Veritee: Hi, I’m Veritee and I’m 68 years old and I live in Cornwall.

Barry: And I’m Barry, Veritee’s husband. I’m 69. So, we’ve been here 35 years or so.

Veritee: Yeah. About 35 years in this house. We were in Ashton before, another village. But before that we were both London -. Well, he was more a Londoner than me.

Home is security for me. Not, I mean I did lead a bit of, a bit.. Not… I did lead a bit of an itinerant life in my early days. I squatted. I was homeless. I moved around a lot, mostly in London but I also came down here and lived in Cornwall as well in the ‘70s, in the early ‘70s. And other places because I didn’t really have any... Often, I would work somewhere and live-in, you know, in hotels and stuff. And I lived in so many places, and squatted, as I’ve said, mostly in nice squats, if there is such a thing, because we did them up and I squatted with the.. In some squats that were actually run by Piers Morgan’s brother. No, sorry, Jeremy Corbyn’s brother. Piers’ ran a group of squats in Elgin Avenue, he was an activist then, he’s a weird meteorologist now who doesn’t believe in climate change, but he gave me a place in one of the squats there, which was all done up. I mean, we had water and we decorated and it was a decent place to live in. A whole row of houses, like huge houses. So, that was a good one but I’ve had really bad squats, you know. And, so, home means security, no one’s going to move me on, you know I’ve got a bed to go to every night which is mine. I don’t have people coming in and trying to use it, use it as sort of... interfere with my life. It’s my security. Which is why I’ve got so many things, I’m a bit of hoarder. It’s peace and security and no one’s going to take me away from it.

Barry: Well, just having this, yeah, because I spent half my life working away, yeah. I mean...

Veritee: At sea.

Barry: Yeah, Nigeria, Ghana, Falklands. China, you know.

Veritee: South America.

Barry: South America.

Veritee: Brasil, where you got HIV.

Barry: That say, I spent half my life travelling, you know. So, having somewhere where I don’t have to go anywhere, yeah, it’s a base. That I don’t have to go.

Veritee: Ironically my dad was a seaman too. Should’ve known better. But he spent very little time, for years, you know. Although he would have leave, it seemed like very little time. Sometimes it’d be months away, sometimes only five weeks. But I felt on my own, you know. I was here on my own with my daughter in the end, but you didn’t spend a lot of time in those years. And ironically it was getting HIV that got him home because they... basically he lost his seaman’s ticket and he couldn’t go to sea anymore.

Barry: They took my medical certificate away and without a medical certificate, you couldn’t work.

Veritee: They wouldn’t let someone on constant medication… A lot, it wasn’t about… Less countries bar you these days but there were more then that barred you from being in their country, so you couldn’t risk that if your boat, your ship, went anywhere, you couldn’t go anywhere.

Barry: Well, I spent quite a few years in-and-out of America, which -.

Veritee: At that time was banned.

Barry: You couldn’t go so that was it.

Veritee: When you were diagnosed. Obama opened it out but when you were diagnosed America was a no-no. There was that side of it. There was also that thing they say – well, I think it was an excuse – they didn’t want anybody on medication in case they ran out and they couldn’t get it - which they needed to keep healthy and alive – so that’s, but… Yeah. But it brought my husband home because he would not have retired.

Barry: Well I would’ve done before now but it would’ve been another few years.

Veritee: And I hated it at the end. I absolutely hated it. I knew he was a seaman, but… Obviously, I knew he was a seaman when I first met him ‘cause he did it for forty-odd years, but I thought he did ten years and I thought: ‘That’s a good stint.’ I just assumed, but I didn’t talk it through with him. Not understanding. I thought he’d do about ten years and then he’d leave and find something else - because he’s an engineer - to do, but he’s not a risk-taker. And, you know, ten years went by, fifteen years went by, and he wasn’t gonna leave. And I couldn’t hack it anymore.

Barry: It’s just there wasn’t any jobs. Yeah, when I first started, the ones that were leaving, there was jobs in hospitals, looking after the plant, power stations, and that all went, so… There’s no work down here, so...

Veritee: Yeah, and we didn’t want to leave our home, ‘cause what it meant for Barry is that after… He’d lived onboard ship in very cramped circumstances - he was an officer so he had his own cabin - but you were on top of people all the time. It was pretty much the accommodation – ‘cause I’ve been on once or twice – are very small, you know. Though it’s a big ship the accommodation is tiny. And he could come here and spend five weeks in this place with beautiful scenery around him, fields, nobody to bother him unless he wanted them to, it was just...

Barry: I wasn’t getting alarms at two o’clock in the morning that you gotta get up and you’ve got three minutes to go and answer the alarm, otherwise all the alarms went off all over the ship and everybody was up. And it didn’t make you very popular if you did that.

Veritee: Anyway, yes, home is so peaceful and quiet. We dread leaving here. I mean, the thing is we’re so used to having all this and peace and quiet and that’s the main thing. And it’s comfortable. It wasn’t comfortable to start with. When we bought it, it was derelict. And I brought up my daughter when she was like eighteen months. Every floor was up. There was a hole in every floor, because we have radon here. We’ve got the highest radon ever recorded in Britain, in this house. We were on national TV because of it. I mean, we’ve got recordings of that. They’re on YouTube if you wanna see ‘em. What was it? Well it was National TV, I can’t remember, two of them, both BBC and ITV filmed us, because it’s such a high radon level in this house, if not dealt with. We became an experimental home for -.

Barry: Building research.

Veritee: - building research establishment. So we haven’t had a quiet life in some ways here.

Barry: No.

Veritee: It’s been a bit eventful in these ways, but in a way that’s alright. I mean, it was exciting, kept me in touch, to have people ‘round. I had film crews here, loads of times, different things…

Barry: When the pony fell down the mineshaft we had two satellite vans, BBC and ITV, parked up in the yard where, you know…

Veritee: You know, ‘cause we made national TV on that. I mean it’s not deliberately, I’m not a self-publicist, I’ve never been. You know, I lead a quiet life but for some reason these things have found us, long before the HIV thing. I only became a bit of self-publicist to start with was when I was diagnosed and realised that there was actually zilch support, especially for women, like me, especially middle-aged old bats like me, there was no support here. Not in Cornwall. And really at that time not anywhere else. There wasn’t any Facebook groups, no one was out on Facebook. So from my little home here I did my best, then. But the other things that have happened in this house I didn’t seek it, you know. It just seemed to come to me. I mean, I’ve been in here, come home from work, really late as I was a youth worker, picked up my daughter from the childminder at ten o’clock – poor little thing you know she’s half-asleep – to find the satellite people outside again for the radon thing, for tomorrow morning. You know, that sort of thing? But I didn’t seek it. That just happens. So, home has been quite exciting as well. I mean, we’ve had a good life here. I mean, we used to have loads of people here. There have been times when there’s been fourteen people sort of around, just turned up, and then another five come to stay in the early days, you know, when people realise you live in Cornwall and everybody and their dogs descends, and I mean their dogs as well. Before we ever let anything out, we didn’t have AirBnB or anything like that, and it was in a state. It was rubble, it was… The walls were falling down. The upstairs bedrooms you couldn’t walk on, because there was nowhere to put all these people, and the cars would turn up from London, you know: ‘Just come to stay for the weekend...’

Barry: And later on when our daughter got older she’d have her friends ‘round for parties and things because it was a biggish house and rather than have it in a little terrace or somewhere, all come here...

Veritee: A lot of her friends only have mining cottages which are very, very small, and so yes, right up ‘til… I think the last one, well, eighteen…

Barry: When she left home, weren’t it?

Veritee: I mean, the last big bash which must’ve been forty, fifty kids here and yeah, in the flat, where you’re staying…

Barry: With a marquee…

Veritee: And a marquee out there for her eighteenth birthday, you know, people camping, a mini-festival thing. We’ve had that for ourselves as well, for his fiftieth, but the last big one was probably for her eighteenth when she did all that. So, it hasn’t been quiet, although we gave the impression that it’s quiet. It is now. And we’re a bit old for it not to be. We like visitors, but not the hordes we used to get. But we haven’t had a quiet life here. People used to say to me: “How can you live up there, you must -,” - who haven’t been - “… how can you be so isolated? In a cottage up in unnamed lane, ages away from any, well outside the village, but an unmade track to get here. They thought I didn’t see anybody. Now, I worked, you know, as a youth worker. I saw hordes of people when I was working, you know, fifty kids or whatever and colleagues and the rest of it. And then I’d come home to a place that was always full. I mean, I had friends lived here, didn’t they? We’ve had friends…

Barry: Yep.

Veritee: We’ve had a couple and their baby, but mostly the woman, who her son Sam was pretty much brought up with mine because they were little bit different in ages, but they lived together. I had a foster-daughter for some years that basically made herself my foster-daughter. She moved in when she was twelve and didn’t go away ‘til she had her own baby. I mean, yeah, in our, ‘round the table a few years ago there would’ve been like… We wouldn’t have been sitting here like this. There woulda been somebody wandering in who might be staying in a van, that was a friend. Well that was only last year because she left last year. People in the caravan who rent it. We‘ve had a guy here who’s only just gone who’s a traveller who’s been living here up until six months ago for about two years. He’d be wandering in. So our life it isn’t quiet, actually seeing it now. It’s… This is really the first time we’ve had it like this.

Because I was homeless I know how lucky I am to have this place, you know. Absolutely privileged. I know we’ve worked for it and there’s quite a few people who think we haven’t worked for it, it’s always like ‘it’s luck’. No, it ain’t luck. We both worked very hard for this place, but I was homeless. A long time ago and squatting and really at one point, you know, and really on at the end of the road with it, you know, when I was very young. So, I’ve always put up people that have nowhere to go. And the caravan usually is for that. They pay rent. We encourage them to get DHS, you know, the housing benefit and all the rest of it, but until recently it was always homeless people that lived in it and one of them – who became my friend – she was in a tent. She’s my age, she was my age. She would now be 70-something, well, a little bit older, 71 she’d be now. When I met her she was living in a tent in Cornwall. And that would have been, what? Late ‘50s then?

Barry: Yeah.

Veritee: She stayed twelve years and she died here. In our caravan. And she became a good friend. So some of that has been really positive, because she was a lovely educated woman, trained-teacher like me but things happen to people, don’t they? You know, so… That was a really positive experience, she was a lovely lady but sadly she had already had a heart attack before she came here and she died of heart failure but… We’ve done it all our lives, but, here… But recently, as I say, since someone, people have realised I’ve got no one staying a van in the yard or somewhere in the fields or whatever, I’ve had five requests. Two have only been to put their vans here for storage, the rest have been to live, because Cornwall; there’s nowhere for people to live. You know that’s something that people don’t realise: lovely holiday area, locals can’t afford to live here. And if you’ve got no family or support, the chances -. Or, and you’re not ill so you can get sheltered housing after being on the waiting list for ten years, you can be homeless just like that. But I can’t do it any more. I’ve done it all these years and we’ve decided that’s it, so we’ve had to say no to everybody.

Barry: Well it starts off fine but after they’ve been for a while they start taking advantage and, you know, and it just ends up stressful so you know, that was… I mean, the guy who was there was only meant to be for three months it ended up nearly three years, you know...

Veritee: And the trouble is that… You see this is all of what home means to us, ‘cause this is what we’ve always done. I mean, when my daughter was young I would have people that had nowhere to live but I got references and I made sure they were okay and some of them were very educated people with training. To live in my caravan, to give me childcare because Barry was at sea, so they’d look after my daughter for, from what? Seven months?

Barry: Yeah.

Veritee: And live in my caravan, look after my daughter, while I, so I could go to work as a youth worker. And it worked out very well for most of us. I mean, all the people that did that with me were fine and got on their feet from doing it, you know? ‘Cause I mean one or two of them had children of their own. I’ve had people with two kids in the caravan doing that ‘cause they’re homeless. So what our home is is a chance to give back as well. You know, because I wouldn’t have got this if I hadn’t managed to get myself back together through the help of other people. And I’m talking about when I’m 25. I’m 68 now but I mean I’ve never forgotten it. You know, they gave me help and so I could return some of it, but it makes me upset because the trouble is is we’ve had too much recently of people thinking we’re playing Lady Bountiful or whatever, that we’re doing it to feel good about ourselves, which we never did. Obviously it gives us something, but we’ve never done it for those reasons, it’s simply because I was in that position myself years ago. And also because Barry didn’t really have a home until we came here, not really. Apart from… ‘cause he was out in, having to work abroad. He lived in his mum’s house when I met him…

Before me he couldn’t even have a houseplant, you know, it’s that, like that. The benefit of having me is he can have dogs, cats, he’s had other animals, not that he necessary -. You like the chickens, didn’t you?

Barry: Yeah.

Veritee: Goats were my idea. He couldn’t have another live thing because of his lifestyle, you know. He certainly couldn’t have had a kid, obviously without a woman or somebody, but somebody to look after all these things, these live things, including, as I say, houseplants. So it’s true really, I‘ve enabled him to have all these things that with his job he would never have had.

Barry: So my house in Ashton was just a little detached two -bedroom house, little garden and a garage that I could put my car in when I went away and –.

Veritee: - and somebody came in and cut the lawn to make it look tidy once-a-fortnight or so.

Barry: Yeah, I enjoyed it. My job I didn’t particularly want to be doing it. It was stressful, the amount of paperwork that was required before you could do anything. Yeah, so, actually, I was glad, yeah, because I didn’t have to go away, yeah, you know, stuck in a hurricane, no communication, don’t know when you’re going to get off the ship, yes.

Veritee: I’ve had him out during hurricanes not knowing if he’s died or not, because he’s out at sea, and not knowing if he’s alive, and one time in Antigua he managed to phone me before they shoved him on a plane. I mean, you know, and I phoned his job, work, and they won’t tell you. Because actually one reply I got was: “A lot of these men have wives in every port. Yeah, you’re married to him but they wouldn’t… That was the, that was the line then.

Barry: Company policy.

Veritee: So I was not allowed… I was his wife but I wasn’t allowed to know. Well, I could have, not being married to him but that’s how it is. You didn’t get told. It wasn’t like people imagine. I mean, there’s some shipping firms where, you know, the container ships where wives go with them but that’s only like captains, that’s not -.

Barry: Well no I could have done You could’ve. because I was an officer and -.

Veritee: But not on the ships, not that sort of ship -.

Barry: You know the ships I was on, when we were working it was dangerous, you know, and no one that didn’t work for the company and were fully-insured and done all the training was allowed on it.

Veritee: I mean the thing is it gave him, it’s given him a lot. He could leave the sea and not feel guilty about it, not feel like he was taking any risks because the risk had already happened, ‘cause he took a risk when he had sex with somebody else, if basically, but the risks -. There was nothing he could do, there wasn’t actually voluntarily walking out of his job, which by then he hated but he loved it when he was younger. He did love it for years.

Barry: Yeah, that’s…

Veritee: But by then not, but HIV has actually, and I hear this a lot from a lot of people – he doesn’t actually say it’s given him a lot, but it has – I hear it from a lot of people who say it’s given them their life back. It’s changed their life, it’s got them healthy, it’s got them off addiction. It’s made them assess where they’re going next and to use the time they’ve got. I hear so many people that that’s how they feel about getting HIV and that’s, sort of, in a way the same for you. It’s changed your life. You like this life, you like it like this. This is what you wanted but you couldn’t leave. You didn’t feel you could afford it, this place, without that money from sea and, so, a lot of people like that. And I often feel like, because sadly I was happy with it was and the last thing I wanted was this and though I’m happy to have him home – I actually thought that eventually I might persuade him to come home, persuade him that we wouldn’t go bankrupt, there are ways, he could never believe it. But I was always hopeful without having to get bloody HIV to achieve it! So, I mean, I was a middle-aged woman with friends and a life and, yeah, I wasn’t doing youth work anymore but I felt sort of… I was proud of myself. I hate HIV. It took so much from me. Sorry, it just did. And though this life’s nice it wasn’t… I wouldn’t… It’s not the terms I wanted it on. You know, I’m one of the few who don’ think, can’t see anything positive about having HIV. And yes, it’s changed my view of my home because, you know, I realise it’s in a way hard won, all those years at sea and… But it’s also meant that it’s more of a refuge than it used to be because I have more, need the security more, you know, because of being at home.

God I sound awful, don’t I? You know, so many women I talk to say they have no problem with being HIV-positive. They don’t even think about it except taking their meds and a lot say all the positive things about, that I just said about having HIV and how it’s changed their lives and been a positive experience. Really they do. Not all, but quite a few. And the others say well it’s nothing, they just take their meds. You get good medical care, you do, there is a positive in that. We get much better, good medical care than before. But that is… And I actually get put down some times when I say that it’s not like that for me. It’s as if because I run a group – or one of the admins on, well I’m an admin on about three HIV groups and I’ve done peer support training – it’s as if that’s not right, that somehow because I’m somebody who does that sort of thing that I should find it all hunky-dory and great and easy to live with and no problems except take the meds. Doesn’t mean you can’t do the work if you don’t feel like that. You know, I don’t see why it matters but it apparently seems to. I mean, when, if you do that sort of support work or peer support. I’ve never been, done it, not doing it from any other point-of-view, I don’t do it any more anyway... I don’t see why you have to have your life sorted out completely as long as you’re aware of what you haven’t got sorted out. And I’m very aware and I don’t see how I need to be fine with living with HIV.

Why is that a thing now? Just because we got the meds. I mean, yes, I know how awful it was before the meds. I’m fully aware. A friend of mine died in ‘84, I know exactly what it was like but it doesn’t mean I’m going to be happy about it. And I don’t see why I should be forced to be happy with it, but that seems to be how people… Or at least more adjusted to it, I don’t know. People say things like ‘you’re not accepting it.’ No, I’m not accepting it. It’s a terrible thing to live with. I hate it, sorry, I just do. Anyway, it’s made my home more of a refuge. Somewhere I know I’m safe.

But someone, and I can’t rem- . Your company and I can’t remember who said: “Actually it’s an occupational hazard with men at sea.” That’s what… And it is, but it’s not talked about. And it was always assumed actually that it was gay men at sea, no actually, there’s lots of women waiting for you on those ports. I’ve seen it. Little shorts brrrr. ‘Come on, land myself a seaman for the night. I’ll get some money tonight or I might even land him.’ You know, so, it’s like that. Especially in places like Nigeria and Brasil and what-have-you. So it is an occupational hazard so they weren’t, sort of, phased by it, his job. It’s obviously happened before.

Yeah, I think my life completely changed. I think women… I made a decision to go completely open, not straight away. I was stuck here - he was in hospital, didn’t know whether he’d live or die – and everybody ‘round here, ‘cause we knew everybody, kept saying: “What’s wrong with Barry?” I kept saying: “Pneumonia.” And I’m not someone who lives secrets, my life’s an open book. I just can’t live, sort of, saying something’s not what it is. And in the end I said: “He’s got HIV. He’s got AIDS. He’s got an AIDS-related pneumonia.” And I tell you, it did change for me. People that would invite me to things… I mean, not with my close friends -. No, it did, in fact it changed more with the closest friends ‘cause a lot of them never really visited me ever again, you know. I mean, I stopped having people dropping in, women coming in. I was a respected youth worker, you know. People used to come to me for advice, knock with their kids. I didn’t want that, but they did, you know? And suddenly I’m rock-bottom, I’m someone, somebody with HIV. I’m not who they thought I was. I’d betrayed them, I think.

Barry: We were renting a stable with someone with a horse and when she found out she come and took her horse away. I don’t know whether she thought I was going to give her horse HIV or what, I don’t know -.

Veritee: I actually spoke to her husband and he did – he was a seaman, Barry – he came back, no, no she actually said to me: “I’m a clean woman.” Right? That was her words as she took, she took, came to get the rest of her stuff and I said: “Why are you going?” ‘Cause it’s only a, it’s a field, she don’t even have to talk to me. She said: “I’m a clean woman.” I said: “So am I.” And anyway a bit later her husband came back to get a bit more and he, he’s a seaman, and he said she’d said: “I’m sorry but I’m frightened it’ll happen to me.” But she judged me to not being a clean woman ‘cause, because her husband might, just as mine might, have sex abroad with somebody while he was working. I mean, it happens. But she was… It was her own fear. But we’ve never forgotten it, you know, that... Little things, there were... I could have repeated so many things years ago but I’ve forgotten half of them. That wasn’t the only thing that happened. So much happened like that. If I’d not been open they wouldn’t have known, I suppose, but I just can’t live a secret. So I didn’t. And so much happened. People didn’t come back. They used to be regular visitors, never have, talk to them on Facebook, but… They’re not my friends. They don’t want to be friendly. You know, they never even basically entered this kitchen since! Quite a few, really. So…

So I’ve still got me husband. That’s really, that’s positive. And it’s been really positive meeting all the women, especially, all the people with HIV that I’ve met on this journey. Not so much now because I really can’t travel to London and I had to do that, or Manchester, and a lot of other places, I had to travel to meet these people because I couldn’t meet them here. Activists, rather than people that are keeping it a secret, because that’s the experience of mine here, that people with HIV are very secretive and I needed to meet people like me that weren’t. And I’ve met some absolutely wonderful people that I so admire, men and women, but mostly the women, you know, which I never would have met without HIV. You know, they were wonderful women in their own right without the HIV, a lot of them… An artist friend, who’s a brilliant artist, so… So many skills, so many wonderful things they’d done in their lives and I wouldn’t have met any of them if it wasn’t for HIV. I wouldn’t known these people existed, so were in my social group type-of-thing. So that has been really positive. But I had some real negatives as well. I have been refused a tattoo, locally. Yes, other places said they would do it but they refused it. I even went to the Press, I was so appalled. Even got a letter from my consultant to say I was -. It was before U was proved to be equal-U but it was after the Swiss statement but we all knew that, controlled on drugs, you weren’t going to pass it on, especially if you used universal precautions etc. But they weren’t having it, I even tried taking it to the Commission, you know, European Commission. Unless I’d had money to fight it… I had no money. I tried THT, I tried everywhere. I said: “Look, this is really wrong. You know, you’ve got to help me with this, just for other people, because this is so bigoted.”

Barry: And all you wanted was a little red ribbon.

Veritee: The reason I had to tell them was because what I wanted, I wanted a red ribbon entwined with a prostate cancer blue one. It was to do with, you know, solidarity written on it, just somewhere. I‘d never had a tattoo. I just thought, I fancied, I just thought I’d have that. So I had to tell them what it was and I’m open so I told them why. And they refused. And anyway there’s a form you fill in and most people with HIV have tattoos and they don’t tell ‘em, but I do. So a lot of people say to me you’ve got HIV and you could avoid all this if you didn’t tell them. Well, I think that is… That is buying into the stigma. I won’t do it. I absolutely fucking refuse to buy into that stigma. So I tell, try to treat it like it would be if I had cancer or anything else you’re on daily meds for, you know. I refuse to treat it any other way in terms of that sort of thing and medical stuff. And… But it ends up backfiring on me because I’ve been refused massage, I’ve been refused laser therapy for hair removal because I’m an old lady who grows hairs on my chin now and I could get those removed. But I’ve been refused it. So, there’s some things. I’ve had nurses in hospital when I was on IV – ‘cause I got a splinter in my arm, my finger – and I’ve had them been scared to touch me and I’ve had IV antibiotics and actually spouting all sorts of shit, the nurses, and I’m there with the IV and I’m telling them – by then u-equals-u had come in – and I’m saying: “I can’t give it to anybody, you don’t have to use gloves and a mask and all that.”

I wanted respectability basically because I hadn’t had it, you know. As a young girl, woman, who was going through all these things. I was quite happy to be seen to be a bit notorious, and have a but of an unusual hippy lifestyle but later on I wanted to be what I became, which was a teacher, a youth worker, trained counsellor and group-worker. In London I was the head of a charity, I ran the charity. I mean youth charity. So I was the senior worker there. And when I came here I never quite achieved those lofty heights, but I was assistant co-ordinator to a youth project with what they called ‘troubled young people’, some with real issues. So I had a life that was… I wasn’t doing that anymore but I achieved that and I wanted that respectability, that sounds awful. I wanted to at least be seen that I had a worthwhile life and had done things. And not be seen in the perspective of had I carried on as I was when I was young and nearly died on the streets. I didn’t want that. I wanted a different life and HIV brought it all crashing down. I lost all that, you know. I’m no longer seen as that person.

To be fair, I was very handy. I’m not one of these women that can’t… I did all the maintenance in my flat and built and knocked a wall down.

Barry: When I first met you I said you were struggling putting a washing machine in or something and I said: “Do you want me to do it?”

Veritee: And I said no! ‘Cause I can do it. ‘Cause I was the precise opposite from the women that rely on Barry and always have. ‘Cause the woman downstairs that I met him through relied on Barry. He’s always done this, you see? To do – ‘cause she’s single – to do all her –.

Barry: Maintenance…

Veritee: - maintenance.

Barry: And move furniture about.

Veritee: And I absolutely refuse because I’ve never had that relationship with men and I wasn’t going to start. I did it myself and if I couldn’t do it myself then I’d have to pay someone, but I did it myself. Mostly I couldn’t afford to pay someone so I learnt to do it myself including motorcycle mechanics and ordinary mechanics. I can’t do any of that now so I am grateful to have Barry now because my hands, I’ve got problems with my hands and I can’t stand up and squat down because of my leg and… So sadly I need him now but in those days the last thing I was going to do and I couldn’t understand why all these women did get him to do...

Barry: Well, I volunteered. It wasn’t as if I pushed. “Get out of the way, let me get to that you stupid woman, what you doing that for…?”

Veritee: I’m afraid in my youth I used to think: ‘Oh that’s it, they can’t learn to change a bloody plug or put a washing machine in themselves, you know.’ I just didn’t understand it ‘cause why does somebody find a man who’ll do it? But never mind, he’s useful.

Barry: Yeah. But at that time they all thought I was a major drug dealer because I disappeared away…

Veritee: Don’t put that in.

Barry: ...and came home in a taxi from the airport which cost a lot of money but I wasn’t paying for it, so it didn’t matter, but that’s -.

Veritee: That was the initial thought. ‘Cause he used to disappear, usually in a posh car to the airport, which at the time was tiny and no one could afford to fly from it, ‘cause Newquay airport was just a Nissen Hut.

Barry: Two port-a-cabins.

Veritee: And these tiny little planes that cost a fortune to get on and he’d go there and that’s how the rumour went around. That somehow – when we first moved here, this was – that he was some high-flying, he was so dodgy, you know, even though I said, when I got to know people: “No, he’s a seaman.” But that’s what the rumours -. But, yeah we did get into... him through me and I did feel I was part of the community. I don’t feel I’ve got any community now. I don’t feel like part of this community at all, you know. I don’t feel included. I don’t know a lot of the new people who’ve moved in in the last ten years. They don’t know me. I’ve never -. I think in several years since I stopped being a part of the community and involved in the village hall and had a child at school, I have not been invited to anybody’s home, actually in their kitchen, in this village or around. Fifteen years. Not since HIV actually.

Barry: But a lot of it’s also because I don’t drink anymore and the pub opening hours. I was never an evening drinker anyway. So they all go down there at 8 o’clock, which is when I’m starting to get tired and don’t want to go anywhere so we don’t actually meet these new people, ‘cause if they go down that pub at 8 o’clock at night I’ve got no idea who they are.

Veritee: Yeah if you’re not… It’s the only meeting place in the village now. If you don’t go down that pub you’re not included, you’re not a part of it. And Barry gave up drinking and I don’t -.

Barry: Well after that -.

Veritee: He gave up drinking because he had sex with somebody because he was drunk and he’s never got drunk since, you know. Me? I started drinking. So I suppose I could go down there and get absolutely arseholed, but I don’t drink in public. I mean, as you saw, drink has a terrible affect on me. Two wines and I’m stupid. So, I can’t drink. I drink too much but I can’t drink in public. I couldn’t go down that pub and have more than two.

Barry: Well the trouble is once you get the taste for it...

Veritee: Yeah but that’s my self-respect. It’s always made me walk out. At that point. I’ve never stayed there. I’ve never got beyond drinking two, and I shouldn’t even drink those. So how these people, the local people, spend so much time in pubs drinking so much, I’ve got no idea. But I do drink now.

But he stopped because he got it. He got HIV. It changed his life, it stopped him drinking, you know. Almost instantly. So… There’s so many positives for Barry, you see? ‘Cause it is a positive. ‘Cause you drunk too much.

When I was first diagnosed, ‘cause being the sort of person that I am, ‘cause I tried to turn a negative into a positive, I mean I had in fact started a… I’ve had a few disasters in my life and the fact that I was a youth and community worker at all is due to that, and then I started a charity because I got post-natal illness when I had my only kid so I started a charity. I always turned it around, try to make it positive for other people and myself actually. And so of course when I was first diagnosed and decided there’s no way I’m not going to be not telling anybody, I looked round to find what there was, that I could join in with. And I didn’t find much at all here, to start with.

So I basically found what was - I think they were called Positively Women, it’s now Positively UK – and what they had was a series, they had meetings for women, they’re encouraging women who didn’t come from London that actually… and women in rural places or outlying cities like Edinburgh or Manchester or out, lived on the outskirts of Manchester, women all over the country who, one of the criteria is we were all supposed to be out and looking to be activists, though that wasn’t the case, a lot women that went weren’t. And they had funding and always used to pay my transport because I used to pay my own a lot, ‘cause there were women who couldn’t pay it but they had funding to pay our transport and our accommodation and food while we were there to attend meetings and they used to sort of dot them around different cities. Sometimes in London but sometimes in Manchester, Bristol, all those places, so we could meet up for a weekend.

Part of it was work, you know, in that we were supposed to be taking out what we’d learned and did learn an awful lot from it, but also it was a social thing, it was to meet other women with HIV who, you know, hopefully, in my case, open and not hiding, which to me that was important to me in the first place, not so much now, and that was like a lifesaver for me for my mental health because obviously there were some women who’d been diagnosed by then fifteen years or something, you know. People who had lived with it, who’d managed to survive the old way before there was treatment and yes at that point treatment was complicated because there had to be injections, that was one of things, it was very complicated to keep people okay who’d been through that then. Actually, all of them are doing okay, I haven’t heard of anybody... And now are just on the same drugs that we’re on, you know, because things have moved on so much now. But it was so reassuring to meet those women. One, to see how they were still alive, you know, I know that fifteen years ago it was no longer a death sentence but it wasn’t so long before it had been, and healthy, most of them, a lot of them working, a lot of them working in the HIV field to be honest in their various cities and towns but not all, with successful careers in whatever they were doing, lives, children, you know, the whole bit. It was so useful to meet up with other women and see that for yourself. Not just on social media, there wasn’t any then.

And I took it back and I started a women’s group in Cornwall and it ultimately failed and we lost our funding, but anyway. And we lost our funding here and that... and there was a little bit of money with the local charity that now and again they’d put on a spa day or something where we can get together. There was one just before the first lockdown, we all went – well, the women who were willing to meet , ‘cause a lot aren’t, willing to meet in Cornwall, but there are a few, usually the same people – so we did have a spa day together which was lovely and we did meet up. There was a little bit of funding to pay for it. But on the whole there’s no funding in Cornwall for that sort of thing and PosFem lost its funding, so there’s no funding anymore to do that. And I used to go to a few other things as well, conferences and other things, for which there was funding to get people from outside to do them, and there isn’t anymore. So all that’s been lost, I think, well I’ve not heard of any. The last thing I did was the Project 100 training, where I did get some money, contribution, not all, I paid for some of it.

Barry: I think they just paid for the hotel, didn’t they?

Veritee: Yeah. Well, that was when I did the training in Taunton but when I went to the conference in London for it, I think they paid some of it, I can’t remember what, they didn’t… There’s occasionally funding. And what I go for was always to try and bring stuff back here but I haven’t really succeeded in doing that because it just… I mean…

Barry: She’s after…]

Veritee: A lot of it is because -.

Barry: Her notes are on the table.

Veritee: - there’s a lot of women in Cornwall are younger now who have it and they’re working, there is that. They’re busy, they’ve got good medication now, they’ve got busy successful lives and they’re working.

Barry: And kids at school…

Veritee: And kids at school, you know.

Barry: Because you know what children can be like, you know.

Veritee: Well, there is that. The thing about they don’t come out. They don’t out because, you know, I know, I’m free because, well, my child was like sixteen, seventeen -.

Barry: Seventeen.

Veritee: - when I got HIV, you know. She’s in her thirties now. But she was never bothered by it either. She didn’t like, she didn’t really get on with me much at the time. She was a stroppy teenager at the time but that’s… But HIV she never had any problem with at all. So, not really, did she?

Barry: No.

Veritee: They insisted she got tested though which I didn’t understand. It’s fine for her to get tested with her permission, but there was never any way she could have got it off -. I certainly didn’t have HIV when I was pregnant and I certainly can’t give it to her just living in this house whatever I did. So I never understood why they absolutely -.

Barry: They insisted.

Veritee: Insisted, they absolutely insisted and they took her away and wouldn’t let me be with her while she had it. She was under eighteen and it wasn’t her choice because she’s scared of needles. She’s actually scared of needles. She did it, but it was literally, they said to us: “You have to bring her in.” I know. And people didn’t know fifteen, fourteen years ago it did happen, that happened, and I’m in the consulting room expecting to be able to go in with her, or you ‘cause you were there too –.

Barry: Yeah.

Veritee: - one of us go in with her to help her because she’s always been terrified of needles, always. And suddenly somebody said: “Oh we need to ask you some questions Caja,” took her out and did the fucking test without us there. Yeah. And we’re not allowed to be together for our consultants either, we have to be separate.

Barry: No, we could -.

Veritee: No we can’t, I’ve asked, we’re not.

Barry: What even now?

Veritee: No. Well, not now, I don’t know now because I haven’t asked for years but it was insisted we had to be separate, you know? A lot of stuff I don’t understand and I don’t like. And I will say about the – when I was first diagnosed, I hadn’t seen my husband as he was in hospital with PCP, very ill on oxygen, yes he was ill – I had come in to the clinic for my first clinic thing and Barry wanted to support me and I wanted him to support me, but I hadn’t been able to talk to him since he was diagnosed and basically he was straight into hospital, literally. Diagnosed, clinic, from the clinic, straight into a hospital bed. He was that ill. So I hadn’t talked to him, so I went for my first consultation at the clinic and I’d not been able to talk to him ‘cause he was in the hospital with very very sick men and nothing but curtains ‘round us and we couldn’t talk. And this was all a shock to me, I was in absolute shock really. And this was comparatively – what do you call? - it was comparatively private to be in a consulting room with the consultant going in and out. She wasn’t always there. So while she was out I started saying to Barry, he’s sitting in a wheelchair: “I’m absolutely in shock, I’ve got HIV too,” and I said: “Why couldn’t you keep it in your fucking trousers?” and raved at him for a bit. And the consultant came in and said: “If you’re going to abuse your husband…” - believe me I didn’t, I just stood there and shouted at him. I was absolutely beside myself and so upset and I’m an emotional person, and she said: “I’m not going to let you abuse your husband in my consulting room,” or something like that, and she offered you therapy for abusive wife.

Barry: They took me out offering me counselling, you know. Nah.

Veritee: Personally I never got – in my view – never had any empathy for me since I had HIV from medical people, except the consultant I’ve got now who is very good, but because of what happened to me, because of these things, it’s more than that but, and it continued to be like that for about five years but the clinic got better and had new consultants come in and things got better but on that first instance I was threatened that I had to go to Bristol. I really wasn’t that bad, seriously, I’m not talking about, I’m not talking about somebody’s who… I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t stoned, I wasn’t anything, I was completely and utterly – because I didn’t do that in those days, I haven’t taken drugs for forty years, you know, and I didn’t drink – and I was just upset.

Barry: And then you had to drive home by yourself.

I’ve never been anything but working class, you know, and I just mix with most people, yeah, I mean I did end up quite highly-educated because of my job, the exams and different things but I’ve never really pushed what I… yeah, I’m just me really, basically. You either take me or you don’t. If you don’t, I don’t care.

Veritee: He doesn’t care. Yeah, in that way…

Barry: Yeah, so if you don’t like me, fair enough. It doesn’t even bother entering my head about, you know, it’s just: go away.

Veritee: And your fairness thing.

Barry: Oh yes, I have got a big fairness thing. I mean, my mother – because I bought the house – was going to leave everything to me and I said: “Nah, you’ve got two other sons, I mean, yeah we don’t need it that much.”

Veritee: We can survive.

Barry: And end up them being upset because I’m here and I ended up with all her money –.

Veritee: Which was only her house, she didn’t have anything else.

Barry: Yeah I know, but it was still a hundred-and-something-thousand pounds at the time.

Veritee: Yeah.

Barry: So I persuaded her, yeah, not...

Veritee: Barry’s got this thing about the fairness and that is the sticking point. The one thing he will dislike people for. If someone is not fair and people mistake it for meanness ‘cause it can often involve physical things, or the use of our property, our home, because so many people have used our home, you know, used it… Some people used it as their own. Wandering, take things from the fridge. Just used it. And we’re fine with that. And he’s fine with that.

Barry: Up to a point.

Veritee: Up to a point. And I’ve got that thing as well, so we’ve both got that matching… It’s gotta be fair. It’s got to be reciprocal. Not necessarily the same thing for the same thing but something, you know. That’s… I’m like that too. But I’m not like him with the friendship. It matters hugely that people don’t like me, if people don’t like me. An awful lot don’t. You know, so many women have befriended me and done this thing, like: ‘I’m you’re best friend.’ Ugh. Every time I hear that my heart sinks. You start doing that, you’re going to dislike me, because I’m not a person that’s actually capable of having a best friend. I’ve never had a best friend, you know. I can’t explain it. I’m friendly and I like people and I certainly like women, you know, as friends. But one thing… even as a child I never had a best friend, I don’t do that exclusive relationship, not with anybody. Not really. Not even, sort of, with you ‘cause I’ve always got other friends. I mean, and then the other thing that’s a sticking point when they do that is eventually women who I’ve had as friends start to resent you. You always go out with him but you don’t go out with me. Why is it people who got in relationships do that? And I’m thinking: ‘He’s my husband. I’ve made my life with him. Why are you doing this?’ That’s why I can’t have exclusive best friends with women. Maybe if I was single. But I didn’t, even then have exclusive… I don’t have those sort of relat-. But it matters to me I’m liked. At least liked, I don’t mean I don’t want to be adored, seen as a best friend. I just want to be liked for the things that are likeable. And so it does matter to me a lot. And I’ve found that I don’t have anybody that likes me particularly anymore.

I hoard clothes, he hoards tools. And they’re all up in that big garage which used to be a lorry garage.

Barry: I’ve got tools all along both walls

Veritee: And every screw or bolt or anything you could want, he’s got.

Barry: Well, that’s why, she said, a friend phoned up, they didn’t supply these bolts with the flat-pack. I’ll go and have a look, went up there: yep.

Veritee: I’ve got ‘em.

Barry: I’ve got ‘em, I’ll be over.

Veritee: But it’s what he does and he like... But your shed is your safe space. You disappear up there.

Barry: Yup.

Veritee: You have long conversations with my friend that is now yours. You mooch around if you need to get away from me and you don’t see me. If you don’t want to. When he’s up there. So, that is your safe place in the house, isn’t it? And mine’s my bedroom. Which I should show you ‘cause I’ll show you why it is, because you don’t understand ‘cause you’ve only been downstairs. I’ll show you that. Well, if you… The place was derelict, there was one, two, three, four...

Barry: Five.

Veritee: No, four bedrooms upstairs.

Barry: No, because you’re -.

Veritee: Oh, five bedrooms! This was a five-bedroom house. Damn the money. They were tiny, all tiny, but five bedrooms and by turning it into just three we’ve down-. The house won’t be worth what it could be ‘cause even if they’re tiny if it says five bedrooms it’s five bedrooms. But we knocked… One of them was just big enough, it wasn’t – it was a cot bedroom – you couldn’t get a full six-foot bed, a single in it, it’s so small. But – box room or whatever – but you’d get a cot in, you know. But the place was falling down and all the ceiling was falling down. And I need an en-suite, I need somewhere to have a pee in the night, otherwise, I mean it’s possible to… Our bathroom’s downstairs and since my accident – and it was alright when I lived in the flat – I could do it. Obviously the flat’s got a toilet.

Barry: Yeah, there was a toilet but you had to go through three doors to get to it.

Veritee: Yeah, there was just a toilet upstairs. And one of the reasons we bought the place, ‘cause I predicted, though I was only 31 that there would come a time when you needed a loo upstairs, you know. But in the end we knocked in two of the rooms into a bedroom.

Barry: Put in an en-suite.

Veritee: Put in a little en-suite, a little shower, a toilet, it’s only got cold water up there, but, except the shower’s got hot, but anyway we knocked it in to that so that’s three rooms gone, we’ve got another two. And we don’t share a room, we don’t share a bedroom. We, you know, people think we’re estranged, we’re not. We have sex, whatever, we agree to meet up. But I’ve got my bedroom and he’s got his bedroom and, so, that is your safe space as well. But I rarely go in there, do I?

Barry: No.

Veritee: So, we’re so lucky, we’ve got a home. I mean, we go away and I share a bed with him, I’ve got no objection to it, but that is my safe space. I’ve got my own room and we’ve got completely different … Well, I’ve kind of merged into his now but we used to have completely different sort of sleeping times and stuff because he was a seaman and they do six hours on and six hours off and he could only sleep for six hours at a time and -.

Barry: Well, not even that it was four hours -.

Veritee: And get up in the middle, what I call the middle of the night, and all sorts of things like that so, you know, so, yeah… We’ve both got our own rooms. And my bedroom – which is far too big for me, for one person, you know, with a big double bed...

Barry: Yeah, but if I moved in there I wouldn’t have anywhere to put my clothes.

Veritee: No, ‘cause my clothes…

Barry: One of the bedrooms has been turned into like a...

Veritee: A dressing room. I mean, it’s not posh. You’ll see it, it’s covered in stuff, the thing is it’s my dressing room. And the other thing I did with it is that I painted it pink. Now, when I was growing up pink was seen as a girly colour and I went through a phase of rejecting all of that patriarchal whatever stuff, very early on, before people thought of it I was a feminist in ‘71 and I went through… I also went through a phase of being a lesbian, I mean, I lived in an all- … I once lived in a totally separatist house, no men were allowed. And it was a big debate whenever someone had a male child. ‘Cause women had children while we were there, it was a big house you know, and some of them had boys. You can’t help what sex your children are gonna be, but it was an all-female house. I’ve been through all that. I’ve had girlfriends, all that. But I’m not a lesbian in that I am… I can have sex with anybody but I can’t, I, you know; I prefer men. You know? But I did it because I just totally rebelled from what I was brought up with. I had been so… You know, until I did that… I don’t think people can really understand what life was for a young woman in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Someone born in ‘53. How you were abused at every single turn. You only had to go to the shops and your bottom was patted. You went to work and you were told you had to wear tights and high heels because... and the men put their arms around you and up your arse. It was… The ‘70s were unbelievable. And even then I knew it was wrong. Absolutely knew that this was not right. I suppose because I was a daddy’s girl, whatever, and brought up to be, to think I was equal. Always. And so, anyways, comes to the pink… So pink was always seen as a, you know, so I rebelled. I’ve got a friend who’s known as Blue, but I was known as Blue when I was young because I wore mostly blue clothes, because the only thing I could find that was sort of gender neutral, I didn’t want to wear black. My daughter wears black, always black, but I didn’t want to do that so I wore blue. And also I took blues which were like purple hearts, so sadly I was called Blue. But then I reclaimed it. I decided pink is a lovely colour. By doing that, by rejecting even a colour, you’re sort of buying into it. So my bedroom’s pink. Very pink. But not prissy prissy, baby pink. Anyway, that sounds ridiculous but it’s my safe place because my bedroom’s pink. And it’s like…

Barry: And you’ve gone -.

Veritee: Gone full circle. I’m embracing pink and all that being a woman means. I love being a woman. I wouldn’t want to be a man, but I spent many years wishing I was a man because of the freedom they had and the lack of… You know. All this shit that women are different, they don’t like sex, they want relationships. Women are, you know, we’re different from… No, I’m not. I fucking like sex and I want to be free to do what I want to as… but sadly we’ve got the pill and sadly now we’ve got HIV, but.. So no one’s free, but... All that stereotypical crap. Anyway, so pink means a lot to me, you know? So my bedroom’s pink. I mean it’s hard to explain really. So I’ve got a lovely pink room, it’s my safe space. I can go up there when I’ve had enough, sometimes I’m not -. Especially if I’ve had a drink, I can’t -. I really can’t drink, why the hell do I drink? Somebody who has two wines and has a hangover for two days. Haven’t today ‘cause… If I had more than two, but yeah… I can go up there if I’m ill. I can disappear up there for days, I don’t even see him, you know. It’s my safe -. It’s somewhere I can go. I thought my she-shed would be my safe place but -.

Barry: It’s too far away.

Veritee: Especially in the rain in the winter. But then also we started letting the field again and I can’t go down there so it’s not mine, you know like I hoped it would be. So, my bedroom is. Got my little suite where I’ve got water, a toilet, a bed.

Barry: A shower.

Veritee: A shower. Everything I need is up there. I could put a cooker in the corner I suppose. But I wouldn’t. So that’s my safe space. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to move into a little old peoples’ bungalow, you know. Wouldn’t have that, would I?

No, I don’t want to sound fucked up, you know basically. I mean, this is going to go all over Bristol. I don’t want to sound fucked up. I don’t want to sound like I’m a mess because I’m not. I’m an emotional person and having HIV, unlike for some, has had far more negatives for me than it has ever had positives. And you know people often talk about the positives that they found from having HIV and I find it very, very hard to drag up any. It probably depends where your life was when you were diagnosed. And I’m not saying my life was great. You know I’d had the accident and I’d had a lot of other things happening to me, but I envisaged my life – ‘cause I was getting older – I’d envisaged my life going into graceful old age as a respected member of the community, with friends, who’d always had known me for years, you know, continue to do an odd bit of voluntary work and the charity I’d started, you know… Yeah. And join clubs with other little old ladies like me, you know, and be accepted. I did not expect to embark on another route of activism, which I did, though I don’t do it – I keep saying I don’t do it now – and try and get things for women like, which I did try in this county but didn’t really succeed but I tried. I didn’t expect to be doing that. I didn’t really want to be, you know. I’ve done my stuff. I’ve had loads of traumas in my life, starting off from a very early age with different things and, as I say, homelessness and the lifestyle I had and ending up in a therapeutic community which, you know, I might explain behind the scenes what that is.

Also vulnerable mental health and I was… I ended up mostly phobic anxiety. I ended up so phobic at seventeen, sixteen-seventeen, that I didn’t leave… I left home at about fourteen and lived all over the place and people’s sofas and stuff. I left home first and… But I was forced to come back, I got ill and a lot of it was to do with my food intolerance. I’d get really ill, I’d be away thinking everything was going fine. I couldn’t be in my home and there’s lots of reasons for that that I won’t tell you and I would come back and, you know, get ill. I’d get really ill. And as a child I was really ill, I mean I was taken to doctors constantly because I couldn’t keep anything down. I have a… I’ve got a phobia about vomiting now because of it. I can’t. I’m terrified, because I spent most of my childhood vomiting and it was so scary and I didn’t get any help. I mean my Dad hated illness and used to hit me for it and my Mum -.

Barry: Say it’s all in your head.

Veritee: Used to tell me all in my head and pull myself together and my Mum couldn’t do anything because she was partially-sighted and very dependent and so I ran away from home and I… If… As long as I ate the right things, and I didn’t know what this was about, I didn’t understand what was happening. There was no help for food intolerances in those days at all, none. And even the doctors said it was in my head. And yet all my childhood I’d been in that state to the extent that when I was young, eight, I had Barium meals, I had full investigations, ‘cause I was ill, you know. I mean, I just wasn’t right. I was so thin… I wasn’t right and it’s not right for a child to be vomiting all the time. I know now it sort of runs in the family. I’ve got a relative that had to go into Great Ormond when she was… Couldn’t even keep soya down, couldn’t keep breast milk down. The saviour of me as a child was that I could be breastfed and I was alright, it was only when I was weaned that it all started. I was fine on breast and my Mum breastfed me for quite a long time, but then as soon as I got weaned, I got ill and didn’t grow and all that. So, and it carried on and I survived but it was awful. Anyway, point is I ran away at fourteen and lived everywhere and then I was forced to go home because I got ill, because I wasn’t living with the hippies anymore and I was eating meat.

Well, it wasn’t meat it turned out to be dairy but I didn’t know what it was and I got ill again and my phobias stem from that. I was a… became phobic. It was always assumed from very young that I was mentally ill because I had this stomach problems, you know. And my Mum didn’t help because she meant well but she used to buy me Complan, which is made of milk, which is supposed to build you up, make you sort of put weight on you… And I’m totally allergic to something called whey, which goes in a lot of these supplements like EaseSure and all that. I used to get given that by hospitals and I’d then be so ill and I couldn’t move for days and... I’m not allergic, I’m intolerant, it’s different. It doesn’t kill me but, but… I had to come home. And I didn’t go outside, I became so phobic and of course my Mum was feeding me this stuff and every time I went out or even downstairs I’d vomit and I couldn’t be far from a toilet and I become so phobic I didn’t leave my room for six months, except to go out… I left, occasionally when I felt well, I went out and I took pills because as long as I was on them I didn’t care whether I was sick or not.

Barry: Well, you didn’t eat if you were on -.

Veritee: I didn’t eat as well, that was the other thing. I took amphetamine. Didn’t eat if I took amphetamine, didn’t ever need the food. But I didn’t eat, I didn’t feel bad. Oh dear. And during one of those things I got into a lot of trouble. I mean, I went ‘round with some guys that were stealing cheques and doing things, you know, doing all sorts of things, like basically stealing car seats, buying, hiring cars, roaming around the country. I don’t think I remember taking a single meal in months because of… So, I felt well. Might be starving, but I felt well. So, I did a few things like that.

Anyway, at the end of the day I got arrested and put on probation for three years. I know. I had, didn’t do anything.. What I actually finally got caught for, I mean, I was roving around and I used to go and live in London in squats. Started in the squat thing very young, on people’s floors, but I got arrested and put on probation for three months and that’s when I came home, you know. And the reason I got put on probation for three months is that when I went to the Magistrate’s… What I got caught for was actually stealing a packet of coffee beans and some Alkaseltzer for my stomach and something else to give to the person I was staying with. And when I got into the police station I got found with some tiny bit of dope in my pocket and actually I’ve never smoked, it makes me sick. It’s not done what it does to a lot of people helps their appetite, it actually makes me sick. That’s another thing I can’t do. Never been able to smoke. I used to pretend, you know, in the hippy days. Never could smoke. Wasn’t mine. Someone had just given to me to put in my pocket. And in those days – these days you wouldn’t get it – those days it was a jail sentence, you know. And I got put on remand and then I got… When I went to the Magistrate’s I was bolshy to them. And women in those days, young girls, they weren’t bolshy to Magistrates. So I got away with not being imprisoned because by then I’d gone home and my Mum was feeding me stuff and I was so ill and I was obviously ill by the time the court-case came about, so they thought I was just mentally ill. They thought all my… And I’d explained what had happened and how when I escaped I didn’t seem to be ill.

And it doesn’t make sense, does it? To anybody telling that story it sounds like I’m a totally mentally ill person, that when I leave my parents or I’m not at home: I’m fine. No one ever made the link that it’s what I was eating. That any of it was to do with what I was eating. But they thought I was mentally ill so instead of putting me in prison, they actually gave me three years probation on the understanding that I saw a psychiatrist every week. But when I got home to my Mum’s, where I had to be... I had to have a set address which was my parents’ - and then I started getting sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker and so ill that I ended up really phobic about being sick and very phobic about even setting outside the door. Really, to the extent… I knew… I use to try and go ‘round the town but I’d get halfway around and I’d be vomiting on the corner or needing the toilet. It was dreadful. I couldn’t go anywhere.

But they thought it was all in my head. Everybody thought it was all in my head. So, one time I went to the psychiatrist, who thought he was Mr Freud, beard like this, he did. He actually did and... They took me… Basically, started asking about my sex life… He thought he was Mr Freud. The point is it was all about this stuff as therapy. And he was a psychiatrist, he shouldn’t have been trying to give therapy to a young woman my age, seventeen. He started talking, asking me about my orgasms. Oh, it was common then. You just don’t believe what… And I don’t… He probably had no ulterior motive, he wasn’t a sexual predator, but… I mean, I’d been abused by my family doctor. I’d been abused by my Dad’s friend from 8 years old, you know. I didn’t trust men, older men… A man sitting there asking me about my orgasms? I mean, for god’s sake. So, I was abusive to him in that I told him to -. You know, go away. You know, I’ve always been a bit mouthy. They called the blue… It was like that thing they’re coming to take me away, out of the cuckoo’s nest. They called the people, put me in a strait-jacket, gave me an injection in my bum, put me in one of those ambulances and took me to the local asylum, which was called Park Prewett.

So they put me in there and they gave me what is now considered to be – and it’s nothing to do with this, I’m just saying I’ve had enough traumas in my life – they gave me something called deep sleep treatment. If you look it up, it’s now banned. They put you in an artificial coma. It’s only given to young people they thought were rebellious, had problems with social, with socialisation. There’re documented things with people, anyway… It was done, it was a treatment started by a guy called William Sargant who was… Eventually killed people. He went to Australia and people died out there, they didn’t here. The reason we didn’t die is that in Britain all psychiatrists are trained doctors before they become psychiatrists. They realised that they couldn’t do his regime because putting people in artificial coma without waking them up to use their bodily functions. Their organs shut down. So, we didn’t die in Britain but we went through this awful treatment, had three weeks in an artificial coma, where they woke you up every two days, you know or, made you go to the loo, gave you laxatives. I mean, I was given – to put in artificial coma – I was given Largactil, usually given to old ladies, five six seven drugs, injection: out. No artificial breathing, we were young. We survived. Most, not all. And they’d wake you up, make you go to the toilet, make you eat something. Make you eat something, I’m not talking about… It was torture. We were made to eat. It was unbelievable, you wouldn’t believe this happened but it happened to me. The trouble is none of us… We’re all old now that went through that and it carried on ‘til about 1979. It still happened. ‘77 mostly. And it has been written out of the… No, hardly. People know it happened here, mostly they think it happened in Australia after William Sargant left the NHS and went there. No, it happened to hundreds of us and we’re all my age. Most of them are older than me, ‘cause I was young, you know. And it’s been written out.

Barry: Can’t find out…

Veritee: Can’t -.

Barry: - hardly anything at all on it.

Veritee: No one’s interested. No one wants to know. My records have been lost. You know, the only record is in my doctor’s records which says I was admitted to Park Prewett for… I had three weeks of the coma and then I had another week, two weeks or so, a week or so before I was discharged. For five weeks or something for counselling. I never got a minute of counselling. I never got anything. All I got was this. Therapy they called it. For therapy. That was my therapy. It was unbelievable, no one would… But the thing, it’s like, none of us have managed to get anything, any apology. And there’s no group, there’s no push for it because most of them are in their eighties or dead, you know. There’s a few younger. And people have tried. They have been a couple of books. There was a TV documentary about it but it did say about Britain but it mostly said about America, sorry, Australia, because people did die there...

Barry: And they did get an apology by the Australian Government -.

Veritee: Australian Government gave an apology but never here...

Barry: Whereas nothing here at all.

Veritee: It’s been written out. It’s only people like me that have that testament. And I tried with that one for years because… I’ve got P-. That’s why I’m so emotional because I’ve got massive post-traumatic stress disorder from several different things. And I tried so hard with that one. And it… brick wall, brick wall, brick wall. At least HIV, people recognise it.