by C S Kenny
When you drove through the main gate and up the drive you passed staff houses, I remember them as white painted one storey buildings. Strangely it reminded me of Butlins Holiday Camp in Pwllheli, I had been there when I was five or six on a family holiday. I was about to say even more strangely, but thinking about it, it makes sense, the fact that I was reminded of Butlins seemed to ease some of my apprehension about entering the place.
I was placed in the Assessment Centre. My first port of call was the medical building. Stood in a room in my underpants, a nurse sat at a desk and a Doctor in a white coat, at least I hope he was a Doctor; I dropped my undies and raised my arms above my head as ordered. The Doc cupped my balls in his hand and told me to cough, I did. He then said to the nurse, “Tick and two.”
Now I have a good idea what the ‘Two,’ part means but I’m buggered if know what the ‘Tick,’ was about. I was then informed that I was to remain on the Librium. That pissed me off no end. I know I was not as informed as they were, nor was I as qualified but it seemed to me, especially as I was in an Assessment Centre, that it may have been an idea to ‘Assess’ me first, then if my behaviour warranted it put me back on the medication. I wouldn’t mind but I hadn’t been there long enough to show them just how much of dick head I could really be. In the interest of fairness I did a couple of weeks later see the psychiatrist.
Recommendations:
I would suggest a trial of anti-depressive medication for the boy, although previous therapy with Librium has not proven beneficial.
Until I read that part of the report I was not aware they had changed my medication though I guess it is quite feasible, if I was being a good boy for my induction period and taking the Librium, that I wouldn’t have remembered even if they had told me.
For the first month or so I was in a secure part of the home, I’m not a hundred per cent sure but I think it was called Royston House. It came as no surprise to me when after a while I was transferred to the Approved part of the school. Judging by the conversations I’d had with my social worker it seemed that going to the approved school was already a done deal, so why all the charade in the assessment centre?
To be honest the regime there was not too bad, though I did get on the wrong side of a couple of members of staff. On one occasion I was dragged by my hair from an art class and made to sit the lesson out in the corridor. No big deal really, I probably deserved it and I didn’t like art anyway.
On another occasion I got a hiding and a bouncing down the stairs by one chap who took offence at something I said. As I recall I may have questioned his birth legitimacy whilst mocking his southern roots. The odd good hiding was something I expected now and then, under the circumstances in which I was living, I looked upon a few slaps as an occupational hazard. I think that shows when I tell you that the worst couple of weeks I spent there was the fortnight beginning May 5th 1973. I was fourteen and one of a small minority of Yorkshire kids, the majority being North Easterners, i.e. Geordies, Mackems and Monkey Hangers etc.
On that day, a man I had never met and who had never met me caused me so much bloody grief you wouldn’t believe it. In the thirty first minute of an FA Cup Final a certain Mr Ian Porterfield scored the only and winning goal for Sunderland against Leeds United. As adamant as I was about coming from Bradford and not wanting Dirty Leeds to win so much as a church raffle, the stick just kept coming and coming. Thanks Mr Porterfield.
Though, as I said, the regime wasn’t that tough, I still absconded on a regular basis, usually with another lad and usually staying on the run for no more than a few days to a week. I was happy just to be on the run, whereas whoever it was that came with me invariably wanted to head to their home town, which was fine by me.
My regular absconding was how I had the good fortune to see the delights of places such as Middlesbrough, South Shields, Hartlepool, Sunderland and Newcastle. I would also like to point out that, in general, I found the North Easterners to be wonderful people. They were friendly, extremely funny and the accent was a delight.
The summer of 1973 turned out to be very enjoyable for me. I had, in the months leading up to the summer, been behaving like a real dick-head. Absconding, being argumentative and generally doing my best to wind staff members up, in truth, being a right little shite. My mum and Philip had made it known I was welcome to go on holiday to Spain with them during the summer break. Then, because of my behaviour, the offer was withdrawn so I had to stay at Aycliffe.
The Approved part of the school consisted of four large houses each holding around 25 to 30 boys. I was in Newton house and the other houses were called Lincoln, Collingwood and Franklin.
Towards the end of July, Newton house was the first to go to summer camp. The site was a field, I guess around an acre or so in size, situated alongside the River Tees near Egglestone, Teeside, close to Barnard Castle and was imaginatively named, The Camp. A wooden building stood in one corner of the field; this contained a dining room, a kitchen and a shower area.
As we were the first group there it was up to us to pitch the large green ex-army twelve man tents. These would remain in place until all four Houses had taken it in turns to spend a week there. From the second I jumped from the mini bus and began unloading the equipment I was a different kid. This was my kind of environment, I felt comfortable and I knew what I was doing.
In school I was usually the one moaning and groaning about having to do this that and the other, out there, in a fantastic piece of countryside, it was the majority of the other kids moaning. More often than not it was either the goody two shoes kids or the older ones who looked upon themselves as tough guys, moaning about having to sleep on a ground sheet or having to wash early in the morning with a bowl of cold water. They moaned because we had to spend a few days hiking, because we had to help with cooking meals. One guy even spent a whole week whining about grass.
“Arrrgh, fucking grass. I’ve got grass in my hair, down my shirt, up my arse, I fucking hate this place.”
The only complaint I could have come up with was seven days there wasn’t long enough. I couldn’t even moan about that when, towards the end of the week, the house master took me to one side and asked me if I would like to stay at camp when Collingwood House arrived, I jumped at the chance. Lincoln House came, I stayed, Franklin came and I stayed. The final week of Camp I barely spent any time with the other kids; I was given the chance to go Grouse beating. Five pounds a day, a packed lunch and a bottle of Newcastle Brown, I was definitely up for that. I don’t think the people running the shoot were aware of my age and I don’t think the staff at Aycliffe were aware of the Newcastle Brown, so in both instances I kept my mouth shut.
If those four weeks had been my assessment period and I had a home to go to, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been sent to the Approved school.
Case review: Mr J.G. Sanderson Senior House Master:
Christopher’s behaviour leaves little to be desired. He relates well to staff and boys, and is a boy of ability who was well to the fore in school camp – a real asset.
As with all good things, camp came to an end and though my good behaviour continued for a short while, it wasn’t long before I returned to being a pain. The absconding started again and I fell back into what was for me, my normal routine.
Every time I was arrested I would end up in court and be sent back to Aycliffe. The punishment I received once back there wasn’t much. It mainly consisted of a royal bollocking, a push or slap here and there followed by a few days of chores, scrubbing floors, washing up and sweeping paths, that sort of thing. I would be made to do these chores when the other lads were doing something else like roller skating or a trip to the pictures, anything that would be seen as a treat or a privilege.
To be fair I had caused them some grief so I deserved my punishment. Which was one of the reasons I never complained about it, the other reason I didn’t moan was to try and piss them off a bit more. I learned at an early age, when someone is angry with you and they are
having a right old rant full in your face, if you can stay calm and speak quietly, it sends them friggin loopy.
By the time I had reached Aycliffe I had seen quite a few Shrinks but Aycliffe seemed to have a particular obsession with them. That was probably something to do with the fact that the Principal of the school was a shrink, Masud Hoghughi I believe his name was. On a few occasions I found myself sitting in his or some other psychiatrist or psychologist or psycho something or other’s office. I had come to the conclusion by then that these people, the psycho something’s, were only putting me through these tests to justify their own existence. By that I mean it must have cost a great deal in time and money for these people to qualify and I’m sure their services didn’t come cheap. So whenever their report about me landed on the doorstep of whoever had commissioned it, it surely must have been a couple of pages of complete waffle.
Since they now knew that I was aware of my dad’s shirt lifting activities they had stopped questioning me about gays. However now they wanted to know about my poems. This really made me angry. I was not a violent child, though it wasn’t unknown for me to kick off once in a while. I came close to kicking off when they brought this subject up.
It may seem a petty thing to lose your rag over but it wasn’t petty to me. In my eyes, every aspect of my life was controlled by someone else. Everything I wanted to do I needed permission for. I believed they already knew enough about me but what they knew didn’t seem to be enough for them, they wanted to know what was going on in the bits of my mind that didn’t make me act like a dick head.
Those bits were mine, my writing was mine, it was my release valve and I was not going to give it up to them. The poems I wrote may have been complete rubbish, but they were my rubbish.
J.G. Social Worker:
At present Chris must feel rejected by the significant adults around him. His mother and stepfather seem not at all bothered about him. His father is inconsistent and always leaving him to go to different parts of the country. His aunt and uncle cannot take him as their foster child. He must also wonder who he is and what he is. He has done little to pride himself on so far and the future must not seem so bright for him.
Yet Chris does not express verbally his anger at these people and against the authority that punishes him by sending him to different institutions. He expresses this in acting out behaviour and also in the poems that he writes. His Aunt once found a book of his in which he said he was the worst boy in the world and that he always caused trouble. However he would not talk to me about this book. Hence in feeling that he is to blame he may need the security of a controlled environment for he no longer trusts his own behaviour.
They wanted to know why I was writing, what I was writing, who I was writing for. I took great pleasure in knowing I had something they could not get their hands on unless I said so. I didn’t write with the intention of allowing anyone else to see it. I would often write a poem or a piece of prose and keep it for no more than a day or so before screwing up the paper and throwing it away. I sometimes just needed to get it out. There was one occasion when I did write something for the psychiatrist.
By then I had a pretty good idea about how the conversation would go once we were in his office and, as I had rightly assumed, within a couple of minutes of talking he asked me if I was still writing. I said I was and dug into my pocket for a small piece of paper. I handed it to him and said, “I wrote this for you.” I’m not sure if his expression was one of surprise or of mild appreciation that I had taken time out to write something just for him. He took it from me and read it.
If I were you I would listen.
You are not me.
If I were you I would listen.
You are not me.
If I were you I would listen.
You are not listening, you are not me.
What I was trying to convey with that I’m not too sure. In all honesty I think I may have just been trying to be a smart arse, aiming for something and wildly missing. There was however a punch the air moment a couple of minutes later. He tried to flatten out the creases in the piece of paper and asked if he could keep it.
“Of course you can,” I answered, “I wrote it for you.”
He flattened it some more with the palm of his hand and then read it again. I think he must have read it three or four times before he finally looked at me and said, “You could just have written you may as well just shut up.”
“I could have,” I replied, “but would you have listened?”
He pursed his lips and ironed the paper again with his hand before placing it in a drawer. I remember coming out of that meeting feeling quite smug. I may have had no reason to feel that way; I could have read the signs completely wrong. However I felt pretty sure that he’d had to work hard at not saying anything after he pursed his lips. He may have wanted to say, “That’s shocking.” He may have wanted to say, “I walked straight into that.” Whatever it was he was struggling to hold back, I had got a reaction from him and I’m fairly sure the meetings were intended to work the other way around.
Another question they would always ask was, “Why did I persist in absconding?” The honest answer was, “Because I didn’t want to be there,” wherever ‘there’ was.
Even though I told them that, they had to dig about to try and find another reason. An A4 sheet of paper with the words, ‘He doesn’t want to be here,’ printed on it and a bill for Christ knows how much wouldn’t keep the author in a job for very long. So the finished report was a breakdown of the tests carried out, probably something like, ‘In order to ascertain, blah blah blah.’ Another half a page of bollocks then, ‘In conclusion it is my opinion that the behaviour displayed shows blah blah blah.’
For fucks’ sake, is it that unbelievable when a child is sent to an institution that he wouldn’t want to be there? Personally I would have been more concerned about the child who was happy to be in an institution. They would be the ones, I would have thought, who needed care, consideration and understanding.
If I had been in charge of any of these places and a member of staff had knocked on my door saying, “Chris Kenny has done a runner again.” I would have replied, “Fuck him, he’s not coming back here, let somebody else have him.” Which to be fair is pretty much what Aycliffe finally did say. If you consider that on the night I ran away from there for the last time I broke into a couple of the staff living quarters first, then it’s hardly surprising.
I had planned to run away on that occasion, sometimes I just did it on a whim, that time I had been thinking about it for a while. My mood had been getting more and more, well I’m tempted to say depressed but that’s a word that was banded about by the professionals. I just felt pissed off, so far away from anyone I really knew, nobody I could trust to talk to.
I was forever being told, “You know you can always come and talk to me if you’re feeling down or worried about anything.”
I knew that, I also knew that anyone I spoke to would tell someone else who would tell someone else who would make sure they upped my medication and limit my movements before writing down just what I had said. That may sound like a broad assumption on my part however looking through my records it seems that anything I said, which they thought to be significant, was put down on paper. Not so much an assumption but more spot on insight I reckon.
Though I had planned my final runner from Aycliffe the plans were not down to the last detail, which was not something I usually did. A rough idea of the direction I should be heading was about as far ahead as I bothered planning. Besides, I had absconded often enough to know just a glimpse of a police car and I would leg it in any direction, often ending up miles from where I wanted to be.
I had made sure I was dressed for the occasion, jeans, hiking boots, and a pair of normal socks under a pair of thick walking socks. Incidentally, I turned the walking socks inside out, I’m not sure what they are like now but back then they were ribbed on the inside, if you turned them inside out they were much m
ore comfortable to walk in.
To top off my stylish look I had on a vest, a shirt with one of those big fuck off penny collars, a multi coloured striped tank top and a denim jacket. I also had on a pair of woollen gloves with a matching bobble hat, the bobble had been removed; well I didn’t want to look silly did I?
The route I had planned was Scotch Corner, Ripon, Harrogate and then Bradford. As I was on my own this time I figured the police would also expect me to be heading for Bradford so using the roads was going to be dodgy. This meant a road journey of around 80 miles would probably end up as a trek for me of well over 120 miles. If I managed to at least get out of the County then I would probably risk using public transport. Should the opportunity arise I would steal a car but for that I needed a key; I hadn’t yet learned how to hot wire one. The minute I left the grounds of Aycliffe and turned left, I had the familiar butterfly feeling in my guts, I wasn’t sure if it was through apprehension or excitement, but I liked it.
After a couple of farmer’s fields I was once more jogging down a railway track, without doubt the best place to be. The moon had been illuminating the landscape leaving me feeling exposed in the fields. Thankfully the rail track was lower and hid me from view of the roads.
I knew the line went straight into Darlington which was about ten miles from Scotch Corner, but I had absolutely no idea where the track went to after that. It dawned on me it was not going to be easy to get to Bradford, especially if I had to use roads and fields.
As far as I was concerned, that was my challenge. I didn’t care how long it took, just getting to Bradford would be good enough for me even if I was arrested the second I arrived. One of the reasons I had been sent this far away from Bradford was to stop me making it back there, I was determined to show them I could do it. I’m sure it made not the slightest bit of difference to anyone else whether I managed it or not, but to me it was essential that I had something to aim for. Especially as it was February, it was cold, it was miserable and would have been easy after a couple of days of struggling just to walk into a police station and turn myself in. I wasn’t going to do that.