And this is me

There was once an impressionist called Mike Yarwood. He made a lucrative career out of pretending to be other people and became a huge TV star. At the end of each show, he would come onto the stage without disguise and props and said, “And this is me”. Unfortunately, Mike Yarwood’s “me” was an embarrassment. He would sing a song, very badly, before wishing us all good night as the titles started to run. Perhaps if he had sung the song as Harold Wilson or Eddie Waring, we might have preferred it because, it turned out, we loved what Yarwood wasn’t rather than what he was. At the risk of having a similar effect on my loyal reader, this piece is called “And this is me.”

Since the passing of our friend Ben Hiscox, I have found myself trying to describe the reaction of the people in our village and the effect his passing has had on us. I cannot explain just why I started writing about it: I just did. I had no idea how my writing would be received but something drove me on to do it, to take a chance that, somehow, I could contribute something, no matter how small and insignificant, to our community. I think I was writing for me, too. Like everyone else, I could make no sense of what had happened. We were all shocked behind belief but there was a spirit, not a religious spirit, but a spirit amongst the people that brought us together. And that spirit went way beyond Stoke Gifford. Thousands of Bristol Rovers supporters who never knew Ben rose to applaud him on Good Friday and he became their best friend too.

Being asked by Ben’s family to read Slate Grey Skies at the funeral was the greatest honour of my life by some considerable distance and to see it in the celebration booklet was humbling. As humbling, if not more so, have been the comments from Ben’s family and friends, thanking me for my words. Thanking me! As I have said elsewhere, I am not good at receiving praise. Not that I don’t welcome it, of course, but I always think, on the rare occasions that it happens, that I probably don’t deserve it, that people are just being kind, humouring me. But these are decent, honest people. They did mean it and I could not be more flattered and grateful.

I was stunned to have people telling me how much they looked forward to reading my articles in the Bristol Rovers programme, the award-winning ‘Pirate’. I supposed, as I had not been to a game for nearly three years, that no one was reading it, but this week people were saying how much they enjoyed pieces on this and that and they were sorry I had left. Just my luck that I found out too late!

Writing is what I do. I don’t pretend to do it well – that is for others to decide – and I certainly don’t pretend that it is all technically perfect. In fact, I know for sure it isn’t. But I write from the heart, with corrections from the head, and I write from feel. It was all I ever wanted to do. When I was at school, I was no good at anything. I did not understand any of the sciences, none of the maths made sense, there was not a subject, except what they called English Language, that I liked and was any good at. I was even worse at practical subjects like woodwork. But give me a piece of paper and something to describe and I was Mr Literary Duracell.

I had no parental drive and encouragement to succeed. My mother, a Dutch woman with little education herself, brought me up alone and the struggle was merely to get by. We did not have a television until I was a teenager, we never had a telephone, we had one small electric heater to warm a three bedroomed house. All I had was a little record player and my vinyl music collection. And that was my life. I never felt poor, but we were. When I was very young, I went to my grandparents after school until my mother finished work in town and collected me. It wasn’t until years later that I found out that they charged her for me being there and she would often going without lunch herself so that I didn’t go hungry.

By the age of 13, the mental health problems that have plagued my life started to emerge. I started to have night terrors, anxiety attacks and, what I later discovered, bouts of severe depression, my black dog. Not that I knew what any of this meant. My mum just told me she was taking me a doctor in a basement in Portland Square where I drew things, punched a punchball and kicked a football around. And I talked. To a child psychiatrist.

After school, I drifted into work, my mother upped sticks and remarried, leaving me alone in the house. I was happy for her, she deserved it, but I had even less money than ever. I never told her that, for two years, I had no heating at all and no running hot water. I washed by boiling up saucepans of water and emptying them into a large plastic bath.

All this time, I wrote. Often just poems or songs, but sometimes lengthy essays. No one ever read them. The bug still remained.

Then, after I married and settled down, I was given the opportunity to write a single article in the Bristol Rovers programme. The editor Keith Brookman liked it so much he offered me a regular gig and apart from being fired for a year during the boardroom split, I carried on for almost 13 years. I also secured a column with the Bristol Evening Post, a dream come true and a passport to who-knows-what until I was removed as a direct result of the aforementioned split. I am afraid I don’t have access to the kind of lawyers I might require if I was to tell you how my newspaper sacking came about and who was responsible for it, but I have never felt the same about Bristol Rovers ever since. And I have never bought the Bristol Post since 2006 either. Perhaps my newspaper column might have led to something, maybe not, but I am left with an almighty ‘What if?’ in my life.

I set up this website when I finished work last year to scratch that writing itch. I have found that I can write about pretty well anything – not necessarily that well! – and I can do it to order. And I am writing a book on the Greek island of Corfu which has stalled in recent weeks for obvious reasons.

So that’s me, the writer who never really made it, but at least I tried!

The black dog of depression is never far away and it is important for me to write and talk about it. Depression is not a good place but it is familiar and you learn to live with it. It becomes so familiar that, perhaps perversely, the fear of change is almost as unsettling as the depression itself. You would probably need to be me to explain how that works because even I can see how ridiculous it sounds. It’s like saying you’re happy with being depressed. Of course, I am not, but there is security in darkness and provided it’s topped up with drugs and the occasional therapy, you can see yourself spending the rest of your life there. I am now on an endless waiting list for further therapy – the NHS list itself is so full, they can’t fit me in for years so they contract out some services to private companies (who profit from illness: nice) and I am now on the waiting list of a private company.

Writing has been something of a calling for me, like nursing or teaching is for others. It has given me enormous pride that, somehow, I have been able to ease the pain of Ben’s family and friends by simply writing a few words. It is not all about me, I never pretended it was and I have always been at pains to make sure everyone understands that. But we all do what we can when times are tough. Some people in this village have been positively heroic and I am not exaggerating. All I have tried to do is to reflect their heroism, their kinds, their compassion and their great strength. Oh yes, and their love. Better mention that. Lots of love in our village.

Thank you so much for reading. This is part of me, not always the part of me you might usually see, but it’s part of my bigger picture. I might not always write what you want to read and feel free to tell me when I get it wrong.

Finally, editors please note: I can write much nicer and more thoughtful stuff than the likes of Katie Hopkins, Jeremy Clarkson and Kelvin MacKenzie. As Yosser Hughes used to say, Gissa Job!