15 NICKY NICHOLLS

 
NICKY NICHOLLS C905/15/01-05/VHS 01-02

 
MENTAL HEALTH TESTIMONY ARCHIVE

NICKY NICHOLLS
 
C905/15/01-05/VHS 01-02
Original on DVC-Pro
Copy on VHS

Interviewed by Premila Trivedi
Camera by Faye

Transcribed by Julie Sharman
October 1999

[Start of DVCPro tape 1 of 5 – Start of VHS tape 1 of 1]
[Camera: `Interview with Nicky Nicholls, C905/15 tape number one’].

`Ok, so hello Nicky. It’s good to have this opportunity to talk with you and to hear something about your life story. I wonder if we could begin perhaps by talking about when you were born and where, and maybe a little bit about your family circumstances at the time?’

`Yeah, sure. Apparently… and I say apparently, I was born in Weybridge [ph], in Surrey in a private maternity home, and was abandoned at ten days old… and my next recollection of that is… is… my first memory is about three… of being with my maternal grandparents. Not ever knowing my mother from birth… and not really asking or caring… just being there, you know…

`Can… can you tell me a bit more about those early memories at… at three, of your maternal grandparents?’

`Yeah. My first memory is of having a little friend called Paul, and he was deaf and dumb, and I remember being… this was a specific moment of being agitated, because he couldn’t speak, and I was trying to teach him in a nursery rhyme, and I didn’t realise he couldn’t hear me. That was the very first memory of holding his hand, and the next one at about the same age, was of a policeman, shooting a dog in the head. He’d been poisoned and the policeman shouted at me, and… and told me to go away, and I think that was my first memory of terror, and fear, and I remember running and running and running… not stopping.’
`Could you do anything with that? I mean did you run to somebody?’

`No, I didn’t. I just kept running ‘till I got down to some near allotments, where all the kids used to play in the street, ‘cause in them days every… all the kids played out in the streets and… and most of the time it was safe out there, and… and then… my next memory was, my gran telling me that Paul had been killed, and he’d walked in front of a lorry, not hearing it, and I remember asking about his three wheeled bike, ‘cause I didn’t have toys, and getting a clout round the ear ‘ole, for not understanding what death meant, you know… and I didn’t… and…’

`So that was when you were about four or five then?’

`No, about three… three or four…’

`Oh, [both talking together] so very young…’

`It was a very early memory, and… my first memory of death… and stuff like that.’

`Gosh, that must have been devastating for you, to have… you know to have such a loss?’

`Yeah, I think it was confusing… not… as I don’t think I knew those feelings then. I think I was very confused of where… that he was never there again for me, you know, ‘cause he used to let me borrow his bike. I used to hold his hand and take care of him. You know, so… that was sort of the first early memories…’

`With… with… in your home with your grandparents, were you the only child or were there other people around?’

`I had several aunties and uncles. They were all very much older, they were like teenagers probably. There was my grandmother and my grandfather who was… quite an abusive man, that verbally is very loud, and he was quite Victorian in his ways… and once he spoke, the whole house went quiet. When he wasn’t there the whole house went wild, full of teenagers doing their stuff and I used to sit under the table in the kitchen all the time… and what I saw most was feet really, walking backwards and forwards, being afraid. And I was being abused by him… sexually, and I was bribed with sweets, and told not to tell. Sometimes my gran went away, and I think it was to visit her children, that had moved… married and got… you know, moved away, and… and… I just started carrying these terrible secrets before I was five. So…’

`And there was nobody within the aunts or uncles that you could have told?’

`No, there was two uncles abusing me… in turn. One joined the Army, and I used to dread it when he came back, you know, the uniform and… this terrible fear, and it… it… you know, in hindsight I feel that uniforms have played a big part in my life, you know, they used to bring me terror, you know, like the policeman shooting the dog, and… and the Army uniform. One of the other… other uncles that was abusing me, got married, and he moved away eventually, so there was just the two… my grandfather and my uncle, the Army man…’

`Was there… situations in that family set up where you did actually feel safe, where you any sense of security?’

`When my gran was home I used to cling to her, she used to… she used to have the old starched, white pinnies that smelt nice, and… there was a big black hob in the kitchen, and a fire burning, and they didn’t have any furniture except upright chairs. There was no armchairs or settees, but she used to sit me on her knee, and I recall that quite vividly, of being safe with her… and then… the total fear when she would go away, ‘cause she never took me with her, you know.’

`Yeah… it sounds really distressing. Did… did your grandparents talk to you about your mother at all?’

`No… no I never… I never asked for a long time. When I started school, on my very first day, I got beat up by the school bully, her name was Nina. I’ll never forget her either, and… she beat me up… because I had old parents. She said my parents were old, and it didn’t make any sense to me then, you know. So… that’s how it started really. The abuse was very early, physical, sexually… and emotionally I suppose.’

`Yes. And then it carried on into your school life as well with…?’

`Yeah…’

`…with other children?’

`I was very isolated in school. I used to… at a very early age I felt that I didn’t belong in the playground with them, it was like…always on the outside looking in, because they always seemed as though they had toys, they had nice clothes… I was very scruffy and my grandparents were very poor. You know, it was post-war stuff and things were short… toys and clothes and stuff like that, so… if you were poor you didn’t have it, you know.’

`And was it a mixed school?’

`It was a mixed school, yeah…’

`Yeah?’

`Yeah…’
`Can you tell me a little bit more about the school, you know…?’

`It was a very old school… you know, and the teachers were very Victorian too, and… corporal punishment was all… was there at that school, rapped knuckles, canes. I got impaled on a grid once, on a Victorian grid… it went all the way through my knee, and I remember… because I… I was… I wasn’t allowed to cry… it wasn’t the done thing to cry, you didn’t cry… and, I remember the whole playground surrounded me… and staring down at me, and looking at me in amazement because I wasn’t crying, and… I didn’t cry. I was only worried about wetting myself because I was running away from the bully to go to the toilet, and… yeah, it… it… it was a very traumatic start for, you know… for a five year old, I suppose.’

`Did you find any teachers who were particularly kind or…?’

`No. Never. I was frightened of grown ups from the very beginning, and I think… my trust had been taken away, even though I didn’t realise it at such at young age, that.. I just didn’t go near grown ups, if I could help it… or children… you know, in retrospect, because I was… I think I just… the bullies just found me, you know. I… I just thought I was that kind of person in the end, that… that I was vulnerable and I looked vulnerable, and… I didn’t speak properly, ‘cause I didn’t converse with other children very well, so…’

`So you didn’t have a special group of friends or a special friend, or…?’

`No… no. Most of them used to laugh at me ‘cause I wasn’t dressed like them or I didn’t have toys, and… and things like that, so you… you know, you were left out from the beginning… you know… and… and I suppose children can be very cruel, without knowing it, and I was the one to be picked on, you know… so, my… my childhood was very silent.’

`In terms of the work you were doing, like in school during those early years, did you… how did you find that, sort of actual learning?’

`No… No, I wasn’t very good. The best thing I ever did in all my school days, you know, until I was nearly fifteen, was stand up and spell `biscuit’… and I was hopeless at everything else. Good at drawing… that was picked out quite early, but anything else, Maths, English, History… just useless, hopeless… I didn’t concentrate and I didn’t achieve anything.’

`Can you tell me a bit more about the drawing? You said that was picked up quite early?’

`Yes… people used to tell me I was good at drawing. I used to enjoy it, as well, you know. But I suppose it really didn’t mean much, ‘cause I wasn’t encouraged at home, you know, and then… when I was just turned five, and all this stuff was going on, my natural mother turned up, right out of the blue and… and I remember that day specifically. I remember what she had on, what she looked like… what happened. There was a lot of screaming and shouting between my grandfather and her, and my gran was crying. I'd never seen my gran cry. And… and I was dragged out, by my mother… by this woman, my mother… and I just remember screaming a lot until I got to the front door and she looked at me and said, `shut up’ in such a way that it frightened me, and I did shut up, straight away, and I went with this woman… went on my first steam train [laughs]… which frightened me. And… there was no word spoken at all, all the way to London. I didn’t know where London was, and… that’s where I ended up, in London.’

`And previously you’d been with your grandparents, where was that?’

`In Stoke… Stoke on Trent… a mining… a mining town.’

`Can… can you remember that experience of going on the train…?’

`Yeah…’

`…and not having any communication?’

`I was terrified. I was just terrified of this person. You know, who she was, and not being told who she was, and that I just had to shut up and go with her, and that was it really, that was the end of… that was the end of my childhood, as it was.’

`Can… can you remember what happened when you actually reached London then?’
`Yes, I was introduced to this… this man, who apparently was her husband, and taken to a room, with just… compared to my grandparents, it was very posh. They obviously had money, there was carpet on the floor. I’d never seen carpet before… and curtains, and… a bed of my own… ‘cause everybody slept together in… in one bed, in Stoke… and… I was just frightened, and… I remember starting to cry and he came in. His name was Les, and he looked at me and he said, `Don’t cry’, and he took the light bulb out, so I couldn’t switch the light on, and he just shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, you know, `it’s not my fault’. And that was the start of that. And there wasn’t really any explanations. I wasn’t told anything… and… it was quite clear to me… then… that my mother hated me, ‘cause she started beating me quite early, after… I mean really beating. My first good hiding, ever… my first physical good hiding from her was with saucepans, round the head, and knocked me off a chair, and… then told not to cry, and put in the room, the light bulb taken out… and my chest used to hurt with wanting to cry, and you knew you couldn’t… you know, even then you knew you couldn’t, or else… so you didn’t.

`So you were actually living sort of physically in quite nice surroundings, but there was all this horrendous abuse…?
`Yeah…’

`…going on?’
`And I missed… I missed my gran, and… I wondered where she was, and I missed my dolly. I had one dolly, that she bought me from a Salvation Army jumble sale, with an… it had an eye and a leg missing, and I got it for… one Christmas, and it was my most treasured thing and I didn’t have it.’

`So that had been left behind?’

`It had had been left behind, yeah. So… that was the start of it really, and I… as I said before, my childhood was gone. You know, the beatings started, I wasn’t treated like a child, I wasn’t treated like anything… that you would treat anyone. Totally ignored. I remember they looked at me… you could tell she hated me. You know. You could just tell by her face.’

`Were there any other adults or any other children around?’

`Other children came later. I think she must have been pregnant, because it was about… shortly after… and my first step sister was born… and… I don’t remember much about that really, but… because I was always so quiet and I wasn’t allowed to play. I used to have to sit all the time, or… sit in my bedroom or whatever. I do remember getting measles, and getting dragged out of bed and beaten, ‘cause it was so inconvenient, and I remember going to the bathroom and trying to wash the spots off, ‘till they bled, but they wouldn’t come off and I just made them worse. So… you know, it was just things like that, it was just… emotional cruelty, you know, and the beatings, and the hidings… and everything just got worse and worse, and… I think she got a bit too close sometimes, and they changed my name, from what it was, and… I remember getting rapped on the knuckles at this posh school in Finchley, for putting the wrong name down. I wasn’t told that it had been changed, you know, and I could barely write anyway, I was very… immature in school, you know.’

`So how did you find that transition from the school in Stoke to the school in London?’

`Exactly the same, I got picked on just the same because I was different again. You know, even though… I was… I had nice clothes now, you know, and I was dressed nicely, and to the outside world I was a nice, normal little girl. It was all hidden, what was going on.’

`So you never felt you could tell the teachers in school?’

`Oh no, no. As I say, I didn’t like adults… kept as far away as possible, and I liked being on my own really because it was the safest way to be. You know, when I went home from school, to my mother’s… I was usually locked in my room or told to go to my room without being fed, sometimes… and then she was pregnant again, and I was… she gave me a really good hiding… I can’t even remember why, but… it was with a bamboo cane and I was very badly marked, and then I was shipped off back to Stoke. They… they tied a… a luggage label on my… on my coat lapel, and I was put in the goods van, with the parcels, and, when I got to Stoke station my gran was waiting for me, and she had my dolly, but…’

`And how did that feel?’

`That was terrific… it was just… and confusing too, and she was crying… and… but that was short lived again, ‘cause as soon as I got back, the abuse started again, in secret, you know, so…’

`And how old were you at that stage?’

`Probably six and a half, seven… I don’t know. I can’t really put a… you know… it was… I was… I was on that train journey so many times, backwards and forwards, but… you just lose it really.’

`And then you stayed with your grandmother… with your grandparents… after that, for a while?’

`Near the end of my school days, yeah… yeah…’
`And did you still have contact with your mother?’

`No, no, I was taken from her… and… I remember… I was sort of in a… I should have been in a growing up period at that age, and… beginning to realise or understand it… the sexual abuse had been very wrong… and what… and the beatings and everything was wrong, because… for me it was normal. It had become a way of life, and it’s what happened to… to people like me, ‘cause I was no good… I was told that quite often. My mother used to hold me in the bath, under water… ‘till I nearly drowned, and just said, I was a `no good little bastard’. You know… and what I didn’t realise was her pain, ‘cause I didn’t know about grown up things as such, you know, even though all that sexual abuse was going on, I… I never grew up for a long time. Well after my teens… you know.’

`It must have been very… it must have been very difficult for you. I mean who… who talked to you about things like periods and stuff, I mean…?’

`No one. No one. I’d been raped very early… I’m not sure of my age, probably eight or ten… ‘cause I remember it, very well. I was taken into the paedophile ring… by one of my mother’s friends, or cleaner… and… had suffer that quite a lot, especially during the school holidays… and… I remember there once being… there was blood… a lot of blood about… and being shipped off back to Stoke again. They used to hide it. They were very clever. It was all hidden and… [sighs]… and I still didn’t think there was anything wrong with that because it’s the way I’d been treated, and, as I say, in the… you know, as… as I was getting to fourteen, fifteen… you start to realise how awful it is, and I think I just totally withdrew, into myself. I became very isolated from a very early age… because… although I’d felt different through my school years, as I was growing up I knew I was different then, because children weren’t treated like that.’

`So even as you were growing up you weren’t… making friendships with your own kind of…?’

`No… I never had friends…’

`…like age group…?’

`Never. Not ever, once. I can’t remember one friend. Except for Paul… you know, in the very early days.’

`What about… I mean, can you remember playing as a child…or…?’

`No…’

`…going out, or…any leisure activities?’

`I remember playing… no, I never went out… things like that… not… not as a teenager, I just withdrew and… stick close to my gran, ‘cause everything stopped. The abuse stopped. I think in a way, when it stopped, that was worse, because it was the anticipation of will it start again? So the fear was more embedded in me, when it wasn’t happening, ‘cause it went very, very silent… and… I was just very unhappy.’

`Did you… did you find there was anything that you were… like before you mentioned about your drawing, was there anything that you could do, that kind of soothed you, or helped you at all?’

`No… when… when I was with my mother, I was… in my room drawing a picture, and she sneaked up behind me and… and she smashed my head into the table, broke my nose, and told me how I wasn’t good enough to do those things, and I never drew again. I went… I… I reverted back to matchstalk drawings at school, which… to the horror of some of the teachers.’

`Because they knew…’

`Yes…’

`…that you were quite gifted?’

`I sabotaged everything, after that, and… I wasn’t to draw again until I was about nineteen in a mental hospital, so I abandoned that… and I just worried… I just spent most of my time worrying when I could get away from all this, you know…’

`What about with the other… other subjects at school, were you still finding those quite difficult?’

`Yeah, when I left school I couldn’t even join my letters together. I was totally hopeless, you know…’

`And…what happened at that time… I mean you were… you were growing up, and then… did you sort of like… what… did you have any ambitions for yourself, like when you were a teenager?’

`No… I just didn’t want to be abused any more. That was the only ambition I had. I didn’t have any. The school found me a job, very… I left school at fourteen and a half, because it was the Easter holidays and I would have been fifteen by the time we went back, so I didn’t go back, and they’d found me a job at… with Spode pottery, painting pottery… and I just remember the… the absolute terror, of going into this factory that was full of grown ups, and factory workers can be quite abusive or… or loud, you know… and expletive… and, I just found that emotionally abusive to me and I was frightened. There were some nice people but I was… I was still frightened, of being in this environment, and… I didn’t manage to hold onto the job, I was too scared. I was ducking every time someone came near me, thinking I was going to get hit or abused, and…’

`In that job did they kind of train you, or was there a sort of like apprenticeship thing or anything like that?’

`Yes… yeah, you had training. And I found that quite scary, because people were behind you all the time and I’d be wondering if they were going to hurt me, and I didn’t trust anyone. My trust had gone. I didn’t trust anyone at all… so I just went from job to job, giving my gran most of my wages, which wasn’t a lot, and sticking with her really. And…’

`What kind of hours were you working in the factory?’

`They were quite long. They were from very early in the morning until six o’clock at night. I think there was a… I worked in a factory called Michelin, that used to do inner tubes for tyres… that’s going back a bit… things like that, and… but, there was all these grown ups and adults being rude and telling rude jokes, and you know, and my own realisation that whatever it was that was supposed to happen in… in this part had already happened to me. You know, the sexual thing, but… it had already been happening and it was wrong, and it made me feel different, and I felt guilty, because I’d been threatened, it was… you know, I was bad and… so I was… had this great big sack of guilt on my shoulder as well. You know, it was a bit heavy for someone who’s still a teenager.’

`And so even… were there other teenagers working in the same places?’

`I can’t actually remember. I just remember lots of people, and hating going there, and can’t wait to get out, and I used to go back and sit under the table, in my gran’s kitchen, ‘cause that was my best place to be, with the dog, you know. The family dog…’
`Could you talk to your mother about the fact that you were so unhappy at work or…?’

`No, I… no, I wasn’t allowed to speak to my mother, but I didn’t speak to my grandmother either. I think sometimes I was afraid to speak in case something came out that I wasn’t supposed to tell. ‘Cause you’re not supposed to tell all these things, you know, but I think she knew what was… had been going on. I think she was quite hopeless…’

`And when… when you were between jobs, did you find it… if you left one job, did you find it fairly easy to get another job or…?’

`Oh yeah, jobs were two a penny then, ‘cause it was… the country was getting itself together, and industry was thriving.’
`And did you feel pressurised by your grandparents that you should be working and bringing in a wage or…?’

`Yeah, you were supposed to bring in a wage, I mean that was the way it was, but there weren’t… there wasn’t really any pressure from gran. I avoided my grandfather like the plague, you know.’

`So even when you had like, money in your hand, you didn’t see that as opening up any opportunities for you or…?’
`No, I used to give it all to my gran… just keep… I started smoking quite early. I’d just keep my cigarette money. My gran learnt me to smoke, ‘cause smoking was ok then. It was the `in’ thing.’

`And would people in the factory smoke?’

`Yeah… and… you were supposed to be grown up if you smoked, and…’

`So you’ve had a variety of jobs in different factories…?’

`Yeah, and then… one day I saw an advertisement for the Army. I was… I was seventeen and a half, just old enough to join, and… I made the decision there and then, ‘cause this was my way of getting out. I think it’s the first time I had an ambition as well, that I could start again on my own, see the world… have a career, you know… and… that’s what… well I joined the Army, I didn’t actually see the world. Didn’t get very far.’

`How was… how was that whole experience of kind of applying to the Army and being accepted?’

`There was no [inaudible] in the tests, because… I didn’t think I’d pass it at all, but I did. And then there was… quite a… [pause]… I had to have my birth certificate, and it was then that I found out everything on my birth certificate wasn’t true. I’d been a… there was… all these things on it, and… declarations of untruths at the end, signed by my mother… and… she’d got on the birth certificate that my grandfather was my father, which quite put a lot in perspective of her pain and anger at me. [Pause] You know… so… that was quite traumatic. There was a lot of crying, and… my grandfather didn’t want me to have the birth certificate. He told me that my father was a GI, American Red Indian, soldier… fantastic story, and… I knew it wasn’t true. I just knew by looking at my gran, and… I chose to hang on to the… the Indian story, as the cover up for me… for my guilt, my shame… the way I felt. Filthy, dirty… used… betrayed…’

`That’s a terrible revelation, and at a time when you were feeling a bit hopeful, and as you say, having ambitions for the first time…’

`So I left there, angry… and I joined the Army, angry… and I think the anger destroyed me. Destroyed that ambition.’

`Can… can you say a bit more about that perhaps? You know, about life in the Army?’

`Yeah… it was… it was just like going to school. I was picked on straight away. I must have had it written on my forehead, `I am vulnerable, beat me up’. It was only… it wasn’t them, it was because I didn’t know how to mix with people or to converse, or to have a conversation, because I hadn’t had any. You know… and… it was just… not being able to join in, just frightened, and… and of course, the whole camp was full of Army uniforms which didn’t help my case very much, but however, I went through the training, and I ran away once, I got frightened. I discovered there were gay people in the world and I got… one of the ladies tried it on, a Corporal, and frightened the life out of me and I ran away and ended up in Soho… [laughs], you know… not intentionally, I didn’t… I didn’t know that it was that kind of place, but I got… I quickly got picked up by the Military Police, and taken back, and… I was given another chance, and I was moved to Aldershot to do my… I joined the Ordinance corps, ‘cause I wanted to be in the bomb squad originally… a lot. That was high hopes for someone with my education and I became a radio operator. So I achieve what I set out to do, and I was moved to my first camp in Bicester in Oxfordshire, and… again it was just like going back to school. I was… I… I… I couldn’t join in, and one night I was dragged out of my bed and I had drink poured down my throat, and I felt fantastic. That was it, I’d found it. It made me feel like them, want to dance like them, be like them… it helped me to do things I’d always wanted to do… and that same night, I drank to excess, ‘cause it was so fantastic, and I’d never experienced alcohol before, and I fell out of a window, and when I stood up, my left foot was hanging off. It was severed… and… and… that was the end of my career, and the start of a new one… being an alcoholic.’

`How… how did the Army respond to that incident where…?’

`Quite badly, I got the blame, I was drunk. You know, they got… they got out of it, but on the other hand they kept me on the camp for quite a… quite a long time because… while I was in the Army my grandparents had died, so I was homeless… and… really that… there was nowhere to go… and… there was a girl in the camp who said I could go and live in Darlington with her parents. She arranged it with her parents… and I’d had several skin grafts and operations, to put myself together, and in that respect, the Army were good to me. But… I got the blame and I was dishonourably discharged, because I was drunk… and I didn’t tell what happened, ‘cause you don’t tell. I was still in that mode of not telling. You know, that the drink was actually poured down me… and…’

`So at that…’

`It wall voluntary really.’

`And at that time they were seeing the alcohol, incident as a kind of disciplinary thing rather than something you might have needed help with?’

`Yeah… yeah. But they missed that, and… and I hobbled off in my… calliper, to Darlington, to these… to this horrendous family [laughs]. They used to call… they had two… two other girls, teenagers, and I used to call them the Ugly Sisters, ‘cause they picked on me. I think it’s ‘cause they were jealous of their mum’s attention on me and… her dad was alright. But it was strange and I didn’t like it, and I just wanted the effect of the alcohol. I… I couldn’t think of anything else, all the time I was in hospital, was how good that drink made me feel, and being a very experienced… inexperienced sort of person in life’s terms, you know, I just went out and brought more whiskey, ‘cause that’s all I knew. And just drank it, drank the whole lot, and that took me into my first mental hospital.’
`Was that while you were still in Darlington?’

`Yeah…’

`Right…’

`I was taken to hospital, and I think I attacked a Policeman, in a blackout, ‘cause I blacked out straight away. And… and women in those days didn’t get drunk and attack policemen, or didn’t wear trousers and striped tee-shirts, and wear one earring [laughs]… not in 1964 you didn’t.’

`And did you have a reason for kind of… a specific reason for dressing… in that way?’

`I dressed in… I… I dressed… male, because I thought… I believed… I really did believe that if anybody was going to abuse me again it would put them off, and I didn’t want to be feminine and I didn’t want to be… you know, be involved with sex. I was frightened.’

`Can I… can I just go back a little bit to the Army. You were in a women’s corps were you, so…?’

`I was in… yeah, the woman… the women… WRAC… yeah…’

`So most of your contact in that period, would be with other women?’

`Well it was a mixed camp, but yeah… mostly it was women. I didn’t go out anyway, to the NAAFI, or… or things like that.’

`And so you were probably in the Army for a few… few years then?’

`No, I was in eighteen months, that’s all it lasted. Well, it… it’s a miracle that I didn’t drink for eighteen months, when I look back, ‘cause at… the Army’s about drinking really… ‘cause the camps are usually quite isolated and the NAAFI is the only entertainment, you know… so most of the time I just used to stay in the barracks… it was a… eight bed barracks, you know… eight beds… and… yeah, it was quite lonely really, but everything was better than what I’d come from, so I treated everything as a bonus. Even being shouted at by the Sergeant Major and things like that, I could take with a pinch of salt, you know… ‘cause they shouted at you but they didn’t hit you. You know…’

`Yeah. Just going back a bit, do you… you say you became a radio operator…how did that feel, kind of, you know you’d done the course, you’d passed… did you have a feeling of achievement about that?’

`No, not really. I just went along… I just went with the flow really. I think I could have done better, but it was the best I could do. You know, people were going for good jobs, like… animal vets and drivers and stuff like that. I settled for the easier thing ‘cause that’s all I was capable of, you know, I wasn’t… wasn’t very clever. I was very… very immature. Very.’

`And so you went off to Darlington to start a new life?’

`I don’t know what I went to Darlington for, it was just… somewhere to go, you know… and… I’d never really travelled anywhere before, so… Darlington it was.’

`And… you said that, at that time you were… that’s when you seriously started drinking?’

`Yeah, yeah. I had a taste and I liked it, ‘cause it helped me, to become confident… and to do things that… I would be able to do normally if I’d have been… capable of doing it, you know. Just talking to someone, just having a… a two way conversation with someone instead of `yes’, `no’ or running away, you know.’

`And did you… work when you were in Darlington?’

`No… no… I was quite badly injured, and… no I didn’t work. I just drank. Whatever money I got, was spent on drink.’

`Were the family aware that this was going on?’
`Not at first, but then they… they… they became aware, and… I know when I was taken into my first hospital, Winterton Hospital… mental hospital… that they came to see me a couple of times. And then suddenly it stopped, and then I don’t think they were coping with the fact I was actually in a mental hospital.’

`So what… what happened to take you into the mental hospital?’
`I’d got very drunk, and I remember feeling angry about this calliper on my leg. [Pause]… and taking the calliper off, when I’d had some drink, throwing it over someone’s back garden, and scraping my foot along the floor, ‘cause I couldn’t walk properly, but still drinking, and… I remember seeing a policeman, and I don’t know whether it’s… was a flashback to the childhood policeman telling me to go away, while he shot this dog, but I just… went into a total blackout and I was told that I attacked him… and I actually woke up in Winterton Hospital, not even knowing where I was. I had no idea where I was. I don’t think I’d ever heard of mental hospitals, you know, I’d… I don’t think I’d ever heard of them.’

`So in… in your growing up period, you… you’d not come across kind of…?’

`No…’

`…mental illness, or…?’

`I know I was involved in it, but I’d never heard of hospitals. I know now though, that the whole family was dysfunctional. Hmm…’

`So waking up in the hospital, I mean how did…how did you make any sense of that, or what happened next?’

`I just felt very, very ill, for a start, and… and then being aware of a lady called Gwen, with a teddy bear, but she was very old for a teddy bear. She was an older lady, about fifty, walking round in these circles, and thinking how strange that was. And then… expanding my views on… on the… on this place, and people were rocking in chairs and… I just didn’t know where I was, you know. And I felt terribly ill, and then being given medication and being told that I… I was in a mental hospital.’

`Right… maybe we can have a bit of a break?’

`Yeah… I’m very thirsty…’

`Right, Nicky, we were talking about… how you ended up in Winterton, after that incident with the policeman. If we can go back a bit, and talk a bit about your first impressions of Winterton, you know, in terms of kind of the actual structure of the ward… other patients? What you remember…?’

`I found it very scary. It was foreboding and Winterton Hospital was one of the old Victorian… pre-Victorian hospitals, very old and grim… and big, you know. There was no end to the corridors, but… at first I was in a locked ward, and I was placed in a locked ward because I was under age, I was under twenty one, and not safe to be up. I was diagnosed with depression and as the months went by with these… there was no integration with the… with the patients. Some of them were very violent, very seriously ill patients that couldn’t talk or… or anything, and… most of them were older. Most of them were very much older than I was, and I was terrified. And… so that was my first impression.’

`Can you remember anything about what kind of assessments you had or anything when you first went in. You said you were diagnosed with depression? Can you remember how they came to that conclusion, or…?’

`No, I can’t remember the… actually going in there, I just remember sort of being in the locked ward, and… I did see a Psychiatrist I think once a week, a male one, who, most of the time, just asked how I was, and… showed me blotting paper… had all these tests of… shapes on blotting paper, and what they reminded me of, and… I was put on liquid largactil… my first drug sort of experience, and it made me feel drowsy, and horrible and miserable, and confined in a very small space, and at night time, at bed time, I was taken upstairs, to a very big sort of ward where all the beds were pushed together. Quite a lot of beds, probably fifty, even more… all pushed together touching each other, and there’d be a lot of wailing and screaming and moaning going on, and… just two sort of night nurses that didn’t really do anything, or talk to you… just sort of told you to shut up, you know, told people to shut up or… you know…’

`So you didn’t have any, like lockers or anything then in that sleeping… section?’

`No we didn’t. Our lockers were downstairs in the ward, and we had a key, and we had to put it round our neck, and they would lock us in the… actually in the day ward, with a number on it.’

`So was it like a separate building then, the ward… was it… or was it part of a bigger, a bigger building?’

`Oh it was part of a big… bigger building…’

`Right… and… and you had the day area downstairs and the…?’

`And a night…and the nights… the wards were upstairs. You know, above the day room.
And the padded cells were just round on the right, and I was ex… to experience padded cells very quickly.’

`Can you talk a bit more about that perhaps?’

`Yeah, I mean… I… I have to remember I was only nineteen and… quite traumatised by this new experience, apart from my previous ones, and I became more and more depressed, and… I used to start to cry and shout, wanting to get out… and I remember being diagnosed as… as in a very depressed state, and being told that I was going to have this ECT, which I didn’t even know what it was, and I didn’t ask… and actually being… being given a pre-med that made me drowsy, and then taken down to this place, outside the ward, out into the grounds and across to these huts, and… and the first time I ever went there, one of the nurses pulled up one of the cubicle curtains aside, and I saw what was happening to someone… and that was my… first sight of ECT… a person was like having sort of fits and jerking and… horrible… and I was terrified, and I started to fight… I tried to get away… and the same thing happened to me, time and time again, and I never used to remember who I was.’

`And nobody had explained to you before hand what would happen during the treatment or anything?’

`No… nothing. There was no explanations. There were… there was too many people on the wards, there was only two nurses on each shift, and there was no one to one’s or anything like that, except when you saw the Psychiatrist once a week, so you were very much left on your own, you know. And then… I was to experience sexual and physical abuse from nurses, eventually, after a few months being on that ward.’

`Was it a women’s ward?’
`It was a woman’s ward, yeah.’

`And were the staff female?’

`Yes. Yeah. The doctor was a male, but he was in a separate office. He had his office somewhere else.'

`You were… you were saying earlier about a padded cell, and that you ended up in there…?’

`Yeah…’

`Was… was that to do with you refusing to have ECT or…?’

`Yeah, or just trying to get out of the ward… trying to get out of the locked doors and just… you know, getting physical about it, banging on the doors or… you know, trying to hurt myself, because I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the confinement and I was terrified of the patients, and… the first time I had a straight jacket I was just absolutely petrified, and then I was injected and passed out. And I was injected with stuff that I could taste, and when I woke up I was in a padded cell, on my own, alone… couldn’t hear anything… and the whole thing was padded and… it was just unreal, you know.’

`Was there any furniture in the room?’
`Nothing, it was just the pads… on the walls, on the floor… totally padded cell, with a gutter running sort of round the edges, and the… like the… the… the door was like a prison door. You know, and… a couple of nurses came in once and they force fed me. You know… so I was heaving and I didn’t want it.’

`And what about if you wanted to go to the toilet or anything like that?’

`I think they came in for that and gave you a… like a potty or something, but… most of the time you was just all day, on your own. Just wondering what was happening, and you’d keep dozing in and out of sleep ‘cause you were so doped up with drugs… it didn’t really matter in the end, you didn’t know whether it was night or day or what.’

`And what clothing would they… would you have on?’

`It was like a sack thing, that went over your head. It was very rough. It was like a sack cloth, very thick and rough. It was horribly… itchy… [laughs]… used to itch, and you couldn’t scratch yourself when you had a straight jacket on. It used to be really irritating.’

`So you’d have the straight jacket on as well?’

`On top of that, yeah… and it’s just because I was frightened. I wanted to get out. I was frightened of everyone in the hospital. You know, and… my… my drugs used to be replaced in my locker with vodka, from these nurses, in the end, and I’d be taken to the padded cells sometimes, for sex… or taken out… actually they’d applied to take me out the hospital for day’s out, and I’d be taken to hotels or their homes, for sex… and they said I’d be going to the pictures or the skating rink… and that went on for quite a while with two of them… and then one of them let me out one night, during the night, in the middle of the night… gave me some money, and told me to go… and I was just pushed out of the hospital with nowhere to go, in the middle of the night. And that was my first experience of Winterton…’

`Gosh that sounds pretty horrendous… it sounds…’

`It was… it was horrible.’

`And again, did you feel like there was nobody you could tell about the abuse?’

`No… well I was in that mode that you don’t tell anybody anything, or else you don’t know what’s going to happen to you, and… I remember… she’d given me some money, the nurse… and I remember thinking about having a drink and that would help me… again. And… I woke up in Redcar. I don’t know where that is actually, I think it’s in Yorkshire somewhere, but I woke up in Redcar in a bed and breakfast, feeling really diabolical, and... thinking... I can't live like this, I want to go to heaven… ‘cause I used to think about that when I was eight years old… wanting to die. And I thought I… I just can’t live like this, it’s not for me, and… I didn’t really know anything about suicide. I just know that if you took a lot of tablets you would die, so I bought some drink and tablets, with the money… and swallowed a whole bottle of… I think they were aspirins… they weren’t very good, I’d bought the wrong stuff, and drank the drink and that, and woke up in another mental hospital in Middlesborough… and that was my first suicide attempt. Now… and I remember feeling really gutted that I hadn’t died…’

`Yes. That sounds… yeah, it sounds pretty horrendous. I mean that… that whole experience of being… kicked out of Winterton in the middle of the night, sounds completely horrendous as well.’

`I think… I think the nurse was very sick, and… when I was first given that attention it was great, you know, because it… it was like someone cared about you and I was far too inexperienced to understand and realise that I was being used, and abused… again… with people that I should have been safe with, and trusted with.’

`Do you think… do you think other people were being abused on the ward?’

`I’ve… I’ve seen people been… being physically attacked by female staff… on… on two occasions… on… in two hospitals, in two different hospitals, so yeah, it does go on. Well it did, I mean, I know things have changed now, but… then.’

`And you never felt that you could ever discuss any of that with the Psychiatrists that you saw?’
`No, I had no rights. I had no rights as a child. And I believed I didn’t have any. I… I did stick up for one patient in the Middlesborough Hospital. She was getting attacked by a sister, a nursing sister, and the consequences of that was that… I went to attack the nurse to save this woman who was very mentally ill, being attacked, and my hand went through the office window, and my arm was cut open. Look, I don’t know if you can see the scar, it’s right along there… and… I was dragged in a room… an ante-room by the Sister and her… her staff, and held down while I was stitched without anaesthetic… and… I’d learned a long time ago not to cry, and I didn’t cry… and then I was shoved in a padded cell after that, and then I was in a locked ward again… and eventually I managed to escape. I got out the dining… a cleaner left the dining room window open and I got out... and I’ve never been back… [laughs].’

`Ok, we’re going to… stop to change the tape now, so thanks…’
[End of DVC Pro tape 1]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 2 – VHS tape 1 continues]

[Camera: `Interview with Nicky Nicholls, C905/15, tape number two’].

`So, you were in Middlesborough Hospital. While you were there, did anybody ever actually talk to you about why you’d taken the overdose or…?’
`No… no. I just remember seeing a Psychiatrist. And most of the time they gave you blotting paper to look at, and ask you questions that you didn’t want to answer, like about your childhood or your parents… and… those little square block things you had to put in the right shape, you know. That’s all I remember about there. I can’t… I can’t even remember one specific doctor, ‘cause you would remember one, or the name, but I can’t… so, they were very few and far between.’

`What about with the nurses, did you manage to form more of a relationship with nursing staff?’

`No not really, but there… after the padded cell, there was one nurse called Maureen, that actually complained about how long I’d been in there, and I… apparently I’d been in seven days, which is quite a long time, and she said she… she told me she’d made a complaint, and she brought me some drawing paper and an apple, and she was really nice. I’ll never forget her, and then I escaped a couple of days later, I got out, with another patient, and she got caught and I didn’t.’

`How did you actually get out of the padded cell?’

`Out of the dining room window, the cleaner had left it a bit open, and… I was off. Just grabbed this woman called Dorothy, and said, `Come on, we’re going… getting out of here’. I didn’t know that she was… quite a violent, violently ill woman, and… she was very violent. But… thank God, you know, she was ok with me, and thank God she got caught again. ‘Cause I didn’t know about mental illness like that, you know…’

`So at the Middlesborough Hospital, was… was the hospital in town or was it separate?’

`I have no idea at all…’

`Right…’

`…’cause I don’t remember actually going there again. Most of the places I went I was always drunk or out of it, or too ill. I just remember being there and the… asking where I was, and after I escaped I got very drunk, and… I think I hit another policeman and was taken back to Winterton. And… I got away from there in the end. It wasn’t the same.’

`Were you admitted onto the locked ward at Winterton?’

`Yeah, the same ward, with the same nurses. And they treated me differently. Totally ignored me sort of, as though nothing had happened. And not very pleased to see me back. I think they were scared maybe… that I might say something, but I wouldn’t have done. ‘Cause at… at the time, that was better than Middlesborough, you know.’
`So the first… first time you’d been in Winterton, how long had you been in there?’

`A year.’

`And then you were in Middlesborough…?’

`Mmm…’
`And then you were back in Winterton?’

`Yeah. Not for very long. They don’t really know how long, and I can’t tell you, but I just know that after that, I just hit the streets, and wandered about from town to town after that, you know, it was just like… repetitive stuff after that.’

`Just to… just to take you back to Winterton a bit… I wonder if… can you tell me a bit… either from that experience or from the time when you’d been in for a year… like maybe a bit about what you did during the day, you know, how your day would kind of be, if you can remember that?’

`Yeah, they used to have sort of OT stuff, but it used to come into the ward there, and it did like basket making or… the usual stuff, like trays… and things, and… and it was there in… in that ward that I actually painted again, from childhood for the first time, and there was a wonderful doctor there called Dr Simpson, she was a woman, and… she came in with a brown paper parcel to me, and she said, “Open it…”, and it was all drawing materials and crayons and pencils, and she said, “I’d really love you to draw me a picture.” I think Winston Churchill had died about that time and she… she wanted a portrait of him, and… I did it, eventually, after a bit of pushing, and then we had the great framing, and hanging day, in the ward, and I just have a vision of all these… these patients, and… Dr Simpson, and a couple of the other nurses, standing round and clapping while this picture was hung on the wall, and I… and me feeling totally embarrassed, you know, and waiting for someone to come and hit me… maybe, you know… old stuff… so, that’s when I started drawing and painting again.’

`Was that the first time really that you’d…?’

`Yeah…’

`So she must have had some idea that that was a skill?’

`Yeah, apparently that… I used to doodle a lot without knowing it, and one of the nurses had… had told her that I was quite good at drawing… so she… she very kindly brought this parcel…’

`And was there a place on the ward you could sit and do drawing…?’

`Yeah, it was like the usual… ward. Green walls, a few armchairs and some… and… and a dining area, you… you had it all in the same place. So there was like dining tables, you know, like school tables, you know the long… long ones? So there was… I used to draw there, while trying to keep a lookout from behind, you know… ‘cause you got attacked sometimes, so…’

`By…?’

`By other… patients that were ill and didn’t know. You know.’

`And did you… yes… so would it happen that other patients had also tried to perhaps take, you know, things you were using?’

`Oh yeah… yeah. There was a lot of stealing and destruction going on, so…’

`And… so… sorry…we’re just going to stop for a minute…’

`Ok Nicky, we were talking about Winterton, and you were telling me a bit about the structure of the ward, that the bedrooms were upstairs, and downstairs was the day area. I wonder if, within that ward, did… was there any opportunity for patients to have a bit of privacy? Was there anywhere… you could go?’

`No, no it was… the only private place was the bathroom, that was… off the day ward as well. There was like a… there was big old fashioned bathrooms, and… old fashioned baths, you know, the… they had no… surrounds to them, like in the middle of the floor. Yeah… and I suppose for lowering patients in that… that couldn’t get in.’
`Right…’

`But there wasn’t sort of private place for thinking or… you was together all the time.’

`Right. And did you find that… you know, difficult?’

`Yes. Yes, sort of… and… at bed times, I hated going to bed. You know, I hated bed, period. They… they hold… held different connotations for me, and you had to go… and… you had to get undressed where you were… and usually I rolled my clothes up an slept with them, you know… so…’

`Did you have curtains between the beds?’

`No… there wasn’t any curtains in that ward, none… there was no privacy at all.’

`Right.’

`I was actually situated next to a lady that… was a religious… had religious paranoia, and she used to bounce up and down on her bed, praying to Jesus… you know, jumping up and down on the bed next door, and sometimes she’d go really funny and she’d be taken away, you know… go hysterical, so that was quite scary as well. I slept… basically I think I slept with one eye open all the time. You know…’

`So what would happen if you were having problems sleeping, I mean… were you allowed to get up or…?’

`No… no. You just lay there. And usually you were knocked out anyway. You know, medication there was very strong and heavy, and it was something I wasn’t used to either, you know…’

`And what would the night staff do at night? Would they just… they’d just be in the… would they stay in the day area or would they be in the…?’

`No, they’d be in the… in the ward, on a table with a small light, so it’d be… not quite dark, but you could see them there, and usually they would be smoking or chatting… whatever… there’d be two… usually two.’

`Right… so very little opportunity for any privacy or time on your own…?’

`No privacy at all.’
`Right. What about… I mean you were saying earlier on that you felt… that you were in the very difficult position… situation with the nurses that were on there… did you feel that it was a place of safety for you, the ward, or…? [Pause]. Obviously not, so… and there was nowhere within the hospital that you felt you could retreat to?’

`There wasn’t anywhere, ‘cause the doors were locked.’

`Right.’
`I learnt how to… they had firewood for the burner somewhere, and I found… I got a piece and I… I… I managed to make it into a shape with my fingers, and I could… I found out I could pick the lock… ‘cause there they were very old doors, and… sometimes I used to sneak out, down the corridors, but get frightened and come back… so..’

`Right. That… sounds very enterprising of you, to get out…like that?’

`Yeah…’

`Yes, yes. What about food that they provided in the hospital, what was that like, can you remember?’

`Mmm… you don’t want me to really say do you?’
`Yes…[laughs]’

`Disgusting. Usually it was mounds of stuff and you’d be eating with patients that didn’t know how to heat… how to eat food. They would be eating with their hands and… and… you’d be sitting next to that person, you know… and you’d feel really sick. I wasn’t a very good eater anyway, so… and I didn’t eat meat, so what… what was on my plate was indescribable, and… you usually didn’t know what it was, you know, but if you were hungry enough you’d eat it.’
`And they made no provision for the fact that you were a vegetarian or…?’

`No… no… no. I didn’t think I had any rights to complain about anything. I didn’t know I had rights, and they weren’t certainly given to me… when I was there.’

`And if you… you say you weren’t a very good eater, so if you had times when you weren’t eating, would the nurses note that and try and… and help you…?’

`No… I was never approached… but usually I threw my food away, or gave it away, or it was taken away by another patient. They’d spit in it or grab it or… you know, things like that… that would be… make you feel sick really. There’s a certain smell to those hospitals that you don’t forget, and… you know, people… and some patients used to urinate and defecate where they stood, you know, and that would be very sickening, so… a lot of the time you didn’t… usually feel like eating. Sometimes we were escorted to the prison shop, and we could sweets and sometimes I had chocolate or something.’
`How often would that happen, that you were allowed… you know, you were taken… to the shop?’

`Not very often. If you asked, but, you know, you didn’t usually like to ask people.’

`And what did you do for money then, if you were going to the shop?’

`I used to get a giro, and then they would change it at the… at a sort of a cash point thing in the hospital. Used to be sort of old green giros then as I remember. Not very much money, but it was sick money.’

`And would you keep your own money or would they…?’

`Yeah, you… I think you could keep your own money. I can’t really remember. I think you did… but you had… ‘cause you had a locker that you could put your stuff in and you had the key round your neck.’

`What about cigarettes? What did you do for cigarettes?’

`Yeah, you got those at the shop, and sometimes the nurses would get them… come round with the list… you know, but you weren’t allowed matches, so you had to ask for lights all the time. So that was a bit… you know…’

`And… did cigarettes have any special currency? I know that like in some hospitals there’s a big issues around cigarettes… having…?’

`Well… everyone smoked then, and I think nurses even smoked on the wards, it wasn’t sort of frowned upon, smoking, it was sort of the `in thing’, and I think that came much later, so…’

`What about… you said that you did OT on the ward, and they brought the stuff up, I mean did you ever go… I know it was a locked ward, but did you ever go off the ward for any OT or…?’

`No. No, never. Everything was brought up.’

`And what about for any recreation facilities, did they have any gym or…?’

`No. No, I can’t recall anything like that. I just recall being in that ward, until the… those… two of the nurses started taking me out…’

`Yes. So it was… and so you didn’t leave the ward for any social… get togethers with other patients from other wards or anything?’

`No… no, never.’

`Right… so it sounds quite a restricted environment?’

`Yeah, you’re not sort of talking hours or days, you’re talking, you know, a whole year, of just being incarcerated in somewhere where you don’t know where you are, why you’re there… and you really don’t want to be there with these… people that were… obviously very ill.’

`And as time went on, did any of that become clearer, about why you were there or did it…?’

`No, it was just like my childhood abuse, it became acceptable and that’s the way it was, so you didn’t complain… and you didn’t have anything to say really, you just did as you were told.’

`I wonder if… can you tell me a bit about like what would happen, just to give some context to your day, you know, what would happen from like the time you got up… sort of through the day? Can you sort of vaguely…?’

`Well, I would always be the first… up, because I… I didn’t sleep very well, you know. And try and commandeer the bathroom, the big old bathroom, before they shoved six or more in, at the same time, just to get a strip wash and… and stuff like that. So that was the day, and then… then it’d be breakfast, which probably consisted of porridge most of the time… and… and then it’d be… they… they might have rounds from the doctors, you know, and they’d… they’d just say, “How are you?”, and walk away, and that was it really. You weren’t sort of… it wasn’t like a special meeting… I had one once a week I think, with a doctor that was up the corridor somewhere, but… and that was it really, it was just existing. There… there can’t be another word for it, really… there was no motivation or… or… not even playing games like… you know, like you do now, and scrabble and stuff like that. There was nothing like that.’

`And, when the O… the Occupation… they used to bring the Occupational Therapy stuff up, did… was there a separate Occupational Therapist, who used to do that work with you?’

`Yes, she used to bring the paints and everything, and it was usually painting trays that had already been made. You know, they used to make them basket trays and things, and… then you’d have to do a painting on the tray, and varnish it and stuff like that. That was about it really.’

`Right. Right…and then you’d have your lunch would you?’

`Then there’d be lunch and then it’d be the same sort of thing, just sitting around and… you sort of got to know when one of the patients would be… going to take off. You started to recognise signs from violent patients, so you learned to go in another corner somewhere, out the way. I got attacked a couple of times… quite badly, ‘cause I wasn’t aware, but I learned, very quickly to be aware. These people that were very ill, would… would attack me…’

`When you got attacked, did the staff sort of… address that?’

`Oh yeah, they’d… there was very quick interference, from the staff on that one. And they’d usually be taken away, probably to the cells, I don’t know where they took them… or whatever.’
`Right. Ok, and then you’d have… so, the afternoon you would just spend sitting around were you…?’

`Yeah, they’d be… probably books in a bookcase that you’d read a thousand times, or the old magazines that they brought in, and you’d search for a crossword and it’d be done already… [laughs]… you know… but that sort of thing. Usually… usually life was about existing really, and watching out for yourself, and… just go with the flow really… and most of the time you was doped up… anyway, and too lethargic to do really anything at all.’

`Can you… describe to me a bit about medication time? I mean how did that…?’

`That was… that was on the wards as well, that was done with a trolley… the two nurses, and… mine was always liquid. I wasn’t given… ever given tablets, it was always liquid Largactil.’
`Was… was there a reason for that? Why it was liquid?’

`I think it’s because I had a history of taking overdoses… so that I couldn’t hide any of the tablets. I had to swallow it and it was… it was really horrible… and it made you really feel horrible and tired and… and not like a nineteen year old that should have been out having fun somewhere, you know…’

`Were any of those side effects taken in to consideration by the doctors?’

`I can’t really remember many doctors there you know, I just remember seeing someone once a week and saying what a nice sweater I had on or something. You know… there’d be no “How are you?”, you know…’

`So you had… you had, for your treatment, you had medication, and Largactil…?’

`I had… yeah, I had liquid Largactil, and when I became… and when the depression used to set in, which was quite often, and… and I think only… not in me… it… the depression wasn’t just because it was in me already, it was because of where I was. And how it was… that I used to get depressed very quickly, and… and I’d want to get out, you know… and… and sometimes I would refuse medication, then it would… they would… they would be forceful, and then I would fight them back. You know, and then I would be taken to the cells, and then taken for ECT… that was the only answer they had. Really, I think all I needed was, someone to listen… and talk to me, you know. But you didn’t have that and… I can remember trying to remember my name. I sort of knew it but couldn’t really… get it all together, just my first name, you know, and… and it used to be so frustrating, the effects of that ECT, and it didn’t make me feel any better, it made me feel worse, ‘cause it would be frightening and confusing.’

`Can you… can you just… can you remember much about that actual experience of having the ECT? I don’t know whether you could describe a little bit?’
`I remember one, specifically that I think I spoke about when I… when the nurse pulled the curtain by mistake, thinking that was my cubic… cubicle and… and it was already going on, and seeing that and… and I just went berserk, you know, I mean… it was just terror… seeing all these things on the person’s head and… all the fitting and… and… ‘cause you have a pre-med before, so you’re supposed to be.. you know, calmed down, but… and then you just give in. When you… ‘cause you’re strapped to the table, and… you know, with your… your… your legs and your arms are strapped to the table, and then you just give in.’

`So you just…?’

`You don’t fight it… you just go with it, ‘cause you can’t fight that system. There’s no way out of it.’

`And can you remember how you felt, after the ECT… you were saying it made you feel terrible?’

`Yeah, not only is it the after… I would come to… I don’t know if it was days or hours or whatever… what effect that had on me, but I just remember I had memory loss. Quite bad memory loss, and it seemed as though, as soon as I just started to remember, what and who… that they would take me down again, so this was like several times… you know, and… they just said I… that I was depressed, it was depression. You know…’

`And you feel it didn’t really have any effect on…?’

`It had no effect except bring me more terror… and… in hindsight I can see that they missed my other illness, which was alcoholism.’

`Yes, that’s interesting, ‘cause what… what was happening to the alcoholism during this year that you were in Winterton?’

`Well there was two nurses there, that… that started to be interested in me… for… for certain reasons, you know, sexual and… whatever reasons they had, and they started to substitute my medication with vodka… and it’d be left in the locker, so the craving was re-started, and the depression got worse because the drink wasn’t always there and they weren’t always on duty, so I had a mixture of… Largactil and alcohol… problems in there. ‘Cause the abuse was normal for me… so that… you know, that was quite normal… that was what’s happened to me. That’s what did happen to me…’

`I wonder what you thought when they did this substitution, you know, of… of the vodka for your medication, you know… did you…?’

`I thought I was special…’

`So you thought they were being kind to you?’

`I thought it was great. [Pause] And you… the other bad part of the abuse is that you went along with that ‘cause you got a drink out of it. It was like… dangling the carrot to a donkey, I suppose… ‘cause I didn’t know I was an alcoholic, I just knew I wanted a drink, ‘cause it made me feel good. But combined with medication, it made me very ill, and it made me more depressed, ‘cause the… each one wasn’t flowing as it should have been. You know, it wasn’t… it wasn’t regular, or continuous…’

`And did that… did that go on… throughout your admission… throughout that admission?’

`Most of it… through the first admission… it went on through all the admission, until I think they might have been sussed. I… I have no reason why I was let out during the night, by one of them… with a key… but I… I’ve got a feeling they might have been getting sussed or… that my behaviour was… when they were supposed to be taking me out, that was… my behaviour was very erratic by this time.’

`I wonder, if they… you… you don’t know… what they thought about why you’d suddenly disappeared from the hospital then? Do you…?’

`They told me that the… when I went back for the second time after Middlesborough, that I’d just ran away. ‘Cause I… they knew I had the ability of opening the door, but they knew I wouldn’t go anywhere there, because I was frightened, ‘cause I had no money or… you know, all my money was spent on cigarettes and sweets…’
`But they… when they’d thrown you out in the middle of the night, they’d given you…?’

`They gave me some money. Yeah. And with that I bought alcohol and tablets and… tried to kill myself.’

`That must have… yes, I mean, that just sounds so distressing, to be put… put out…in the dead of night?’
`It… it was the reason I wanted to kill myself was… although it was a very adverse situation, that I… I actually felt rejected… [pause] by being put out… because it was the only place I had. So I’d been rejected by these two… or this one certain woman… and… nowhere to go.’

`So what… you said you went back to the same ward… you’d been in Middlesborough and then you were… went back to Winterton…?’

`Yes…’

`To the same ward?’

`Yeah, one of the women wasn’t there… the main… the main one. I think she’d moved to another ward, I don’t know. Because it’s very… I… I don’t know even how long I was there, but I think my mind was so distressed I just remember being there, and leaving… of my own accord, I think. You know, I was let out properly, and… with no after care, and no home… and I ended up in Bradford, and I don’t know how I got there… had no… I had no idea I was in Bradford… and… I was just a very sick person by then, and… on my way to prison… I didn’t know that.’

`When you say you were… a very sick person… physically, psychologically…?’

`Yeah, I had a very bad limp. Mentally I was very sick… disturbed, by now. And confused I think, because… I was supposed to be in a safe place, and here I was getting thrown out all the time, and… the… there… there just wasn’t anyone there. That’s how I felt. There wasn’t anyone to tell… how you felt, ‘cause you felt as though you weren’t being listened to anyway.’

`And you still had the problem with your leg did you… where you’d…?’

`Yes. I had a very bad limp for a long time. Mmm…’
`So then you ended up in Bradford?’

`Mmm…’

`What… what happened next?’

`Well, I came out of… [inaudible] came out of… and I must have been drinking very heavily, and… there was a blackout, because I don’t know how I got there, by what mode of transport. It was pouring with rain, it was very dark. I had one sleeve missing out of my jumper… one sleeve on, one sleeve off, and no shoes and socks… and… I was very cold, and I saw a café sign, and I thought, `I’ll go in there’. And, I just remember standing there and this… very hot steam coming from me, and everybody looking at me, and… and then I went into total blackout again, and I woke up in another mental hospital in Bradford. And I don’t know what it was called… it was in Laisterdyke… but I was there, and… things were different at this hospital, they… they were… the staff seemed very nice, and kind. And they were asking about me, for the first time… but there wasn’t much to tell and I’d… I was still sworn not to tell about my past, you know. I just said my mother used to hit me a bit, and… I heard these two nurses talking in the other room, and I heard one of them say… “Well, I’ll bring her a frock in, and you bring a pair of high heels, and we’ll book her in to have her hair done”, because I was like this little boy, dressed as a male, you know, terrified of being approached… sexually, and… they frightened the life out of me, these two… you know, and I got out of there. I got out of a window, and left.’
`And was it because of… specifically because of that incident?’

`Yeah, because I thought they wanted me to have sex with someone. I was very distorted in my mind and… I’d had no training with sexual behaviour, or talks or… learning, and the only one I knew was the rough… the rough sex, and… and the threats, that went with it, you know, and I thought that I was being set up for this, and I made my way back to the café… I went, and there was an English lady who ran it, who was married to a… an Asian guy, I think he was… I think they were Pakistani… and they took me in… temporarily, and… and I stayed with them for a while, and all their children. They had lots of children, and it just seemed alright, ‘cause they let me drink, and it was ok to be drunk, and they thought it was funny. They thought it was good fun, and I think my mood changed, because people accepted that I was a drunk, and I could be funny and drink… but… I blacked out a lot.’

`And were you living with them as part… as part of their family?’

`Yeah… it was like a real family unit, but it was a café business, and… they had a… a shabeen upstairs, and I suddenly became Manager of it, and now… that was my manipulation as an alcoholic. So it was free booze, and… and then I started to become violent, and that’s when I recognised that in drink I was violent.’

`Could you say a little bit more about that?’

`Yeah. Umm… umm… there was some gay women that used to come into the café, and I wasn’t sure about this. I wasn’t sure about myself in any way, about my sexuality, and I certainly wasn’t into sex of any kind, but I got set up by two women, and… and didn’t cope. And one was calling the other and… and I got very drunk and went after the other one, and… attacked one with a sabre, panga [ph] knife… a knife thing, you know, and she was very lucky to live… [pause]. And I actually woke up in prison. I was taken straight to… to Risley… I was so violent. From the Police cell straight to Risley Remand Centre in Warrington, and… the consequences of that for me was terrifying, it was… it was alien, because I’d always been attacked and never attacked anyone in my life you know, and… and that scared me more than me getting beat up, or hurt… ‘cause I knew that wasn’t me. Now I swore I would never hurt anyone, and… and I was on remand for a while, and then this couple from the café came and supported me… and came to the court and everything, and I got out on bail, and the charges were dropped, but I’d been in prison and… just going into prison was another abusive… thing then, you know. It was just total abuse from entry to coming… you know, right from going in there, where you were stripped, naked… umm… and you were searched for fleas and nits and crabs and… put into a wire cage that you couldn’t move in. It was just total wire box, where you could only sit up and you couldn’t move your elbows or your knees, and you could be up there, in that wire cage… a row of women in a wire cage each… for about nine hours… without a drink, or not to go to the toilet… you know, without anything to eat… and then… and then being examined again, and then made to… to bath in disinfectant. And I know some of it is necessary because… but it was the way it was done, it wasn’t how… it’s… it was like the total… demeaning of a person… on show, you know, in front of everyone.’

`I wonder if… did you have any… did you have a similar experience when… you were in psychiatric hospital, or was that quite different…from personal experience?’

`Umm… I really can’t remember going into any of the psychiatric… I usually went head first… [sniffs] on the stretcher or something… you know… I was usually overdosed or… just out of it.’

`When you were in Risley, were any of your medical issues taken into account?’
`Never. Not until much later on, many years later… many years too later, and I believe what you say now to me, should have been done then. [Pause] You know… the… the… the danger should have been recognised from that moment…’

`So it sounds like it’s a very difficult time for you, living with this knowledge that you’d actually… hurt somebody…?’

`Mmm…’

`And then also having to put up with this terrible punitive regime in there?’

`Yeah, because there’s like… the prisoners as well, you have to… it was like being in hospital as well ‘cause they were violent and… abusive as well and… so you’re on the watch out again and… although the sleeping arrangements were much different, there was two in a cell and you don’t know who you’re going to get… it’s pot luck, who you’re in with… and there’s a code in prison where you don’t ask what anybody’s in for… [laughs]… you might get the answer, you know, and then… then you would be fearful, so like… it was like the sorting office of criminals… and nobody… you didn’t know the violence or what they were like… but I managed to get on, in prison. I quickly learned… I was… I was told by a prison officer, if you’re afraid, don’t… don’t act it, act tough. Pretend you’re tough, and you’ll get by… and that’s when I started to put the… the masked woman. I learned to do that in prison, which was my survival kit from then on. This… this armour I put up, and… beneath that armour I was the little boy whistling in the dark, absolutely petrified, every second in my life, but… walking around as though I wasn’t frightened of anyone, and I suppose that was giving out the wrong signals as well. I was… I wasn’t a fighter in prison or anything like that… I became… I was a manipulator, in as much that I used my art work… to make letters and draw letters for people and do little cartoons, and earned tobacco… so I got respect, because I had the most tobacco and stuff like that… so that was another survival thing. Then I learned how you got drink and how you got drugs, and…’

`Within the prison?’

`Within the prison. Some off the staff, you know… a lot of the stuff come off the staff.’
`How would that work? Why would the staff cooperate?’

`Well if you did you’d… a lot of them were gay as well… you know. It was sexual favours and… and some of it was brought in by prisoners… visitors, and then you would bargain with them, and you’d swap things… for this and that. It was all wheeling and dealing… it was very clever.’

`Do you think… do you sort of… you… you fitted in… you… you learnt that culture quite quickly then?’

`I learned that very quick, because that’s how you survived. You didn’t… you know, you didn’t talk about religion or God or anything like that… ‘cause that was wimpish. You had to be hard. You had to pretend you hated everyone… and you hated all the screws… and I liked all of them. They were all so good to me. But I couldn’t let that be seen, you know… and I think… those prison officers… the first time I was in prison, cared more about me than the… than the nurses did in the hospitals, which I find quite amazing. They had more feeling, and although their arms were… their hands were tied… in as much as helping me was concerned, all they could do was… you know, lock me up really… was… that they did care…’

`How did that show itself?’

`In the way they spoke to you. ‘Cause if you do the crime, you do the time, and I learnt that very quickly. You don’t winge and moan., and you just do what you’re told. You do as you’re told, and you get by quicker, you know… and there’s little privileges… if you become a special prisoner, and… you get special jobs, like the painting party and you’re out your cell more, and who’s like that, you know… so you learn very quickly.’
`Did you have anybody specific that you remember you said you generally got… you generally quite liked this girl…?’

`Mrs Vickers… she was motherly and… sort of… I think I used to sort of wish she was my mother you know, and… how lovely she was, and maternal and… and happy, and she used to say… she used to sneak me paper and pencils and… I can say this now because she’s retired… I think she’s died actually, I was told, but… she used to give me paper and pencils and ask me to draw cartoons for the staff, you know… and that was nice. You know, ‘cause somebody was noticing who I was… you know, I was being noticed. I know it was in the wrong place for the wrong reason, but… you know…’

`And for the benefit of the other… the other prisoners, you were putting on a tough act though, but actually…?’

`Yeah… yeah… I knew I was damaged then. I knew then. Because even in that prison, even though I was getting on and that, I still didn’t fit in. I always felt like… on the outside looking in at these prisoners. They seemed to do it better than I did… the day… you’d get on with things, you know, and I’d be terrified of everything, and just have to take a deep breath or a swig of whiskey or something… you know, and say, `I’ve got to go and do this’, you know, and just… just actually just being with other people was a nightmare.’

`I wonder if that got any easier, because you said earlier on that you gained some respect because you had more tobacco and… you know, because of… of your art work?’

`Yeah…’
`Did that help you feel better?’

`No. No it didn’t, but… it made me safer. But it didn’t make me feel better. I was still terrified. I was always frightened I was going to let it drop, this front, you know, that I couldn’t keep it up any longer, it was ‘cause it was so tiring, to do that all the time, when all you wanted to do really, ‘cause I hadn’t cried up to this point, was just to break down and cry and I’d get a hug off someone really, that’s all you wanted. You didn’t have hugs either, ‘cause that would have been [inaudible] as well. In prison it was a different set of rules than hospitals…’

`So you said you were… you got out… you left Risley and you got out…?’

`Yes. I went back to Bradford, and… I… I… I… I got into my first relationship. And that’s quite… quite late in life I suppose really for me… or for someone young, but I was probably about twenty two now… and… she was a runaway from Liverpool and I didn’t know that I felt like that, and she didn’t either, but it just happened, and I found that I… I quickly changed roles, in myself, that I wanted to look after her, ‘cause she was so young and vulnerable, and she was talking about her parents all the time… and she was frightened as well, and I think I recognised the fear… and… and although I was a very heavy drinker and getting into terrible scrapes all the time and fights with men in the streets and that, who approached me, you know… quite normally for them, but not for me. And I would just hit out, you know… and she said she wanted to go back to Liverpool, to her parents, so… I got very drunk, I… I don’t remember… I… I’d hitched us a lift. In them days, hitching a lift was quite the `in thing’ you know, and safe… and… and I was very drunk and I hitched… we hitched a lift on an apple lorry all the way to Liverpool, and… I think the alcohol quelled the fear of meeting her parents and… they sounded quite rough, you know, and they were… [laughs]. They were… [pause]…’

`Can you say a little bit more about that?’

`Well, they were an extremely large… they were Liverpool Catholics, and they had about… I think it was nine children, or nearly all boys, there was only one other sister… younger sister… and a dog. We mustn’t forget the dog, and they was all in this council estate in a three bedroomed council house, and it was absolutely packed, you know, the house, and… I was so fearful… I was so… I was terrified of her dad’s reaction… and he was totally the opposite to what I expected… he… he couldn’t thank me enough for bringing Jean home and… and… and what happened to our relationship was that we actually both got a job. I got drunk and went for an interview and got a job as a Manager, and bearing in mind I never went to school, you see I was great at manipulation though, with alcohol. They went together with me, and I could talk my way into anything, and I found that a great asset in my survival… and I got this Manager’s job at a garage, and I employed Jean as a Cashier straight away, and we actually didn’t have a relationship as such. We’d got the family together, we got the house together… decorated and furniture and bills and… clothes for the children. They were very poor, and… and they were all rogues, the boys… you know, in one way or another, and we spent a lot of time visiting prisons, and stuff, and I became very close to them. Very… until Jean told me she wanted a baby, and I knew I’d… I knew enough… [laughs]… I couldn’t be responsible for that and it was total rejection, again… and I went straight to the bottle, wouldn’t go home to the family, and sacked her… and then robbed the garage of about £3000 pound… on purpose. Spent all the money in a couple of days, on the family, and… on drink… umm… and then went on the run, so…’

`How long did that period of relative stability last then, that you were in that relationship?’

`Just months… well not very long. And I… I found out as I went on in life that I wasn’t able to maintain anything for very long… especially if it was good. If it was good stuff, if nice people came into my life I… I was just totally incapable of managing anything. [Pause] And I was quickly back in prison… you know, got mixed up in some really heavy stuff… in Liverpool… I… actually went in `gangland’, and it was like a death wish, ‘cause I had no reason to live anyway. I was… I always seemed to be on a death wish and I didn’t really care what happened any more… and… went very heavily into drugs, and… just dossed around in squats and things like that, and begging, and… stealing…’
`And you were on your own at this stage?’

`Yeah… and then I got taken in by another maternal lady that I met. I forget how I met her but she was a wonderful, wonderful Irish lady called Mrs Linton, and… I used… I think I used to attract these types as well, that they wanted to mother me, and… it was fine for a while. She had a… real… she was a property owner… she owned a lot of Toxteth and her house was really posh, you know. When I say posh, I’d never seen a posh… posher house in my life, and… I couldn’t maintain it. I couldn’t accept the love from her, I didn’t know how to. I always thought there’d be a catch, and… and the more trouble I got into the more attention I got, you know, from her… and it… it was the wrong attention. If I hadn’t have done anything at all, I would have got the right attention as well. But she supported me, through everything, and… Liverpool was just a nightmare. It was just a nightmare of… of sleeping rough, and… in gangland, people asking me to do jobs with guns, and I wouldn’t… thank God. But I did do armed robberies, with pieces of wood and stuff… and… and then, the next day I would feel this guilt, this enormous guilt, about what I’d done… you know, if I’d remember, and then I’d just go to a Police Station and give everything back… and they’d be totally amazed, you know… and I’d be off to Risley again on remand and… [sighs] and that was sort of the… the general thing, that I couldn’t actually settle anywhere. I felt great rejection from Jean. I think if… if there was love, that was it. ‘Cause she was just a nice person. You know, and she grew up to… to be a really beautiful person, and I believe she was a good mother. She got married eventually and she had children… you know, so she turned out right nice… but my life was going spiral… you know, and I was very dangerous. ‘Cause my… my drinking was out of control… and… I spent a lot of time in Risley, in and out, in and out all the time with different charges, and… and things. And then I remember, I got involved with somebody else, and… another lady, that I didn’t want to be involved in, and I could never say no either… ‘cause now I was on this scene, and I was… I didn’t want to be on it, and… she was actually the wife of… of a well known… bad man in Liverpool, and he’d got a lot of years in prison, and she had a child, and that got all involved, and… it just went terribly wrong. And… I became very violent… I was in the… it made the newspapers, I was so violent… I chased someone with a zulu spear and… sabre… and attacked them. I didn’t hurt them, thank God, I was too drunk, but… they got me back into Risley. And there still wasn’t any help… nobody was saying “Why are you doing this? Why are you so… you know, why are you so violent?”.’

`And you still had the feeling then that this actually wasn’t… wasn’t you?’

`No, it wasn’t me, because I would just sort of be in the dock and… and I would hear these people talking about someone being chased or hurt with something, and I’d say, “Who the hell would do that?”, you know, and… the Matron… that usually was in the dock would say, “It was you…”. And I would be just totally… [pause]. I was like two people really, and that’s… I think that’s what alcoholism does to you. You know, I had one… one illness that was very quiet when I wasn’t drinking, and it was withdrawn, and the drink just brought out this other person that wanted to express theirselves I think, and… in quite a… a very strong way. `Look, I’m here!’ you know. But nobody offered me anything in prison. I wasn’t seen by a Psychiatrist or… talked… my… my illness wasn’t talked about… my drinking.’

`So even with some of those warders that you felt were actually quite kindly, you… didn’t really talk to them about… these issues?’

`No… you didn’t have one to ones with warders. Not like that. That… that would be dangerous in that kind of prison… from other prisoners. You know… you just didn’t do that.’

`So you… were you… you were aware at this time that the… the alcohol was… was a problem for you?’

`Well I didn’t think it was a problem. I just used to wonder what was happening to me. I was ever in denial about alcohol. I would say it was because of them, or… you know, I’d blame somebody else. I wouldn’t blame me or the alcohol, it was their fault, and it wasn’t my fault, and why shouldn’t I drink? I deserve it, you know, I’m having a bad time… and it was all this self pity, and stuff, you know… on top of everything else. And self pity is a killer, you know… in every way.’

`So you weren’t… you weren’t on any psychiatric medication or anything?’

`No…’
`I take it you… [inaudible] [both talking together].’

`I was on my own medication like cocaine [laughs]… marijuana… anything. And the purple hearts, I used to take them as well… anything that changed my feelings or my mind… I would take. And I never had a doctor all those years… ‘cause I wasn’t in one place long enough. I was always either on the streets or, you know… in squats or… living in somebody else’s house who’d taken me in and… who was foolish enough to take me in…’

`How was your physical health?’

`My physical health was very bad. I had very bad asthma and bronchitis all the time… and a lot of sickness… I was always vomiting. That was ‘cause I didn’t eat, you know… and when you lived on the street sometimes, you… you eat out of bins and you didn’t know what you was eating, when you was drunk… or you didn’t eat at all. You know… if you got any money given to you or you got any by other means, you’d spend that on drink, and toothpaste… I had a thing about losing my teeth. So I… inside my jacket I had two pieces of string, and on the end of one was the toothbrush, and on the other was my harmonica so that would earn me money for drink, playing on the streets. So they were my priorities… drink and toothpaste [laughs].’
`Had you taught yourself to play the harmonica or…?’

`Yeah, I don’t know how I’d learnt to do that.’

`And was… that something that you enjoyed, actually the music?’

`Yeah… as a drinker, yeah… I think… people who drink, they love music… but music’s beautiful anyway, I know that, but… when you’re drunk, you want music and you… I don’t know where it came from… the ability to play anything. I didn’t know I had any abilities in that… and that was to get stronger later on… I didn’t know how far it was going to go but… no, I don’t know how I learnt to play the… I just do.’

`Was there quite… was it… was it like a community of people in Liverpool at that time then…you know, like who were into the drugs and the alcohol?’

`Yes… yeah there was like a mixture of prostitutes and gay people, and… they all looked out for each other, and it was… there used to be a lady called Chinese Eileen, who was an easy touch, and if we was ever short of anything, a drug or a drink, or some money or cash, or was in trouble with the Police, Chinese Eileen was the answer. She was a wonderful lady… and we had a lot of… I don’t know how she put up with us, but you know, you’d knock on her door at any time and say “We need this, we need that”, yeah.’

`And did you feel accepted within that community?’
`I was just sort of… you know… the community changed so much, because like… you know, prostitutes got arrested and taken away to prison or you know, somebody else would go off or relationships would change and there was a lot of fighting and… in the gay thing and… partnerships would change, so it was changing all the time, so no… I was… still wasn’t a part of that. I used to sort of look in on them, but… you hung around with those people ‘cause that… that’s… I felt that was the only place I deserved anyway, was the low… the low places, the gutter…’

`Yeah. During this time, were you keeping contact with like anybody from your family at all, either through the psychiatric hospital admissions or…?’

`No. There was no contact at all.’

`And your grandparents had died?’

`There… there was no contact with family at all. All gone.’

`Right, and had you… by… by the time you were in Liverpool, had you lost contact with the people in Bradford?’

`Oh yeah, every… every time… was… the… the last time was forgotten. You just moved on, you know… if you caused a great big disturbance somewhere or you… you caused trouble in one town, you just moved onto the next town and didn’t tell anyone about it… unless they’ve read about you, you know, but… and… and every time I went to a town, I would… I… I know I used to think that this time it’ll be different… I’m going to try harder… get a job. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, but it never materialised. I didn’t have the capability or the knowledge, how to do it anyway. I had no self… social graces whatsoever.’

`But you did do it with that… with your partner’s family in Liverpool for a while?’

`With… yeah, but they were very rough, and… you sort of belonged there, you know. There were floor boards, there weren’t carpets on the floor, but yeah… anything else outside, jobs or anything, people just looked down at you anyway, ‘cause I didn’t know how to dress and I didn’t care how I looked anyway. You know, most of the time you were dirty. Nobody… I was unemployable… I was drunk to drink… to… to work… so…’

`Ok, we’re going to have a break now…’

[End of DVC Pro tape 2]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 3 – VHS tape 1 continues]

[Camera: Interview C905/15 tape number three’].

`So Nicky, you were talking to me about your Liverpool experience, what happened after that? That sounded like quite a grim time?’

`Yeah… after Liverpool… during Liverpool it was just drinking and getting into trouble with the Police, going to Risley, coming back and… being homeless… getting into horrendous situations and fights, and it was just total madness, and mostly alcohol and drugs related and… this total feeling of `I don’t care’ if… if I die, or anything like that. I think I was just on a… maybe a death wish, you know. Life wasn’t going anywhere for me, and… I… I invariably ended up back in Risley and quite happy to be there, and… umm… it was the same old thing. Prison regime and day in, day out… and…’

`When… when you were in Risley, like on those several occasions, I mean did you think about suicide or did you talk to… about suicide to anybody?’

`No. I used to think about it all the time. No. But it was… it… it would be very hard to kill yourself in Risley. I know there has been a lot of hangings on the men’s sides… but… in the women’s side… a lot of the men are put in one-ups, ‘cause it’s a bigger place, you know… one to a cell, sometimes… but in women’s it’s always… it’s always been two, two in a cell, so it’d be very difficult to… to do that, you know.’
`But while you were in prison you were in that state of depression that was similar to what you’d had before?’

`Yeah…yeah. I didn’t recognise it as depression, but I now know it was… deep depression, and… no will to live really. And I… I met someone there… well they met me, and… I was chased, almost, and… very reluctant, and… [pause] and when I got to Liverpool Crown Court, I was let off, instead of getting three years, I was actually released… much to my surprise, and disappointment, I think… ‘cause I didn’t want to be out. But anyway, I made my way to Manchester, to this woman, and she had five children…’

`And this is somebody you’d met in Risley?’

`Yes, I’d met in Risley, and… and I was very honoured, because she was like a big wig in… in the prisoner’s section, you know, there… there was like big people, prisoners, and… she was very elegant and… and respected, so it was… I felt quite honoured… and… I think the very first night I got there, I got very drunk, and wasn’t… nobody was impressed with me. The children or her mother, or her… and… I think it’s the first time I’d ever tried to get in… normal mode… with a life… umm… it was going to be partners, children, mother in law, the whole set up, and my intentions were very real, and… and the first thing I tried to do was get a job. I went to the… to the… for the job interview, drunk… and… I was very good at disguising my… my drunkenness to a point, and… it was for Catering Manager, and I couldn’t even cook, and I got the job… and it was for… Littlewoods, and… I soon got… to bribe my staff, and they did the cooking, and I did the washing up. You know, it was totally reversed but I got a job and… things were kind of normal, but… my partner was… a shoplifter, a professional one, a gang shoplifter that earned quite a lot of money, and I was immediately put down by that… that… I… I… a) I couldn’t shoplift, when I wasn’t drinking. I was hopeless, and I wanted this normal life and I wanted to be there for the children, and I wanted to help, and all my intentions were very good, and… she also took a lot of drugs, and I used to experiment with them, and they were different drugs, what used to be like LSD and… stuff that used to really blow your mind, and… [sighs]… it was just a nightmare. It must have been a nightmare for everyone, not just me. You know, and I was frightened this… this feeling of depression that I didn’t know I had, trying to keep my head above board, and… keep this job going, and be there for the children, who were very unruly. [Pause] And this went on for quite a while, and… I kept losing the… the jobs and I… I would get another one… in factories. Very low, demeaning jobs, until in the end I was asked to try this shoplifting, driving and stuff, driving the getaway car and stuff like that and… I was… I was really scared, you know, if I hadn’t been drinking, ‘cause I wasn’t allowed to drink while he was shoplifting, and… I was just terrified. Terrified for the whole family really, and… we moved to a bigger house, a six bedroom… which was one of the first council houses like that, built, and… I just had no responsibility at all. I didn’t know what responsibility was, and… I found that out when she was arrested for shoplifting and taken to prison, and… her mum was very ill, and… I think I still pay the price for that… you know, my lack of responsibility in caring… for the children. All I cared about was myself. And, the only thing I could think of when my partner went to prison was to drink, ‘cause that’s the… the way I used to handle things, and had no feelings for the mother or the children, and I know they needed me and I wasn’t there for them, and… instead I got a gay guy to move in and put a pinny on… he was very camp, to look after the house, and take that responsibility away from me, and… indulged in some affairs, and then I got a letter… an anonymous ‘phone call first, saying that Irene was having an affair in prison, because I was very well known, you know… and… then I got… umm… then I got a letter about it as well, and… I don’t know, I just lost it.’

`What, was than official letter or was that from somebody…?’

`No, it was an anonymous...’

`Right…’
 
`…letter, and… she was having an affair with someone. That hurt… and I don’t blame her now, of course, but at the time it really, really hurt. And this… this girl was responsible and wanted… you know, she was more responsible than I was. She wasn’t a drunk and she wasn’t ill… and… and I remember one night, thinking… I just can’t go on like… I can’t cope. It was when the youngest son, who was about nine… stopped me at the gate, going… he said, “Where are you going?”. I said, “I’m going to get the shopping… bread, milk, dog, cat…”, that’s all I could do, you know… get those five things every day, and nothing else, and he said, “But you’ve already been four or five times…”, and he took me back into the kitchen and there was like four… four bags of the same things, and I’d been repeating it, and… money was very short because I couldn’t shoplift like she could. I couldn’t earn the money… and couldn’t maintain the house that was… that that money, kept up that she got you know, but I couldn’t make that money, and… I decided to sell the new fridge/freezer… like… a drunk will sell anything, and I did, I sold it very quickly and I was… asked to go and collect the money at the… at our local pub. I used to play darts, a darts team, which is all very normal… I sound very normal, but when I think back on everything, it’s just a nightmare… and… I remember being in the pub. I got drunk… I always had to drink before I went out anywhere, I couldn’t go out anywhere sober, into a public place, and I was very drunk… and these two blonde women approaching me, and… of telling them to go away, ‘cause this was a very normal pub, it wasn’t a gay pub… but they were asking me to take them to a gay club, and I was saying, “No…”, you know, “I… I’m a member there and I wouldn’t take you in there, you know… not if you’re going to make fun of me…”, they … they said no. Well apparently, according to witnesses, I… I was persuaded and called a taxi and took them… instead of going home with the money to pay the bills off with this fridge/freezer I’d sold, I took the money with me and… it turned out… in the club… that somebody overheard one of the women… both the women talking about setting me up for a threesome, and… one of them come and told me and I got rid of the… the younger one. I told her to go, and the older woman seemed alright, on her own, and… I don’t know what happened in between then. I was total black out, and I think it was… I was frightened of going back home, but you know… ‘cause I knew I’d spent some of the money now, and… and things needed to be paid to keep the house together, and… I remember coming to in this… this… this room, and… this… this blonde lady was… standing in front of me in her underwear, and I told her to go and get some clothes on. Told her she was disgusting, she’d invited me apparently, for a drink… and I’d thought what I wanted was a drink, and… and the next time I saw her, she was dead, and… [pause]. I just remember this… [pause]… I can’t even describe the feeling, I think… terror is just a bit mild. It’s like this… this horror… umm… of… of seeing someone staring at you… and… there was blood pumping out of her ears, and… I was thinking `God, what’s happened?’. And… I tried to find the ‘phone and I couldn’t find it, ‘cause I was in a strange… strange house, you know, and I remember pulling this wire… really frantically, you know, pulling… and it just kept coming away from the wall and… and this ‘phone actually fell on my head out of a cupboard, which frightened the life out of me, because I thought now someone was in the house, you know, and I was told that I ’phoned the Police, and… and… apparently when they got there I wouldn’t let them in, ‘cause I thought they were burglars… but… umm… I’d ‘phoned the pub up as well to ask Mac, who was the… the owner, for help, ‘cause I knew Mac, he was a long… you know, a long time friend, and… he was always there for people, and… I… and I remember hearing his voice outside the door, and apparently he’d kept me talking and got on… got his wife to get the Police on another ‘phone, and I remember this young policeman… that’s all I remember of the whole thing… is this young policeman saying “There’s a dead woman there, did you do it?”, and I remember saying, “I’m the only one here”. But my statement was apparently taken straight away, and… and… the statement reveals… what actually happened is… the statement I gave, which I don’t remember, but… like it was… [pause]… being… I was in a Police cell, and… I remember I couldn’t sit still, and I had a mop bucket with me, you know… just a tin mop bucket, and I think I’d… I must have asked someone if I could be sick in it. I remember thinking, `This is all I’ve got left in the world’, was this tin mop bucket, you know… everything’s finished, and… not wanting to let go of it, and I was taken for my mug shot and finger prints, and wouldn’t let go of this bucket. I was carrying it like a bag on my arm, and… just wouldn’t let go. And it was just like this total world of terror, and the… and the word `murder’ and `charged’ and your knees buckling, and… and is this a nightmare or is it real, is it not real? Am I dreaming?, and… I think it was just at last, I think that was the total collapse of me, really… all these… this accumulation of the years that had… and there was… I just remember my head screaming all the time, begging it not to be true and… and stuff like that, and… worrying about the kids and the mother who was dying of cancer and… and the lady in prison. I won’t mention her name you know, but… all these lives I’d suddenly destroyed, you know. That I’d done that… and… just because I wanted to drink. And I remember being… taken… going through… being taken straight through Risley, I wasn’t even stopped. They just said “Take her straight through”. Miss Spetz was the officer, and I remember her saying “Just take her straight through”, and I was taken to the prison hospital, and I think that was the first time I’d been in a prison hospital, and… and… [pause] just every minute seemed like years, you know. [Pause] And… [sighs]… umm… somebody asked me… there was somebody in the cell and they asked me why I was there, and… and I said “I’m a shoplifter”, you know. It was just total denial, not… disbelief, not believing, and then it started coming on the news every half hour on the tannoy… and… and there were long bars in… in the prison hospital, from the ceiling to floor, so that they were open… cells, and… every time the news was going to come on, I used to put my head out the bars and just cough a lot, you know, because I just didn’t want to hear what I was hearing, you know… and… [pause]… I was like that. I was quite ill for a long time. Mentally ill, physically ill, disbelief… and just total terror, not sleeping… being doped up… losing it, throwing tables up at the ceiling… [pause]. Wanting to sort of rip yourself to pieces… and then just finally losing it and… I was told I was out of it for twenty four hours, and… and a Priest called Father Elgy [ph], sat with me, and… [pause]. He told me that God would forgive me, and I just told him to `fuck off`, and I’m sorry for swearing ‘cause I don’t usually swear but… that’s all I could think of really. “Don’t give me God now, just don’t”, you know, and… I was such a long time on remand and… and then going through the process of… of… [sighs]… pretending it didn’t happen… ‘cause court cases took a long time, especially when they were complicated as well, with… it was complicated because I couldn’t remember, and… going into this denial of it not happening at all, and just pretending everything was alright you know, and… and one day I was called… called out of my cell by some nurses and officers, who were… and… the walk to the visiting room from the prison hospital was like a mile. It seems like a mile long but it’s just… a very long corridor, and they… they said “Come with… come with us.” And I thought, `Oh, they’re going to execute me in secret”, and I was so happy. And then half way down the corridor I thought `How are they going to do it? I hope they don’t hang me… I’d… I’d rather be…’, do you know, all this madness going through my head, but happy [laughs] to be… and I really thought that’s what they were doing. It was just like the television, this long corridor and being escorted down. And they took me in this room and… my Barrister was there, with a… with a… with someone else, and the nurses stood there, and then, he said, “Look, Nicky we want you to see these”, and they showed me the photographs of the dead body [whispers] and… [pause]… it’s like a sledge hammer between your eyes, you know… and they were… they were… they weren’t doing it to be horrible, they were doing it so that I… that it might jolt my memory, to help me, and I didn’t want any help, I wanted to be… I was really disappointed they… they weren’t going to kill me. You know, it was like… I’m finding this very difficult, but… I’m just trying to put you in the picture of those… seeing those photographs, and… and they said, “You did it, you did this to this person”, you know… “This person’s dead now…”, and… that was the start of my… [pause]… getting into… [pause]… the fact that there was something really wrong with me. [Pause] That… that I should dish out the same punishment that had been dished out to me, you know, because all they didn’t do was kill me. You know… umm… and it was a long time before the trial and it was soul searching and… then, quickly replaced by denial and soul searching, and then denial, and… I remember in the court, having to face… now, my ex-partner, and all the people from the pub and the darts teams and… and feeling really ill, really. Just totally physically and mentally ill, and hoping for life, ‘cause I knew there wasn’t a death sentence now and… and that didn’t happen. The statement… the statement was umm… umm… they said it was `diminished responsibility and provocation’, because of statements from people in the club, saying that I was set up, sexually, and that I was actually… I came to… out of a alcoholic blackout… fully dressed in a bath full of cold water, and this woman was standing over me… naked, and… and they put it that I was being threatened, sexually, and I reacted in a very… well, the worst way anyone could react. And it hurts me, you know, because… [sighs]… it was learned behaviour… but I was suffering… I reacted in… in the way I always wanted to react when I was being beaten by my mother, or abused by my family… and, and… and here I’d dished it out to a stranger, you know, to someone I didn’t know… someone who didn’t deserve to die. But this was like… when I was first taken to hospital, mental hospital, when I was nineteen, that should have been, you know… that need never have happened, if people… do you know… do you know what I mean? Umm… if people had recognised the distress and… and the mental anguish that I was going through at nineteen, but nobody wanted to know, and… and you didn’t tell. If nobody asks, you don’t tell really. And if you’re just sworn to secrecy and you don’t talk about being beaten, and here I had… here I was now in a situation where I’d done it. I’d given it back, and it wasn’t the person who deserved it, you know, I mean… nobody deserves to die un… for whatever reason, and certainly this lady didn’t. You know, and I… I’ve got to… you know, it… it has destroyed me now, today, it… I’m destroyed with it, and… I find it very hard to live with, and… it just shows the consequences of child abuse [pause]. How many people it affects and the… in the long run… in the end, when it goes too far, when the help isn’t there, when you don’t get what you need. When you’re in places where you need it.’

`I wonder if you were able to see that at the time?’

`No…’

`Or is it just in hindsight that… you’ve been able to make those links?’

`It’s in hindsight, ‘cause it was suggested to me by a very eminent psychiatrist that… in theory I killed my mother that night, because I was… I used to be drowned as a child, by my mother… you know, held under the water. Abused. But that doesn’t justify… still for me taking a life, there is no justification, and… I find it very, very difficult, to deal with… umm… and I was sent to a… I didn’t go back to Risley, after the trial, I was sent to an open prison, and I was only given three years, and that… I… I felt really strong about that. It was very unfair, because I didn’t just destroy that life, it… there was her family’s life… all those children involved in my life, the partner, the mother… you know, there’s so many people were destroyed by that one action… you know, and… [pause]. I don’t know, I just found it unbearable to deal with. I went to this prison and… it wasn’t a prison regime like Risley, it was… it was soft really [laughs]. But in a way, because it was an open prison, it was harder, because you could… you could walk out of there, you know, but where was you going to walk to with this on you? You know, so, I suppose in a way it was harder ‘cause I… now, I was never going to be free. It wasn’t even a case of bars, or padded cells. Now there… there was no freedom for me ever again, and there still isn’t. You know. I’ll have to stop a minute…’

`Yeah, that’s fine…’

[Pause]

`So we were talking about you’d gone to the open prison, and you were finding that quite difficult because of the self imposed bars, if you like…’

`Mmm… yeah. Umm… [pause] I think what hurts me the most… the day I got to that prison, the first thing I did was have a drink… someone offered me a drink, and that made me feel even worse, and I think that was the start of… my really… my violence turned in on myself… from that day. My first mission was to kill myself. Umm… I used to go into these horrendous, paralysing panic attacks where you actually can’t move at all… and had to be wheeled out of the dining room on several occasions, and… just this… it was like this terror following me that I just couldn’t accept… that somebody had died, in all this stuff, and then… wanting to know about the children, and how they were coping with that, because they were very young children, but old enough to know what was happening. And you were getting on with your time [pause]… because… umm… that’s what I needed to do. I needed to get on with my time. As short as it was, and… [sighs]… I was put in the prison laundry… umm… I didn’t have the strength to tell anyone I was terrified of worms [laughs], and… because the gardening job was the best garden… you… the best job in the prison, it was the highest paid, and… I wanted to do that but I was frightened of worms and I didn’t have the courage, so I opted for washing borstal socks in the laundry… smelly borstal socks, and… it seemed… a… fitting enough punishment for a long time, you know, ‘cause it really was horrendous, the smell, as you can imagine… and, there was a male prison officer there as well, in control of that, and that was frightening, but he turned out to be a… a real good guy… kind. And somebody who started to listen. You know… and it was… a few days after being in that prison that the… the… there was a prison Governor there, who was the first male prison Governor, in any women’s prison, who got to the prison at more or less the same time as I did… for different reasons, and… he was the one who told me I was going to AA. And I thought I was going to learn… to learn about mending cars, I really did… you know, ‘cause they did several courses on… on… in this prison. It was like rehabilitation motivated, and typing and stuff, and I thought, oh good… I’ll be able to do something useful [laughs], you know… and went skipping off to this… this place on the Sunday afternoon, and it was Alcoholics Anonymous... and... and I skipped out [laughs]… straight back out you know, and… denying my problem, and… he must have foreseen this, and… I was marched back in and locked in, my first meeting… and I had to learn… and the first thing I… I heard someone say was… there was a lady, an American lady had come in to chat, as a volunteer, and she said she hadn’t had a drink for five years, and I thought… `That is so sad… if I could get out of here, I’d go and get her some of mine’, ‘cause I had a load… a little stash… and that… there’s not many alcoholics who would give their drink away [laughs] but I really wanted her to have one, ‘cause I felt sorry for her, and… what I didn’t hear her say was, she hadn’t had a drink for five years, one day at a time. I projected straight… `how could I go without a drink for five years?’. No way, you know, and I started to learn. I went every week. Started to learn about AA. I didn’t stop drinking, and I’m ashamed to say that… um… but I changed my drinking habits, and I went more drugging as well… and, there’s a lot of drugs in the prison… umm….’

`Was… was the AA sessions within the prison?’

`Yes, they… they were outside people that were AA members, that came in as volunteers to hold a meeting every Sunday, for people who think might… they may… might have a drink problem. But because I had to go, and because they gave out real cigarettes, at every meeting I… I went… and I’m glad I did, you know. The seed was planted there for me about my drinking habits, but the denial was still there, but… the seed was to grow later on, but the job was done in there, you know… and…’

`Did you… did you feel angry that you were being made… like right at the beginning, did you feel angry that you were being made to go?’

`Mmm… yeah. There was no reason why I should stop drinking. See, that’s the denial of an alcoholic as well, and this is also what was missed when it… when I was in hospital at nineteen, was my alcohol problem… which wasn’t really all that recognisable, in women in those days anyway, it was usually men with strings round their waste, you know, and old clothes and… err… but yeah, I kept going, and… and finally, for the first time, in prison, I was offered a Psychiatrist… which… which quite amazed me, ‘cause I didn’t actually think I had a problem then. Umm… [pause] and he came.’

`How… how did that come about? Did…?’

`I’ve… I’ve no idea why, I think it was just arranged, because I wasn’t talking about anything, and I wasn’t talking because I could never remember… and I still don’t today, and they insisted on me talking all the time, but… you know, just officers and… chit chatting. I’d just look up and say, “I don’t remember”, and I’m sure they thought I was copping out, but, I just didn’t remember, and so I wasn’t talking, and so they got a Psychiatrist.’

`Was this kind of just ordinary every day chat as well? That you got…’

`Yeah, just chit chat, yeah… you know, like… the laundry officer, and I’m sure, you know… I know that they conveyed the day’s events… in writing or whatever they did at the end of the day, and… and behaviour, ‘cause your behaviour’s taken into consideration as well, and… I remember sitting in front of this psychiatrist and… and I couldn’t believe it when more blotting paper come out… [laughs]. I thought blotting paper days had gone, and I just started taking the mick out of… mickey out of him, you know, but… I was making up things. He was saying, “What does this one…?”, and I was saying “Donald Duck”. You know, told him he looked like Alfred Hitchcock, and he wasn’t impressed, and he said “I don’t think I need to see you again”, you know, and I didn’t need to see him either, you know, so that was my psychiatric treatment in the whole of the… sentence. I think my main treatment was the best. It was AA… and I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know that was the best thing that was happening to me at the time, but… it didn’t stop me drinking, and…’

`Can I just ask you… how was that tolerated within the AA group? The fact that you hadn’t stopped drinking… did they know?’

`Oh no, you don’t tell anybody [laughs]…’

`Right.’

`My… my… my drink used to be stashed in the… in the duck pond, on string… and tied to bushes, and… any other illegal substances that came over… the wall mostly, you know, and… we did grow Cannabis in the Governor’s garden but he… he was watering it for six months, not knowing what it was ‘till he got raided [laughs]. He didn’t find out it was me until the… he knows it was me since… [laughs]. I… it was all in the papers, Bless him… [laughs], but it was like… you know, you was always trying to beat the system all the time, you know. But at the same time, you know, after… I started to be in AA quite a while, and I suppose some things were making sense, but they weren’t… they didn’t apply to me, not at the time, you know, and… but something else was happening in the laundry, and this… officer… Mr Morris, was a very encouraging man. He was amazed that I could draw, and I was amazed that he was amazed that I could draw, you know, and... and then… I wrote this song… about whiskey. I didn’t know I could write songs. I knew I could play the harmonica but I didn’t know I could write lyrics or anything, and… there was a… a lady who could sing and play guitar in the… a prisoner there, and… I asked her to do it for me, and… and everyone just loved it. And so the songs started, and I was encouraged by then the prison Governor, and… the… the Laundry Officer and everyone really, and especially the inmates, ‘cause we used to have sing alongs on the landings at night and… half of us out of our head on spliffs and… you know, and drink, and… and everyone would be in one place, for the first time, ever… all singing these songs, and they got to know them all and put concerts on and stuff like that, and… I was entered for the `Koestler Award, which is very big prison awards, for art and music, and some of my stuff was entered, and I won both.. the same year.’

`Fantastic’

`So.. that was like the first thing that ever happened to me, that was good, and the Governor told me he was really proud of me, you know, and that was something new, being… say, you know… nobody’s ever said anything like that before, and there was like this awful feeling after, that… what do they want out of me? Is something good happening? And like, something’s going to happen now, and I was very… you know, very… drawn towards being… I don’t know, I just didn’t like good things happening, it didn’t seem normal, for me, but I carried on. I was encouraged with the concerts, and they became… they… they were in the national papers and… and…’

`So were you writing… you carried on writing songs? More and more songs?’

`Yeah, more and more… just never stopped. And it was like… it was like writing a musical… story, about myself really. It was like these emotions that were pouring out through music, it was just like a new discovery, and… and people identifying with them as well was amazing. They felt like that, you know, and… there was a baby unit on there, and we used to wheel and deal for these little babies, and pinch and get over the wall for sweets and toys and… get up to all kinds, you know. It was a different era, it was the start of something different, and… probably, was self discovery really, starting to understand something, and once I started to understand that I… I was addicted to alcohol, and I started to understand myself a little bit more. Just a little bit, not a lot, but… something started to make sense. And then…’

`And… sorry, did that understanding come through the… through AA?’

`Yes. Yeah. It did. It had come… it came through identification of those that spoke there, and I thought, `God, yeah, I feel like that’. I didn’t know other people felt like me, you know, and it was taking away that alone-ness, and that feeling of being different and special, and…’

`So even though on one hand like you were drinking and… you were not being totally honest with them but you were still actually gaining a lot?’

`Yeah, I was learning about an illness and I thought you could still drink. I thought they were going to teach me how to drink properly…. [laughs].’

`Did you realise it was wishful thinking?’ [???]

`Yeah… [laughs], and I thought I’d be better once… once I’d been a few more times, and then… and then… I was moved to the hostel, which houses twelve women.’

`Was that within…?’

`That’s within the prison walls but it’s where… a few weeks before you go out, you’re… you’re asked to go out to work, on a daily basis, earn money… they find the job for you, and… they take your keep out and then they save the rest, and… well, most of the jobs were waitresses in… little pinnies, and I… I said, “There is no way…” [laughs]. I didn’t want to leave prison, I was terrified. There was nowhere for me to go at all, and… and the thought of being a waitress with a pinny on, just freaked me out even worse. I couldn’t think of anything worse, that could happen to me any more, you know, and… they sent me… they actually sent me to a hospital in Leeds, on my own, on a train… never been out for a long time, with a… with a train pass, to an alcoholic clinic, to get a bottle of Antabuse. And Antabuse is a substance… I will explain it, the… that if you drink on it you become… you can become fatally ill, not just ill, you know, it’s… it looks very much like Paracetamol by the way… which I quickly recognised, and it was very quickly swapped for Paracetamol [laughs], and… all my secrets are coming out! And when I got back to the prison that day, I was… summonsed to the office by the prison… prison Governor, and they told me they’d found me a different job, and that it’d never been done before, in prison… and I was going to be the one that was going to do it… and… when they told me I was going to work at John Smith’s Brewery, up in Tadcaster, it was just totally amazing, I was thrilled to bits! [Laughs]. I thought `Yes! Nice things are happening to me at last.” And that’s where I went to work. And they gave me white wellies, white coat, pink gloves, pair of goggles… and I saw over the horizon of the conveyor belt, a host of… beer bottles coming up [laughs]… and I was.. I was supposed to put in crates which didn’t actually make it, because I was so gob smacked by the sight of all this wonderful alcohol, but… I earned £100 pound a week, wouldn’t take the money, ‘cause I was quite happy with the beer that the workers gave me, ‘cause I was, again, a great manipulator… with my sob story… and they knew how to get me drunk through the day, and sober before I got back to prison… and… on the hostel there was a prison Officer called Mrs Chapman, and she was a wonderful person… and she tried to save me many times from coming home drunk, to the prison… and… most of the time she couldn’t, but a lot of times she tried and… and she understood alcoholism, she understood me, and… and I… I got to call her `mum’ for the first time, and her husband worked in… in the borstal nearby, and he became my `dad’, so now I’ve got two prison Officers… this is getting more and more weird as it goes on, and… it was just, ok, you know, just like things were starting to happen. And then I had to leave the prison, and that was one of the worst days of my life. The other one was… was the trial and that, but… there was nothing that anyone could do. I was put outside the prison gates, with £600 from the job, and a… and a train pass and nowhere to go. And there was no after care, there was no probation, there was no one outside those gates. And here I was, someone who’d killed somebody in an alcoholic blackout, and they knew I still drank, and then they wonder why they pick up the papers and read that these people go out and do it again. You know, I was very unsafe, I was frightened, I was ill… mentally ill, and still drinking. And within an hour of leaving the prison and getting on the train at York for London, I was drunk… leglessly drunk, and I ended up in a place called Crawley…’

`Did you know where you were going to?’

`Not really. There was friends there, and I wasn’t sure of the reception or what, but they were… they were good, but they had to put up with my drinking, and my bad behaviour, and my self pity.’

`When you left the prison… I mean the… the two warders that you called `mum and dad’, were they concerned about what was going to become of you?’

`Very, but their hands were tied, and they weren’t allowed to maintain contact with prisoners that go out, ‘cause they could lose their jobs or their pensions and stuff… and… but when they retired… and I see them now. They’re still in touch. They’ve been to stay here, and I’ve been to stay with them… taken friends down, you know. And they’ve been very supportive.’

`Brilliant’

`And… and the prison Governor too.’

`And they…’

`I went to his house for dinner…’

`Really?’

`And I thought, `Wow, this is really weird, sitting at the Governor’s table’. I was calling him Joe instead of Sir and… you know, `What’s this posh food they’re eating and what’s all these knives and forks?’. I had to just copy them and… and you know… just this amazing sort of turnabout. It makes you very suspicious. But none of them want anything, they just want me to be well, you know.’

`It almost sounds as if that prison experience was kind of like… they were human beings who were acting in a very human way, but the system was not acting in a human way, in the way it turfed you out… without any after care?’

`No… that’s the system… it is the system, and the people were helpless. You know, I do know someone that was there with me, who was turfed out, and she was back in after doing… killing someone… a week after she went. She’s… she’ll be in prison for the rest of her life, because she didn’t get help.’

`With… with those people like the Prison Governor and the man in the laundry, and the two warders you called `mum and dad’, I mean… did you ever… I mean kind of… were you ever able to… talk through any of the stuff about the lady that had been killed, you know, did you… or did that get buried?’

`I buried it, most of it. I tried to talk about my childhood and stuff but it didn’t work, and… I used to feel terrible. I told the… sort of the violent abuse, the hitting and that, but not sexual one… it was too… I just didn’t know how… and… if I did talk about the woman that died, it was… my regrets… as I do now, ‘cause I’m still full of that… and… probably always will be.’

`But some… some of your feelings were coming out through your music, through your songs?’

`Yeah, that was like a safety valve I think, and I think… I don’t know, I think it was all meant… meant to be… the BBC heard about my songs and… they came and recorded some and that was very exciting for all the prison.’

`Within the prison they came?’

`Within the prison. All the girls were excited and… it was a big thing, in it, you know… and I don’t know. I just felt as though I’d accomplished something, just one thing in my whole life… that day. And…’

`How did that feel I wonder, that feeling that… you’d done something with… with other people as well, ‘cause it seems that a lot of your life you were very separate from people around you. Now it seems you…[both talking together]…?’

`Yeah, there was a band, you know, there was a little band, there was… singers and musicians and… yeah. But you knew that wasn’t going to last, because everybody has to go home or… they get moved, or.. but it was good while it lasted and they did a lot of good things for charity as well, for children… disabled children and old people. And we were taken out on gigs… there was more out than in prison. You know, the officers used to have to take us out in a van. We did a lot of gigs, all around Yorkshire.’

`So you were considered to be quite trust… quite trustworthy?’

`Oh yeah, it was an open prison, and if you went, you were just… and then you were caught, if you got over the wall or… left the prison, you’d be taken to a secure home. And… yeah, it was alright in the end.’

`And you’ve made friends with other prisoners then?’

`Oh yeah, you made friends, but… there was a… a lady who got life. I mean, I was… made special friends with, but I was advised when I left prison not to keep in touch with her, because it wouldn’t be good for me. And I did start taking advice, a little bit. But then as soon as I got out… I just went straight back on the drink and the amazing thing was… a few days later, I found myself in an AA meeting… in Crawley. I couldn’t believe it, but… and then you try and grab that normality that you had. You know, you try and grip… that little bit you had in the prison, you know, and you think `God, I just wish I could get some of that back, you know…’, ‘cause outside is different to inside anyway, you know, and… [pause]. I got signed up by a record company, just by chance of someone playing my tape in a pub, and I got signed up by Viking Records, and… and then all of a sudden I was whisked away on this… this magic carpet that… that you’ve come out of prison a few days before, and you’re suddenly signed up by a record company, and… you only see films like that, don’t you? It’s like it’s not happening to you and… I became homeless, because I… my drinking was very disruptive to everyone, and found this sort of squat place where I didn’t pay any rent [laughs], the poor guy. And I totally wrecked it in drinking, ‘cause I started turning the violence on myself, and… I was very violent towards myself then. And… but this record thing got me pulled together and they got me a place and paid for it, and gave me money and tried to keep me together, and got me a Manager, who in the end turned out not to be so good manager, and I suddenly made a lot of friends, where money was concerned, you know, and… and it was a new world, and…’

`And this was within a few weeks of you leaving…?’

`Just weeks, yeah… days…’

`Gosh’

`And… it was very traumatic… trying to go to AA and people giving you a drink ‘cause that’s the business, you know… that’s the music business for you, you know. Everyone drinks darling, in… in the music business… [laughs] you know, and… I was no exception, so I had friends… who knew I was going to AA, so I had to concoct a plan, to please everyone… so I came back from the meeting one night, I had a meeting with my friends that were helping me, in this music business, keeping me company and stuff like that. I gave them a list of what I could drink and what I couldn’t, and this is what AA had told me… and I put down all the drinks I didn’t like on the right hand side, [laughs] and all the drinks I liked on the left hand side, and… that was deviation and denial again, and… and then told all the music people this is only what I could drink, ‘cause I was allergic to the other stuff, so… so I got away with my drinking, and I still got as drunk as I ever did, and I smashed the house up, and… did moonlight flits and… attacked one of the singers even once, and I was very abusive and…’

`Were you still writing through this time?’

`I was still writing and… it was more emotional, and my suicide feelings were more intense and I was trying to cope with them… wondering why they were there, and… and it was like good and bad and… and it was like being pulled, you know… [pause] and… Oh, God. I ended up in Nethernee Hospital, thank God. It was just such a blessing to be back on home ground. The relief of being in the `real world’ for me. ‘Cause the outside was not real for me, and… being incarcerated and locked up was real. It was real for me and it was back, and I just felt so safe there, and I was in a quiet ward. It wasn’t a very violent ward. There was a few… a few people that weren’t very well, but they weren’t as bad as… it was a locked ward though, and I just remember… umm… there was no way I could get drink in there, and I just wanted a drink so badly… and I didn’t know about cold turkey and alcoholic fits that I was having, I didn’t know I had them either. So… but there was cold turkey, and… and I was treated well in Netherne but I can’t remember one single consultation with a doctor. I can’t even… if I did see someone I can’t remember. That’s strange now, ‘cause I’ve never thought about that before, but… I can’t remember. I probably did. I’m sure I must have… but I was transferred by ambulance, to Warlingham… and…’

`So how… how long did you stay in Netherne? Just for a little while?’

`I don’t know…’

`Can’t remember…?’

`I’ve no idea…’

`That’s fine…’

`Probably months… umm…’

`Just… just to go back a bit… you said you were treated well, would that be by the nursing staff?’

`Yes, they… they didn’t have uniforms on. This was new for me as well, where nurses stopped wearing uniforms, and they were… they looked like real guys, you know…’

`And was it…?’

`They would sit and chat to you, but not necessarily… but just come and chat… “How’re you doing?” and you know. Not one to ones as such, but they would acknowledge you as a human being, and that was something you could mess around with, and lock up and punch and hurt… like the old days. So this was new as well for me.’

`Yeah… was the environment very different from…?’

`Yes it was. It was open… there was… there was a lot of privacy. There was curtains round your bed. The ward was warm, and cosy… it was even cosy, and… yeah, it was alright.’

`Was that a mixed ward or was that a…?’

`No, it was a women’s ward, that one…’

`Right…’
`I was quite lucky in my travels… that I only got women’s wards…’

`Yeah. You said you went through cold turkey at that time?’

`Mmm’

`I mean how did you… did you get help with that or did you… how did you handle that?’

`Yes, I was given Heminevrin… which gives you an alcoholic buzz for about sixty seconds and it’s wonderful but then… [laughs] it just knocks you out. So that was a new drug for me, but it was… it was to reduce… the craving over a period of probably ten days or more… and I was transferred from Netherne to Warlingham Park Detox Unit, in Pinel… Pinel House… then… where I was kept on Heminevrin [ph] for quite a while… quite a few weeks… and started to learn about the illness of alcoholism, which was the start of… of the recovery.’

`Cause I was going to ask you… was anybody discussing with you at this time that this is what they were doing?’

`Yes, I was being told now what was happening. I was told at Netherne that I would be going to a Detox. I remember asking what Detox meant ‘cause I didn’t… I hadn’t ever heard that word before, and… and when I got there again, it was.. there was thirty other patients, the same as I did… gagging for a drink, going crazy, fitting… you know, and… and yet wanting to be well at the same time. We was all the same, it was amazing, to meet people… and a lot of them with mental illness as well, you know, and… just the same. Very disturbed people I suppose. Yes…’

`Yes… that’s… so that was quite… that admission was quite… that admission to Warlingham was quite a significant… turning point…?’

`It was the biggest change of my life… it was. Although I was still… I… I was very guilt ridden, and very aware of what had happened, and… because I’m such an openly… I’m a very open… person, I speak openly, and… but I… thinking sometimes, I had to watch myself all the time, in there, and of… of saying… because people were admitting to things they’d done in drink, and I started to get really frightened, you know, because they used to have these group things that I wasn’t used to. I’d never been in a group situation where… you heard another person talking about their problems…’

`Right. Maybe we could… stop for a bit… and then maybe we could talk a bit more about Warlingham?’

`Ok…’

`Next tape, thank you very much…’
[End of DVC Pro tape 3]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 4 – VHS Tape 1 continues]
[Camera: `Interview with Nicky Nicholls, C905/15, tape number four’].

`Right Nicky… just recapping a bit… you came out of prison, and then you went down to Crawley, and then you got signed up by the record company… and you were homeless for a bit. What happened after that?’

`Well, the record company… bought a place, for me to live in and I didn’t like it. It was a big… big house, and it was lonely, and… I was drinking secretly now. I think it’s the first time I’d ever drank secretly, and hiding it… ‘cause I wasn’t supposed to drink, under the contract, ‘cause I got too drunk…’

`Oh, that was written into your contract?’

`Yeah, and… umm… so I ran away, and I ran back to York. I got back to York somehow, I don’t know how I got there and… just lived on the streets, not wanting my `prison’ mum and dad to know where I… where I was… and… and I remember one… it was a very sunny day, and… I’ve never in my life bought any flowers before, and… I remember buying a bunch of daffodils… and they weren’t for anybody in particular, and… I had some more drink in a little pub. There’s lots of little tiny pubs in York… and had a few double vodkas, and I knew I was going to die that day, so… I felt too guilty to accept the good stuff, with the record company and that, I thought I didn’t deserve it, and it was too weird and… and I hung myself in a public toilet, and… I was actually hanging from the neck when somebody came in… and saw the rope twizzling round at the top of the toilet apparently, and I was cut down and… received some cuts on my face when I was cut down… and taken to a mental hospital, but I… I still have no recollection of being in there but I was visited by my `prison’ mum and dad, and then the Manager from the Record Company came, and he took me back to London, and… it all started from there again really. Umm… [pause]…’

`So did you… can you remember how you felt about coming back down to London, was that ok with you?’

`No, not really, but… you have to remember I was used to being told what to do, and… whatever frame I might be in, I would usually comply. Being ordered about is much easier than being responsible, myself… really.’

`And you still had that close link with your `prison’ mum and dad?’

`Yeah, I tried to sever it, but they weren’t going to let go. ‘Cause… I saw it as interference in the end… somebody trying to love me, and I didn’t want it, and it was like playing a game, calling them mum and dad, when I didn’t really experience my own… parents, in that way, and it was very weird to be loved, and being asked if you was alright and… getting hugs and being fed meals… you know, and… so… I found it really weird, and… then I… then… then… [pause] I went into… I went to Netherne…’

`From this…?’

`From there… because I couldn’t stop drinking, then I was transferred from Netherne by ambulance to Warlingham Park, Detox Unit, and… umm… it was a very overwhelming experience in as much that… for the first time in my life, I was with thirty other alcoholics… and they were as sick as I was, and frightened, and it was… the first experience of group therapy, and it was… it was hard, and it was tough. Tough love, I call it… and…’

`Was that experience of group therapy different from the AA experience?’

`Oh yeah… yeah… this was… this was… learning about the illness of alcoholism and… and… and… being able to say that I had an illness, instead of being a drunk, made it seem a bit more reasonable, you know… that it was an illness, and I did have it, and I’d always had it, and I began to learn about it, and we had to go to AA meetings and we had group therapy nearly all day, and role… role playing, and… [sighs]…’

`Who… who would take those kind of groups? Would it be the nurses or…?’

`The nurses took the… took it, yeah… and they were qualified psychiatric nurses, and… and some of them… well you did have to be tough. I think… [pause]… [sighs]… from my own experience, I know that alcoholics can be very hard headed, you know, and stubborn, and… denial… denial plays a big part in the recovery, you know. If you keep denying it you don’t stay sober. But anyway, I thought that… that it’d be reasonable of me… um… I’ve been very charitable now to… to Pinel House, that I might give AA a try… give it a whirl… in brackets, and… having… umm… [sighs]… I didn’t really want all the music stuff, it was too… too… too overwhelming, coming from a prison cell to… this big, London stuff, and there was… too… too busy you know… but I did start going to AA, and… I used to get digs… I always got digs somewhere, and… with… with a fellow patient, and lived with her… and her husband, who was a milkman. It sounds like a funny story and it was really, but I stayed there for a while and then the record suddenly hit… the one… the one that the company released, suddenly hit big time, and it hit Nashville, and… hit every radio station… in every country, and it became a number one hit… and… not in this country, but all over the world and in the country music, it won the Golden Rose Competition for Lyrics, which I didn’t know about for a long time, nobody told me… the singer took the… took the credit, and…’

`’Cause I was going to say to you, was… that was going on even though you, yourself had withdrawn a bit from…?’
`Yeah, because I’d… I’d signed over the records to the company. I’d signed the rights over to them, and… and… the singer and my Manager, were both not very nice people, and they were taking a lot of my money. I’m still owed a lot of money, but material things are not important to me any more. It was just the thought of being betrayed again, that it seemed like… a way of life, you know, being betrayed all the time, and… but anyway, I… I… I stuck with AA… [pause].’

`Did you… just going back a bit to the Detox Unit, so you went through the detox process?’

`Yes, I was… I was there for quite a while. I went through detox, and then… into group therapy, which not many people used to get through. There was about sixteen people in the group, and it was life story situation… which didn’t work for me, ‘cause I wasn’t very honest, and of course I didn’t know how to be. There was no way I was going to sit in front of strangers and tell them what happened to me, sexually… no way at all. It was impossible, and they were all… very gifted people and professional people, like Dentists, Psychiatrists, and there was only me, that never went to school [laughs]… so there I was again feeling the hole… like the hole in the doughnut, you know… the odd one out… and I remember them asking me to wash… they used to have reunions at Pinel where… ex-patients or clients used to come, and… they used to have an evening of reunion at Pinel, and… the group had to organise it, like… a… a monthly magazine. A painted… thirty foot painted mural, and… and a buffet, so… I usually got the mural, but I… I got assigned by all these professional people to washing the lettuce… which was my big job, and having not ever been involved in the magazine before, I… I washed it in very hot fairy liquid [laughs]… and it all… it all went limp…’

`[Laughs]’

`And… they were all very angry… and I couldn’t understand why. You know, they just asked me to do a simple thing, and I blew it… so… and that… on that… I… I decided that it wasn’t for me then, this… Pinel, or… or AA… if people were going to be nasty to me like that, and I decided… it was Good Friday, and I decided that I would go to the… there was a place called Croydon, that I’d never heard of before, but I decided I would go there, but I’d walk, and I didn’t… I… I had to follow the bus stops… ‘cause I didn’t know the way, and I just followed the bus stops all the way to Croydon, and I was going to show everyone that I could do… controlled drinking now I knew all about alcoholism, ‘cause I’d been there at least… you know, a few weeks, and I knew everything… there was to know, about this illness… and… within seven hours I’d… I’d done… I’d… I’d drank… loads and loads of Pils lagers and beer and shorts… shoplifted wine from the shop… had three hospital admissions and got chucked out… hit two Policemen… was arrested and then thrown into an AA meeting, and thrown out, and eventually admitted back to George Ward, in Warlingham Park, which is… a locked ward, and a violent ward… and… with compliments of Dr Gaiford.’

`Dr Gaiford was… the one at Pinel House?’ [Both talking together]

`Was the Consultant Psychiatrist with the Alcohol Unit, and… and to be quite honest, I think that’s the best thing anyone’s ever done for me, was to lock me in a locked mental ward like that…’

`That’s an interesting thing to say, could you explain that a bit?’

`Well, I didn’t think so at the time because I was attacked while I was there, and I was very physically ill from the alcohol, and withdrawing, and it was… I was reminded that nobody knew where I was, I didn’t have anyone that knew me, and they would never know where I was, and he was saying if you don’t behave, this is where you’re going to stay, for the rest of your life, ‘cause that’s what alcohol will do to you. And it does… alcohol drives you mad in the end, when you’re an addict… and… that frightened the life out of me, and he took me back to Pinel after a week, and that’s when I gave in, and I decided I was powerless over alcohol, and my life was very unmanageable with it. And… [pause]…’

`So although he referred you to George Ward, he still maintained contact with you?’

`Yes…’

`And then took you back?’
`Yeah. Yes. I… it was a frightener, and that was his methods and… and for me it was the best one. That’s what I needed, was a kick up the jacksy really… [laughs]. I needed frightening enough to do that, and… and I started doing that and… I lived in this place… and… that the record company had… had gone and… and while I was in Crawley… I think this is significant because there was a lady that worked there, that I… I was her boss, and… ‘cause I’d got a short term job that I drank… drank my way into and drank my way out of, which was usual for me. But, she followed me to… she was twenty years younger than I am… and said that she wanted to live with me, and obviously I wasn’t ready, but… too scared to say no to hurt her feelings, and she moved in, and… she’s the nicest person I’ve ever met in my whole life… ever. There was no catch. She genuinely wanted to be with me and I found that… amazing, and… [pause]… I found it hard as well, and I realised that her parents were very worried about her, and… and… and she was too nice for me, I thought, and then…’

`Were they worried about her because of her connection with you or for some other reason?’

`I think so… I think everything. She was a young girl, she was nineteen, and… I worried too, and… I told her that I’d given up the house, didn’t want nothing to do with the records, or the company. I found this most `horriblist’ place to doss… had no electric, it was dirty, and it was what I thought I was worth, and I told her to go, and she was devastated, and so was I, but that’s what I thought I should do, ‘cause I didn’t deserve all this, and… it was just a nightmare from then on. Like… the Record Company were trying to hang on to me, and I was invited for interviews and being interviewed and… things were working and… I was trying to… to like evade it all the time, because I didn’t feel good about myself, and… umm… for six years I just literally dossed around, and… I… I used to have… sessions with Dr Gaiford, probably once a week, and sessions at Mayday with him… which I didn’t find helpful at all.’

`You didn’t?’

`No…’

`Did you have an idea of what you wanted then?’

`No…’

`You know, what would have… what… what might have been more help?’

`No… I just didn’t want to talk about sex, because that was… [both talking together]…’

`Is that what…?’’

`’Cause that would tend to be the subject, and… my sexual behaviour, which was zilch [ph] anyway. I certainly wouldn’t let anyone touch me, and… under any circumstances, whoever they were, you know, and… [pause] I find that quite demeaning as well… psycho… you know, psychologically and… like… like a guy being impotent, I think, you know, or whatever it is they suffer from… inadequate. Not a full person, but then… I have to remember that I never was a full person from childhood, that was… I was disintegrated as a child. I was broken into pieces long before I understood what sex was, you know… so… you know, in hindsight, I… I… I know what… why I felt like I felt.’

`Were you ever able to tell Dr Gaiford about the abuse at all, or…?’

`[Sighs]. Not… not… not the sexual… I tried, but it had never felt comfortable, and… we talked more about my sexuality, which I found discerning and… and was promptly told one day that… to accept that I was nothing, and… and what he’d meant by that was that… that I was actually asexual, but he used the words `nothing’ and I left the hospital feeling like nothing. But… in a lot of ways, he… he said the wrong things to me, but in other ways, he saved my life, as well. He gave me time. And he encouraged me with my art work and I think he thought that that was more important in my life than my sexuality, perhaps, that I was more worthwhile, with my talents than.. than my sexuality, but that wasn’t the case with me, because if you feel in adequate, I… I don’t think any person is born to be alone, and… although I tried these relationships, I… I couldn’t maintain them, but… I had to accept that… that probably he was quite right. That that’s the way some people are made, and especially from my childhood. Umm… so…’

`That sounds a tremendously difficult thing to sort of take on?’

`Well it’s to come to terms with things, and the feeling of being inadequate made me inadequate in other ways and that… that maybe I was inadequate. People only said I was good at drawing because they… maybe they couldn’t draw, or.. you know, I played nice music because they didn’t… they didn’t know how to write music or things, and I didn’t believe anyone any more, and I went six years like that… the Record Company telling me not to work, and I put myself in really horrendous situations by like joining the Post Office. It was all men… and I was abusing myself, and they abused me, like verbally, you know. Dirty jokes and I had to put up with all the… and I didn’t have to do it, and I… I know why now I did. It was just another way, without alcohol, of hurting myself, and… giving myself a bad time, because I was inadequate, and… and it was heavy work and it was cold, and it was freezing, and I missed… I missed Paula, the lady that I met, you know… and I’d got rid of her, and I thought `Why do I do this?’. And I did… I did start to question my own motives for my behaviour, towards myself… but I always think that… that I just didn’t deserve all this, you know…’

`Yeah…’

`So… so that was… it was six years of hell really. It was six years of not having an AA programme. I went to AA once a week, and didn’t get involved… didn’t get involved in service, or didn’t join in… was just on the outside looking in all the time… then thought that was enough…’

`Did you… did you go regularly though?’

`Once a week… but I… I was last in, first out… didn’t converse… and didn’t join in… and I was so unhappy, ‘cause I didn’t have an… a proper AA programme and I didn’t have a drink either, so it was like being in hell. I just…’

`So by this time you had actually stopped drinking completely since [both talking together] you came out of detox?’

`Yeah, I stopped for six years… yeah, I… I stopped drinking, and it was a miracle… I… I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for that experience of not drinking and not having a programme of life, but… I didn’t have any learning about anything, about running a home or anything. I lived in these awful digs, and… got involved with someone else and that all went wrong, and… same old story. Repetitive stuff, until… [sighs] one day I just thought, `this is not for me… I can’t handle this’… and I just picked up a drink as easy as that. It’s like I never stopped… and I found out I’d been ripped off by my Manager and singer in the record company, and… that was betrayal… again. I found out… this girl had been bringing men home. Another betrayal, ‘cause I’d spent a lot of money there… you know, the money that I’d got… and… gave up the jobs and everything, and… just picked up a drink. And I remember, quite vividly, suddenly waking up, screaming out for a God I didn’t understand, and I was saying… “God, help me… please help me…”, and I didn’t even know who I was talking to. And I was on the floor in a Police cell… just asking… screaming for help. And it was like I… I was totally and utterly mad, and being aware of it, which is worse. ‘Cause usually when you’re mad you’re not aware of it and you don’t care, but I was aware that I’d gone mad. Totally mad. And, apparently I’d hit several Policemen in armed, riot gear, that’s how they came for me… helmets, shields, all the… the works, and hit them with a pine bench. A kitchen bench… I knocked them all downstairs, you know and… I remember one of them saying “You know you’re going to prison, don’t you?”. “You know, this is it… you know… you’ve had so many chances…”. I said, “Yeah…”, I said, “It’s ok… I’m just a hopeless case, I don’t mind… I’d just be so happy… I give up… I’ve had enough.” And… I was taken to Croydon Court the next day, and I was taken into the court room, and there they were in the public gallery… AA people. They’d written letters, and… you wasn’t aware that somebody cared about you, you know, you… I had no awareness that… people actually cared. There was people in that gallery that I didn’t know, and I was terribly ill. I’d been given Heminevrin [ph] from the Police doctor, and… and it was a woman Magistrate again, and I thought, `I ain’t going to say nothing`. I’d just had it, you know? And… and to think these interfering bloody AA people were… I just want to go to prison… sod off and leave me alone, you know? Let me wallow in it… let me wallow… and… apparently I fell asleep in the dock [laughs]. They just… saw nobody, just snoring sounds coming, and… I was given a chance. What they asked for… was to be taken back to Pinel, and… I was given one more chance of freedom, and I don’t know whether that’s true or not, the freedom bit, but… when I got to Pinel, there wasn’t any group then, the group had stopped, because Pinel was slowly coming to an end… and… Dr Gaiford said to me, “There is no group, but you will be it… on your own.” That meant I had to do buffet, magazine and mural all on my own, but what he was actually doing… when I thought he was being very cruel, and very hard… again… was that he was giving me time to reflect on what could be. ‘Cause I’d had a taste of sobriety… umm… but not the `full monty’, you know, to coin a phrase now, and… and I think that’s what he wanted me to… to experience, was… sobriety, with a programme, and they call it a… a `Twelve Step’ programme, and… there’s twelve steps to `normal’ living.’

`So…’

`Whatever `normal’ is…’

`So, he as a Psychiatrist, was following a similar sort of programme to what AA…?’

`Yes, it’s called the Minnesota Method, and it’s the five step… the first five steps of the AA programme, which involves a life story, and it becomes admitting that you’re an alcoholic, and acceptance, and then the life story. Then AA does the rest, once you get into it.’

`And they… and those two work together? They gel together?’

`Usually, they… it’s worked for thousands, and I’m sure… you know… they’ve saved so many lives.’

`Yeah… so how did you find that then?’

`I found… I found the group… thing, on my own, very isolating, very lonely, but he was right, I did reflect… quite a lot.’

`Can you explain to me, how did that work then…?’

`I was a group… well…’ [both talking together]

`The group thing on your own…?’

`Yeah, well the… they used to have like detox, and then a group, and… and you would be… umm… promoted… [laughs] we used to call it, from detox, to being an ordinary suffering drunk… to group, where you got group therapy, but the group had to do certain things, for the unit, like the magazine and the mural, and arrange… and plan the reunion, and usually the group did that. But I was on my own. I was left to do all those things, but without being… having group talking, because there wasn’t a group, and… I just saw him briefly for once a week, and…’

`Gosh, that’s a massive responsibility on you then?’

`Well the art work was alright, because I’d done many… many murals there, so I was ok with a big mural… and the magazine was ok, ‘cause I got a bit of help off some of the other clients that were in detox, and… it was just the buffet really, but then… help came at the last minute [laughs]…’

`And where did that come from?’

`I… well it came from outside… ex-clients that volunteered to come in and… and… ‘cause I had no idea. I’d no idea about food… what… in any way. So I found that… that… and I was there quite a few weeks, I don’t really know how long. But… and then… amazingly… the Social Worker that worked there then, came up with the idea that Nicky should actually have a home of her own, and I thought this… like… this can’t be real… and me be given a home of my own… and it frightened me to death, and I thought, `No, don’t give me a home of my own…` [laughs], you know. `I don’t want that responsibility, that’s too much…` you know, and…’

`Because you’d had that previously with the… house that the Record Company had…?’

`Well that wasn’t… they paid for everything, I didn’t have a responsibility for any… anywhere I lived. You know, when I lived with these women and… and stuff, I just put money on the table, they did everything else, there was no way I could do it.’

`So this was a completely different kettle of fish then?’

`This was like “Give Nicky her own place… well the key… then she has to pay rent and bills…” and… although I was excited in one aspect, that… that I wouldn’t be homeless any more, there was this really overwhelming fear of responsibility, and I was given homeless refuge as a trial, and it was like… a… a studio flat, it was just… all… there was a little kitchen, a little bathroom, and you sleep in the living room, and… I just didn’t have any posessions whatsoever, I’d lost everything in drink. You know, all I had left was my underwear and my own money, ‘cause… they’d seem to go hand in hand with me wherever I went, you know… and my toothbrush, and… and I moved into this… place and then followed all the suggestions in AA, like getting a sponsor, like someone that had been there before who’d got sober… and… [sighs] it was hard… being taught how to do shopping…’

`Who… who… who’d… who did that with you?’

`That was my CPN later, but you know… having to go into a shop and pay for things instead of nicking it, and… and I’m not trying to make light of that, but that’s the way I was, and that’s the way I had to survive in the past… and… just the total responsibility of worrying about money and how do you sort your money out, and how do you know what… what you’re supposed to get, and… all these questions and answers that I was getting and... umm... where do I get furniture from and… you know, you need something to sit on. Then the normal things started coming like what about a telly? Will I be able to sit long enough? You know, and… it was just so overwhelming, but I had a lot of help, in the sponsor, and… and a lot of help from a lot of people in AA. I was given a lot of furniture, and beds and… and chairs…’

`So AA acts as a very practical forum as well as a kind of…?’

`Yes…’

`…discussion…?’

`Yeah. I learnt to do that myself later on, I was able to do that for… for other people, later on, so it’s a learning experience as well. But… it was very lonely as well, because it was learning a new life, and then being aware that I was still ill, ‘cause I used to feel ill, and… and I didn’t recognise that feeling ill was depression. You know, I just didn’t feel right, and yet… and I still had these very strong desires to die, because the nicer it got, the… the more I wanted to die, and… but I muddled through and then I was given more help and I thought, `blimey…`. They also give me a… a flat now… they gave me this flat that I’m in now, and… I remember coming to see it with an AA member, ‘cause I was too scared to come up myself, and then, after we come out, the next day I went back to Taverner House and queued up for two and a half hours in the queue, with the keys, and I said, “The flat’s really nice and here’s the keys back.” And she said, “But it’s your home…”, I said, “No, it can’t be mine, it’s too nice.” She said, “Nicky, for God’s sake take the keys and go home.” And just someone saying “Go home…”, and that’s how I got here, and… [pause] then… then I was given… no… I was here about three years, and my primary purpose was to stay sober a day at a time, for as long as I could, and go to as many meetings… they suggest ninety meetings and ninety days, and I doubled that, just to learn about everything… and to get into the habit of going to AA. And... I had no time for anything else… because I didn’t want to drink again. No, the… the compulsion had left me, and… that was pretty amazing stuff, you know, that I didn’t… actually didn’t want to drink any more… for the first time ever in my life. But then… doing that, you’re put in touch with reality… you know, God gave me a memory… and the reason I drank in the first place was to block those memories out, and that… I’m talking about the child abuse… and it seemed like I’d gone a full circle of my whole life, back to where I started… ‘cause I know the fears of the abuse were haunting me, and I was having nightmares about… the murder thing, and… and there was no alcohol to take the pain away… umm…’

`Were you on any other medication at that… [both talking together]?’
`No, I didn’t ask for help in any other way. I stopped seeing Dr Gaiford…’

`Do you think he was picking up the depression?’

`I don’t know, but I stopped seeing him, and I was just on my own, here… then I was… I went to Mount Carmel [ph] as a day patient, and that’s a half way house for alcoholics. They usually are kept in… you know, you stay there and live there, but I already had a flat and I went… so I was sharing stuff there… not heavy stuff, nothing specific, but it was heavy enough… and bringing it home, here… not realising. It was like wrapping concrete round my ankles, you know, and… I didn’t see the decline. And then… I got Charlie, my cat, after about three years, and I… he was like… an angel, from heaven, you know… and… he had been abused himself, and neglected, and I just fell in love with him, and he was my friend… and…’

`Where did you find him? Where did you get him?’

`It… it was from an abusive house near here, where he’d been left, and abandoned, so we had a common… a common bond, and… [sighs]. I just remember coming home from Mount Carmel [ph] one day and thinking, just the way I felt like the day I hung myself, in York… that… why have I come all this way and just feel still so empty and lonely? ‘Cause like, what am I doing it for? What’s it all about? What’s this normality everyone’s been on about? What’s this bridge to normal living? I feel like crap, and these people won’t get out of my head, you know… and… I’d got a drill, to drill a hole over the wall there, and the rope. I made the noose, and I decided that I was going to hang myself, and… I was sitting on the floor making the noose safe, and Charlie came over to me, and licked my face… and that… and straight after that I put my coat on and my scarf, and I… I walked up a great big hill outside here, and went storming into my doctors without an appointment, or without knocking on the door, I just walked in, and there was somebody there… and I just looked at him and I said, “You’ve got to help me”. And it was like that same repetitive thing of… you know, asking God to help me… that whatever it was that was wrong with me, I needed help. Because I’d dealt with one illness, and I was still dealing with that one, the alcoholism, and yet here was the other one and what do you do with this one? Do you have a twelve step programme for that? [Laughs] You know, you can’t detox yourself on depression, and I really didn’t know what to do with it anymore, because usually, my depression took me wherever it wanted it to in the past, and I went willingly with it, and… umm… I remember within the hour, I was in Westways [ph], sitting with Andrew Wilson and… I think it’s a priest or whatever you call him, a vicar… a CPN, and a Psychiatrist… within an hour. And all of a sudden, just by asking for help, and opening my mouth, it… I was there. I was… I was surrounded by these people… you know… and… there was the start of something different, and recognising… that I really did suffer from deep depression, and that I’d never actually been treated for it, and I should have been.’

`Yeah… through all those admissions and stuff… yeah…[pause].’

[Pause].

`Can we stop for a bit, Faye?’

`Right… so you were telling me that you finally managed to get to see a Psychiatrist, and a CPN, and the Chaplin, Andrew Wilson…’

`Mmm’

`What happened then? I mean what was their response to you… at that stage?’

`Umm… very caring, and… I was asked to… attend The Oaks, which is a Day Centre for people that are ill or… and it’s for alcoholics as well, and… and I did that, and… I found that helped… I found that help important then, because I was… I was trying to keep sober. I was very early sobriety… about three or four years into sobriety, which is early days for anyone who’s… you know, into this `normal’ living as they were calling it, and… and they call it a bridge to normal living and I was looking for this normal living, and couldn’t actually ever find it, there was nothing… quite normal about my life, you know, and I had the sponsor, and… I remember ringing her up one day that I was really… p’d off with this normal living, that it wasn’t for me and it wasn’t working, and… and winging and moaning about responsibility of bills and the trouble I was getting in with them and… not handling my affairs, and I couldn’t do shopping, and… she very quietly said to me, “Nicky, come down off the cross, we need the wood…”, you know, and… [laughs]. I didn’t actually know what she meant at the time but I do now, and… and it was a good thing she said to me, because it was wallowing and I wasn’t grateful for my… my environment, and I think I wasn’t grateful because I… I wasn’t aware that it was so different. You know, I kept expecting bad things to happen all the time, and they weren’t… things were actually starting to work, with this psychiatric help now, and… and… and my AA programme was working for me, ‘cause I was working this programme now, a day at a time, and…’

`Were you actually getting some practical help as well in terms of kind of you.. you mentioned bills just now?’

`Yeah. The CPN… she took me shopping for the first time and she showed me how to look up, in the aisles, which wouldn’t… never have occurred me. When you’re shoplifting you don’t look at anything but… up your sleeve, you know, and out for the floor walkers, but she taught me how to look up in the aisles, and how to find things, and… I think one day I learned that preserves were called… jam was called preserves, ‘cause I was getting upset about not finding jam and why didn’t they put jam instead of preserves, you know, it’s called jam, and she used to laugh at me. And I remember the first time at the till, she took me up and immediately had a shopping list and we got what… what I needed, and… and I was just totally gob smacked that we really did have to pay for it, and I was trying not to, and telling her how easy it would be just… and you know, she was in a cold sweat about it [laughs], you know, and… trying to get me out the supermarket as quickly as possible, but that was good, that was normal for me, and really having to pay for all this stuff, seemed like a waste of money, you know, but… she came into my home on a weekly basis, and I needed help with cooking, and… and how to run the house itself, because I hadn’t had that experience properly, and… and I couldn’t cook at all at this point… and she showed me how to cook pasta, and showed me what a green pepper was, and I wouldn’t let her cut it up, I wanted to paint it instead it was just so beautiful, and just learning the name of things and given little exercises like a… a three list thing, and… and go and get the shopping and see… could I accomplish that, because I was afraid of people, outside, and I did have agoraphobia, and I had panic attacks, quite often… and froze at places, you know, where I couldn’t move for a long time. At bus stops, and on buses, couldn’t get off buses and… once I’d got on them, and I did a five… a five… five times round trip on a 198 once… before the driver realised there was something wrong with me, that this poor creature was frozen… holding up their bus pass…’

`So you were just literally petrified?’

`Yeah and… and I was trying to get to The Oaks, and I couldn’t get off the bus… and I was an hour and a half late, and in the end, the driver helped me to get off, he was really nice, but I was very distraught that that should happen, you know. So there was lots of little things, and it was the little things that seemed to be destroying me really, and not these big major things that used to happen in my past, you know, with the drinking. But it was… it was good to be off the drink, and it felt good, and as each day passed, it seemed more realistic that I wouldn’t drink again, you know…’

`And was it just the CPN who was helping you practically, or was there…anybody else?’

`No. I used to have one to one sessions with Father Andrew, who was very helpful, and… I found him very warm, and supportive, and he used to come to my flat. Sometimes I would go and see him… and then I was directed towards… a female Psychiatrist at Warlingham, and… and I found her very hard to trust, ‘cause the questions were getting deeper, about childhood, and I found that hard to let go… and I did let one thing go, and then she got moved to Maidstone. She got transferred from her job, so I felt betrayed again, that I’d gave someone a secret, that I’d sworn never to tell, and… she went away with it, but she actually does keep in touch with me, by letter, still… and we exchange letters, and stuff, so…’

`Yeah, so you feel confident that the stuff you’ve told her is actually safe with her?’

`Yes, I do.’

`That must have been difficult for you when she left?’

`Yes, ‘cause it was very detailed. I mean what I’ve spoken about today hasn’t been detailed, I mean I was speaking in… every aspect of the abuse, sexually and physically…’

`Yeah…’

`And… I think it is very hard to let go of something that you’ve been afraid of and carried with you for all your life, and nobody’s actually got a hold of it before. Or… I’ve never found anyone that… that I trusted that much to let go… and what… what would happen when I’d told it. So the help is continuing and… on that basis, with a CPN…’

`Do you feel that after that… experience at… with… with Dr Gaiford and then you coming back into sort of like the psychiatric system, that actually your mental health problems are being recognised now?’

`I think so, for the first time in my life, and… umm… I wasn’t very forthcoming either. I wasn’t willing to accept all that help because I was very… I didn’t trust many people, and I found that hard… the hardest to do was to trust someone. And in… in AA you do a five step method and recovery and… and the first five steps involves a life story, and… you usually choose your sponsor to share your life story with and… I only told her little snippits, nothing heavy, and she… and she was wonderful, because she said she wasn’t qualified to deal with that and I needed help. Then I realised I did need help, with this, and it was heavy, and it needed to come out… because it was very dangerous for me to carry it. The danger was drinking again, to block it out because it was painful, and I was having nightmares about the woman… that I killed, and ever since I was shown the photographs, for eleven years, every single night I had the… the same nightmare, of the photograph floating above me, and it come to life and would bleed all over me, and… that was getting me down, and… I knew I had to deal with that and it’s still hard now, because I’m only in the process of that. I’ve found someone that I can trust to do that, but first I had to deal with the childhood thing because my fear of people was too overwhelming and it was stopping me from getting well… my agoraphobia, my fear of people, my fear of men, and I would… I’d be standing… at the cash register, and they’d go to give me the money and I’d duck… you know, and I… I was ducking all the time from people, and friends and… that I’d made in AA and… it… it didn’t seem right, you know, kept getting funny looks and… ‘cause I hadn’t told anybody why. And I didn’t realise I’d been doing it myself, you know…’

`Yeah. It sounds as if it was still quite… chaotic in some ways, that you were trying to juggle lots of things, like living in your own home, managing practically, you know, with looking after yourself and financial stuff, and then managing people outside as well. It…’

`Yeah, the financial thing was very hard, because I didn’t have any money. I was no longer a thief, and I was trying to be as honest as I could be, and… that was very hard, but… even now, even today, I’ve never felt that this is my home. It’s just somewhere I was moved to and it has… never actually feels like mine, ‘cause I think it’s still unbelievable after all this time, that somebody’s actually trusted me to have somewhere to live, and… I was sharing with you before that… old habits die hard, and even after about four years of living in this flat, people would come and visit me and ask me if I’d switch the light on because they couldn’t… you know, they couldn’t see me, and that in my head, I’d probably be waiting for the light to be switched on and the door to be locked and unlocked and… and little habits that weren’t right, and it… then when this was pointed out to me, I began to feel inadequate again, that I’m never quite going to get this… this normal life right, you know. It’s very hard to switch around from that life to this life… of… of managing my own life as best I can, and… getting help for myself at the same time and…’

`Do you feel you’re still learning to manage yourself, or do you think you’ve got that… sussed now? Not, not… not the psychological stuff, but the practical day to day…?’’

`Yes, I’ve learnt how to cook now because of the CPN. She was a great help. Not much. I still burn things a lot… and get it wrong, and I know I can… I can be devastated by just burning one thing and then another day I can laugh at it, you know, it’s just different days, and… learning to converse with my neighbours now, and… and having little chats with them about the weather… quite… still… still overwhelms me sometimes, because it’s quite normal. But trusting is still very hard, and… I do have people here sometimes, and sometimes when they’ve been here about half an hour, I want them to go. ‘Cause they chat about ordinary things that I can’t identify with, like they talk about their children and their past and where they came from and things like that, and it just shuts me up really, ‘cause I don’t really want to talk about what happened to me. It’s best to talk about the now really and… what I’ve achieved since I’ve been here. Which isn’t very much in anyone’s eyes, but for me it’s a big mountain, and… I just wish I could accept this as my home, but… even just saying that seems unreal, but… that I haven’t managed to… to… I still sleep on the floor, ‘cause it feels more comfortable.’

`Really?’

`Mmm… and I’ve tried sleeping in beds and that it... it’s not right. But it’s warmer and it’s got a roof on it, and… things like that that… ways of life I have to turn around bit by bit and trust that I’m safe in a bed, ‘cause I know… I hate beds. They… they mean danger…’

`Yes. In terms of… have you had any readmissions back to hospital, like since you’ve been in the flat say?’

`Yes I have. I’ve been… I’ve been admitted into a… a thing called `The Women’s Service’ that’s… that began in February and apparently one of the first of it’s kind in the country, that’s… it’s a women’s centre run by women, and the women that run it are psychiatric nurses, and assistants, nursing assistants, and it’s… visited by a female psychiatrist twice a week, and backed up by her, and… I found this place, by… when… when the first psychiatrist left Warlingham [ph] and I was left high and dry, my CPN tried to find another female Counsellor, and it was quite a few months before she found this lady called Penny Cutting that was… that had come to Warlingham and… I was introduced to her and went to see her, and… I think it’s taken nearly two years just to trust her, but… I can say in all honesty, she is the only person I trust with my life, and I can’t say that about anybody else, except one more person that I met later on, and… but it took a long time, and was there going to be a catch? And I didn’t know about this new service, it wasn’t existing then. It opened in February, but before that I had started talking to Penny in Warlingham on a weekly basis, and I found myself going down and down. I found the whole thing depressing. The childhood thing, and realised for the first time in my life, how awful it had been, for me, and I hadn’t recognised that pain… because I’d blocked it out all my life, and I… I hurt because I thought it was so normal. And that I did suffer days and days of… terror, beatings and abuse… and just the whole thing of not being wanted by anyone around you… [pause] and still having that feeling that… that because there wasn’t a bond between mother and baby, that… there’s a great big hole in my soul, you know, that that’s never going to be met by anyone, and… is something I have to come to terms with, that… that I have been alone and because of it… although I do make friends quite easily, but then get frightened and… and don’t maintain the… the friendships you know, because I always think there’s going to… something going to happen to them, and so I sabotage most friendships. But I’m learning not to do that now, because I’m meeting people that have been in… in the places that I’ve been, and have the feelings that I have… and instead of… trying all the time to… to reach this normal life everyone’s talking about… to accept that it’s not going really be quite normal for me, ever… because I wasn’t brought up normally, and I… I can only do the right things that are right for me… and… and I learnt this in the house, when I went…’

`And this is the women’s service house?’

`Yeah, the house is in Purley [ph] and it’s like a beautiful house… it’s furnished, and it’s separate rooms, and they’re beautiful rooms and… beautifully furnished, and there’s group therapy twice a day, and one to one’s with the nurse, twice a day… and nurses are on hand all… all day, twenty four hours a day, and… [pause]. The biggest… the biggest, I know it sounds silly… the biggest thing I found… [pause]… I looked for a reason not to be there. I was one… I was one of the first to go in, and I looked for a reason not to be there, because… they required… they didn’t make you do anything, you could do anything, but they did like you to sit at the table and eat, and… I found that really scary, because when I was with my mother, I used to be thrown scraps and I was on the floor, where the… her other children would eat… be eating at the table, and my grandfather’s place… I used to sit under the table, out of fear… you know, and then I… never actually managed to ever sit at a table, and… it’s taken since February to learn to sit at the table and talk and converse with people and eat… with a knife and fork, like a human being does… and again it’s the little things that are overwhelming now… and… I did manage to sleep in a bed twice, while I was there…’

`So even in… in that situation, you… you were not able to… you were still sleeping on the floor?’

`Yes. Yeah. There was no way… I remembered my abuse from Winterton Hospital, by nurses and I had a terrible fear of medical people… especially female nurses, and I think it took the whole stay of the first stay there, ‘cause I’ve been in three times now, umm… just to trust nurses, and I was showing, that unconditional live that they have to offer, as professional nurses, real carers…’

`So a very, very different experience from your previous…?’

`They were totally, and… and… I think this is the breakthrough that was needed… with Penny… ‘cause I was still very reluctant to let go, of certain things, and frightened of what they might think, and the encouragement… from the staff… on a continual basis, was just amazing, it just never stops. And… my art work, I used to sabotage… my art work all the time, ‘cause my mother told me I wasn’t any good, and you’re not good enough to draw, for anyone, ever… and… that encouragement too, it’s like… a freedom inside that my talents have been… because that abuse had been so… tied up, and not able to come out because of… that like… it’s all rushing out at the moment, the art work, you know, and the… and the expression is just… is freedom.’

`It sounds brilliant and it sounds excellent, so there’s…’

`Yeah…’

`I think we’re going to have to… we’re going to take a bit of break… sorry, I didn’t know whether you were patting me on the back or…’

[End of DVC Pro tape 4]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 5 – Start of VHS tape 2]]

[Camera: `Interview with Nicky Nicholls, C905/15, tape number five’]

`We were just talking about your creativity and that… by being in the women’s service house you’ve had the opportunity to explore that a bit?’

`Mmm’

`Do you want to say a bit more about that?’

`I think the first thing that happened was that I trusted Penny enough to talk about my childhood, in detail… in graphic detail… and… and part of my problem as my art work was being beaten that day and told I wasn’t any good, where… then I didn’t utilise that talent any more… only to my own ends in a criminal sense, by forgery, and… using it to make tobacco in prison, so… it only went as far as that. I did… I… I was asked to put on a… an exhibition, in prison, outside in York, and agreed to it if they’d do it, but I wouldn’t go, and my work was exhibited there but I didn’t go, and the other thing that happened to me in the art field in prison was that the Governor… actually secured me a place in York Art College and I was the only serving prisoner ever to do that, and I went, the first day, with a home made portfolio, that one of the girls had made… totally embarrassed about it, and… not being aware of what I was going to be asked by fellow colleagues, one of the girls asked me where I lived, which was quite an ordinary thing to ask anyone, and I said “Oh, just down in Askham [?] nick…”, and her face said it all, and said, “You’re not going back there”, you know, and I didn’t go back. So I didn’t follow that… that up. But I did win a Koestler Award in Art in prison, which is a big award. It’s a… it’s a competition organised by Koestler] in his day, for prisoners all over the country in Great Britain and Ireland, and it’s a… a very fierce competition, and… I won both sections… and the first time a woman’s ever done that.’

`Excellent…’

`In… in the Art field, and Music, so…’
`Brilliant… who… who were you encouraged by?’

`By Joe Whittey, The Governor. He was excellent… and, he… he was great in that field, but… as soon as I started… started drinking again… even then, when I’d won those things, I know I sabotaged that, it… it wasn’t as good as what… I knew that inside my work wasn’t being released… because I was afraid of anyone criticising it I suppose, so I made it bad so they could criticise it, and that’s what I expected them to do.’

`Except instead you won prizes…?’

`Yeah, and… yeah, the music was played on BBC radio, all of the prison… the whole prison shut down for those… those moments, and all the radios were tuned up, by the Officers…’

`Brilliant…’

`And, I was the only one who didn’t hear it, ‘cause I disappeared outside [laughs]… and chose not to…’

`Mmm…’

`But that was down to lack of self worth, ‘cause that… a lot of the… the dignity as a child, you know, rights as a child, you know, your self worth is… stolen, as well, you know, so… I was a lot of things missing, as I was growing up. And… with… without qualities that ordinary people have.’

`You were saying that as you… as you went back into drinking, you kind of lost some of that… you know… creativity…?’

`Yeah, I lost it… I mean…’

`Have you sort of picked it up again?’

`Only in the last two weeks.’

`Could you say a bit more about that?’

`Yeah, I… I… I found this encouragement in the house. I experimented with another medium in the house, and it turned out a lot more than I thought it would. I thought, `I’m not going to be any good at this’, I put myself down to begin with… and the response to… to the pictures was amazing, and… it’s a pastel medium, which I’d never even hoped to work in you know. I’d had pastels at home and never even used them, ‘cause I was afraid of them, ‘cause I’ve never learnt how to paint at all, it… I’m just self taught, and it’s like a new journey, and people who’ve seen the paintings just want them, and that’s amazing ‘cause I keep… every time one goes, and… and it’s gone, I think they’ll be back in five minutes and they’re going to find the mistakes in it and… but… I’m not ready to enjoy that yet, but it’s still amazing that… what’s happening, you know… and… I want to do it more now, and I’m enjoying it, and that’s the main thing. It’s not about letting them go, it’s about enjoying my talent, that I should have enjoyed years ago, and I’m sure if life had’ve been different, I would have been in college or… encouraged in that field…’

`And are you… when you say `letting them go’, are you actually selling…?’

`Yeah… yeah, that’s amazing as well. You know, enough to get it together again, and try and pick up the pieces because of this breakdown in February, of my… confidence and… expectations of myself, which were very high. Too high… and trying too hard to… to keep it together by myself, and… and refusing help again, and all this same stuff that goes round, and `I’m not worth it’, and why do they want to help anyway? ‘Cause this… this women’s service, it’s an amazing… it’s the first time I’ve ever had help from anyone, genuinely… for… and I… I’m talking medically, I’m not talking Joe Whittey, the Prison Governor, or people like that, I’m talking hospital, and it’s been giving me such… [sighs]… intensity, and… and… and true… that I can’t believe it’s happening, and I’ve tried to even sabotage that by swearing at staff and… when I’ve been upset, and… and they… they… they just help you, and… and the help’s… I’ve been there three times, and each time… the last time was definitely better. I was kept there a bit longer than usual, and… it was time to let go with Penny, the Counsellor, about how I really felt about this abuse. I never wanted anyone to know I’d had sex in my life because I was so ashamed of it, and it… and yet I know, today, that people think sex is quite a nice, normal thing, but for me it isn’t, and I have to sort of… get on another road of thinking, where I don’t… feel so dirty all the time. Because it stays with you, that stigma is with you… they’ve destroyed so… so much of me, and… I’m just not a whole person any more you know, I’ve never been a whole person since it… since the first time it ever happened. I’m just a person in bits, and… and I need to put some of them bits together to make me a little bit whole, you know, so that I can function, ‘cause… [sighs]… if I don’t function, if I don’t put these bits together, there’s a great danger of me drinking again and then the drinking again’s going to… it’s going to… I’m just going to get on the merry go round and I’m not going to get off it. You know, so… I need to find a way, to forgive myself, for a lot of things, and to let go of the guilt that I carried for other people as well, ‘cause…’

`Do you feel confident that you might be able to do this?’

`Only with help. If I don’t try it on my own, I’ll be alright. But if I hand myself over, to the people that I’ve found in my life, that I believe in now, and that’s the women’s service. I believe I can salvage something, maybe… but… if I don’t, I have no doubt in my mind that I’ll die by my own hand, and… that’s not frightening. What’s frightening is failure… and… I’m on a good road for the first time. I think I’m on the right road now, and I… I’ve got a lot of support and I’ve been put on the risk register, at the hospital, and I got a Social Worker for the first time in my whole life, which I find amazing, and… she is absolutely fantastic and supportive, and… and all these wonderful people are in my life and… and Joe Whittey’s still in my life, and my prison mum and dad are still in my life, and… and I can acknowledge the fact that… [sighs] I can ‘phone that house twenty four hours a day which I do sometimes, because I still have nightmares and I still find it hard to sleep, you know… and I sleep with… there’s a lot of things to work on, and it’s early days… for this other recovery in my life, you know… I’m nine years away from the drink now, and… that’s just a day at a time, and I’d like to be them many years away from my abuse, and my experiences, which will never go away, but… which I may learn to live with and handle in a different way.’

`Yes, which it sounds as if you’re beginning that process?’

`Yeah, and it’s a new process, so it’s strange and it’s scary sometimes. And sometimes it feels more comfortable to wallow, than to deal with things, but I must learn… I must learn not to do that. Try not to do that, and to hand myself over to the people that I trust.’

`Mmm. Yes, that’s brilliant that you’ve managed to… to find those people. Can we stop for a sec?’

`It looks like things are… are changing for you Nicky, hopefully, and you’ve got a network of people around you that you feel that you may be in a trusting relationship with. I wonder, looking back over… you know, over the thirty odd years that you’ve spent kind of in institution… you know, in and out of different types of institutions, reflecting back, would you…? I don’t know, would you… how would you consider that experience, do you think it’s been positive, negative, a mixture…?’

`I think looking back… there are regrets, especially when I first was admitted to… Winterton Hospital, and the wrong things happened, and… I think, I do believe that if I’d have had the understanding and treatment that I’m… I’m receiving now… everything would have been definitely different, you know. To go through… I… I do believe that I slipped the… you know, I got through the net, several times… even out of prison, I was let off because of… when I should have been jailed, because… you know, ill or drunk, whatever, I was still a criminal, and… I always got Solicitors with very strong mitigating circumstances, and it would have been kinder to put me away, and perhaps get this help that I got first in prison, because that’s when it really began, with Joe Whittey, who cared enough about me, as a human being, not as a prisoner… as a human being… to get my life started. He recognised the… the major problem, and that was to… to rid me of that one problem that was causing me the most problems. And that was drinking… excessively… and causing so much trouble and heartache, along the way with it, and he took time out to… to put me in the right place at the right time, and it was a struggle to get sober, but that was half the problem removed. And now, I feel that… that I’ve found the same kind of person in Joe Whittey and Penny Cutting, and the… and the staff at the house, the same sort of… it is the same sort of feeling, that… that maybe, this is the… the other half of my illness, that can now be dealt with, in sobriety, and… and who knows, you know? I’m not ambitious at all and I… I live a day at a time, best I can, and… and I’ve done several other things other than art work. I’ve written musicals and I’ve written a big one that I’d like to go to television. I worked very hard on it… with someone else… and I’ve written lots of children’s books and television plays, but… where do people like me go to, you know? Where do you start on your own? You know, I was just picked up because I was… a sensationalist sort of thing for that Record Company and I was used as that, you know, and they used my story, and I’d got it on tape, buy the tape… and I was horrified… to hear people talking live about my… being in prison, for… for murder and stuff like that, and I don’t want that. I… I… I want… I want to be recognised on my own merits, either as an artist or a musician, or a playwright, you know… because I have achieved some of these things, and I’ve been a cartoonist as well… but to achieve that off my own merits, not because of what I’d been or where I’d been… just because I am, and I think if life had been different, and… we say `never say if, or should’ve… could’ve and would’ve…’ in AA, but… if I’d have been allowed to be a child, and to grow up as a child into a… a decent human being, instead of a violent, resentful, hurt human being, who knows…?’

`Yes…’

`Who knows?’

`Yes, ‘cause certainly I mean, the talent that you’re showing… you know that’s… that’s coming through now, in all sorts of ways, as you say through your music, through your art, through your writing… certainly deserves great recognition. Just going back… you talked just now about that the Record Company used your story… and you found it very difficult to listen to other people talking about incidents in your life…’

`Mmm…’

`This must also have been quite a difficult experience for you, but I wonder how you feel about telling your story in your own words, as we’ve done today? How that feels as an experience for you?’

`I feel the experience has been because… I’ve been asked to carry a message… not because of where I’ve been or what I’ve done… but to carry the message of my experiences, through hospitals, through psychiatric hospitals… because of my abuse… through prison, through recovery from alcoholism, a day at a time, up to now. I don’t feel used, I feel that it has helped me immensely, to talk to people… who want to… who… who just want to know who I am, and not why, you know, and just to… to… to have my experiences from very old psychiatric days where… where beds were shoved together, and there was only one toilet, you know, and… and two nurses to fifty people. And them horrendous days of… of padded cells and… and hopefully they’re not needed so much today because drugs are taking place of… of all that stuff, you know and ECT… and, I feel ok and it’s been a great privilege to be sharing with two very nice, and understanding people. I’ve enjoyed your kindness today.’

`We’re very grateful to you and I’m sure your testimony is really important, in… in so many ways and we’re grateful to you. Thank you Nicky.’

`It’s been a privilege, thank you.’

[Faye: `Ok, when you’re ready…’]

`Ok, this is a little character I invented in prison, he’s called `Nicky Bee’, and he derived from me being called `a little bastard’ by my mother every day. And one day I was in prison, just sitting there and I doodled this little sad Bee figure with a ball and chain round his foot, and… all the other prisoners fell in love with him and… and he was copyrighted and born in prison, and he’s done a lot of things since. He’s been a… he’s been… he was on the HMS Lion in the Falklands War as a mascot, and somebody had made a cuddly toy in prison of him and they took him and brought him back safe, with the ship, so that was nice. And he’s done advertising, and this little book’s about him, not being wanted, in the hive because he’d lost his sting, then he met a friend called Kilmarnock, and Kilmarnock helps him, takes him to Mrs Ladybird, who adopts him, and lives happily ever after… and he has lots of adventures after that, so there’s a lot… of follow stories, follow up stories of him… so that’s Nicky Bee… [ph].’

[Faye: `Is it based on you, as a person?’]

`Yes. Yes, but in a very childish way, and… of not being wanted, and then finding help and getting adopted and finding a new home...’

[Faye: `Have you shown it to anyone?’]

`No, not yet, but… everybody loves him, and a lot of children have seen him and love him so… it’s just having the confidence to do something with it… with him… and… I think he carries his own little message. And he’s not a nasty little bee, he’s got… he’s got no sting, so… [laughs] so… that’s Nicky Bee…’

[Faye: `Ok, when you’re ready…’]

`These are copies of some of the… records and… LP’s, singles and LP’s that… were recorded by Viking Records, Lakeside Records… and I… I started to write these songs in prison. It was a way of getting my feelings out… not really having… having any idea whatsoever of any of them ending up on vinyl, so it was amazing. This… this one was a very big hit… `Child of 1945’, especially in Nashville, and it won the Golden Rose Award for Lyrics, and it was also chosen for this… mixed album. And I went to the opening bash in… in Oxford… there was only ten records chosen for that LP, in the Country Music, and then different singers wanted to sing different songs, and it just went from there… until I sabotaged it again, with alcohol, and… lost the whole lot, but… that’s the… Basker [ph] Registration, and these are the Koestler Awards that I won in prison. Just other records… Cabin [ph] records from Watford… so… an amazing experience, you know… you know’

[Pause]

`Some of these songs were co-written with… the Country Singer, Dave Vernon, and Chris Andrews, who was the Manager of Cabin Records in Watford, and that was good fun, working together… umm… [pause]. It was amazing to hear the songs build up and… and… just to… just to remember that they were actually written in the prison laundry amongst a lot of dirty, smelly borstal socks… and… I still can’t believe the encouragement I had from the Officer there, Mr Norris, he was wonderful. Used to say, “I’ll do the socks and you write the songs” [laughs]. Great stuff.’

[Faye: `Ok…’]

`Ok… I… I found painting and drawing… expresses how I feel sometimes and this is one of my down moods… cold, isolated, lonely… umm… but… they do get happier sometimes, but it is a good way of getting rid of my feelings and expressing myself. This one’s a cheeky dolphin, ‘cause I adore animals… every animal growing, and… animals… dolphins are very spiritual and… and I believe they’re very helpful to people who are not well, as well, so I like them.’

`This is a… an old painting of someone else’s that I remembered, and I did it from recall, and it… I love… I love boots, I don’t know why I love boots, ‘cause I didn’t like shoes when I was drunk, but I like boots, and that’s appealing… it’s nice.’

`That’s… that’s a Vietnam child, and when I saw this photograph in the newspaper… a very tiny photograph, it reminded me very much of my childhood of being caged and trapped and frightened, so I… that reminds me. I keep some of these things to remind me of how far I’ve come really… and that’s another Indian… a musical Indian, he’s playing a pipe. I hang onto Indians because of the story I told… about my father, and… which wasn’t true, but I became involved in Indians… the… Native American Indians at an early age, ‘cause they too are very… they’re spiritual and… and… they know what life is, on life terms, they live it, and they’ve been through a lot. And I identify with them, a lot. And the next one is… about racism, which appalled me… was another photograph in the newspaper, about… how the blacks had to wait eight hours for one bus… and the whites had one bus every half hour, and the blacks weren’t allowed on, and they had to wait eight hours for one bus. I can’t imagine what that mother… was feeling, with those children. A lot of people say my paintings and drawings are unusual, but I like to… to paint and draw what I feel, and what touches me the most. [Pause]. This is the owl… I’ve… I’ve written a… a musical fantasy called the Owl Man, who’s half man… half man, half owl, based on a true myth from Cornwall, and I’m hoping to do something with that, in television, if I’ve got the courage to do so, anyway…’

[Faye: `Ok…’]

`Ok this… this bambiwas… I did this in the women’s house at Purley, and… it was my second revelation on pastels, and… what I remember most about it, is not actually doing it, it was the response from other people, and… I think that was the start… this is the start now of my… new work. Pastels are so expressive for me and it’s… easier than painting actually, ‘cause I don’t really know how to paint, ‘cause I’ve never learnt, but… I really enjoyed doing this little guy… and he looked helpless and hopeless, as… as I felt when I was doing it. But… after all the encouragement from the nursing staff, and… and clients… I felt good about it. So I framed it. And this is a… a mixture of my favourite painter, Edward Landseer, who painted the `Monarch of the Glen’, and I’ve incorporated two of his paintings. This… the first one is dig… `Dignity and impudence`, and this one with the St Bernard, and the drooling dog is called `The Doubtful Crumb’, and I just think… I could be quite envious of this painter who paints animals so… so well. You know, and it’s not very often that I copy paintings but… if I do want a famous painting in my home, I can just… paint one. There’s a… a copy of the `Laughing Cavalier’ in the hallway [laughs]. It’s a bit cheeky really, but… I do love it, Edward Landseer … he’s a marvellous painter.’

`This is a print from America that a friend brought me from a… a native American village in Florida, near Fort Worth I think. Umm… and I love it, and I… I call him my Spiritual Guide, he… he doesn’t have a name, but I feel as though he’s watching me, day and night. Mmm…’

`And this is Chief Joseph, from the Nez Pierce Tribe, and I painted this with my hands, and… a lot of people have been after that one, but I don’t think I’ll be letting it go.’

`[Noise in background] Oh look… pussycat… [inaudible]… who’s a good boy? There’s a good boy… look… [inaudible].’

`Who’s that?’

`I haven’t got the mike.’

[Faye: `That’s alright, I’ve got you on the camera one…’]

[Inaudible]…

`This is Thomas… Thomas Nicholls, from Lygham [???], abandoned in a black bag.
[To cat] You’re my best friend… and my baby… come on baby… oh, baby, baby… you’re such a good boy, eh…. Who’s a clever boy… oh… yeah, you keep me very busy… alias Hannibal Lector [ph] [laughs]…’

`[Inaudible]’

`And he’s as frightened as me, inside… he’s the little boy whistling in the dark, and this is a pigeon… [laughs]… he runs a mile… don’t you? Don’t you darling?’

`[Inaudible]’

`Shall I go and get Thomas? Err… Charlie…?’

`If he’ll come, yeah…’

`He’s very, very special… it’s alright, baby… sit down here… there you are… shh… shh… there. Good boy… this is Charlie Nicholls… [pause] saved my life twice, didn’t you darling? Who’s a good boy… he’s very playful… aren’t you? Oh look [whispers]… here we go… I think he’s very fearful so I’ll let him go… [pause]. There’s a good boy, very clever…’

`[Inaudible]’
[End of audio tape five side a]

[End of DVC Pro tape five].