And then we had a massive recession in this country, and I lost me job and I couldn’t find work. Well we were under a lot of financial pressure and we, they were going to take the house of us, we’d be homeless, and I, I finished, I got involved in organised crime and it’s not something that’s clever and it’s something I’ll never think, well I’ll be proud of. But going through that period of time, I thought, To do this you’ve got to, you’ve not got to have a conscience And I did [laughs], and I used to worry about going to prison and losing me family and, all the time I would be pouring more and more pressure on meself. Eventually I did find work and I was working seven days a week but, the bills and the, the outstanding money was immense and we, we couldn’t catch up and, that through the stress and the pressure the voices came back and, I always remember the first time it came back really dominant, it was a real loud shouting voice, it was a Friday evening and I was walking through Sheffield town centre and this voice kept screaming at me saying, You’re Mickey McAvoy, you’re worth millions And Mickey McAvoy was the guy who robbed the Brinks Mat gold and I foolishly believed this, you know, and , thinking I would got all this money stashed away I walked into this pub and bought everybody a drink and then bought another one so you can imagine the problems when I got home with no money. And this went on for quite a long time but I still never disclosed, I had this big fear of disclosure, of not being believed. And, eventually a friend of mine asked me to go in business with him, and we set up this business and in the first year we turned over a million pound, but then with that comes a lot of stress and pressure and, we were working eighteen hours a day seven days a week. And because I would never told me wife about the abuse, because the major problem was what the abuser did to me of, some of it was quite disgusting, but I would got over that through dissociation, I didn’t feel the pain, but it’s what she said, it was the mind games and me mind had never healed from the, from the fear.

I got more voices and I, I ended up that I was, I was going to work and, but I wouldn’t work I’d just sit there and listen to all this nonsense going on and, some of it quite, vile [sighs], Well I did, I’d a voice telling me it was my fault I led him into sin, I deserved to burn in hell and, and that was the voice of the priest, and then I heard [NAME]’s voice telling me to kill myself so we could be a family again and, oh it was, it was awful and then of course what happens, my boss pulled me in and told me I’d , you know, a couple of weeks to get my act together and I never got it together, I got a golden handshake which is how, how it works there. , and, I had to sign papers saying I wouldn’t no work with a, another firm for two years or something but the, the size of the golden handshake covers

All that. I sold my house and moved into a sort of studio flat. Which is a posh way of saying a bedsit I think it shows you how middle class I’ve become.

[Laughs].

Yeah? and then I spent three months, totally out of my head on drugs and alcohol.

And I went through thousands over that three months in, in money, I spent nearly everything I had, I had loads of friends then but the [laughs], you know, they were only there because there was drugs and alcohol on the go.

And then one morning I just could no take it anymore, I went to my doctors and I told him, and he got me, I saw a pychiatrist the same day and the pychiatrist had told me at the end of it that he thought I might have a serious mental illness and I needed to come into hospital.

I mean I think it’s a shame, because a lot of people haven’t heard of direct payments orand they’re just trying to bring it into mental health and it’s quite a slow process and I think it would work for a lot of people. I’ve got one friend whos getting it, and I’ve got another friend whos applied, but she’s waiting to hear, so we will have to see what happens with that. And it’s been changed now. Called Self Directed Support’ and I helped her fill in the form and it took us an hour. And it’s quite lengthy. it’s a bit like the DLA form about what you have to do, what help you need and what your needs are and things like that. And yes. So that’s the new scheme and I’ll see how it goes for people, but I really recommend the direct payments if you are a person that does suffer a lot from being in hospital to be monitored all the time. I mean my direct payments worker’s never had to make the phone call but she knows the numbers to contact, my Mum and my CPN if I’m showing any signs of becoming unwell. And that can be all sorts of things like overspending and getting up on a high, having lots of energy, you know, talking too much. Things like that to going the other way and being low and not wanting to get out of bed. She does see me have duvet days some days and I refuse to get dressed. She’ll say, Are you getting dressed today I’ll say, No, I’m having a duvet day I don’t bother to get dressed, but I don’t do that very often now. So that’s nice. And she’s very supportive because she’ll help me with things round the house and cleaning and shopping and doing my clothes and things like that because I’ve got lazy-itis which nothing to do with having an illness, it’s purely the fact I’ve had her for a couple of years now and when she first came in, I was quite depressed and she’s helped me through that bad period and now I’m better, I’ve kind of got used to her doing it. So I am treated like a depressed person when I’m actually fine. But there you go.

So I take advantage of that, so it’s really like having a housekeeper. But it’s the company as well that’s the important thing. you know, I know that when I get up, she makes me a cup of tea which is really nice, and she lets herself in the door and shouts up, good morning and I drag myself down and then I spend a couple of hours just talking to her in the morning and that’s how we start off and that’s quite nice. So it’s companionship.

And I think particularly for me because I’m single. I think if I was in a relationship it would be different, and I probably wouldn’t need direct payments, but I don’t like being on my own and so for me it works, and long may it last. I don’t know with the present government what will happen with the funding or things like that but for me it’s really working. So for me it is quite amazing really and I just hope more people can get access to it.

it’s just so peaceful, there’s just hardly any noise at all. it’s an easy life.

And what do you think about living here? Is it just the peacefulness that you…?

Here it’s a lot, it’s very quiet. Where I lived before it was in a village, but we were on the main road through, so you know, basically it wasn’t too bad, but the neighbour was annoying. That’s part of the reason we moved I think.

oh right.

He used to spy on us all the time, well, when I was outside or my Mum was outside he was just looking through the window all the time, and like cutting flowers down, and spraying them with hose.

Yes, it was pretty bad, and he was liking banging on the walls, when I played music and stuff, even though it wasn’t very loud. He phoned the police up loads of times as well. But like slam doors. One time he came in, into the house on his own. Like without even being invited, like through the back door I think, and knocked on my brother’s door and asked him to turn his music down. Yeah.

But I was [clears throat] as I say only in for eight weeks and it just seemed to be, you know, I got back and sort of fairly coherent mindset and I was taken up to a hostel, like a hostel for… to just like a social work, house, hostel in Edinburgh and it was, it was, yes, I was just there for a six months and they teach you how to behave you know, cook, be a bit more social. It was interesting that. I mean it was like, you know, I mean I was pretty fragile and as I say it was a weird thing because sometimes I’d be okay and other times it would be, you know, and it was almost like sleeping. You know, I would go to bed at 10 oclock at night and probably struggle to get up [coughs] at nine, you know, so it was like, you know, it was like sleep therapy, but it was like taking it too far. And I was just like, I was… but anyway, but that was, that did knock, knock the psychosis pretty much on the head.

So what was it like living there in a hostel?

It was fine. It was good. It was it was it was a good place to sort of you know, recuperate. Or convalesce. At the start, I mean, the doctor said, At the time you were probably were unwell for a long time How long? I’ve a feeling there’s not much point thinking too much about that.

When I went to visit him in prison, I mean it was horrendous. I mean, all, all leading up to that, and prison, I mean I’d never been inside a prison in my life. It was awful trying to even to get to visit him. But I noticed then that he was beginning to imagine things that were going on and he said that people were listening, you know, through the things in the ceiling, and they were always watching you, and listening to what you were saying, and he was getting really sort of psychotic then.

And when you’re in prison you don’t have any rights, you don’t anything, you don’t know what to do, because you don’t know how to contact people. So I ended up getting my daughter to come from [place name] and seeing what she thought, and she said, Oh no She said, He’s not right. But what are we going to do about it And I said, Wellrdquo; And he didn’t want us, because I kept saying to him, [son’s name] you know, there’s something, you’re not well, there’s something wrong He didn’t want me to do anything about it.

Anyway we did. We contacted his probation officer, and she… she got in contact with some new in-reach team that were in the prison service, and it took ages for them to get back to us, but they said, when they went to see him.

They said, That he actually shouldn’t be in prison at all. That he needed to be in a hospital But it took them nine months before they actually transferred him to hospital, and he was in hospital for, well in a secure unit, as they call it, for nine months. Okay.