Drew Payne

In the afternoon, he'll have to tell his story and everyone has said to be honest.

He's just had to sit and listen, so far. In the afternoon, he has to answer their questions.

Liam sat on the chair and waited. He’d carefully dressed up for today - his new(ish) grey corduroy trousers, his pale blue cotton shirt, his most special shirt, and the dark red tie Ed had helped him pick out at the Tesco Extra superstore on the outskirts of Darlingham. He’d been told about that day three weeks before and… he planned for it, including buying this tie, his only tie. But was his planning enough? He didn’t know what exactly he should plan for. Harry, the nurse, had brought him

Thanks It was a shock how this film still disturbed me, forty years later.

It was a terrifying television film but I couldn’t stop watching. A bomb had exploded followed by a mushroom cloud rising above the city. That was shocking but the aftermath was terrifying, how quickly everything disintegrated and fell apart, and how no one came to rescue the survivors, they were just left alone in this burned world. I watched it all on my own. It was Sunday evening, 23rd September 1984, and I was eighteen. I was sat watching my portable television in my bedroom. It was my most beloved possession because I could watch whatever television programs I wanted to without my father’s criticism or censorship. That evening neither of my parents would have wanted to watch or approve of the television film on BBC 2. But I wanted to watch it. I enjoyed the television films and plays on BBC 2, they were different and interesting, on subjects I knew so little about, but they were also such good television dramas. I’d heard about Threads, it had been on the cover of that week’s Radio Times, it was about a nuclear attack on Britain. This was the height of the Cold War, many people were talking about nuclear war, and right-wing politicians were speaking loudly about a “survivable nuclear exchange.” Threads scared me that night, it exposed the lie of the survivable nuclear war, in such a terrifying way, and it left lasting images in my memory. Images that I would draw upon whenever someone else would talk about a survivable nuclear war, that great lie. I was afraid of nuclear weapons before watching Threads, how could one weapon kill so many people, but after watching it, I was terrified of them. But that was forty years ago and I was a very impressionable eighteen-year-old. Had Threads been so bad? Was it so terrifying? Did it still stand up now? To mark the fortieth anniversary of its original broadcast, the BBC repeated it on 9th October 2024, on BBC Four and can still be viewed on BBC iPlayer. I watched it again, the following Tuesday morning, via BBC iPlayer, as I did our weekly ironing. I’m forty years older now and not easily shocked. As a former healthcare professional, I know what radiation can do to the human body. This is a forty-year-old film, made on a shoestring budget (£400,000 at the time (2)), so how scary could the special effects be? Forty years later, Threads shocked and then terrified me, all over again, but also for different reasons. Threads starts out as a kitchen-sink drama, it was written by Barry Hines. It follows a young Sheffield couple, Jimmy and Ruth, as they prepare for their wedding, she’s pregnant, and his working class family will meet her middle class one. Ruth has morning sickness, Jimmy argues with his workmates, and they go to the pub together in the evening. In the background, there are heightened international tensions between the West and Russia which are reaching boiling point, but this is only shown as newspaper and television headlines, hardly effecting the main characters. Suddenly, the British government declares a national emergency, closing motorways, emptying hospitals and placing the army out on the streets. Then, mid-morning, a nuclear bomb hits Sheffield. An EMP pulse disables all electronics, including cars, a shockwave destroys buildings in a wide radius, which is followed by a firestorm which sets almost everything on fire. This kills thousands of people in Sheffield, killing most of the film’s characters. The only one left alive is a pregnant Ruth, who wonders, shell-shocked, through the ruins of the city. But no one comes to her rescue. The hospitals are overrun and falling to pieces, leaving Ruth to eventually give birth, alone in a barn, to a baby daughter, Jane. A year later and the world is living under a Nuclear Winter, which has blocked out the sunlight, killing any attempt to plant crops and causing freezing temperatures all year round. This causes millions more people to die and the only currency now is food. If survivors can’t work, mostly tending to the land, then they starve. Britain is under harsh military rule, looters and other transgressors are shot on sight. In this world, Ruth and her baby daughter struggle to survive. Ten years later, the Nuclear Winter has lifted but Britain is now a feudal society, with a population of four million, the same as during the medieval period. Ruth looks like an elderly woman, her hair white and her body broken by fatigue, not like a woman in her mid-thirties. She and Jane work on a farm, growing crops by hand. But Ruth dies in her sleep, leaving Jane alone. Jane scavenges and loots to stay alive but becomes pregnant when a boy, who acted as her friend, rapes her. Eventually, in a makeshift hospital with an elderly nurse, Jane gives birth but her baby is grossly deformed because of the radiation. The film ends with Jane’s horrified expression, seeing her baby for the first time. Threads strength is its storytelling, it takes known facts and presents them through the lives of its characters and what happens to them. It also takes its time to tell its story, at the beginning. The nuclear bomb doesn’t hit Sheffield until a quarter of the way into the film. This gives us the chance to become involved in the lives of Ruth and Jimmy, and their respective families. We know and care about these people. But this film isn’t about a plucky group of survivors. The nuclear bomb and its aftermath kills nearly all of the characters, leaving only Ruth alive and its through her eyes that we are shown most of the effects of the war. This film is about how quickly a nuclear war doesn’t just destroy buildings and kills millions of people, but it destroys our very society, leaving behind a world that is nearly impossible to live in. Here, the nuclear bomb sweeps away all of the city’s infrastructure. There are no fire engines left to fight the fires, no relief workers to come and help the survivors, food and medical supplies run out and survivors have to cope on their own with their injuries and the radiation sickness. Marshall law is soon imposed and never lifted. Here there is no fight for freedom, only a fight for survival. But this film, unlike other apocalyptic films, doesn’t end a week or so after the disaster, as the survivors start to rebuild their world. This film looks at the future that a nuclear war would give us. The nuclear winter that kills nearly as many as the war. But most shocking was its depiction of how our society would never recover from the war, devolving into a near feudal state. The most shocking part is its portrait of the first generation after the bomb, without a society to support and develop them, their speech has devolved to monosyllabic words. They don’t speak in sentences; they just shout their needs using one or two words. Tonally, Threads adopts a very documentary approach, muted colours, a narrator informs the viewers of different events unfolding, only adding to its authenticity. The narration is voiced by Paul Vaughan, who narrated many documentaries at the time, and the newsreaders are played by Lesley Judd and Colin Ward-Lewis, already known as television presenters and announcers. This also adds to the authenticity. What can Threads offer an audience now? The special effects here are not up to modern standards but they used sparingly and Threads small budget made for much more imaginative direction. A lot of shots are close on the actors, showing the emotional effect of the drama. Threads strength is its emotional drama, showing the toll this war takes on the people here. It provides some horrifying images, that stick in the mind long after watching it. The woman wetting herself at the sight of the mushroom cloud. The burnt bodies in the rubble of the city. The food store being guarded by men in uniform, as starving survivors are held behind an iron fence. One of these guards is dressed in a traffic warden’s uniform, the most benign of jobs, his face covered and carrying a machine gun (the extra playing that part was a traffic warden in real life). The most shocking images came from the section ten years after the war, the images of a society almost completely destroyed. Threads is still a disturbing film, but what its most disturbing is not its portrayal of the physical damage a nuclear war would cause, but how a nuclear war will destroy our society and we may never recover from it. Watch Threads here on BBC iPlayer. Drew

That's a good description of work experience. Inflation is such a downer. My early teen pocket money was five pounds a week, and it bought me a lot. Now, I just paid five pounds for an e-book. Such is life.

My experience of managing work experience kids (which was twenty years ago) was that they would spent half a day with us, once or twice a week. I'd give them basic tasks to do, like making beds with the HCAs, so they didn't come to any harm or get "traumatised". I'm sure they were bored silly. But I'm also sure they used it on applications, for jobs or college, when they left school. Aunt Sadie is just as bitchy as Liam's mother, she doesn't have a good word to say about her sister (she didn't help her sister when she was a single mother and won't offer Liam somewhere to live when he's released), she just wraps it up in being a bit fluffy. Underneath, she enjoyed telling Liam how dysfunctional his conception and birth were. At least his mother didn't hit him with that. Thanks for your support.

If Liam's family were functional and supportive then he wouldn't have ended up killing another boy. Plus, his Aunt Sadie is just as much a bitch as his mother, just in a different and more fluffy way. Liam and Ed are getting work experience, but it is pretty crap work experience. I never did work experience at school, but when I worked in a hospital, I supervised teenagers doing it. They couldn't just follow nurses around all the time, so I gave them the lowest and dullest jobs to do. I had to keep them safe and not let them do any harm. It must have been so boring for them. Thanks for your support.

Liam pulled his chair closer to the table and said, “I’ve got something for us to read together.” “I ain’t reading no kids’ book,” Richie said, glaring back at him. “It isn’t a kids’ book,” Liam replied, pushing the book in front of Richie. “Five… Days,” Richie slowly said as he read aloud the book’s title. “What’s this shit?” Richie’s top lip curled up in a snarl that was the mirror image of Elvis Presley. Did the kid practice it in front of a mirror? Liam pushed down his frustra

Three films that helped shape my queer identity, but not at the same time or even in the same way. Films and books have always been important to me, and growing up they provided me with so much information and many times shaped how I thought and saw myself. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s and there was so little information or help about being gay, that I could find, so I turned to novels and films for my help and education. So many times, films have given me an insight into how others see and view a subject. Also, films are immediate, I can watch them in ninety or a hundred minutes (occasionally longer). It takes me so much longer to read a book. I can lose myself, in a good film, for an hour or so, before returning to the world around me. Growing up, three films marked important moments in my own queer life. They reflected how my life seemed at the time of viewing, or how I wanted my life to be. These are the three films. [Spoiler alert, I discuss the plots of the three different films] Victim (1961) Barrett, a handsome young man, is on the run. He has stolen a large sum from his employer to pay off a blackmailer and to protect the man he loves, barrister Farr. But Farr is the first man to reject his plea for help, so do all the other men he turns to for help. Barrett ends up hanging himself in a police cell. Only after his death does Farr realise the young man was trying to protect him and reluctantly agrees to help catch the blackmailers. Though it was produced as an argument for the legalisation of homosexuality, this film paints a grey portrait of gay life as lonely, bleak and loveless, and open to be the victims of heartless blackmailers. It was 1982 and I was sixteen. My greatest possession was my tiny, black and white, portable television. I still lived with my parents, but that television meant I could watch it in my bedroom, away from my father’s control of the television’s remote control and my mother’s disapproval. That little television meant I could watch what I wanted, and I did. That Friday night, BBC 2 broadcast the 1960’s film Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde. It started late at night, and I watched it in fascinated horror. Suddenly I was watching gay life being portrayed on the television screen. Then there was so little portrayal of queer life on television and what there was always portrayed gay in such a negative light. But I watched that film, intensely, following every scene of it. Was this the life I had to look forward to? At sixteen, I could barely acknowledge to myself I was gay, I had told no one what I feared I was, and certainly not had my first boyfriend, that was still years away. But this film did nothing to change that. Victim was unrelentingly bleak. A young gay man, at the beginning, was in deep trouble and no one, none of the other gay men he approached, offered him any help, they all left him alone and ultimately killing himself in desperation. Was this the life I had to look forward to? Or was it the life of the film’s hero, married to a woman to pass as straight, but in the end losing it all when he’s exposed as gay. I didn’t like what I saw but I feared that would be the life that lay ahead of me. I didn’t know any other way to be gay because that was the only life I was told there was. Why couldn’t I just be normal? I found sleep difficult that night. I couldn’t shake the nightmare life of what that film told me would be mine. The next day, sat on the backseat of my father’s car with my parents sat in the front, my mother asked me, “Did you watch that film, last night, with Dirk Bogarde?” “No,” I hurriedly replied. How could I admit to watching a film like that to my parents? To do so was only one step away from admitting I was gay, and I couldn’t face doing that then. My parents carried on discussing the film, in pitying tones, as I tried to sink down within myself, on the car’s backseat, and our pet dog slept away next to me. [Dirk Bogarde, the star of this film, with his matinee idol good looks, was also a deeply closeted gay man, who never came out in his lifetime] Parting Glances (1986) Robert and Michael are a gay couple, living in 1980s New York. Robert is about to go and work in Africa, leaving Michael behind to wait for him. Set over Robert’s last 24 hours in New York, it follows the couple as they prepare for Robert’s departure, attend a farewell party and as Michael cares for his ex-boyfriend, Nick, who is living with AIDS. ABC Piccadilly Circus was a subterranean cinema, just off Piccadilly Circus. I bought my ticket at the street level entrance, and then walked down two flights of stairs to reach the cinema’s single screen. This always felt so luxurious and different, actually walking downstairs to see a film, especially for a matinee showing. It was 1988 and I was twenty-two years old. I had moved to London the year before, to live on my own and come out as gay. I’d had my first boyfriend, though it didn’t last long, and finally come out to my parents. I now worked in social care and was enjoying having days off during the week. It didn’t matter that I worked the weekend, I was so terminally single. London offered me so much cultural life and I was eating it up as fast as I could. I saw plays, visited art galleries, heard authors read from their work, and saw a lot of films. Also this was the first wave of queer cinema and there were so many small and middle budget queer films for me to enjoy. I’d read a couple of reviews of Parting Glances and it sounded interesting. So that midweek afternoon I went to see it, playing at this quirky cinema, off Piccadilly Circus. I settled down in the rather tatty old cinema seat, as the lights dimmed, I started to watch Parting Glances, and it swept me along with its quirky and left-of-centre story and characters. Here I was presented with a happy and handsome gay couple, but who faced a challenge, being apart for two years. Could I handle that? If I had a boyfriend then I wouldn’t want to give him up, I’d be broken if he left me for two years to work abroad. I was wrapped up in the story of this couple, struggling in the face of being parted for so long. This wasn’t a scenario I’d seen before. I’d already seen enough films, well several of them, were the gay couple were having problems and would eventually split-up, especially when one partner was being unfaithful. But here was a couple who loved each other but were facing a situational problem, a problem I’d seen straight couples facing in films and drama before. This film presented a different and refreshing portrait of a gay couple. Around them were a collection of different characters, including a gay man married to a woman, and she knew he was gay, and a man living with AIDS. He was living with AIDS, facing the problems of his diagnosis, but not dying from it. There were no scenes of him lying in a hospital bed, looking like a living corpse. The characters in this film were quirky and fun, and felt real. Real people with real problems. But it was the ending that left the deepest impression on me. There was no gay tragedy. The gay couple didn’t split up and the man with AIDS didn’t die. The couple stayed together, the man with AIDS was alive as the film ended. This was the opposite of so many queer dramas I’d seen, up to that point. At twenty-two, I still harboured that internalised homophobia that somehow my gay sexuality wasn’t as good as if I was straight. I expected my relationships to fail and AIDS was that danger lurking around the corner for me. But here I was being presented by the opposite. Here was a gay couple who stayed together and a man with AIDS who was living with it, not dying from it. I left the cinema and returned to the bright spring afternoon. Could I make a film for myself were I managed to stay together with a boyfriend? I walked to the underground station. I wanted a relationship, I didn’t want to be single, but so many gay men I’d met, in London, were single too. Could I make a relationship work, if I could find someone? That was my struggle, I wanted a relationship, but everything I’d experienced, growing up, told me being gay was wrong and gay relationships didn’t last. But I had just watched the portrayal of a gay relationship that did work and looked like it would last. I couldn’t shift the thought from my mind. Parting Glances has become one of those films I return to, over and over again, and still enjoy. I have a tired, old video copy of it that I still watch, every year or so, and I still enjoy it and the gay couple still remain together at the end. The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994) Three drag queens, two gay men and a trans woman, take a road trip to Alice Springs, in the heart of Australia, to take up a booking to perform as the cabaret at a resort there, managed by one of the gay men’s estranged lesbian wife. Like all great road movies, it’s the adventures they have and the friendships they make along their journey that makes this movie, plus the great one-liners. It was 1994 and I was twenty-eight. I was in a room full of other gay men, on the last day of my holiday, we were watching a showing of The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert and we were laughing. But we were all laughing and at every joke. There wasn’t my odd laughter at the very gay jokes, suddenly outing myself in a cinema audience as one of the few, or only one, who understood those jokes. Here I didn’t have to worry, everyone else got those jokes too. For the last week I had been on my first gay holiday, but it wasn’t a typical gay holiday, whatever that is. This was run by The Edward Carpenter Community and was dedicated to community-building, creativity, personal growth, friendship and fun for gay men. It might sound very lofty ideals but in reality it was a very relaxing holiday for me. Myself and about forty other gay men had spent the week in a holiday center, in the Scottish countryside. There were workshops, fun events, sports, a dress-up dinner, evening entertainment, a cabaret night and even drag volleyball. It was the opposite environment to the London gay bars and night clubs I’d been frequenting in my endless and depressingly negative search for a boyfriend. Suddenly I was holidaying in a very relaxed environment, were my sexuality wasn’t an issue and neither was my appearance, I didn’t have to comply with the latest ideals of fashion, which I rarely did. I didn’t have to work at being liked, people there just liked me, and there was no pressure to couple-up and pair off, if I went to bed on my own then that wasn’t a failure. Suddenly being gay wasn’t the main thing about me, I could relax back into the other facets of my personality. I could explore my creativity without any embarrassment, without someone questioning who did I think I was doing that. I even had a holiday romance with a Scottish man called Bill. A man I would not have normally met. But I also knew it was only for a handful of days, a holiday romance, and I wasn’t chasing after the impossible. I’d had a relaxing week’s holiday, away from the stress and unnatural sites of my job, and for the first time in my life, being gay wasn’t an issue, wasn’t something I had to tell people, wasn’t the defining thing about me. Now, on our last night, we were watching The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert together. We were watching it as one audience, all laughing at the same jokes, all enjoying the musical moments, all moving along with the story. Watching this film captured the feeling of community I had been enjoying all week, and Bill and I were curled together watching it. It also helped that this film was a joyous celebration of being queer and different, but it wasn’t angst laden, no one was sad-to-be-gay, no one died at the end, though the jokes were very gay and rude. The next day, we would all leave and return to our ordinary lives, but that evening we were joined together in the enjoyment of this very gay film. I was enjoying myself. [Unfortunately, some elements of this film haven’t aged as well as others. None of the three leads had any previous experience of performing drag, a trans woman character is played by a cis gendered man and this character is dead-named for a crude joke.] Now. Victim is deeply homophobic and negative, and deeply uncomfortable to watch. It was considered forward-thinking, in the early sixties, but it scared me, in the early eighties. I didn’t want to live that life. But it also reflected my own homophobia then, I wasn’t ready for a positive ending. Parting Glances was a breath of fresh air, focusing on the characters’ stories and giving me a refreshing portrait of a gay couple and a man living with AIDS. I only saw it six years after seeing Victim, but my life and queer identity were already changing and growing, and Parting Glances inspired me to want more. The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert is a glorious celebration of being queer and different. It caught that moment in my life where I was finally enjoying being gay and moving forward with my life. I now live with my husband in East London. But a good film is more than just a film; it can mark an important point in my life, and it has done so many times. Drew The picture illustrating this blog is Red Velvet Cinema Seats in Row by Moinul Hassn, find more of their pictures here

@Anton_Cloche, there's a lot for consideration here. Firstly, a 10 years on Epilogue. Let me think about that. I know where Liam is heading and maybe I need to think about this. It would give me a chance to introduce a character who is important to me. Liam is an intelligent young man and here has given him a chance to learn and use that intelligence. Mrs Williams is very much a mentor to him, but she is so excited to have such an intelligent pupil and wants to ensure his intelligence is stimulated and developed. He has been so lucky to find her. I have the rest of this story planned out and I know how it ends, though there may be an epilogue added. Liam can't really have a pardon, he killed another boy in an act of manslaughter. Stabbing the other boy once could be self-defense but stabbing that boy multiple times was manslaughter. But I wanted to show, through Liam, that rehabilitation of killers is more than possible. Nurton Cross is based on a real place, one that I once worked in. There they patients/offenders who were nineteen or even twenty years old, who it was felt it was best for them to finish their sentences there. Janet's comment about it was easier to extend someone's time at Nurton Cross by a year or so, then finding them a new place and transfer them there, again was based on a real comment I was told, and that was why nineteen and twenty-year-old were at that hospital. Thanks for your feedback, it really means a lot to me.

Yes, Liam has to be more independent, but at Nurton Cross, he's had chances that he wouldn't have had previously. In his old life, if that continued, he would never have had the chance to study A Levels, he would have probably had a poor selection of GCSE results. There's an irony.

And how he gets there from here is how this story ends. I'm nearing the end and thanks for your support.

Thank you so very much for your kind words, you make me blush. I am so glad you are enjoying my story. I am working on the next chapter, unfortunately there are only four more chapters left to write in this story. Once I have finished this story, I'll be starting a new story and that will be about another cast of damaged and screwed-up people. Thanks for your support.

Liam followed behind Nurse Victoria down Nurton Cross’s main corridor. Victoria was chatting away about the previous night’s football match everyone had watched on the television in the Common Room. Well … everyone had watched it, even Ed, but Liam had sat next to him on the sofa, reading his book. He was reading a strange book called, “A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters.” It was strange, but he was also enjoying it. It was a bizarre sort-of-history novel, and far more interesting to Liam t

I first came across Wicked when I read the novel, in the early 2000s. I enjoyed the book’s story and themes, questioning whether are people born evil, made evil or just painted as evil. Isn’t it so easy just to have a villain? We saw the original London West End production of the musical, back in 2006. And last month we saw the first film, in the two film version of it. I enjoyed the film as much as the book and musical, though they are all different, and found myself swept along with the story, but I wasn’t the only one. During a press junket with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, journalist Tracy E Gilchrist asked this question: “I’ve seen this week people are taking the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’ and really holding space with that and feeling power in that”. This produced a very emotional response in Erivo and Grande. “That’s really powerful,” said Cynthia Erivo, who played the lead role, Elphaba, in the film. “That’s what I wanted.” Ariana Grande gripped her co-star’s hand as she spoke. Gilchrist later said, for her, “holding space” was “being physically, emotionally and mentally present with someone or something.” (2) This has all gone onto to be a meme on social media. Defying Gravity is a very powerful song. It’s sung by Elphaba, the Green Witch of the West, at the end of act one of the musical, and the end of the film, Wicked Part One. Elphaba is fighting back against ignorance and intolerance. She literally flies above it all. It says, no matter how much you try to push me down, I’ll raise above it. It is a great end of act one/part one song and Cynthia Erivo performs it perfectly. But for me, my “holding space” moment happened earlier in the film, when Elphaba sang “I’m Not That Girl,” performed heartbreakingly well by Cynthia Erivo. This song comes after the handsome but rather shallow Prince Fiyero (Played with wonderful style by Jonathan Bailey) aids Elphaba in an act of rebellion. As they part ways, Elphaba realises she’s in love with Fiyero, but he loves Glinda (the perfectly blonde Ariana Grande). “I’m Not That Girl” is a painful song of unrequited love, Elphaba knows she isn’t the “girl” for Fiyero, and never will be, but she still loves him. Sitting in the cinema, hearing Cynthia Erivo singing that song, and I was swept back to being sixteen again. I was hopelessly, secretly and stupidly in love with a straight man who couldn’t see what was happening. To him, I was just a friend. I would never be his “girl” and I left with emotions I had no experience how to cope with. Back then I saw no way out of it. It’s over forty years ago that I was sixteen, I’ve been with my husband for twenty-six years, yet that song drew me right back to that horrible and painful time of my life. That is the power of a well written song, capturing a specific emotion. As I sat there, in the cinema, watching Cynthia Erivo’s singing of “I’m Not That Girl,” I was taken right back to being sixteen, to those hopeless emotions. It caught me off guard, I hadn’t expected those emotions and for a moment I remembered that pain. It was a surprise to have my “holding space” moment, watching Wicked. I’d seen the stage musical, in which I saw “I’m Not That Girl” performed by Idina Menzel. But in the cinema, with the framing and close-ups of Cynthia Erivo’s singing, it heightened the emotions. It certainly dragged up those memories for me. But that is the power of great songs, to draw us into the emotions and story of a song. Don’t we all have one song or another that is special for us, a song that will take us back to a certain time, a song that can remind us of something good or bad that happened to us, a song that always reminds us of a certain person. This is the power of combining the right music and lyrics, to invoke emotions and/or memories in others. It’s a skill I don’t have. I wish I could write songs, and I have tried in the past, but they were really awful. So instead I’ll carry on writing fiction about screwed-up people and writing essays from my life. If I can create a “holding space” for someone with my writing, that would be worth it all. Drew

Oh hell, I remember things like this. Some overworked social worker, with twenty-plus more clients on their caseload than is safe, didn't have the time to help a mental health patient, so gave them the money they were entitled to and just left them to furnish their own, new home. Many of those people had never budgeted in their life, suddenly are given a large amount of money and they spend it on the things they have dreamed of owning. When this happened, the tabloids blamed the individual social worker, not the crap system they were working in. Supporting people with mental health problems, especially when they move out of hospital, takes time and resources, but the resources aren't there for them, especially if they don't have any family. I saw it time and again and it was so frustrating.

Wow, what amazing experience your family has had. Any chance you could get them to write a book? I'm a retired Registered Nurse, I had to take ill health retirement at the beginning of the year. I still miss my job. I worked as a District Nurse, for nearly the last fifteen years of my career. I looked after a lot of patients who had physical and mental health problems. Our District Nurse team was understaffed but the Community Psychiatric Nurse team, we worked with, was chronically understaffed. In my early twenties, I worked as a Resettlement Worker, helping people move out of a long-stay psychiatric hospital and back into the community. I really believe that living in the community is the best place rather than being dumped away in some long-stay psychiatric hospital, but it is unbelievably underfunded. It was seen as the "cheap alternative" and it bloody isn't. Those people need help and resources too, but mental health services have been the forgotten service, for funding, for far too long. It all makes me so sad and angry. In the 2000s, I worked as a Training & Audit Nurse in East London and regularly worked in a Juvenile Secure Hospital. I based Nuron Cross on that hospital. At the same time, my husband was the Infection Control Nurse covering Broadmoor. I wish I could tell some of his stories but confidentiality and all that.

Thank you. I've lived with Liam for two years and he is such a damaged soul. He didn't have the best start in life, with his nightmare of a mother, and then he made one huge wrong decision. One of the things I wanted to write about here is how people can do well in hospital (especially mental health hospitals) but when they are discharged there just isn't the support out there in the community. I saw that so many times professionally. Liam doesn't even have the support of a family.

I wanted to show how poorly supported Liam is, once he has been discharged from the hospital. In Nurton Cross, there were people around him and he had plenty of support. Here, on the outside, there is no one and his old insecurities have returned. Also, the awful Donna reminded him that people still dislike him. But I do know how this story will end.

He's stuck there, on his own, in a rundown B&B hotel. There is no one to talk to, to help him throw his thoughts, so he's going to go to a sad place. It's a terrible thing to say but his life at Nurton Cross was better.

Liam stood in front of his pale blue cotton shirt hanging off the hook on the wall of his room in the B&B hotel. He reached up and ran his hand down one of its sleeves: the cotton was still soft and smooth under his fingers. He was nearly sixteen when he bought it, his only second afternoon out of Nurton Cross. On Day Release. Aiden had egged him to buy it and… It still fitted him and would be ideal for his interviews the next day. He hadn’t worn it since he’d left Nurton Cross - it was too

In October, the British government announced plans to help people with mental health problems to get back into work. This would see “employment advisers” visiting people in hospital, who have been admitted with mental health problems, and giving them CV and interview advice. It was piloted at hospitals in Leicester and at the Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell, London, with “dramatic results”, though the results haven’t been published yet. This isn’t a hundred percent altruistic, it is also an attempt to reduce the disability benefits bill, which is projected to increase by a third in the next four to five years, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. A jump to £63bn by 2028-29, from £48bn for 2023-24. "There is clear evidence we are really struggling with health problems," said Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall. She wants employers to “think different” about employees with mental health problems, offering flexibility to support and retain people. Now this scheme is not perfect. Why are they only offering this advice and support to people in hospital, why not to people in the community? Why aren’t they working with employers to offer people, with long term mental health problems, work experience to gain skills that make them attractive to employers? And there are so many other things too. But this is a start at supporting people and is better than nothing, which is what the previous government offered, they just wanted people to repeatedly prove how ill they were. Then, the other week, one of my relatives posted a link to this story, on Facebook, with the caption: “What absolute numpty thought this through? They get a job coach visit, why don’t they just say “get over it” because that always works doesn’t it?” Underneath people had added to the following comments: “I actually cringed watching this report.” “Who would employ someone who could be ill numerous days a month? How can a business run if you don't know how many staff are going to be there?” An ‘Oh how stupid’ emoji. “This is what you get when you vote Labour in.” To which my relative replied, “Luckily, I didn’t.” I wanted to scream at the post, “How can you say that? How can you be so prejudiced?” But employment is so important to how we identify ourselves, to our self-worth. How often do we get asked “And what do you do?” How much of our identity is made up from our job/profession? Mark Tausig argued that work is the central activity whereby most adults define their identity. I retired recently and I find it is strange to no longer belong to a profession, which had been so important in my life. Robert Drake and Michael Wallach argue that unemployment worsens mental health, while employment can improve it. They said that being employed gives us self-reliance, we are valued by others, we gain the respect of others, we have an income and employment helps us to gain community integration. We can see this in our own lives. But in the UK only 15% of people with serious mental health problems are employed. That is an extremely large number of people who haven’t got the security and value of having a job. Why aren’t we concerned about this? The evidence shows the benefit of employment. Hoare & Machin, in their study, found that participants who found employment, had greater social contact, more structured time and therefore saw significant improvements in their mental health. Another study found that the work environment improved people’s mental health. That those with mental health problems saw an improvement in their symptoms, plus improvements in their leisure and finances from being employed. And another study found that if people with mental health problems are able to find work, then it reduces the burden on society as a whole. Those people being able to support themselves, partially or fully. Saying all this, we can’t just give someone with mental health problems a job, then expect them to get on with it and their health get better. People will need support. Secker & Membrey identify that specific adjustments maybe required, such as flexible working hours, flexible work schedules and job tasks, especially in relation to the medication a person is taking, allowing the person to regain their stamina and confidence. Modini & Joyce (6) found that the literature, on mental health in the workplace, focused on the negative impacts of work on mental health. But they also found that the evidence is that work can help improve a person’s mental health. Evans & Repper argue, and rightly, that mental health services and staff should also be involved in supporting people back into work, it should be a vital role because of the benefits work brings to people and communities. Drake & Wallach (2) make the same argument, that part of treatment should emphasise the importance of work and support people into employment. But supporting people will bare positive fruits. Castle, Crosse, and Harvey conducted a study were they provided only 20 hours of support to people in gaining employment, but their study found that 21% of those people found jobs and 43% went onto volunteering or studying. How much more could be achieved if those people had an employment coach, even for one day a week? My own experience bears this out, too. In my early twenties, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I suffered from severe depression. It was so bad that I was hospitalised with it, twice, and I spent a long time taking medication for it. This was a very difficult time for me. I couldn’t tell many people I was ill, the stigma of mental illness was very high, and one of the few people I trusted to tell didn’t “believe” I was ill. I was also studying for my nursing qualification at the same time. This actually helped my mental health. I had the structure of my work placements, having to be there at a certain time. Also my studies gave me structure too, having to be at lectures at certain times, having to work on assignments with specific deadlines. My mental health was poor but that structure kept me together and kept me functioning. The only person I told at college was my personal tutor, because I was afraid if others knew I would be kicked off my course, and she supported me and kept quiet about my illness. When I qualified, I found it difficult to find my first job. As soon as prospective employers found out I had depression, they withdrew their job offers. The Occupational Health Department of the hospital I trained at told me that if they had known I had depression they would have had my training stopped. They said I was “unfit” to work as a nurse. I am so glad my personal tutor protected me from this. But all this rejection took a toll on me, my mental health deteriorated. I was being denied employment through no fault of my own. I had already proved I could safely work while having depression. It was so hopeless. I eventually found a job but I had to lie on my application. I didn’t tick the section that asked if I’d ever had any mental illness. During this awful time, I would have loved to have access to an employment adviser who could have helped me through this. Instead I navigated it all on my own. So why are we only just now looking at supporting people back into work, and in such a limited way? Since 2010, we have had the Equality Act, which makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with protected characteristics, including disability, and that includes mental health problems. But laws don’t change attitudes, not straight away. Frijters, Johnston & Shields found that having a mental health problem reduces your chance of getting employment by 30%. I had hoped that attitudes to mental illness had changed since I had depression. It seems now that ever z list celebrity is having their “struggles” with mental health problems. But my relative’s post on Facebook has made me question this. Do people still believe that mental illness is just someone faking it, using it as a way to avoid working? That a mental health problem automatically makes you unemployable? In 2011, David Cameron’s government coined the political slogan, “strivers v shirkers”. This labelled people in work as “strivers” and those receiving benefits as “shirkers”. This simplistic ignorance appalled me back then, but have we come no further? Now I doubt we have. Drew

He's starting to head towards his release but this is all new to him and strange environments change cause anxiety. He still needs the support of his nurses.

He's sixteen now. He's been at Nurton Cross for four years, and all that care is paying off. Plus, he finally has someone in his life who cares about him. Though there are strangers who just stare at you in public.