Memories

By Joyce Robinson

I’m an older lady who lives most of my life in Elswick, Cruddas Park; Riverside Dene as it is now. 

I was evacuated for 4 years and learned a lot during those 4 years has led me into the life and the work that I’ve been involved in since.

Alcohol abuse as various means, various results, various hazards. I’ve come involved with alcohol abuse through two daughters who had abusive partners were not addicts of alcohol but died within 5 years of each other through alcohol related illnesses. I did support them while they were ill but it taught me through their loss to support where I could anyone with an alcohol problem. I worked in the area for social service, which put me in touch with elderly people, younger people who had alcohol problems or mental health problems. 

One of those people I had to become involved in and he had a terrible reputation in the Cruddas Park area as being abusive, aggressive. His marriage broke up, his child was taken into care because of his drinking advertised for volunteers and he offered to come and help me, I didn’t know who he was at the time but he did come and work for me, people were saying you don’t want to go down that road you don’t want to go down there but I did I told the man to come and offer help, we set some ground rules and that man worked with me for 6 months and I never once smelt drink or he never once showed that he’d been drinking, it made me show that alcoholic for whatever reason or drug addict for whatever reason you give them a bit of help and a bit of support and it can work even though maybe after a while something crops up and you have to go back to where you started. But again that made me more determined to help people that I could possibly help. 

There’s a terrible reputation in this area now of alcoholism, drug addiction, not just older people, a lot of the kids on the estate are taking to drink and a lot of it is kids have nowhere to go, nothing to do, that’s the story that they tell you so maybe we need to encourage kids and get something for them to do and I’ve spent quite a number of years trying to do that. 

My husband died in 1970, I was left with four kids absolutely devastated for a long time and they supported me. I didn’t take to alcohol and I had to make sure that they were alcohol free so I do believe that people can be helped. If you give them somewhere to go, you give them a reason to do something and rightly or wrongly you felt that I held a place, that I can fit in somewhere because I’ve worked in this area and represented this community for a long time, many years, and I think that people trust me and I think through that trust I think I can talk to some people that maybe others cant and because of my problems I have an understanding, I can say to people I know how you feel and genuinely mean it you know and I think that’s my story.