Patients or…?’
`…mind’s somewhere else.’
`Patients or staff?’
`Both.’
`Right.’
`But mainly I work on the… on the staff. I try to tell them, I’m not against you… I’m not having a row because I’m against you, I’m trying to help you, if you could only see it. Well the governor could see that, I was trying to help them, but they themselves see it as a… a nuisance… but they can’t win, because once you’ve got the confidence of the governor, and the ear of the governor, they’ve got no chance. I said about sleeping at night on the wards… `who’s sleeping on the wards, who’s sleeping?’… I said `I’m not telling you who’s sleeping on the ward… if you want to find out, come in here, two o’clock in the morning with your key, sneak in, take your shoes off, undo the key and sneak in, and go `boo’, what are you doing asleep?’’. Ha ha ha ha… he was, it was quite hilarious.’
`[Laughs].’
`That’s the only way it was. I mean he never did that, ‘cause he knew… he knows bloody full well they do kip during the night, on their break and all that…’
`Mmm’
`’Cause once the… that’s why the medication’s done early, to get the patients in… down early, and as soon as they’re down and quiet, then they can turn all the lights off and take it in turns in having a snooze… ‘cause the governor told me that when he was a nurse there was no sleeping on the wards. Oh he must have known what they were doing actually… he never did nothing about it.’
`Mmm’
`When the nurses found out I’d… I’d… I’d… I’d mentioned about this on the… sleeping on the ward, they got really huffy about that. I said, `well if you’d done… done your job properly you wouldn’t have… it wouldn’t have happened.’ I said, `I warned you what would happen, I’m going to the governor’, and governors love to know what their staff’s doing. If he goes on holiday for two weeks, when he comes back, the first person he’s going to bump into is me… `how’s it going?’, you know what I mean. He doesn’t need a ward manager or… ‘cause they’re all in together aren’t they, the over time sky lark, you know… they had all secret meetings up there about the over time and… extra shifts and happy… you’re not allowed to listen to that. You can’t blame them really, ducking and diving, ‘cause the pay’s so low, they’ve got to do over time to make up their wages, which is diabolical for a… any hospital, any nurse. The psych… psychiatry where you’re dealing with peoples’ minds… you surely want to clean, you know… the psychiatrists are not too bad, ‘cause they get good wages don’t they? It’s utterly us and them again isn’t it? Everything’s us and them isn’t it? Everything… [voices in background] [pause]…’
`Is there any particular psychiatrist that you remember?’
`Not really… err… I… the only outstanding psychiatrist I met, was one when my fiancee was being looked after, a Dr Capstick [ph]. She was looking after my Geraldine, and… the rest…’
`This is your current fiancee?’
`Yeah…’
`Yeah…’
`But the rest are sort of… ok… you know.’
`Mmm’
`If they’re not ok, I’ll get rid of them. I won’t have a psychiatrist that I won’t… can’t relate to… ‘cause I’d go straight over his head, I’d go to the Health Authority. They know I’ll go there as well. So they’d change the psychiatrist. But I find… with psychiatrists, if you’re… know what you’re talking about and you’re militant about things, they will listen to you. If you just go in there half asleep and don’t know what you’re talking about, or don’t want to talk, the psychiatrist is going to take a laid back situation isn’t he? But if he know… he knows he’s faced with someone who knows what he’s talking about, and he’s… very positive… about the complaint he’s making, or how he’s being dealt with, that psychiatrist is more or less forced to… err… err… ‘cause I’ve said to psychiatrists before, you know… `if you… if you carry on like you are, you’re going to go over the road…’, and `what do you mean over the road?’, I said, `the complaints authority…’, `oh’, I say `yeah, that’s where you’re going’. `Don’t fuck about with me.’ [Laughs]… and it works.’
`What… what do you consider fucking about with you?’
`Not listening properly, getting the notes… saying things out of the notes that are not true and…’
`Has that happened to you before?’
`Yeah… yeah.’
`What… what…?’
`Obviously they’ve not read the notes properly. These psychiatrists, they only read the first few pages. If you’re going to deal with a patient properly, you’ve got to read a bit deeper than that. I’m not saying go back to 1950, but you should go back at least three or four years, and see what the patient’s been doing. But they haven’t got the time have they? In a… psychiatrist in a ward round, it’s `next… next… next…’, isn’t it? I can tell when I’m in there whether they’re… they’re listening to me properly… ‘cause I tell them before I start, I say, `let’s get it straight before we… before we go any further… this, this and this… that’s what I want. If you can’t do that, forget it.’ That’s what they get. You see once you understand psychiatry, to a degree like I do, and you’ve been in wards a long while, and they had different nurses seeing to you, you, become sort of gen’d up… and there’s nothing to fear about a psychiatrist. He’s only like… anybody else. But he can actually… get you well, completely bugger your life up… if you let him… well I don’t intend to let them.’
`Do you feel in the past that psychiatrists did bugger your life up?’
`I don’t know, I don ‘t remember. I made… only the fact that, well… as I keep saying, is that… I’ve not been diagnosed as manic depressive, I’ve not been kept in hospital long enough, I’ve not been studied enough, to see that I’m manic depressive. That’s something I can’t moan about now, because… half these doctors are retired or… you know, it’s… if he’d had said to me about, why don’t you take your case up and sue the hospital and all the rest of it… but, I haven’t got the physical or mental energy to bother with all that. Probably get nowhere anyway.’
`How many different psychiatrists have… do you think you’ve had?’
`How many psychiatrists? Cor blimey… about fifteen I suppose. I’ve seen more psychiatrists, like when I’ve had… when I get admitted. ‘Cause when you go in hospital you don’t… you don’t see the consultant straight away, you see the duty psychiatrist, or the registrar as they call themselves, which is… a registrar is a junior doctor… junior psychiatrist. So I’ve been through a few of them. I’ve had a few of them put their pens down and say that I’m… `I can’t interview you any more’, so I say `that’s all right then, don’t bother’.’
`Why… why… why was that?’
`Because he was… asking me a load of irrelevant questions, not listening to what I was saying, and, I said, `what’s the point in going on?’, `I’ll refer you back to the… consultant’, so I didn’t bother with the junior psychiatrist. ‘Cause he’s like a kid. How can a twenty three year old… kid… who’s got a book in his head, that he’s passed an exam on, start debating with me about what’s what? He ain’t… he’s…got… got no experience. If he admitted he hadn’t got that, or he’ll listen to me properly… it’s like when they want to send me out… if there’s no beds in Chase Farm, they send you out to other parts of London. I said, `I don’t want to go to other parts of London. I want a private hospital in the borough then…’. I’m against that ‘cause I’m against privatisation of the Health Service. Once you start getting talking like that then…’ [both talking together].
`Have you ever been…?’
`It’s too much for them… too much for them.’
`Did… did you ever get put in a private hospital?’
`Yeah… yeah… oh, down in Surrey somewhere… fantastic. You’ve never seen anything like it… bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, fried bread… and all girls with the black… black dresses with little white pinny’s on. I ended up counselling the BUPA people ‘cause there was load of BUPA people there couldn’t get their money off BUPA, so I ended up giving them a bit of counselling… ‘[laughs].’
`[Laughs] Where was this?’
`I forget the name of the hospital now.’
`Where… was this, quite recently?’
`No, a few years back.’
`Right…’
`Had a bit of fun down there…’
`How long were you there for?’
`Oh… about six weeks, something like that… and got transferred back to Chase Farm.’
`Did you notice other differences apart from the food in… between the… private hospital?’
`There’s no comparison is there? When you get lumps of roast beef put in front of you and yorkshire pudding and all that sort of thing, who wants to move? The only… only hassle I was having, was getting my giro. [Both talk together].’
`I used to shoot up on the train and get that….’
`[Laughs]. Did you have a private room?’
`Yeah, oh… of course, yeah… there’s no dormitories in private… psychiatric hospitals, the staff are nice… thick carpet everywhere…. Your own room. Telephone in your room. All that. Marvellous place.’
`Did you have a TV in your room?’
`I’m not sure about that, I can’t remember. But when I was down there I was writing letters and notes, ‘cause I’m very high. I was writing letters to my fiancee’s parents and her brothers and sisters, having a go at them about never visiting her and all that… just read them the riot act. Generally sort of working really. People were nice there, patients were nice. Yeah, nice little holiday that was. Pity you’re on a high, I mean… go to a private hospital when you’re on a high, you’re… you get it made don’t you? I had a great time.’
`It sounds as if you quite enjoy being high?’
`Oh yeah… yeah… wish I was high now. It’s the lows you have to… you have to be careful, If you go too high, you go very, very low, and you can’t… you don’t want none of that. I liked a little bit… be a little bit higher than I am now, you know, I’m sort of… a big sluggish… annoying. I forget things, and… I had to write everything down in a day, if I’ve got things to do I write them down on a bit of paper so I remember, when as I’m high I don’t need all that. I remember it all… [pause].’
`Do you want to have a cigarette?’
`Yeah…’
`[Camera: Shall we stop the time anyway? Interviewer: `Yeah… let’s…[inaudible]…’
`Police in there, ambulances… I was in the cells in… Bognor Police station, singing IRA songs…[laughs]… I was in there…’
`Sorry, I missed that… I missed that… I missed the beginning of that… when…?’
`Yeah… I got caught with a little miniature axe in…’
`An axe?’
`An axe, yeah…’
`Yeah…’
`…in… But… Butlins. Wasn’t doing anything with it, it’s just that people saw it, they shit a brick, you know what I mean? [Laughs].’
`They thought you were a mad axe man?’
`Anyway, eventually they… we all had to go back to Chase Farm ‘cause we were Chase Farm patients, we just went there for a couple of days and have a giggle… it was riot all the time, ‘cause Tom had a police hat on and Mike Jolings [ph], he had a police hat on… and when we arrived, people looking around were thinking what is that? I said, `have you got a problem?’, I said, `I happen to be a psychiatric nurse and these two are my patients down here for a few days’ break.’ Oh, dear, Tom fell out the car, pissed his trousers…’
`Ahh’
`Then we went out on the town. That was it then wasn’t it… oh boy… did we have some fun. We got £20 off one of the governors of the holiday, for Geraldine doing Irish dancing [match striking]. Next day we’re black listed. [Laughs].’
`Black listed from Butlins?’
`Not from him… but the security didn’t want us there. ‘Cause Tom said `I’m coming down just to check… check the security out’, ‘cause he’s a security expert. He says you want to check the VO’s of these… he said `you’re probably employing criminals’. They loved it didn’t they, that’s the management when I was pointing it out to them. We were… we climbed in an ambulance and Tom got the shakes, and he’s got no medication. We said to the ambulance drivers, they were two mature ambulance drivers, you know, they were… sort of forties like… `so what are we going to do?’. I said `it’s easy isn’t it, just pull over there and I’ll go in the off licence and get some beer.’ We pulled up… so the ambulance pulled up outside the off licence [laughs]… we load up with some special brew, and they… we drank all the way back to Chase Farm [laughs]… and we was telling the ambulance drivers the stories of what we’d been getting up to in Butlins, things we were doing…’
`Right.’
`They was in fits of laughter wasn’t they? How they come to let us have booze… but we were so overpowering that… they… they thought well there’s nothing much we can do here, we’ll have to get them some booze ‘cause Tom’s going to shake all the way like this and have to… stop the… stop the ambulance and all that.’
`Which Butlins was it?’
`Bognor. We’d go down there again, go in different names. Take your ….[inaudible]… Butlins. Good doctor there was… when we was there. She threw a bit of a wobbly when she was here so I took her to the doctors. Oh, we’ve had bags of laughs from illness. I think I’ve laughed more than I’ve cried. Some of the things I can get into… the antics… I just don’t believe myself sometimes. People… people see me sometimes and start laughing. `Do you remember the time when you did this?’, and I forgot about it, but they remember like, something I’ve done… I was in a pub with a young… young, young lad, he used to work for me in the lawnmower shop. He’s in hysterics… he went into hysterics with laughter… so the woman behind the bar said, `what’s wrong with Kevin?’ [laughs]…’
`[Laughs]. Do you know why he was laughing?’
`Yeah, I know why he’s laughing, he was telling me about some of the things I did when I had the shop. Things I’d said to customers and… charge them what I feel like.’
`This is when you had a… a shop?’
`Yeah…’
`You were telling me earlier I think, you used to have a shop?’
`Yeah, a lawnmower shop, yeah…’
`Right…’
`That was a riot. It ended up in an admission. Notorious, my shop was then, down the road. It’s in a little market place.’
`In Enfield?’
`Yeah… err… Palm… Palmer’s Green.’
`What year about was this?’
`Err… ’78 to 80. Seventy… about three years. Seventy… seventy eight., seventy nine, eighty.’
`And you sold lawn… you were selling lawn…?’
`I would serve… service lawnmowers.’
`Right’
`I still do that now. If the occasional little job comes up. It’s cost me money sitting here talking to you. I have two jobs to do, but they’ll have to wait. Can’t go nowhere else can they? I rung them up just now, to tell them I’ll be late.’
`Thanks.’
`I’m a great believer in these sort of things, where they get down to the rank and file and ask some questions, you know what I mean? You must help people that are doing studies…’
`[Inaudible].’
`I’m a classic manic depressive… something. The things I do when I’m down… and jumping out of… lying four flights of flats [???], and then ending up, running businesses and everything else… going through gallons of money. When I’m high I’m never short of money, I just go out and… look up my old book work, ring someone up, `oh yeah… come round’, but I’m a bit lazy at the moment. I’m not sort of… I’ve got things I can sell. I’ve got to do a few little jobs to them and spray them, but I can’t get myself to…’
`It can be difficult sometimes.’
`It is… it’s… at the moment it’s difficult. That’s why… if you… if I’d been on a high, when you done this interview, you wouldn’t need the questions, I’d just rattle… rattle it all off. There you are.’
`When you were high, did you get in trouble with the Police?’
`Sometimes, yeah… never been nicked for the whole… yeah, I got… I got nicked for clubbing somebody once… he was doing my car and never done it properly.’
`Fixing your car?’
`Sort of an acquaintance really, and I give him a good hiding. Ended up in Court. He didn’t want to go to court, his sister did, ‘cause I broke his nose. That’s all part of the high, you know, looking back. I look back on quite a lot of things happen to me when I’ve been in sort of depressed situations, and I think to myself, `ah, I know what that is now, that’s the depression doing that’. The depression’s got me into that, or the high’s got me into that. It’s a lovely feeling when you’re high… you’ve got no nerves. At the moment I’m a little bit nervous… I feel a bit uncomfortable… tired… eyes are sore… but… when you’re high all that goes away. You’re in tip top condition.’
`It’s a very physical sensation, depression?’
`Mmm?’
`You… Sort of when you’re depressed you feel bad physically?’
`Yeah, I do now. I’m not depressed but I’m… I suppose you would call it levelled out, minus one, you know… I’m in between depression and… being levelled out.’
`So what happened after… you went to Court and…for hitting this guy?’
`Yeah… high in the court. Copper said to me `you should be a solicitor’, ‘cause I spoke for myself at the dock. Told them some fatic… fantastic story and… I only got done a hundred pound. It wasn’t bad. I felt sorry for the bloke after though, ‘cause… it was quite unnecessary to give him a good hiding… really… it wasn’t warranted. When you’re high you get angry, that’s it isn’t it?’
`Mmm. Is that the most trouble you’ve been in?’
`Yeah… I’ve had a few narrow escapes. [Laughs].’
`Have you been…put in the cells for the… for the night a few times?’
`Yeah… [pause]. Always seemed to come back though, with this illness. I go down, but I usually come back, and in six months I’ve got a car on the road… I’ve settled in here. I’m not depressed, I’m happy here. That’s the next thing, they’re talking about moving me from here next, you know… as soon as you get somewhere nice, it’s all about moving you back into a flat again. Well I don’t want that.’
`Mmm’
`I’m going to tell him in no uncertain terms when I see him, that’s what I want. See, I’m… I’m a person that… when I’m ill I forget to take medication. Well here, you’re given your medication, you’re called for it, you’ve got to come down the stairs and get it. They don’t go… they don’t go to bed unless the… medication’s all been done. It’s all done very… this is a very efficiently run place. Everything’s got a book, whether you… money, sign… you’ve got to sign and… you’ve got to sign for everything, virtually. Beds… efficiency… and I like that. It shows care. The staff are brilliant. Even the agency ones that come are… are good. I’ve never met a bad one yet… [pause]. No, I’m very happy here, I don’t want to move from here just yet. The only stigma here is, you only get £14 a week spending money, but everything else is thrown in. You’ve got TV… got a TV licence, all your food’s done… everything’s all laid out for you. Very restful and relaxing… the staff are always asking how you are and all that and… they seem to know when you’re a bit down, they can… they can look and… all the main regular staff are all experienced. The manager’s very efficient, and he’s got a way of telling you off if you’ve done something, without making a big issue of it, you know… he’ll just point it out to you. Don’t treat you like an idiot…. [pause]. Are we on tape still? Oh, I didn’t know, I thought it was switched off. [Pause] [Laughs].’
`[camera: inaudible]’
`It’s like I forgot this appointment this morning. If I was high I wouldn’t have forgot that, I’d have been up at six, wash, bath, changed… we’re… pretty unprepared for it. Yet it’s been stuck on my notice board in my room about you coming… and I forget… [pause]. Always manage to get out of it somehow though.’
`Is… is it a cycle every sort of year or every few years, or…?’
`Don’t… don’t have any warning. Just comes and goes, and you… you just don’t really remember it. I know I was depressed last November, and I was still a bit depressed when I came here, but soon after I came here I got well. ‘Cause the environment was right. People were friendly… the other… the other people that live here are nice. L…[inaudible] some of them, but… they’re nice people, I look after them when I’m here. One of the old bids [???] brings me a cup of tea up in the morning, brings my paper up, but then I take her out during the… if I go anywhere I take her out for a ride, to get her out of the house. Especially if she’s shouting and hollering everywhere… it helps the staff, gives them a break. All my friends are psychiatric. I haven’t got many friends outside psych… psychiatric circles… only members of SWP.’
`The SWP, I mean, what… what… do they have any policies about psychiatry?’
`The Health Service it comes under…’
`Do they have any specific mental health policies?’
`No, I don’t think so, not to my knowledge. I don’t think any party has. I mean even the Labour party’s got one. What have they got? [Laughs].’
`Do members of the SWP, do you…think that they treat you… I mean do they, treat you any differently because they know… do they know about…?’
`Some of them do, some of them don’t… no, no they’re very nice, very… very intellectual and… [coughs]… sensible people. It’s… it’s… it’s part of my treatment, I feel, to go to their meetings every week, ‘cause it makes me feel better and I’m with people that are… are… think like I do. They’re very hard working, courageous youngsters a lot of them. A lot of young people in it which I like. They’re into everything. If the… if there’s a demo, they’re on it. You know? You get the Labour party, they don’t know what a demo is. They fear demos. There’s a lot of people leaving it though… lot of people… you don’t… you don’t hear it in the television or press but there’s a lot of people leaving the Labour party.’
`Mmm’
`They don’t know where to go. What to do… after all the years they put in it. Scargill did didn’t he… he joined a… he formed the socialist labour party. He was on TV the other night on the… question time. I fell asleep before it came on. Another thing I wouldn’t do if I was on a high, I wouldn’t have… the chance of hearing Arthur… at the best of times is difficult, unless you go to one of his meetings… their… their recruiting well. ‘Cause where, the Labour party members, where can they go, if they feel they’ve been betrayed. They’ve got to come to the CP, SWP, or the SLP. That’s inevitable… it’s going to happen eventually, it’s going to be a… mass parties aren’t they? It’s like in Ireland… Sin Fein wasn’t heard of in Belfast. As soon as the trouble started it become a mass organisation.’
`What do you think attitude to you… somebody who used psychiatric services, has been from other people, if they’ve known your history?’
`What do I… can you just say…’
`Well, what… I mean, I’m trying to get at… like if you’ve experienced any discrimination in your life, because… because you…?’
`’Cause I’m psychiatrically ill, no…’ [both talking together]
`Yes…’
`…never had… no… I wouldn’t stand for it anyway. If someone said to me about psychiatry and all that, I’d blow my top. Blow my top in a nice way, you know…’
`You don’t think that you’ve lot job opportunities or…?’
`No…’
`No?’
`I never had a problem in a job. No… I’ve never had a problem with a job [pause]. I’ve got a trade as well in my hands, so I don’t need to worry about… I wouldn’t go for work for a governor. I’d like to go back to a factory that’s got a union in it, in Enfield. If I could just go in and have a couple of weeks on the shop floor and see what’s… what gives… know what I mean? Sit there with my Morning Star in the canteen… see what the governor comes up with [pause].’
`When you were in… these various hospitals, did… the doctors ever try and restrict your political activities?’
`No… pfff! [ph] They wouldn’t have dared to. Nothing. Politics… politics to me is like food. I’m always reading a book, political book… watch programmes on TV, political programmes. I have other interests, I love speedway racing… steam railway… an interest in that… so I’ve got a variation of subjects. I never get bored. To me there’s never enough time in the day to do what I want. I’m booked right up every day… to do something. Whether I do it is another story, but there’s always something I’ve got to do… there’s someone looking for me or they want something or… there’s something going on here, or whatever… like this here today… this… this comes up today doesn’t it? So I can’t do the lawnmowers today. I might be able to do them later on, but I had to put into perspective what… what do I want to… do… I felt I’m obligated to do this today, so I’ll do it, and… if they don’t want it done and if it’s late, I’m not going to worry about it ‘cause I’m not exactly broke [pause].’
`What about your kids?’
`All grown up. Thirty seven years old. Got a grandson of eighteen. I see them regular… well, fairly regular. My boy lives down in Hastings and he comes up here to see me… sort of once a month, something like that. He’s due to visit me now I think. But he’s got his own life to lead, he’s busy, he’s a carpenter. He’s also a… a… an instructor at… a training college, so… [both talk together].’
`[Inaudible]’
`As long as they’re all right, I’m all right… I… my daughter’s invited me over for dinner, but Sundays I get quite busy Sundays here…’
`So you’re in regular contact with…?’
`Yeah…’
`…both…your…?’
`I lost contact with them a little while ago, ‘cause I had a row with my mother.’
`Your son?’
`Yeah…’
`Right…’
`Yeah, I had a bit of a difference with my mother… the things she was saying about us… me and Jolene… and that all got mixed up and blown out of all proportion, but they’ve come back now, so sort of… they weren’t visiting or speaking to me… but they’ve come back now, for some mysterious reason.’
`Who… you have a son and a daughter?’
`Yeah.’
`Oh and… you said earlier that they were… that… that they were looked after by your parents?’
`That’s right. They’re with their own partners now. My son’s got his own house in Hastings, he loves it down there. He wouldn’t come back up here. He doesn’t like the rat race… he’s very laid back my son. See he won’t even bother ringing here to see if I’m in, he just turns up, and if I’m not here he sits here until I do turn up, you know… that’s… that’s… that’s… and I’m glad really, ‘cause… he’s… shows his nerves are not bad. Go to my daughter’s, see my grandson, he’s eighteen, drives a car… she works as a hospital manager… at… Wiggington.’
`Have they… had any mental health problems themselves?’
`My Dan, I heard… had a little bit of a… I forget what it was now, but it’s never recurred, so…’
`And, your mother’s still alive?’
`Yeah…’
`And, do you see…?’
`I don’t see her, no… we had our difficulties… she’s never rung up since, and I never rung her, so… best left alone.’
`And… and what happened to your father?’
`Did at fifty nine with cancer.’
`How old were you then?’
`How old was I then?’
`Yeah…’
`How do you work it out?’
`Approximately?’
`He was born in 1919, I was born in 1940.’
`Mmm’
`No, hold on… I… I’m doing it… hold on, no… I’ll tell you with that… 1978 he died… I was thirty eight.’
`Right… Did that hit you quite hard, him dying?’
`Not immediately, no… it… it… made me feel… come over, ill… a few months later.’
`Were you close to him?’
`Not when I was young, but… in later years we were.’
`Was it similar to you and your son now? In a way?’
`Different sort of relationship. I’m more open with my son, he’s like a brother to me. You know… whereas my dad, you’d have more respect about what you’re going to say to him, you know… you’d look up to him a bit and… careful what your views were, but my views, I can say to my son anything, and he can say what he likes to me’.
`What does he make of you being in hospital sometimes and being up and down?’
`Who, Dan?’
`Yeah…’
`Yeah… it’s… I’m here, I’m here… you know… don’t think… he doesn’t worry about it too much. I don’t think he worries about it. ‘Cause when he sees me when I’m here I’m always lively, you know, I’m all ok. Even I’m a little bit down from high now… we sit and have a chat and that… he tells me about what the kids are doing and… what he’s doing and that… likes the home. He’s seen the home, looks nice, he knows I’m happy here so… he’s got no sweat. I couldn’t have come to a better place… after leaving hospital. I’d find it… quite difficult to live on my own in a flat, when I was still depressed. This place has got everything for me… nice garden… somewhere to put my tools. Car park, we ain’t got to worry about someone nicking it… nicking it… it’s outside the door of a night. The food’s nice, staff’s nice…’
`In the past when you came out of hospital, were you… discharged and had nowhere to go, or…?’
`Sometimes, yeah… yeah… ‘
`Were you… were you… did you ever like, live on the streets or anything like that?’
`No… no, I’ve always found something. I never get that low. When I don’t know what I’m doing… I know where to go, who to… who to see… [pause]. Black clouds coming over…’
`Mmm’
`I don’t suppose there’ll be any Wimbledon today will there?’
`There might be a bit.’
`Might be a bit, yeah… it’s no good when they interrupt games though is it? It puts them off their stroke, doesn’t it?’
`Mmm.’
`We’ve got nine minutes on this tape…[off mike]. Do you want to tell me about your tattoos, I’ve been looking at them and…?’
`Oh, that’s part of my sort of… probably… I was probably a bit high at the time when it happened. I was in Malta, and…’
`This is when you were in the Navy?’
`Yeah, when I was in the Navy. Why I had them, I don’t know.’
`Did you…?’
`Other people were doing it so I, like a fool, did the same thing.’
`Mmm. Did you get them all done at the same time?’
`No. Ridiculous isn’t it… tattoos? They’re there now, so that’s it, ain’t it? What do you do? What they’re good for is telling kids, put kids off having them…’
`[Laughs].’
`They see those… `I think I’ll get a tattoo’, I say `you… [inaudible]… get a tattoo… you get it on there, you can’t get it off.’
`Do they represent anything particularly that…?’
`No..’
`No… they’re just… are they…[both talk together]?’
`Way out of the hat… [???]… no. Complete adolescence, you know, sort of… I was only eighteen years old… I was a young eighteen as well, not like they are now, wide boys at eighteen… I was still quite a… you know, I’d not long left school had I… had I really? Found myself in Malta. Had a lot… I had quite a lot of fun when I first joined the Navy ‘cause I was boxing as well. That’s what… when I told the nurse when she was doing my counselling that I’d been a… I’d done boxing… she couldn’t believe it… a manic depressive boxing. Of course, I look back on that now. When I used to win I was on a high, I’d lose I was on a low. You don’t know you’re low, you’re still going to box aren’t you? And you think well that’s… I’ll have to go through it now, I’m in this Championship, I’ve got to go through with it.’
`Mmm…’
`She couldn’t believe it…’
`What… what would be your advice to other people who’ve had similar problems, to you?’
`Get seen to early. Or go to a MIND, and get them to advise you to… what you should… well you should get an interview with somebody from MIND, or some other org… organisation, I’m saying MIND, it’s the one that comes to mind… [laughs]… errr…’
`[Laughs].’
`Is… talk to someone you have… but a lot of people are frightened, see. Mention the word `psychiatrist’ [whistles]… don’t want to know do they? We’ve had a few people like that. They say `I’ve got this certain thing and I’m… depressed, I’m tired, this, that…’, I said `go to your GP and get a… a psychiatrist’, [whistles]… don’t want to know about that. I said `well you’ll have to go one day if you carry on getting depressed, you’re going to end up like me.’ Simple as that.’
`Why do you think they’re scared?’
`I don’t know, it’s just… it’s just like these things… it’s like when you mention the word `communist’ isn’t it? Everyone `oh oh…’, doesn’t it… yeah…?’
`[Laughs]’
`They… they… they… brainwash people so much that that’s the attitude. It’s like when you mention the word politics or religion [makes whistling noise]… `don’t talk about that’, and… in… and psychiatry’s the same. Mix with psychiatrists… `they think I’m going round the bend’, and… `cuckoo’ and… you know… `you’re off your rocker’ and as… `if I go to a psychiatrist he’ll lock me up’ and… that’s how they think. But you only helps people so far… you can only suggest to them what they do… what they do about it, it’s up to them. I don’t think they forget though, ‘cause if they get ill again, they’ll say, `I remember old Bob Savage saying about this…’, you know… we all remember what’s said to us. No ones daft are they? I wish I could have got there earlier [pause]. I’ve been married three times. All my wives speak to me. One’s coming over here from Australia in.. in September apparently.’
`Yvonne?’
`Yeah, without her husband… her new husband. She’ll want to have a good chin wag with me; last time she was here, she couldn’t speak much ‘cause her husband was there, but… she’ll obviously want to have a good chat with me when she comes over. One in Enfield, I visit her now and again. She’s all right.’
`That would be… Bernice?’
`Yeah…’
`And then you had a third… you’ve got…’
`Third… Jackie, yeah… she’s been psychiatrically ill. So I’ve seen plenty of her up there… up Chase Farm… [laughs]. I knew she’d get ill. I think her mother… mother encouraged her to… to… leave me… ‘cause I was ill and all that… that’s what you get… end up doing her own brain in. And I’ve been with Geraldine nine years… looks like that one’s a life sentence… we’ve both got disability and that’s it. She’s very pretty, to look at.’
`How old is she?’
`Forty four… but she don’t look any more than about thirty four. Beautiful eyes… loves a laugh. She can sing, dance… do anything. Got the perfect partner this time. Belfast Irish as well. Introduced me to that great place… went down… one of the best places I’ve been in the world that is… Belfast. Never known a place like it… the friendliness, and the people are marvellous. The clubs and pubs are great. Culture everywhere… this dump here… oh… don’t know why I stay here really, sometimes…’
`Have you spent most of your life in this area? Have you?’
`Yeah…’
`And then down in… was it Plymouth?’
`No… well here… mostly here…’ [both talking together]
`Mostly here? Right…’
`I was only in Plymouth for about a year [pause].’
`[Change tapes] Ok… we’ll just… stop there…’
[End of DVC Pro tape 3]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 4 – VHS tape 1 continues]
[Talking off mike]
`…Oh… we’re running…we’re running, Ok… go… no… you were saying that the Police were in and out of the lawnmower shop?’
`Yeah, when I had the lawnmower shop, the Police were in and out quite a lot. And the local shopkeepers thought `hello, they’ve got him this time’, you know what I mean… `caught up with him’. But all they was coming in for, was to book in for a service or… make arrangements to leave the station inspector’s lawnmower to be fixed. One day I walked out there and put my hands up in the air, and told the Police what to do, and they walked me to the wagon and… went into the wagon, and all the people looking… in the street, were looking, and see me… holding my hands up like that… I thought, hang on there, just hang on for a minute… so we hang up in the back of the van, then when I said, right, go, then we pulled the lawnmower out of the back of the Black Mariah, it’s the station inspect… inspector’s lawn mower coming up to be fixed…’
`[Laughs]…’
`Oh dear, it was hilarious! Women in there… and all [inaudible]… my mates up there with their girlfriends in the afternoon… sit out the front of the shop in deck chairs… all the other shopkeepers working their guts out… all us lot sitting outside the shop with the… bottles of beer… I had a big Humber Imperial… we used to go out in. Got pulled up by the Police one night, but… we looked suspicious… and my mates all had… had different faces that looked suspicious… you know what I mean… hard looking bastards! [Laughs]. Mmm… oh, I’ve had a bag of laughs. The lawn mower shop was something else… [laughs]. Don’t believe it when I think back… think back at it… [rustling sounds; matches].’
`Did you end up losing money?’
`In debt, that’s all… it were writ off wasn’t it… debt. Didn’t pay the rent for two quarters… I was worried about all that when I was depressed, like I was this time, so… I… I… I’ve tuned Barclaycard up for about a grand. Last year. Now I’ve moved, they don’t know where I am. I’ve always managed to… I get in a lot of debt… I get depressed… but as soon as I go high… what debt? You know, what debt? I’m not in debt… forget it. Just write them a load of old cock and bull, that’s it. Got a psychiatrist to write to them. My psychiatrist, he’s a bit slow, but he’ll… he’s good at… writing letters for me… if I want a letter to somebody, to wind up, he’ll write one out for me. I’ve got a very… I’ve got a… I had a yellow pages jet… debt of about £500. I put myself in Yellow Pages, if you don’t mind… and… I got my psychiatrist to write a letter saying that…I wasn’t in a fit state of mind when I did it… had it writ off…’
`Was that recently?’
`No, it’s a few years back. See once you’ve been in psychiatry long enough you get to know the ropes. You get a lot of disadvantages about being psychiatrically ill, and I’d rather be a normal person, but… with this illness, where you go low and everything’s black, at least you know you’re going to go high eventually, and come out of it… and you get out of it somehow, ‘cause basically, you’re clever. ’
`Ok…’
`People say to me, `You’re clever…’. Sell rice to a China man.’
`[Laughs].’
`Being in psych… psychiatric hospitals has made me clever… listening to what the nurses have got to say, other patients… it’s a vast area, you know, to…’
`What about other workers in the hospitals, like OT’s, or Art Therapy, anything like that that you’ve…? You must have come across things like that?’
`Like what?’
`Occupational therapy or…?’
`Yeah, I’ve done occupational therapy, yeah… nice people. Never met a bad OT person yet. Yeah, I do a bit of OT. When I’m ill I don’t really feel like getting off my bed, to go to OT, but I know that it’s… got to try and find a way to get over there, ‘cause it’s… it’s the only way I’m going to get well.’
`What kind of stuff would you do?’
`Woodwork, that’s over there… I never did much. Just got there, you know, out of bed… and when I got there I wasn’t really interested in what they were doing… I was too tired. But at least I got off that bed, and went over… and got my name ticked off that I’d been there, you know… so when the ward round comes up, you’ve attended OT. What you’ve done is another story… sod all…’
`What about art… art therapy… are you…?’
`No, I’m not an artist. Piss artist… I don’t know about an artist! [Laughs]. I don’t drink any more… I used to a drink problem with the illness, but… now I’ve realised it’s no good for manic depression I don’t… I don’t drink any more. I might have a shandy or an odd can now and again, but… I don’t know, it just… don’t interest me any more. Pubs don’t interest me. When I went in the pub last weekend, I only had… take a friend for a sandwich and a… I had a pint of… cider… but that’ll probably be it now for a while. Doesn’t give me any satisfaction any more.’
`So it wasn’t an effort… it wasn’t an effort to give up booze?’
`No, not really… used to be an effort when I tried before… when I was still drinking. Now I don’t drink, I… I don’t think of going over the pub. I don’t think of going over the off licence. When I’m high and I drink I go really… I go through the roof then… anything can happen.’
`What’s the most outrageous thing that’s happened?’
`Most outrageous? There’s so many things, I wouldn’t like to remember them… [laughs]. People have to remind me, they say `do you remember the time when you did this? Do you remember the time when you did that?’, oh… they just roll up with laughter… you have so much front when you’re… high as well. Nothing gets in your way does it? Money comes your way ‘cause you’re so positive when you’re selling something or you’re… you’re doing a job somebody, you over charge them and get away with it, where you… if you was depressed, you wouldn’t think of… you wouldn’t have the guts to do it.’
`Have you set up any other businesses?’
`No… ooh… one’s enough [laughs]. That’s what good about now. By setting up that crazy business, at least it’s left me with a knowledge of… of how to still do it. I’m able to get a few bob a week out of that.’
`So you still work a little bit…?’
`Yeah…’
`Fixing lawn mowers?’
`Yeah. Only in the summer ‘cause there’s no… nothing in the winter. So you have to save up in the summer, then you can live comfortably in the winter. Not comfortably, you’ve still got to watch your pennies, but it ain’t quite so harsh. [Pause] [Voices in background]. I’ll go up… see if I can do anything when I… when I finish here. I’ll sit there and have a cup of tea and sit there until the last minute, and then I’ll go out the door. [Pause]. Do you edit this film when you do it?’
`No.’
`No?’
`No it’s all as… as it…’
`Yeah..’
`…as you’ve said it…’
`I thought that some of the long pauses where we’re saying nothing…?’
`No, it all gets… it’s… it all gets included.’
`Yeah…’
`We don’t… don’t edit it at all. So it’s exactly as you’ve…’
`Yeah..’
`Exactly as you’ve told it. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to talk about?’
`Not to my knowledge. Not really. I’ve covered… I’ve… I’ve not covered it in depth, but I mean I’ve… I’ve told you what I can remember. And most of the questions you asked, prompted me to… [pause]. It would take a long while to write my life story, all the bits and pieces in between. My daughter’s offered to… she said to me `you should get your life story done dad’. I wondered what she meant at the time, I thought what’s wrong with her? [Laughs]. She’s watched some of the antics that…’
`Mmm… Well, you could… say it’s in the British Museum… it’s in the British Library now.’
`Yeah… yeah… I’m looking forward to getting the video and see what I look like on the film.’
`You haven’t told me much about, I think your third… your third wife?’
`Jackie?’
`Yeah…’
`I met Jackie when I was depressed. I was laying in the park with a… bottle of… bottle of wine. I remember this girl I met in a café, giving me her address… I must have sobered up and went round there to see her. And that was it… we sort of… got together. She was quite… she was twenty years younger than me. Oh, we had great years. The years we were together we were very happy.’
`When was that?’ [both talking together]
`Fortunate… ‘
`When… which years with her?’
`What years was that? ’85 to… ’89, ’90… It was all right when the money was flowing and everything was all right, and I was well. When I got ill, it was a different ball game.’
`Did she not react well to you being…?’
`She… I think it was making her ill. She looked after a depressed person. Unless you’ve… unless you’ve got the… the knowledge or the skill… that illness can transfer on you. I thought she’s only young, let her go. So I went in St Ann’s and we just parted. Since then she’s been going out with… one of my mates is a psychiatrically ill person, but she’s ditched him now because he’s become… more ill. That’s her track record isn’t it? She can’t handle it.’
`That must have been a hard… a hard time then? A bad…?’
`Yeah… yeah… bit… bit hard, yeah. I got over it though, then I met Geraldine and I’ve not… not looked back since. Although she’s invalid and… I don’t see her very much… she’s the… a person that I… you know… I can’t see me… ever going with anybody else. Despite her illness she’s still beautiful and… love… I feel as though I’m loved by somebody properly, you know… she’s seen me ill. I’ve seen her ill, she’s ill now. Eventually we know we’ll get together again. We’re thinking of getting married… it’ll be the fourth time… [laughs].’
`[Inaudible].’
`We’re thinking of getting married ‘cause if we get married they’ve got to… they’ll… they’ll have to put us in a home where there’s… for a couple, won’t they…?’
`So do you see yourself as living in… somewhere which has got… you know, where there’s staff?’
`I’d rather do that than live in a flat.’
`You wouldn’t want to live on… with… with Geraldine in a flat?’
`No… no, she couldn’t because she… she needs permanent… permanent nursing. She… this… this would be ideal for her, here…’
`Are all the rooms of similar size in here?’
`Yeah… yeah… Catherine, she’s got a double room. Her boyfriend stays with her now, so they got a double bed for her. That’s nice of them isn’t it?’
`Yeah…’
`Sort of… why shouldn’t she have love and the rest of it? Being on her own… when you’ve got a boyfriend, double bed, that’s it… they can lay in bed together. It’s great. I thought it was very nice of them. They would have done that for us if we’d… if there’d been… been the vacancy.’
`Mmm’
`But somewhere along the line, we’ll… it’ll work out. It’s no good worrying about that too much now…’
`Mmm’
`It’s… just live one day at a time… that’s what I do, one day at a time, and worry about the future when it comes up.’
`In the past were you ever worried that you’d end up somewhere like Friern Barnet?’
`No… going to psychiatric hospitals has never bothered me. Never bothered me. I like Chase Farm, I… I’ll… I’ll go up there. I see Geraldine and then I can go and see other people I know. I’ve been up there so long now, like ten years…’
`You know everyone?’
`That… everybody knows me. If some people call out `Bob’ sometimes, I look round and I don’t know that person, but it’s to do with EMU… when I was doing EMU. That’s… oh, I’ve got loads of friends up there. There’s always… always a laugh, something they’ve been up to isn’t there? You get depressed ones who… you know, you’ve got to… nurse them along, but you see some of the people on a high, you’re… you’re laughing then. The nurses are nice to me up there as well. Especially the ones that have been there a long while. They always ask me how I am and how I’m getting on and… `where are you living now?’, `are you happy?’ and all that. They see me go to Geraldine all the time… I visit her nearly every day. Our relationship’s just on hold at the time being… ‘till… ‘till she’s sorted out properly and… eventually she’ll go to a home, so… it’s no good, sort of… going into it like… you get in a…’
`How long did you… you say she’s been there two and a half years?’
`Two and a half years, yeah… [both talking together]. I was in hospital the same time wasn’t I?’
`What… how long was your longest admission?’
`This time I think, was the… yeah… it’s the long… there about a year. Over a year, what am I talking about, over a year. One of my best friends died when I was in hospital, I was depressed as well. He was coming to see me…’
`Mmm’
`Very skillful… how to deal with me when I’m ill. And… got a phone call one day from his wife… she said, `Bob, I’ve got to tell you, Bernard’s died… oh…’. He always used to slip me a few quid out of his… ‘cause he’s a lawnmower man as well. He used to slip me a few bob and… generally see to me, ‘cause I’ve helped him out through little criseses… when his marriage was a bit hooky… ended up in divorce in the end but… he was a bit low over that and I sort of… I was a bit high at the time when he… was going through it, so I… he tagged onto my… shirt sleeve… and got him out of it. There’s a lot to be said for helping other people in psychiatry ‘cause… you get a better perspective of yourself… and… you feel better. I like being popular with people up in Chase Farm. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like me. There probably is, but I don’t know anybody who does. But… I always look forward to go in there. ‘Cause Geraldine and I don’t always have that much to say to one another because it’s all be said hasn’t it? You… what can you say when you’ve been in hospital all day? She can’t tell me much about what she’s been doing. I can tell her a bit what I’ve been doing ‘cause I’ve been out.’
`How long do you think it will be before she gets out?’
`Two or three months. I hope that’s as long as it’ll be. She’s got her own nurse there as well. One nurse is allocated to her. [Pause]. I just carry on, doing what I’m doing and visit her and that’s it… it’s no good. But I eventually will see the doctor about her, in another couple of weeks. I’ll… go on to the ward round in a couple of weeks and… have a say. But so far she seems to be treated all right. The doctor… I’m happy with the doctor… he’s an Irish doctor. And… she seems to be knowing what she’s doing with her. So, I’ll have to go from there. As long as I visit her and take up her drinks and her fags and that, she’s all right. She don’t put no pressure on me at all. Don’t keep ringing here all the time and… mucking about. As long as I visit her regular that’s all right. I will ask sometimes, `what do you want me to bring you up?’, you know… `anything you want?’. She says, `just bring yourself up.’ [Long pause].
[Silence]
`Do you want to… finish it there?’
`Yeah… yeah…’
`Is there anything else you want to… to add?’
`Not that I can think of… not really. You’ve covered most of it.’
`Any sort of message you want to give to people who might be watching this tape in the future?’
`Well I just hope that if watch the tape… it helps them to get a better understanding of themselves. And realise you can get well with manic depression.’
`So you think you… despite… well, your illness as you put it, you… you’ve lived a… quite… well, you’ve obviously lived a very interesting life..?’
`Very interesting life, yeah… oh yeah… yeah… a few disasters here and there on the way, but basically I’m… I’m a happy person anyway.’
`Ok… all right…’
`All right?’
`Thanks very much.’
`Pleasure…’
[End of DVC Pro tape 4 of 4 – End of VHS tape 1 of 1]
