My dad was brought up in a house in Lancashire. I don’t think he was treated properly by his dad and he wasn’t happy, so when he met a travelling man he took to the road and made a life for himself as a traveller. In fact, he was more like a gypsy than the rest of us, so much so that his friends called him the king of the road. I loved him - he was funny and unpredictable. 

My mum’s a romany, and, though she had a house in South Bank for a short while, she soon gave it up. She’s never been happy anywhere other than in a caravan. For a few years she’s been on the site in Middlesbrough by the Newport Bridge where quite a few of my family are. My sister Cheeky lives in the next door caravan.

I was born when my parents were stopping on the fields next to South Bank. My nanna had a house in South Terrace and I was born on her doorstep. I never went to school, except for a week once in London, but one of my brothers was chucked out because he was found in the girls’ toilets and none of us went back after that. And there were a few weeks here in Teesside before my mum gave up trying to live in a house and moved on. In those days school and travelling didn’t mix, and maybe that remains the case. My reading and writing aren’t good, but I’m going to school now to try to improve. I want my children to be educated, which is the main reason I live in a house.

My dad bought a piece of land in Keithley so that he could have a base of his own, but when people found out he was a gypsy they stopped him getting planning permission. He then fought a long battle with the council and the police to stay on a piece of waste land outside the town on the moor. The police used to come at night and drive round the site with their lights flashing and their sirens blaring to try to get him to move on, but my dad was determined and he held out for a long time. It became a battle for his soul and, in the end, it literally drove him mad. He started to suffer from delusions and because of his illness we found him a house back in Lancashire, where he came from, and I looked after him. But just as he seemed to be improving he hanged himself in his flat.

Unlike my mother I’ve managed to make a life for myself living in a house, though I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen South Bank in which to do it. It’s all right here I suppose, but it’s not enough to give up travelling for, so I’m going to find somewhere better than this. I’ve brought up my five children on my own. They all go to school and they can all read and write. At first they were called all the usual names like piky and gypo, and they were told to get back on the A1 and all that nonsense, but now they’re accepted well enough.

I want my children to be able to choose the life they want to lead. Maybe they’ll go back to the travelling life. I would understand it if they did: there’s not a day when I don’t feel that my house closes me in and makes me feel like a bird locked in a cage.