I haven’t written for a while for fear of being slagged off on a whole new level. However, instead of writing in wee stories and messages that only the intended recipients understand, I’ve decided to write everything I’ve ever wanted to about one subject in one post. What happened in my life between 2001 and 2007 changed everything forever.
In 2001 I was living in Inverness with my Mam on Union Road and was in Millburn Academy. We had moved out there after my parents finally and thankfully got divorced in 1999. We were happy – Mam was glowing and had put on weight in all the right places and was looking really good. To avoid any doubt, I want to write that I adored Mam – she and my Gran were my best friends and I loved them both to bits. I even wrote an English essay about how they were my best friends and sketched a picture of Mam’s Bible and Gran’s wedding ring being my most precious items when I was still in Lionel School. Mam had been drinking in Swainbost due to living a very unhappy life – but as my brother pointed out to me, she wasn’t just an alcoholic – she was so much more than that and anybody that knew her will know what a lovely woman she was – and that’s what makes what happened so sore and I struggle to get over it. She was sad though – life hadn’t turned out the way she’d have hoped and she was lonely. I wish I hadn’t been a child so that I could have tried to help her the way Stuart and Tina tried to.
I was really close to “the Eoropie side” of the family. I loved my father’s side too but it got more awkward with them when my parents divorced – I think that’s probably quite normal. All my cousins and I were great friends growing up and I spent all spare time with them or staying at both my Gran’s houses. Granny Bobby was undoubtedly the one who could handle our family more than the other side. She is a truly amazing woman – she’s lived a hard life, full of sadness but she was our saviour and staying at her house in Habost were the happiest times I had. And I know I speak for my sister when I say Granny Bobby got us through a lot of very very hard times. She used to look out her window in the back porch in the middle of the night and look at our house to see if there were lights on and if there was, she’d know something was wrong and walk up – no matter what the weather was like. She is still amazing.
My brother had a very bad accident during the time I was in Inverness – he broke his neck and back and we wondered if he would ever walk again. I think this broke a lot of hearts, especially my mother’s, because of what he had been through throughout his life. He was the best brother a wee sister could ask for. To say I adored him is an understatement. Just as I’m doing now, I remember crying my heart out for him looking down the croft to the sea when I must have been about 8 or 9, because he had left Swainbost and I knew he’d never come back. He got back on his feet after his accident after months of what must have been pure hell for him and he moved back to Aberdeen after being with us in Inverness for a wee while recovering. Mam’s cousin Rose came to the house one day (I wrote a silly “poem” about that earlier on in this blog.) and I believe that’s when everything went pear shaped, again. Rose is a rough character that is my mother’s late Auntie’ Jean’s daughter. She lives in Inverness somewhere, and I’ve never seen her since that day she came to our house with a bottle of cider.
I’d come home from school and she’d be in bed, or Cathie Scott would be at the house and I’d know from Cathie’s face that there was something wrong. I’d have been in 2nd or 3rd year at this stage. In the middle of 2001, we moved to 8 Culduthel Park and Mam was drinking heavily and secretly. Me, my brothers and sister had been pleading with her to get help – absolutely tearing our hair out. We’d find bottles in the toilet cistern, in handbags, flasks filled up with Old Inverness. Derek caught her trying to shove tablets in her mouth and take an overdose – probably not the first time but I’d never been aware of it. I had a wee part time job in the Lochardil House Hotel working at weddings as a waitress. I’d come home from a wedding one Friday when Mam told me that my sister (who was younger than I am now) had been admitted to New Craigs and how “selfish” she was for going to hospital in Inverness and not in Glasgow, which is where she had been taken to hospital following an overdose. My sister, who at that stage I wasn’t particularly close to, being a young teenager, stayed in New Craigs for 6 months and received ECT treatment for the life she had been dished out until then. She had short term memory loss because of the electric shock treatment so when my mother’s father died, she had to be told a couple of times because she had forgotten – this was ridiculed by the Eoropie side and she was told in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t to be allowed out to come to the funeral.
After Granda Eoropie died in December 2001, I stayed in Eoropie for a whole month with my Gran. I slept in the same bed as her the night the house was empty so that she wouldn’t feel lonely. Mam had gone home to Inverness early – I can’t remember if she was at Dodo and Winnie’s with us for Christmas but I don’t think so – and I remember saying to Gran that I bet she’s gone so she can drink. I missed a few weeks of school to stay in Eoropie – I probably was more of a hindrance than a help to my Gran but I felt like I was keeping her company and I loved her hugely and didn’t like the thought of her being abandoned as soon as the hustle and bustle of a Lewis funeral was over. Even with Dodo and Winnie across the road, I know sometimes she felt lonely. We were good to my Gran – she always made me feel like I was her favourite, but I think that’s a knack all Gran’s have with their grandkids. The problem with her was though that her opinion could change depending on who she was talking to at the time. So in early January 2002, Gran took me over to Stornoway to catch the ferry to Ullapool, I remember being extremely sad leaving her and she gave me a big kiss on the lips and gave me some money and told me to phone her if there were any problems once I got home.
On the ferry, I met Bobo and Catriona. I didn’t really know them then but just knew that Catriona was Mairead Ghlen’s sister and she worked at Millburn too. In fact, my very first day at Millburn, which in itself was terrifying compared to Cross and Lionel Schools, she came up to me as I was standing looking lost and said hello etc. Anyway, they offered me a lift from Ullapool to Inverness but declined because I had already bought my bus ticket. Thank the Lord I did because when I got to the bus station in Inverness, Mam had been drinking. I’d never seen her outside the house like that before – one look at her and I knew before I even got off the bus that something wasn’t right. Those that knew her could tell even by the way she’d sit in a chair if she had been drinking – we could even tell by the way she’d say “hello” on the other end of the phone. She had two strangers with her - who I later discovered were some guy called Donnie Painter and his wife. What they had to do with anything, I’ll never know. Anyway, they had a car and I suspect Mam had asked them to give her a lift to go and collect me. I got back into our flat and they left, and I was in my room and phoned Granny Eoropie straight away crying my eyes out. “I told you Mam would be drinking and she is.” Gran went bananas and I think she phoned Mam’s mobile – whose number I can still remember. Meanwhile I phoned my mother’s sister Joan in Stornoway and told her and asked if she would come out, to which she replied, “I’ve got a family of my own to look after.” I then phoned my brother Stuart absolutely bawling my eyes out and he told me to pack my school bag and to come through and stay with him for a couple of days and he’d sort it all out. It was too late to leave that night so I just went to bed. I was later told that either Joan or my Gran phoned this Donnie Painter guy who told them that Mam wasn’t drunk….it was just “very icy” at the bus station. Unreal. See ‘Ice Always Melts’
The next day I got up and packed my bag. Mam was still drunk in the morning so I told her I was leaving and she was trying to stop me. I quickly changed my tune because I was scared and I said I was just going in town to spend some Next vouchers that my Auntie Ann in Glasgow had given me. She asked why I had my school bag and I said I was going to the library (as if!). I had never before lied to my Mother’s face like that before and I was never going to be able to forget it. So I went to the train station and I sat on the cold bench. It was either Margaret Ann or Norma Cheogie that came and sat beside me, totally oblivious to the fact I was sort of running away to see my brother, aged 15.
Stuart collected me in Aberdeen and we went up to his flat. He phoned Mam then to say I was there and she went crazy saying she’d been worried all day and was about to call the police. Nobody had phoned my own mobile phone to see where I was so this was a dubious claim. Stuart was nice to her, as he always was, and spoke calmly and said “Yvonne is staying here for a few days because you’re drinking.” Dodo and Gran then started phoning Stuart and making a big deal of the whole thing. At this point, my Dad was told all that had been happening in Inverness over the years. He had absolutely no idea that it was all going on and he was really upset more than being angry. He said I wasn’t going back until it was sorted out. It was at this point Dodo texted me one night while I was in bed saying “if you don’t go back to your mother right now, you will never be welcome in eoropie again.”
That was the final straw and all hell broke loose. I was bawling my eyes out, Dad was raging and arrangements were being made for me to go anywhere but to Inverness. I was given 3 options – stay in Aberdeen with Dad, go and live with Derek and Elaine in Glasgow or move to Lewis with Doleen and Bob. Doleen is my Dad’s sister and my two cousins Michelle and Nadine were really good friends of mine once upon a time – it all got a bit awkward, as I said, once Mam and Dad divorced.
Anyway, this was all happening very quickly and on 10th January 2002 I was on my way to 17 Ballantrushal. Everyone made me feel very welcome and although it was pretty hellish, I felt at home instantly – I just needed some normality and I got it. My stuff was sent over to Lewis and I had no contact with any of the Eoropie side for ages. There would be the odd MSN conversation with Karen, Dodo’s daughter who was probably only 12, who would tell me I was a bitch and that Mam didn’t love me anyway and Gran never wants to see me again. Joan’s daughter Joanne texted my sister while she was in New Craigs to say “I always knew you’d end up in a loony bin.” Cousins were banned from talking to me in school (The Nicolson) and when I started working in the Co-op’s bakery department after school, I’ll never forget the day Dodo and Winnie walked past me like a total stranger. Only a few weeks before, I had been at their house having Christmas dinner. Dodo even told me while we were walking to the chippie in Inverness once that if I ever needed anything or anyone, he and Winnie would always try and help me or any of us. I just couldn’t believe that leaving Inverness to see Stuart would result in all of this.
Our name was mud in Ness too. We’d hear stories of people slagging the 4 of us (siblings and I) off saying it was a huge plot to get me back to Lewis because I hated Inverness so much. There are 2 people that will always be special to me because I know they openly stood up for us and tried to see beyond the story that was being sold to them in a “damage limitation” way. Boots Robhair and Joey (Pongo). Boots lambasted cailleachs in his car on the way to church for gossiping about us because he knew fine Mam had been drinking in Swainbost and we weren’t making the whole thing up. And Joey basically told my Gran to shutup in Swainbost shop one day when she started going on about it.
Things in Ballantrushal were generally ok. School was ok apart from Mrs Macleay demanding to know why my Gaelic portfolio wasn’t there – I didn’t really feel like telling the whole class that I’d left it in Millburn because I didn’t expect to be banned from my Mother during the Christmas holidays, so I just said that I had been in Lewis for a month because my Grandad had died, to which she replied “well grandads die all the time, doesnt mean you take a month off school.” I skived her next class.
I was sinking more and more into myself and getting pretty depressed, as well as cheeky in school. I was going out drinking now and one night me and my friends went over to Stornoway with a bottle of vodka and I drank a lot of it straight in the 20p toilets. The last thing I remember that night is stepping off the pavement and the next thing I remember is waking up in hospital in a ward full of old ladies and I was checking I still had my own teeth.
I can remember a wee bit about being in hospital, like Doleen pinning my wrists down and telling me to shutup because I was crying for Mam and there was a man dying in a room next door, who turned out to be from Ness aswell. I was horrified the next day to hear that my mother’s sister Joan had come to the hospital – I was furious – it was because of them I had landed there. I felt abandoned from the moment I spoke to her that night in Inverness and she’d never bothered her enormous arse to help me since then. The only cousin from “that side” of the family that ever spoke to me while I was living in Lewis was Anne, Joan’s daughter. Anne is a nice woman now and we are the same age. I feel frustrated with all those cousins for never asking the real story about what happened and just branding us all liars instead.
After the hospital incident, I became more and more distant with Doleen and my cousins (I never took to Bob at all), and I started going to church which made me a self centred brat. I was at the age where you are developing a world view and your own opinions which is fine, but mix in a whole lot of trouble and the Lewis church and it’s recipe for a disaster. I used to shut myself off in my room, which wasn’t welcome in that house as Michelle and Nadine were very well balanced and sociable girls. I can’t honestly remember what happened except that I was speaking to a girl called Caroline on the school bus one day and called my auntie a bitch. Doleen magically found out (Caroline and her worked in Woolies together) and by the time I came home I was told I had to go and stay in Habost at my Gran’s. I swear to God I think that was all it was - oh, and having a messy bedroom. If it was anything else, then I have never had any clue all these years after. I went back to Ballantrushal after a couple of days and my room had been cleared out with some of it dumped in the hallway and soon after I was taken over to the ferry terminal in Stornoway, a tenner slapped on the desk and my auntie turned out and walked off, leaving me with a trolley with a box and a suitcase. I never saw them again until a fleeting ignoring in Granny Bobby’s kitchen and then as I lined up at Mam’s funeral to greet people, and Doleen shook my hand like a stranger and Michelle hugged me so tight I thought we would be friends again, but that never turned into anything. Bob was mowing the lawn or something as Mam’s body was driven past the house in a coffin.
Even writing it all out now, I can’t believe they did that to me. A year before that, my heart had been broken and my world turned upside down by the Eoropie side, and now she was doing it to me. To say that my family were angry is an understatement. Dad came to pick me up in Ullapool and since it was in the middle of my Highers (well, March 2002), I had to sit my Highers in Portlethen Academy.
During the period I had been living in Ballantrushal and started going to church, I had sparked up contact with Mam and Gran E again. I spent a communion Sunday with Gran aswell and it was lovely, although Dodo, Winnie, Joan and co all still treated me like dirt. Mam and I established contact which we generally kept going over the years – it was never the same again and it went through peaks and troughs depending on whether she had been drinking or not. I even went to stay in Eoropie with her during the holidays once but I never stepped foot inside Dodo or Winnie’s again. I emailled Nicola Macleod once when she moved to Glasgow for uni, where I was living at the time, and suggested we meet up and I gave her my number etc but I never heard back from her so that was that. Karen was always a bit of a brat growing up and after our furious teenage argument on MSN, in which I know I was telling the truth, I couldn’t care less about her.
Anne, Isabel and I were sort of friendly for a wee while due to the likes of Bebo etc but I could never get over the fact they never actually asked me what went on and even if they did, I doubt they’d believe it. At this stage in life, I don’t care who believes us or now. My brothers and sister know exactly what went on and that none of what I have written is made up. My brothers dont like the blog – Derek doesnt read it, Stuart is now friends with the Eoropie lot and although he has said he knows its all true, he wants to keep contact with Mam through them, and Tina is proud of me, no matter what, knowing that I loved Mam and all of the Eoropie side and that at the age of 14/15, I was shat on at a very great height by people I trusted and loved, all to save face over in Ness.
In 2007, I was living in Glasgow, doing very little with my life. I got 3 B’s in the Highers I had sat 4 years previously and I had jumped from job to job, college course to college course and never feeling settled. I was never able to pay my rent on time and never once paid council tax. I moved to Glasgow just before my 17th birthday and life was still very weird. However in 2007 I had moved in with 2 lovely girls and one of them was getting married. I was still a very messed up young woman but they were good to me and we had a lot of fun. On the day we were collecting tshirts in Bridgeton for the hen do, I’d left my mobile at home.
I came back to the flat in Kelvindale and had over 20 missed calls, 4 voicemails and 3 texts from Dad and Derek to phone immediately. Usually when they sounded angry with me it was because some debt collector had been in touch with my Dad saying I owed £300 council tax or something. However, I phoned Derek and he told me that Mam had been found dead in her flat. I remember sitting on the chair in the living room holding the phone in a quiet hell as I lost breath crying so hard.
The days that followed were horrific. It wasn’t the fact she had died, it was the whole scenario around it made it all the sadder and worse. We went to Eoropie and it was awkward as hell. I hadn’t seen most of these people for years and I hated them as they spoke about Mam’s drinking as if they had known all along but when we tried to tell them years ago it fell on deaf ears.
When it came to clearing out Mam’s flat, Joan and Winnie insisted on coming aswell as my Gran. Tina and I pleaded with my Gran to make sure that the bedroom was kept in tact as we wanted to be amongst her things and smell her again, and look at her makeup etc. We arrived off the lunchtime ferry in Inverness and went up to the flat to find that they had taken all her coats off the hangers and dumped them on her unmade bed in a pile. I burst out crying as soon as I saw it and Tina nearly clobbered Joan. I wish she had.
They started dishing out all Mam’s stuff in various boxes as if they were raiding a shop – “this is for Agnes a’Phower” etc etc. We’d only just walked in to the place where our Mam had died and we wanted half an hour to ourselves with our thoughts and OUR Mam’s things. Her smell was everywhere – that maternal smell that would break your heart. I’ll never forget it and I can never forgive Joan for ruining that last chance we had.
So that is that. No doubt I am going to piss a lot of people off by writing this. When I was a teenager, I even asked Dodo, Winnie and co to meet with the four of us to sort it all out, and that offer was declined. I have said previously that I was “glad” when Mam died – see ‘Old Inverness’ - I don’t mean glad as in happy, I meant I was relieved. Life has got better since that chapter closed and nobody will ever take the fact that I loved her and all that family away from me. She wasn’t treated well throughout her life – even the fact her brother in law actually paid for the deposit of her flat was continuously used against her while she was alive. This hurts a lot and I don’t know what else I should or could have done. It’s 10 years since it all happened and those people don’t know me anymore. I don’t know them and I don’t want to know them. I wish my cousins had the balls to actually question what went on, but that was never to be. Ness is a very dark and bleak place for me now – Mam is buried in the most beautiful part of the cemetery though.
I had cocked up a lot in life but I truly believe I was never in the wrong when I was 15 and decided to go and see Stuart that day. I was branded a liar from that day on because I had told Mam I was going to the library when I actually went to Aberdeen – so be it. I’m evil, a bitch, a twisted slag – every possible name you’ve heard, I’ve been described as. I am actually so honest that it makes folk so incredibly uncomfortable that they’ll say anything to disprove me. I made a massive mistake a couple of years ago by giving that bunch the satisfaction of seeing me humiliated across the tabloid newspapers – that pissed us off more than anything – but I am happy now. Happier at least, and I know that on judgement day, when it comes to discussing the matters of what happened, I will have a very clear conscience. And if you don’t like this blog, it’s probably because it’s pricked your conscience. Mam didn’t deserve the life she had but I didn’t deserve what I got either. Just because I’m writing about Mam during this period, doesn’t mean that I and everybody else dont know what a great person she was. Drink ruined her life as well as mine and I can’t just block that out. I am 25 in 4 days time and it’s time to leave this story where it belongs – in the rubbish dump of my brain. From this point on, I will never write another word so explicitly about it – I am much better than that, despite what the rest of the world says.
