I come from a Romany family. The house in which I was born, 14 Strauss Road, which was the first house my parents lived in - before that they were in caravans on the road -  was knocked down five or six years ago together with the rest of the street. My dad was a scrapman. I’m not sure how far back the connection with South Bank goes, but I know my mam’s dad had a house here, though he can’t have been in it much. My dad died some time back but my mam is still in South Bank. She looks a bit lost. I’m not sure she’s ever adjusted to life in a house, and I think she’d prefer to be back in a caravan even now. Especially since the place where she settled is all being knocked down.

My mam can’t read or write and nor can I. I suppose I could learn, but I won’t because I think if I did I would be driven mad by all the words I’d want to read and so I think it’s best to keep out of it. I’ve got through well enough as I am. I didn’t do a lot at school other than cause trouble. I wasn’t there much because I went off travelling with my dad. He didn’t have much respect for school and he didn’t want me spending too much time there. It was more important to him that I knew what copper looked like. But his attitude meant that at fourteen I was sent to Eston Lowfields, which was a place for people who were slow. I was only there a week before being taken into care and put in Floxenby Hall in Scarborough. I didn’t like it and I hated being away from home, so I escaped all the time and made my way back to South Bank. I ran away from Floxenby Hall so often that I was sent to Kirkleverton Detention Centre outside Yarm because it was more difficult to escape from there. After that it was borstal at Stokeheath, which I liked better because you could work on the farm. I drove tractors and cleaned out the pigs. I came out of there when I was eighteen, and I was home for a while, but it wasn’t long before I was in Durham Prison for burgling houses. And then it was prison more or less all the time until Becky was born sixteen years ago. During that time I met and married Tracy and we had Gareth, who’s now twenty two. I didn’t get into trouble again after Becky was born, though I can’t put my finger on what changed. I loved her and I wanted to be with her, and I have been. She’s got a baby but she still lives here at home.

I missed most of Gareth’s upbringing, which I feel sad about. I don’t know what effect my prison sentences have had on him, but he isn’t doing much with his own life. He’s been in trouble a fair bit - he’s got a tag on his ankle at the moment for driving without a license. He likes to go out with his friends and spray his grafitti around the place. And he listens to his music and takes some drugs. For a while he was a goth and he was obsessed with darkness and death but that phase seems to have passed now.