The Feeling's Mutual
As lockdown hit last year, Glasgow Mutual Aid groups sprung up to offer a no-questions asked service for those struggling to buy food. We hear from Yas and Derrick, who have helped each other in ways that go beyond a loaf of bread.
Content warning: mental illness, food poverty, suicide
Illustration: Giacinta Frisillo
Name: Derrick
Age: 54
Our family moved to a housing scheme called The Circus in 1967, the year it was built. Although it had a rough reputation, it was a great place to grow up. Parents would look out for each other’s weans and neighbours were always in and out of each other’s houses.
My father was a big influence in my life. He was well respected and was always helping other people. My mum was the home maker and she’d cook us dinner from scratch every night after a full day of work.
My dad worked for years longer than he should have done because he wanted to provide for us until I was 16, but the progression of his emphysema made that impossible. We lived in a top floor flat and when he got back from work he had to take a break on every flight of stairs. He really hated it if any neighbours passed and saw him unwell. Like me, he didn’t want anyone to see him struggling. I took care of my mum and dad until they passed away. It was never a burden.
Most of my life was great, I used to buy and sell guitars. I always had enough money and some wheels. My Dad had to retire at 49, he was told he had a year to live, but he got ten. Then my mum passed away. I was a musician and thought my lifestyle meant I would live fast, die young. I told everyone that I’d die at 33. I’m still here, but maybe I was right. I lost my mum when I was 33, which was so hard that a part of me did die.
Edge of survival
On 7th March I woke up in hospital. I’d been struggling with depression for a long time and I was finding it hard to survive on benefits. The combination of being depressed and not being able to afford food meant that I’d dropped down to six and a half stone. I took an overdose, but I survived.
This is my situation: I live with 24-hour pain. They found out about my osteoarthritis when I was 17 – I was in hospital because some drunk individuals took it upon themselves to stamp my arm over a curb. It was almost amputated. I can be stuck in bed all day, my whole spine seized up and my neck bent in agony. I can’t move half an inch. Every morning I don’t know whether it will be five minutes or five hours before I can get up. Staying at home is generally my only option because my knee just gives way. Nobody really knows how bad it is, and when I go to the doctor I just tell him the arthritis is worse, the depression is worse.
Each time money would come in, it would go straight out to pay people back what I’d borrowed. Then – nothing for two weeks.
After you don’t eat for two days, you get a big fist in your stomach, then the next day you don’t feel hunger anymore. It’s like your brain says, ‘well, there’s no money for food, so that’s that’. I could go weeks and weeks without food, easily.
If there was some help for people who are on their way to feeling suicidal, if there was some net, there would be a lot less suicides in the world. I certainly didn’t know who to contact.
Signs of support
I was lying there out of it, but against all the odds I had survived – this wasn’t a cry for help. One of the women who came in was a psychiatrist, the other one was from Navigator, which helps people who’ve been affected by violence. I didn’t know who was who.
I met Anne Marie a week later for a coffee. She helped me get a proper bank account, so I could do online banking. She also organised bags of food. She was like a counsellor because there was no one else I could talk to.
It felt like I suddenly had some support for the first time in years.
All this coronavirus thing blew up at the worst time because it meant I couldn't see my friends when I most needed them. Anne Marie was the first one to give me help, then my GP called me out the blue. He was concerned about me and put me in touch with the practice social worker who called Glasgow Mutual Aid looking for a food bag. She had tried a few places, but this was the only place that she heard back from.
Meeting Yas
Yas gave me a ring saying that the social worker from the health centre had been in touch, and we just got chatting over the phone. She was easy to talk to. She offered to bring a bag of food around to me the next day and had a laugh after asking about my dietary needs. My answer was ‘no veg’.
When she came round, we chatted at the door and stayed in touch on WhatsApp. She came round the next week with another bag of food. We chatted about music and all sorts. One afternoon I invited Yas in for tea. It was easy for me to open up to her, I felt I could tell her stuff and she listened to me.
We’ve seen each other every week for the past few months. Yas is new in Glasgow and she’s interested in the history of the city. I’ve lived through the miners’ strikes and Thatcher. You see photos of crowds at punk gigs outside the Apollo and I know I was in that crowd. Music had been my life since I was nine years old and was introduced to John Peel. The very first gig I went to was when I was nine. The bouncers found it funny and just let me in. I’d go down to the Apollo and they’d chuck me a few free tickets.
The help I’ve had during lockdown from the likes of Navigator and Mutual Aid has improved my life. My benefits have been sorted out, which gives me more financial stability. I’ve been able to get a kitten: Iggy. He’s already my wee buddy. And over the months, Yas has become a good friend.
It’s got to the stage that maybe I do want to get up in the morning.
Name: Yas
Age: 27
That call from the café didn’t come as that much of a surprise: a voice telling me I’d lost my job and making Coronavirus feel real four days before lockdown was even a thing. But I couldn’t stop my mind tracing back through every moment of the past few years, criticising my lifestyle and my life choices. This was my fault. Again.
Things would have been different if I’d just been a real person and had a stable job. I have no family in Glasgow, just a handful of friends I made during the nine months before lockdown.
I hung up the phone and I was back to square one: living on £82.47 a week in Universal Credit. But this time it was different, because when COVID-19 happened, something changed inside me. I’d been too ill to work for a year before I got that job in the café. I didn’t tell anyone, I just disappeared. We are all struggling so much more than we tell people.
In April, I started seeing friends join a Facebook group called Glasgow Mutual Aid. Posters bloomed across Bridgeton’s bus stops and shop windows overnight. I joined the G40 Mutual Aid postcode group and that’s how it began. Glasgow Mutual Aid (GMA) doesn’t require a constant commitment and that works for me. The group didn’t ask me lots of questions, they just assumed that I’m a decent human.
The feeling’s mutual
As the months of spring passed by, I met lots of my neighbours by accepting requests on the G40 WhatsApp group, I heard their stories, we laughed together. I love the Glaswegian accent, there’s something comforting in it.
I began coordinating the mutual aid in Bridgeton in early April 2020. My role at GMA encouraged me to apply for a job as a support worker, so I could continue to help people and I’d be able to afford life a bit more. You can’t care about what you eat when you’re living on £329 a month: if you try a new recipe and it fucks up, you’re not eating dinner that night. You can scrape by and not physically die, but our mental and physical health combined is what makes us real. Food nourishes more than the human body. I got the job.
Something was happening, suddenly we weren’t being targeted and personally blamed for our circumstances. Through trying to access food parcels for my neighbours, I realised how difficult the process of accessing essentials is, and how it would be even harder if you hadn’t eaten for days or if English wasn’t your first language. Services like GMA are needed because accessing free food can be really stressful –- we’re a simple place where anyone can get help. There are no questions asked, apart from how urgent your request is.
I decided to move to Govanhill, in the Southside of Glasgow. It’s a neighbourhood famous for a mix of cultures. No one bothers asking me where I’m from anymore.
Meeting Derrick
I fell into coordinating G42 as soon as I moved. That’s how I met Derrick. I remember our first phone call, he seemed apologetic to be asking for food, which upset me. I went to the food bank and got him everything I could, though they kept asking me if he liked stuff and I had no idea. Apart from the fact he’d told me that he didn’t like vegetables!
When I first went round to bring Derrick his messages I sat on the steps outside his flat and chatted. I soon established that he lived alone and that none of his friends or family could come and visit him because they were high risk. When he invited me in for a cup of tea one afternoon, I said yes.
I started visiting Derrick every week, and we were able to talk openly about things. He told me loads of stories about the city’s violent history and all the bands that cut about here over the decades. He’s lived through all the music: the 70s, 80s and 90s (he says music died in the 90s – I disagree).
Derrick describes himself as an open book, but I don’t usually share my story. Glasgow is a place of hope for me. It was my last resort - a tiny part of me believed that I could free myself from my own past. Moving here didn’t make my problems go away. I was in a dark place in my life when I survived a serious car crash on The Black Isle, driving back to Glasgow. The kindness of one man, Richard, the head of the retained fire service, showed me that my life was valuable.
All it takes is one act of kindness; you never know the impact it might have on someone. Richard refused to let the police drop me off at a train station at Inverness after the crash, instead his partner came to pick me up and made me a cup of tea. He let me stay with their family and I came to work with him the next day. I didn’t realise it at the time, but such a small and simple thing changed the way I see myself and just being cared about by a relative stranger led me to believe that I deserve to live. It showed me that life can be kind, your past doesn't matter.
Derrick accepts me exactly as I am. He’s pretty much nocturnal so we end up having some really late nights chatting. That’s the thing, he’s thanked me for helping him, but he probably has no idea how much he’s done for me. Having him as a friend makes me feel safer because he’s lived here his whole life and I imagine he could be scary if he needed to be. It’s MUTUAL aid, he reminds me.
Some mornings
I wake up
and feel so lucky to be alive.
Who to contact if you or someone you know needs help:
Samaritans operates a 24-hour service available every day of the year, by calling 116 123. If you prefer to write down how you’re feeling, or if you’re worried about being overheard on the phone, you can email Samaritans at jo@samaritans.org
If you live in Govanhill, you can also use the GCDT telephone helpline if you need assistance with food, benefits & money, fuel, housing, emotional & physical health or support for children & families and older people. This service is available in a number of languages.