Val Bibby
Val Bibby's family background is not entirely known to her but she recalls that her great grandfather was from the West Indies and her grandfather was from Sri Lanka. They emigrated to Hull together on the same ship within the merchant navy as cooks. She talks about a difficult childhood peppered with racist abuse that led her to feelings of shame about her ethnic makeup. An opportunity to return into education also paved the way into exploring her own racial makeup and become more comfortable about her family's origins. This experience gave her the confidence to transform her life and make a career change after years of steady employment.
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Transcription: Val Bibby interview
Interview with Val Bibby
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Date: 2017
JW: So first and foremost - can you introduce yourself to the people that are listening and say what your connection with Africa is?
VB: - Yeah my name’s Val Bibby. – My past history of Africa is my grandfather’s from Sri Lanka which is India and my great grandfather is from the West Indies.
JW: So tell me something then about - you say it was your grandfather born in the West Indies, yeah?
VB: Great grandfather
JW: …great grandfather born in the West Indies. What do you know about your Great Grandfather?
VB: Well I don’t really know a lot of about him. But I know a lot more obviously because I’ve done an essay at university in the Race module that I did. But I know a lot more of my own grandfather because he died the day before I was sixteen so I knew him more.
JW: How do you describe yourself?
VB: Part of me being here today is, when I was at university, I’ve always hated the question, “Where are you from Val?”, hence the essay. And because when you’re, you’re, people look at me they don’t think I’m from Hull and they say “where you from Val?” And I go, “I’m from Hull,” no, and they go like quiet and they say “Eh but no, eh, eh” and I say, “no me mam’s from Hull and me Dad’s from Goole.” So then they go, “Eh yeah eh,” again, and I said “No my Grandad’s from Sri Lanka but I regard myself as from Hull.” But my past is very, very important to me.
JW: Did a little bit deeper for us then and tell us something of the importance of your past?
VB: Well it’s a lovely culture and obviously my mam could never cook when my Grandad came to England as a cook on the boats. So that’s important and that’s funny for us.
JW: So this is your, your grandfather from Sri Lanka?
VB: Yeah. They came together.
JW: But your great grandfather is from the West Indies, is that right?
VB: Yeah. They came together on the same boat.
JW: Right, yeah. Do you know the reason that they came over?
VB: No, no no.
JW: But they are obviously coming to settle here.
VB: To settle yeah.
JW: So were they Merchant Navy?
VB: Yep merchant navy.
JW: Right, yeah. Has that - history continued through the family?
VB: No, no. Neither has the cooking either, because obviously my grandad came here as a cook.
JW: Can you give me some more detail about your grandfather and your great grandfather? What, what do you know about them?
VB: I don’t know a lot about my great grandfather but I know that my, my grandad was a loving man, and I know a lot from him as a person –still got photos at home. I know that he came to England with one suit on and a carrier bag, because my Mum has told us that. - We used to go to his house, he lived down Colonial Street as kids. He lived in - back room. – The landlady there, Maudie we used to meet, she had dogs.
Me grandfather came to live on Orchard Park where we lived and he came one day and he said, “I’m 21,” and we like looked at him and he got a key to a flat on Orchard Park after living in this old house because once Maudie died, me grandad looks after the house and he came down stairs and he used to light the fire to keep the whole house warm because obviously the houses were coming down then.
JW: Talking in terms of race, and you say that people have recognised or they think – that you’re, you’re not from Hull. When did any differences that people – you visually when looking at you, when did that become apparent to you as a child?
VB: As a child I used to get called names. And obviously my Mum’s really dark but my Dad’s white. We used to get called names when we was at school. My Dad use to just say to us, “Ignore them, ignore them, they don’t know any better.”
JW: Some people we’ve been speaking to have not, or they’re saying they have not encountered any racism at all, and other people are saying that it has had quite an impact on them. So do you feel as though that, that your difference has had an impact on you?
VB: As a younger person, yes, but as I’ve got older because I’ve got two children myself and they’ve even been called names and their Dad is white, born in Hull, I’m born in Hull and even my children get called names. And I always say exactly the same, “they’re ignorant. They don’t know any better.” What my Dad said to us I said to my children. People are rude aren’t they?
JW: So what were your ambitions when you were a young girl? What did you want to be when you grew up?
VB: Well my Mum, she went in Barnardo’s because my grandad was away at sea and, as me mam will tell ya, her mum wasn’t a very nice person. We’ve since found out a lot more. We’ve been, we’ve got all the details from Barnardo’s now - only within the last 2 years. So gran, my mam was put in Barnardo’s, only child, she’s left there when she was 16 and then she went to Leeds to be a nurse, my Mum. But not, I didn’t want to be a nurse and this time in Hull it was all like, production. So I went to work at Smith and Nephews where I stayed for 37 years. And then it’s in the last say 15 years that I’ve gone into this social care work, what I am in now.
JW: I see. What were your mum’s ambitions for you? What did your Mum want you to do?
VB: She never ever said to us, “do this, or do that.” And my dad never. And I think in Hull at that time there’s lots of production jobs – she never said to us she wanted us to be a nurse. – She never said, what, I can’t recall her ever saying, “I want you to be this, and I want you to be that.” I think at that time she just wanted us to all be in a job. But I do, I do remember this, when I was 15 I was, you had to stay on at school to do your exams, and that, I wanted to leave. And I said to me Dad, my Mum was at work, I said, “I want you to write me a letter Dad to the school to say that I had to leave because we didn’t have any money,” and my Dad did and me mam still talks about that. If I stayed on I would have got some exam results. But I still found my own way in life. I worked, you know.
JW: What were your interests as a teenager? So around that sort of 16 years when you left school, what were your interests around then?
VB: No I can’t say I was into anything really. I’m into more things now as I’ve grown older. I was always into music because my Mum always had music on. But no, we was just really loved, you know, by both our parents and…
JW: Where were your favourite places to go then with your friends as a teenager?
VB: Well there’s, there’s five of us and we was just a family unit, and well my mam and dad seven and my grandad eight. We used to go to Seaton Carew for our holidays because me Mum’s Uncle lived there, albeit Middlesbrough. We never went abroad. Never ever went abroad. Beverley Westward, we used to go to Beverley Westwood. But in all fairness, my Mum was always at work. Me Mum was always at work.
JW: So very close with your siblings.
VB: Yeah, yeah, we just, it was just us.
JW: So brothers and sisters, or?
VB: Yeah was all just real close. There’s only a year between the first three of us. So we are you know, one boy and two years between the next of me two other sisters. So no we were just, we just a family. Me mum, me Dad never had what he would call friends. But me Dad had family in Goole who used to come. And it was just all the family.
JW: Are you still close now then?
VB: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
JW: So you sort of mentioned then that - you’re more interested in music and - you’ve probably got more interests now, than you had as a teenager. Expand on that a little bit. Tell me more about the interests that you have now?
VB: In the education. I can talk more about me education. – I was at work one day and you know you just, you just a get a day don’t you when you’re bored of doing the same thing. And – I thought, I’m bored here. I’d got divorced so I went and worked in a pub on a weekend and I started to do qualifications to do with that. And then I went to the college and I started doing Sociology, GCSE it was, that’s all. And I went to a volunteers centre in Hull and they asked me what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to work with old people, nothing against old people, but and then I went to work at a women’s centre, volunteer at a women’s centre in Hull. I was there for about eight years. Smith and Nephew’s where I worked at the time allowed me to have a day off every week, full pay.
– I did that, I set an allotment up, women’s only allotment up there. Then a girl came and she said, who I use to work with at Smith and Nephew, she said about doing this - qualification at university and I went, “I don’t know anything about these words that they use at university,” I said, “no I left school with no exam results.” So anyway she dug me in and gave me this book and I looked at it. When I had been in the town centre one day I used to see people with the graduation gowns on and I said to myself, “I’m gonna have one of them one day”. Didn’t realise what you had to do to get one. Anyway so I went along, it was the open day and was actually on the allotment one day when it was the open day. And then me friend come and says “I thought you said you was going to this open day,” Oh and I say, “Oh, no no no, I’m not going like that,” and she says, “I’ll take you.” I went “Oh no I’m alright”, dressed all in the mud and everything.
Anyway I went along, apologised because I had all this mud. Anyway I enrolled and I remember paying, I had to pay, because obviously I were working, I remember thinking, “God I’ve got to pay all this money”, but I went and I went along and I went along every week, every week and then I got struggling. I changed my job role just to work weekends so I could finish the course. Anyway I finished it. And obviously I knew I was getting bored I’d say at Smith and Nephews." Anyway I …
JW: The course was what? What degree course was…
VB: Socio, social and community studies, I did it 4 years part time. I still worked at Smith & Nephews, got shifts swapped so that I could do the morning lecture, completely took over my life, completely changed me as a person, I could write a book on it.
JW: Tell me about the changes then.
VB: Oh the changes were absolutely massive.
JW: Who are you now as a person compared to who you were then?
VB: I've always been a funny, happy person, obviously some sad times in my life but, but just mixing with different people, young ones, reading things what I didn't even understand the words, you know, with a dictionary there. Oh, it just gave me so much more. I've always been a confident person but much more, maybe sometimes over confident. It just makes me aware of things, you know, I'd been in a cocoon at Smith and Nephew's cos I had security for a job didn't I, regular income. I went to the Women's Centre, found different things out what happened to women, you know, started learning how to garden, got me own allotment now, just meeting other different people, you know, just mind changing whole experience.
JW: Yeah. Has it changed your understanding of Hull as a city?
VB: Yeah obviously the community part of the degree, yeah because - the finances, even the finances, even like the economic development of Hull. I remember when I actually left Smith and Nephew's I got a package, like a pension package as I left, so I didn't have a job, massive risk I took, didn't have a job for about 4 months.
JW: What changes in Hull have you noticed or have had the most impact on you over, say, the last 30 year period?
VB: Well obviously we're more diverse aren't we? I actually work with adults with learning disabilities now so that's another group isn't it? So I've worked with women, I’ve worked with and I'm now working with people who are from a diverse group as well because they've got learning disabilities. I do actually think Hull is more diverse now. In the essay what I did a lot of it, and my mum talks about it, is all based on Porter Street and obviously working at Smith and Nephew's I used to walk down Porter Street most days or around there and even yesterday I walked down there and even though it was raining I did observe the diverse people down there. What I's like to say, has the wheel turned a full circle? Cos obviously I know stories from my mum about there and I've even been to the flat what her mum lived in and my brother actually got killed on English Street which is where the coloured community were.
JW: What about university life then? The people you were meeting at university? That must have really opened your mind to different cultures?
VB: Yeah, yes and even reading different things. I think as you get older you realise that there is difference, a difference in people but why should it bother you?
JW: But do we not live in a sort of global village now? We hear that term don't we “global village”? There's supposed to be equality in trade and just equality of races around the globe but politics is perhaps suggesting something different?
VB: We don't do we? Because when people stop calling me names and I don't call them names but I don't, I wouldn't call them names. We don't do we?
JW: Do you have children?
VB: Yep
JW: How many children?
VB: Two
JW: Are they still living locally?
VB: Yeah, yeah
JW: Yeah. And so what are they involved with?
VB: One's a welder and works at a caravan company. The other's at, actually he's in that essay about what somebody said to him and that's within the last 10 years.
JW: Expand
VB: My eldest son is dark, he's very much like me, he's small like me and he's got really straight like Chinese hair, you know the Chinese straight. But the younger one, the younger one is taller, bigger and got brown hair and a lot lighter but the younger one when I actually interviewed him in the essay, and so he went to work at a new place as a welder and this, I know the lad he's talking about, well he's a man, I know the man he's talking about and he says, he goes into this canteen and he goes across to a place and he says oh that's your table, you sit there with them type. Because I’ve asked him, I said how did he, I mean he's 37 now and I said how did you get on, settle in at the job? I'm not talking about discrimination I'm just asking about are they friendly and things like that and he actually tells me that's the rules.
JW: To what extent does it shock you when you hear of that sort of story about your son in the canteen?
VB: Yeah I was surprised actually because, there again I go back to what my dad used to say, they're ignorant, they don't know anything.
JW: Is education the answer?
VB: Well yeah it is. It is. We all can't have enough education can we? I'm going through that now with my adults with learning disabilities, the people stare at them. So I don't think it's only the colour of your skin.
JW: What are your ambitions or plans for the future?
VB: There's lots of things I'd like to do, go back to my Masters with the job I was doing because I think once you get the buzz of education it doesn't go, regardless of you having to stay in to pay, to pay the fees.
JW: So tell me about the Masters? What are you planning?
VB: I wanted, I wanted to go back to the Women's Studies but the course, when I went they weren't doing that course so they tried to put me on this social research, so I did it from September to the Christmas and I had to get in touch with the university and put it all on hold.
JW: If you could go back to when you were 16 what would you do differently? Make different decisions, different choices? Is there anything you would change?
VB: No, even though I was married for about 16 years and that failed I'm not bitter about that. I think that was just maybe a case of I got married too young and I thought I knew everything. So I would do that and I still say the same. I'd still have the same, even though we fell out, I'd still have the same man for the father of my children. And you can always do it now can't you? There's nothing I don't regret doing because there's a reason, there’s a reason why I didn't do them when I was younger, there's got to be a reason but I can do it now.
JW: Well it's been nice to chat to you and thanks for your honesty and your openness. Thanks for coming in.
VB: Thank you.
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Date: 2017
JW: So first and foremost - can you introduce yourself to the people that are listening and say what your connection with Africa is?
VB: - Yeah my name’s Val Bibby. – My past history of Africa is my grandfather’s from Sri Lanka which is India and my great grandfather is from the West Indies.
JW: So tell me something then about - you say it was your grandfather born in the West Indies, yeah?
VB: Great grandfather
JW: …great grandfather born in the West Indies. What do you know about your Great Grandfather?
VB: Well I don’t really know a lot of about him. But I know a lot more obviously because I’ve done an essay at university in the Race module that I did. But I know a lot more of my own grandfather because he died the day before I was sixteen so I knew him more.
JW: How do you describe yourself?
VB: Part of me being here today is, when I was at university, I’ve always hated the question, “Where are you from Val?”, hence the essay. And because when you’re, you’re, people look at me they don’t think I’m from Hull and they say “where you from Val?” And I go, “I’m from Hull,” no, and they go like quiet and they say “Eh but no, eh, eh” and I say, “no me mam’s from Hull and me Dad’s from Goole.” So then they go, “Eh yeah eh,” again, and I said “No my Grandad’s from Sri Lanka but I regard myself as from Hull.” But my past is very, very important to me.
JW: Did a little bit deeper for us then and tell us something of the importance of your past?
VB: Well it’s a lovely culture and obviously my mam could never cook when my Grandad came to England as a cook on the boats. So that’s important and that’s funny for us.
JW: So this is your, your grandfather from Sri Lanka?
VB: Yeah. They came together.
JW: But your great grandfather is from the West Indies, is that right?
VB: Yeah. They came together on the same boat.
JW: Right, yeah. Do you know the reason that they came over?
VB: No, no no.
JW: But they are obviously coming to settle here.
VB: To settle yeah.
JW: So were they Merchant Navy?
VB: Yep merchant navy.
JW: Right, yeah. Has that - history continued through the family?
VB: No, no. Neither has the cooking either, because obviously my grandad came here as a cook.
JW: Can you give me some more detail about your grandfather and your great grandfather? What, what do you know about them?
VB: I don’t know a lot about my great grandfather but I know that my, my grandad was a loving man, and I know a lot from him as a person –still got photos at home. I know that he came to England with one suit on and a carrier bag, because my Mum has told us that. - We used to go to his house, he lived down Colonial Street as kids. He lived in - back room. – The landlady there, Maudie we used to meet, she had dogs.
Me grandfather came to live on Orchard Park where we lived and he came one day and he said, “I’m 21,” and we like looked at him and he got a key to a flat on Orchard Park after living in this old house because once Maudie died, me grandad looks after the house and he came down stairs and he used to light the fire to keep the whole house warm because obviously the houses were coming down then.
JW: Talking in terms of race, and you say that people have recognised or they think – that you’re, you’re not from Hull. When did any differences that people – you visually when looking at you, when did that become apparent to you as a child?
VB: As a child I used to get called names. And obviously my Mum’s really dark but my Dad’s white. We used to get called names when we was at school. My Dad use to just say to us, “Ignore them, ignore them, they don’t know any better.”
JW: Some people we’ve been speaking to have not, or they’re saying they have not encountered any racism at all, and other people are saying that it has had quite an impact on them. So do you feel as though that, that your difference has had an impact on you?
VB: As a younger person, yes, but as I’ve got older because I’ve got two children myself and they’ve even been called names and their Dad is white, born in Hull, I’m born in Hull and even my children get called names. And I always say exactly the same, “they’re ignorant. They don’t know any better.” What my Dad said to us I said to my children. People are rude aren’t they?
JW: So what were your ambitions when you were a young girl? What did you want to be when you grew up?
VB: Well my Mum, she went in Barnardo’s because my grandad was away at sea and, as me mam will tell ya, her mum wasn’t a very nice person. We’ve since found out a lot more. We’ve been, we’ve got all the details from Barnardo’s now - only within the last 2 years. So gran, my mam was put in Barnardo’s, only child, she’s left there when she was 16 and then she went to Leeds to be a nurse, my Mum. But not, I didn’t want to be a nurse and this time in Hull it was all like, production. So I went to work at Smith and Nephews where I stayed for 37 years. And then it’s in the last say 15 years that I’ve gone into this social care work, what I am in now.
JW: I see. What were your mum’s ambitions for you? What did your Mum want you to do?
VB: She never ever said to us, “do this, or do that.” And my dad never. And I think in Hull at that time there’s lots of production jobs – she never said to us she wanted us to be a nurse. – She never said, what, I can’t recall her ever saying, “I want you to be this, and I want you to be that.” I think at that time she just wanted us to all be in a job. But I do, I do remember this, when I was 15 I was, you had to stay on at school to do your exams, and that, I wanted to leave. And I said to me Dad, my Mum was at work, I said, “I want you to write me a letter Dad to the school to say that I had to leave because we didn’t have any money,” and my Dad did and me mam still talks about that. If I stayed on I would have got some exam results. But I still found my own way in life. I worked, you know.
JW: What were your interests as a teenager? So around that sort of 16 years when you left school, what were your interests around then?
VB: No I can’t say I was into anything really. I’m into more things now as I’ve grown older. I was always into music because my Mum always had music on. But no, we was just really loved, you know, by both our parents and…
JW: Where were your favourite places to go then with your friends as a teenager?
VB: Well there’s, there’s five of us and we was just a family unit, and well my mam and dad seven and my grandad eight. We used to go to Seaton Carew for our holidays because me Mum’s Uncle lived there, albeit Middlesbrough. We never went abroad. Never ever went abroad. Beverley Westward, we used to go to Beverley Westwood. But in all fairness, my Mum was always at work. Me Mum was always at work.
JW: So very close with your siblings.
VB: Yeah, yeah, we just, it was just us.
JW: So brothers and sisters, or?
VB: Yeah was all just real close. There’s only a year between the first three of us. So we are you know, one boy and two years between the next of me two other sisters. So no we were just, we just a family. Me mum, me Dad never had what he would call friends. But me Dad had family in Goole who used to come. And it was just all the family.
JW: Are you still close now then?
VB: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
JW: So you sort of mentioned then that - you’re more interested in music and - you’ve probably got more interests now, than you had as a teenager. Expand on that a little bit. Tell me more about the interests that you have now?
VB: In the education. I can talk more about me education. – I was at work one day and you know you just, you just a get a day don’t you when you’re bored of doing the same thing. And – I thought, I’m bored here. I’d got divorced so I went and worked in a pub on a weekend and I started to do qualifications to do with that. And then I went to the college and I started doing Sociology, GCSE it was, that’s all. And I went to a volunteers centre in Hull and they asked me what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to work with old people, nothing against old people, but and then I went to work at a women’s centre, volunteer at a women’s centre in Hull. I was there for about eight years. Smith and Nephew’s where I worked at the time allowed me to have a day off every week, full pay.
– I did that, I set an allotment up, women’s only allotment up there. Then a girl came and she said, who I use to work with at Smith and Nephew, she said about doing this - qualification at university and I went, “I don’t know anything about these words that they use at university,” I said, “no I left school with no exam results.” So anyway she dug me in and gave me this book and I looked at it. When I had been in the town centre one day I used to see people with the graduation gowns on and I said to myself, “I’m gonna have one of them one day”. Didn’t realise what you had to do to get one. Anyway so I went along, it was the open day and was actually on the allotment one day when it was the open day. And then me friend come and says “I thought you said you was going to this open day,” Oh and I say, “Oh, no no no, I’m not going like that,” and she says, “I’ll take you.” I went “Oh no I’m alright”, dressed all in the mud and everything.
Anyway I went along, apologised because I had all this mud. Anyway I enrolled and I remember paying, I had to pay, because obviously I were working, I remember thinking, “God I’ve got to pay all this money”, but I went and I went along and I went along every week, every week and then I got struggling. I changed my job role just to work weekends so I could finish the course. Anyway I finished it. And obviously I knew I was getting bored I’d say at Smith and Nephews." Anyway I …
JW: The course was what? What degree course was…
VB: Socio, social and community studies, I did it 4 years part time. I still worked at Smith & Nephews, got shifts swapped so that I could do the morning lecture, completely took over my life, completely changed me as a person, I could write a book on it.
JW: Tell me about the changes then.
VB: Oh the changes were absolutely massive.
JW: Who are you now as a person compared to who you were then?
VB: I've always been a funny, happy person, obviously some sad times in my life but, but just mixing with different people, young ones, reading things what I didn't even understand the words, you know, with a dictionary there. Oh, it just gave me so much more. I've always been a confident person but much more, maybe sometimes over confident. It just makes me aware of things, you know, I'd been in a cocoon at Smith and Nephew's cos I had security for a job didn't I, regular income. I went to the Women's Centre, found different things out what happened to women, you know, started learning how to garden, got me own allotment now, just meeting other different people, you know, just mind changing whole experience.
JW: Yeah. Has it changed your understanding of Hull as a city?
VB: Yeah obviously the community part of the degree, yeah because - the finances, even the finances, even like the economic development of Hull. I remember when I actually left Smith and Nephew's I got a package, like a pension package as I left, so I didn't have a job, massive risk I took, didn't have a job for about 4 months.
JW: What changes in Hull have you noticed or have had the most impact on you over, say, the last 30 year period?
VB: Well obviously we're more diverse aren't we? I actually work with adults with learning disabilities now so that's another group isn't it? So I've worked with women, I’ve worked with and I'm now working with people who are from a diverse group as well because they've got learning disabilities. I do actually think Hull is more diverse now. In the essay what I did a lot of it, and my mum talks about it, is all based on Porter Street and obviously working at Smith and Nephew's I used to walk down Porter Street most days or around there and even yesterday I walked down there and even though it was raining I did observe the diverse people down there. What I's like to say, has the wheel turned a full circle? Cos obviously I know stories from my mum about there and I've even been to the flat what her mum lived in and my brother actually got killed on English Street which is where the coloured community were.
JW: What about university life then? The people you were meeting at university? That must have really opened your mind to different cultures?
VB: Yeah, yes and even reading different things. I think as you get older you realise that there is difference, a difference in people but why should it bother you?
JW: But do we not live in a sort of global village now? We hear that term don't we “global village”? There's supposed to be equality in trade and just equality of races around the globe but politics is perhaps suggesting something different?
VB: We don't do we? Because when people stop calling me names and I don't call them names but I don't, I wouldn't call them names. We don't do we?
JW: Do you have children?
VB: Yep
JW: How many children?
VB: Two
JW: Are they still living locally?
VB: Yeah, yeah
JW: Yeah. And so what are they involved with?
VB: One's a welder and works at a caravan company. The other's at, actually he's in that essay about what somebody said to him and that's within the last 10 years.
JW: Expand
VB: My eldest son is dark, he's very much like me, he's small like me and he's got really straight like Chinese hair, you know the Chinese straight. But the younger one, the younger one is taller, bigger and got brown hair and a lot lighter but the younger one when I actually interviewed him in the essay, and so he went to work at a new place as a welder and this, I know the lad he's talking about, well he's a man, I know the man he's talking about and he says, he goes into this canteen and he goes across to a place and he says oh that's your table, you sit there with them type. Because I’ve asked him, I said how did he, I mean he's 37 now and I said how did you get on, settle in at the job? I'm not talking about discrimination I'm just asking about are they friendly and things like that and he actually tells me that's the rules.
JW: To what extent does it shock you when you hear of that sort of story about your son in the canteen?
VB: Yeah I was surprised actually because, there again I go back to what my dad used to say, they're ignorant, they don't know anything.
JW: Is education the answer?
VB: Well yeah it is. It is. We all can't have enough education can we? I'm going through that now with my adults with learning disabilities, the people stare at them. So I don't think it's only the colour of your skin.
JW: What are your ambitions or plans for the future?
VB: There's lots of things I'd like to do, go back to my Masters with the job I was doing because I think once you get the buzz of education it doesn't go, regardless of you having to stay in to pay, to pay the fees.
JW: So tell me about the Masters? What are you planning?
VB: I wanted, I wanted to go back to the Women's Studies but the course, when I went they weren't doing that course so they tried to put me on this social research, so I did it from September to the Christmas and I had to get in touch with the university and put it all on hold.
JW: If you could go back to when you were 16 what would you do differently? Make different decisions, different choices? Is there anything you would change?
VB: No, even though I was married for about 16 years and that failed I'm not bitter about that. I think that was just maybe a case of I got married too young and I thought I knew everything. So I would do that and I still say the same. I'd still have the same, even though we fell out, I'd still have the same man for the father of my children. And you can always do it now can't you? There's nothing I don't regret doing because there's a reason, there’s a reason why I didn't do them when I was younger, there's got to be a reason but I can do it now.
JW: Well it's been nice to chat to you and thanks for your honesty and your openness. Thanks for coming in.
VB: Thank you.