Me, Myself & I: The Explosive Autobiography
I was born into a family of corruption, abuse, and conspiracy of murder, a family constantly at war with each other, belligerent, and hard to form relationships with!
Mum was 26 when I was born, she had already had four children before having me. John was born in 1970 and was the result of mum being raped at the age of 16. The fact that she was so young and the circumstance around his conception, John was placed in Local Authority care and eventually adopted. Keeley was born in 1972, Linsey was born shortly after in 1974 but died aged 5 months due to cot death. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) – sometimes known as "cot death" – is the sudden, unexpected, and unexplained death of an apparently healthy baby. In the UK, more than 200 babies die suddenly and unexpectedly every year. This statistic may sound alarming, but SIDS is rare and the risk of your baby dying from it is low. Most deaths happen during the first 6 months of a baby's life. Infants born prematurely or with a low birthweight are at greater risk. SIDS also tends to be slightly more common in baby boys.
SIDS usually occurs when a baby is asleep, although it can occasionally happen while they're awake. time. It was mum who found Lindsay's lifeless body in the cot! Now, that, I cannot ever imagine, the pain, the memories of that day. Obviously, I had never met her, but mum showed me the photographs and it amazes me to know I had another sister. She weighed almost Two stones when she died, which now does make me laugh, such a chubby little cherub compared to my tiny Two pounds Twelve (although you wouldn't believe it now to look at me). I often think about her, wondering if we would have been alike, would we have had the same hobbies.
It was only a few years ago that dad told us he wanted to carry the coffin from the hearse to the place of burial, but mum couldn't face going to the graveside. I'm not sure if she did eventually go. It is horrible seeing my sister's headstone. I would often tend to the grave, cleaning out any weeds, rubbish that had been blown there by the wind.
I placed a miniature weeping willow tree at the bottom of the grave, it overhung the grave and when it blossomed it looked beautiful. Burngreave Cemetery was opened in the Victorian era in 1861. The local churchyards were rapidly approaching capacity and were becoming a health hazard due to the vile smells and leaking fluids which were polluting the already poor water supplies.
The cemetery is situated in what was then Brightside Bierlow, one of the townships that made up Sheffield. A Burial Board was formed and a total of 27 acres of land belonging to the Duke of Norfolk and Earl Fitzwilliam were bought at a cost of ￡200 per acre. Architects were appointed to lay out the grounds and build the chapels and other buildings at a further cost of ￡11,600.
The buildings comprised of two mortuary chapels, on the left, the Church of England Consecrated Chapel linked by an archway supporting the clock-tower and bell-turret, to the mirrored Non-Conformist chapel. At the Melrose Road entrance stood the Superintendent’s House and Cemetery Office and at the other side of the gate was a house for the Sexton. The Cemetery was officially opened by the Archbishop of York, Charles Thomas Longley, on 16th March 1861.
Tracey was born in 1977. Mum openly admitted that if my sister had not died, then I wouldn't have been planned. It was also open knowledge that my parents wanted a baby boy as they had already got three daughters.
As the story goes, at the time of my birth, I was actually dead and had to be resuscitated. The midwife rushed me to the Special Care Baby Unit, which was one level up the stairs. Running to the lift having me in her arms, the midwife tripped over a mop bucket left outside the lift by a cleaner. The jolt of that restarted my heart so here I am to tell the tale. I believe it left me with a permanent heart murmur, but that doesn't affect me! Heart murmurs are sounds during your heartbeat cycle — such as whooshing or swishing — made by turbulent blood in or near your heart. These sounds can be heard with a stethoscope. A normal heartbeat makes two sounds like "lubb-dupp" (sometimes described as "lub-DUP"), which are the sounds of your heart valves closing. Heart murmurs can be present at birth (congenital) or develop later in life. A heart murmur isn't a disease — but murmurs may indicate an underlying heart problem. Often, heart murmurs are harmless (innocent) and don't need treatment. Some heart murmurs may require follow-up tests to be sure the murmur isn't caused by a serious underlying heart condition. I really do wish I could meet this midwife, she actually saved my life.
I spent about Eight weeks in the special care Unit and was progressing well until one day I caught the mumps virus from my mum. Mumps is a contagious viral infection that used to be common in children before the introduction of the MMR vaccine. It is most recognisable by the painful swellings in the side of the face under the ears, giving a person with mumps a distinctive "hamster face" appearance.
It wasn't her fault, but my sister had caught it somehow, and then obviously it was passed to my mum. She came to visit me one day and it was passed to me! So that stalled my progress. It became quite serious, to a point where my parents called in the chaplain priest and had me christened in the hospital. Mum always said that she was lucky to have had a girl as boys tend not to fight against illness otherwise I would have given up my battle to survive.
Finally, I was allowed home, I don't know the details of how I came home, I mean these days, new parents cannot leave the hospital without a car seat, no journeys home in a taxi or anything like that. For some reason I never questioned my parents about my first trip. I don't even know if my dad was in the delivery room during the labour or if he were even allowed to be in the room. There is so much that I don't know from those moments of my life, but I can't really talk to my parents, I've never really been close to them so I've never asked especially recently.
My mum, Susan, was born in 1953, to Walter and Ellen. It was just 3 days before Peter Mandelson was born, he was a British politician, who was a leading adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a member of the British House of Commons, and business secretary under Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Grandpa Walt served in the Navy but the details of what he did I never knew. Grandma Ellen was Scottish or part Scottish, I do believe she was originated from the Auld Reekie, Thomas Carlyle once said, "Smoke cloud hangs over old Edinburgh, for, ever since Aeneas Silvius's time and earlier, the people have the art, very strange to Aeneas, of burning a certain sort of black stones, and Edinburgh with its chimneys is called 'Auld Reekie' by the country people. I loved going to visit my grandparents, my parents, my sisters, and I would walk through Parson Cross park, out through the huge iron wrought gates and cross over the road which leads to grandpa Walt's house. Parson Cross Park is completely different now, it has new equipment including a zip line, cantilever swing, accessible roundabout, and seesaw and new synthetic carpet surfacing, along with playground tarmac markings. The new equipment was voted for by children from local schools.
As well as the equipment improvements, a new tarmac footpath was installed to link the new entrance that was created from the new housing on Buchanan Road to the nearest tarmac footpath within the park.
I remember my grandma cooking Sunday lunch, she would serve the Yorkshire pudding first and I would have a dollop of tomato ketchup on it. Then, when we had eaten that, she would take all the plates back into the kitchen and return with the rest of the lunch. I remember the telephone stand – well it was more like a little shelf, with grandpa Walts' Navy photo above it. I would stand underneath it and measure myself to see if I had grown since the last time I had measured myself. Grandpa Walt had a great sense of humour, but he was the kind of grandparent who would tease and torment until he had you in tears. He would rub his knuckles on the top of my head, I remember seeing a photo of myself as a baby in arms. I was not a newborn but I cannot have been older than one, and grandpa Walt was feeding me beer from a beer bottle. I remember playing in their living room, I'm not sure if it was at Christmas time, or my birthday, but I had this brand new toy, an ambulance, the roof opened up and inside, there were a stethoscope and other pretend medical equipment. I loved it.
I remember grandma Ellen vividly. Both grandparents died when I was small, both of cancer I believe. Grandma Ellen passed first, I don't know how much time had passed when grandpa Walt died. But I do remember him coming to live with us when he neared the end of his life and staying in the front bedroom. People laugh when we talk about my grandparents, you see, Grandma Ellen was big nannan, Grandma Gladys was little nannan, and then there were little fat nannan. I'm not quite sure what relation she was to me, but I loved her dearly. She lived in a flat in Firshill, Sheffield. The Firshill estate was built in the early 1970's where there used to be allotments, there was also had an annual show on where the car park is now at the Sportsman where they had a marque to show exhibits but I'm not sure if little fat nannan lived there during those times. I remember going to visit her and she would be sitting in her usual chair by the fire in a Green printed dress that old ladies seemed to have worn all the time. It would be many years later that I would find out little fat nannan had a sister called Alice, and I would end up being her carer.
Mum regularly told us the story of her having to eat Tomato ketchup sandwiches for lunch and how her English teacher I believe it was at school bullied her. I don't recall her ever telling us a positive story about her childhood and I often wondered if that's why she was the way that she was. I do recall a couple of stories though like when mum was at a fair when back in those days there would be horses trotting round inside the tent, mum was asked to perform for the audience and so she had to mount the horse and stand up whilst it trotted. She said it was the best time of her life. The other incident was when she was chased by a Rhinoceros, some of which are the largest remaining megafauna, with all species able to reach or exceed one tonne in weight. Image if the Rhinoceros had attacked her, I dread to think of the injuries or even worse – death.
Mum was (and still is) the kind of person that, if I put on a little weight, she'd let me know straight away, there was an edge to her that made me uncomfortable to a point I couldn't talk to her about stuff that mattered. I remember when I started my periods, I didn't tell her. When she did find out, I was scared to ask her for sanitary products, she always said it was leaving her skint yet she always had money to buy dad his tobacco. I was once sent home from school with a suspected broken wrist, they said I needed to go to hospital to have it checked out but when I got home, mum refused to take me so it was left untreated, to this day I still have issues with that injury.
A family had moved onto the estate, on the next cul-de-sac from mum's house and I soon became friends with Susan. The laughs we had and the stupid things we did, like deciding to ride our bikes to Pagehall, and being too tired to ride it back so had to walk all the way home. The time we made a Tarzan swing and tying a Tyre that we had found in the woods, to the rope as the seat, and then deciding we would both sit on the Tyre together to swing. The rope snapped and we went flying. I don't recall any injuries but we sure just laid there laughing until our stomachs hurt.
There was a time that Susan and I were planning on running away from home, I think we were around Eight years of age. We had found a suitcase from somewhere and filled it with tinned food we had taken from our parents fridges. Mum found it and instead of asking why we were planning on running away, she shouted at me for taking the food.
Susan was an amazing friend, and although her family moved house often, we would write to each other, using the same stamp every time. We would just cut the stamp off the envelope and stick it with glue to the new letter. It must have been around 1989 when Susan started a relationship with Jonathon. He looked like a scruffy kid, not just his clothes, but also had snot running down his face, he didn't have manners and although I didn't like him that much, he was pretty funny. He got Susan and I in trouble a few times, though, he would knock on peoples' doors and then run, and so we would join in, we sometimes threw potatoes at windows thinking it was funny and then ran and hid.
I remember one time when four of us - Myself, Susan, Tina, and Jonathon went garden hopping, if you don't know what this is, it is where you jump over someone's privet in the back garden and then jump over the next one and keep going until you either got caught or there were no privet. Those were really funny times back then
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