Cash Carraway - Skint Estate: A memoir of poverty, motherhood and survival

Cash Carraway

SKINT ESTATE

A Memoir of Poverty, Motherhood and Survival

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cash Carraway is a playwright, author and spoken word artist from Penge, south-east London.

Her sell-out one-woman spoken word show REFUGE WOMAN, about government cuts to domestic violence services, won Editorial Innovation of the Year at the Drum Online Media Awards in 2019, was shortlisted for Innovation of the Year at the 2018 British Journalism Awards and toured the UK in collaboration with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Battersea Arts Centre.

SKINT ESTATE, her memoir about life in the gutter, is her first book.

AUTHORS NOTE

The words written on these pages were not intended to be read in silence. So please say them out loud whenever you can preferably to someone who doesnt want to hear them.

PROLOGUE

I WRITE THIS SLUMPED on my cream pleather sofa. My fat, tattooed arm wobbling as it scribbles down memories in between greedy mouthfuls of pasta (that isnt gluten free), and a Richmond menthol gritted between my disgusting rotting Jeremy-Kyle-guest-style teeth. And Im just about to pop down to the local Chicken Cottage to grab my daughter a bargain bucket of crushed battery-hen vessels and connective tissues because I cant be arsed to cook. You all know where this is headed first stop Chicken Cottage, final destination Irvine Welsh degenerate, there is no doubt that Im leading my kid down the grim path to heroin addiction.

A lot of my free time (which is a lot of the time) is spent mooching about my estate hoping that a Channel 5 producer will discover me and turn me into the next White Dee. Later on tonight, I shall leave my child alone as she sinks into a fitful sleep, constantly disturbed by the cries of Hey, guys! as her favourite YouTubers spin like a disco ball at an all-you-can-drink nightclub across her iPad the closest thing she has to a family. But Ill be out there, on the town. In a vest top tightly clinging to my Lambrini curves bingeing on depravity with other women like me down the local Wetherspoons, before getting my fanny serviced after closing time in an alleyway by a manual labourer.

I am a terrible , scrounging, despicable little woman when I celebrate my birthday at the Harvester, I visit the salad bar an unacceptable amount of times. I misuse food banks (because who doesnt like free food?) yet I own two iPhone Xs and three Orla Kiely cushions. Im so disgusting that Ive never even been to Center Parcs. My eight-year-old daughter has water fights on the estate with the other kids purely to entertain the local paedos who gather en masse with their horny eyes and fat dogs (who run around leashless) but at least it keeps her out of my hair for a few hours whilst Im living a champagne lifestyle courtesy of the taxpayer.

Wheres the dad?! I make you want to write forty times over in the Daily Mail comments section.

( There is no dad. The dad didnt stick around. Couldnt even keep a man .)

And whilst it is true that my daughters biological father doesnt feature in her life, I am not a walking talking Take a Break magazine article. I am not a stain on society. Or a statistic of shame. I am not a burden on the state (there is no such thing as a burden within a welfare state). And I am not the solo creator of a future stain. That is just the mainstream medias targeted witch-hunt against women like me. Perceptions created by sneering producers at Channel 5 and privileged men of the right-wing press who will utter any old drivel for a chance at a viral tweet. A witch-hunt intended to inject anti-female propaganda into our already divided communities, to demonise and shame and to keep women in check. Portraying working-class woman without nuance in order to keep us trapped in our little poverty porn boxes to be observed like a freakish curiosity from 1834.

I am one of 2 million demonised single women in the UK banished from the sisterhood of posing against Insta-perfect urban walls in gentrified areas because we cant afford to cook Deliciously Ella on Agas. Women like me we dont have husbands and we most certainly dont have wine oclock we have borderline alcoholism . We dont have Farrow & Ball No. 26 Down Pipe adorning our living-room walls, we have standard magnolia woodchip in the squalid little council flats we shamefully refer to as home. Because thats what we deserve . Magnolia, woodchip and shame. We havent worked hard enough, we just dont deserve it, we just havent put the work in. And you do get what you deserve in life, thats an actual fact. You work bloody hard, and you get back what you put in. Thats the popular perception, isnt it? And Ive written this book to show you the flip side of these perceptions. The unheard voice, that thanks to this caricatured and vilified portrayal has led to a cycle of disregard, humiliation and misunderstanding. Because Ive worked bloody hard yet Ive lived below the poverty line since 2010 when I found myself pregnant and alone. Over 8 million other hardworking people (in actual employment, according to government figures) in the UK have been living similar, unstable and impoverished lives too. Does anyone really deserve that? These words of mine are here to attempt to break that belief system and answer that question.

Its May 2010 and Im heavily pregnant. The grubby sofa in the communal area of the womens refuge is stained with the period blood and sweat of a domestic violence victims past. There are eight of us women squeezed onto and around it. David Cameron is moving into Downing Street, but before he wheels in his suitcase and obedient Boden wife, he stops outside to give a quick generic speech about fairness and family values. He forces self-assurance but is clearly broken here stands a man who had always dreamed of power yet gained it in the most un-triumphant of ways. Hes like the guy who got the girl but only after guilting her into submission by threatening to jump in front of a train if she continued to reject him. I sigh, and I tut, and I think I probably shout at the screen, much to the disdain of the women in the room. An old South African woman tells me to calm down or Ill harm my baby, Your baby is feeling your anger, she says.

So, I shut up and watch in silence like the others, but something within me has definitely changed.

This is the very moment where the story begins. This story of motherhood, survival and poverty. For the first time in my life I have something to live for. To fight for. I remember the start of this story vividly, everything so clear, jolting me into the lucidity of an out-of-body experience. Its one of those stories that becomes more significant to me with each retelling.

Its like remembering the band who were playing in the Uber the first time you shared an awkward kiss with the person who turned out to be the love of your life. Its that one line in that book you read that made you quit your demoralising job on the spot, so you could travel round India or somewhere for six months. Its the realisation that hits mid-altercation with the stranger on the bus shifting your world view forever. For me, this is that argument. Right there in the refuge, pregnant and alone. This is the moment that gave me a purpose in life.

Here is the moment: David Cameron is giving his speech and I am terrified and disappointed. I didnt want him as our prime minister, and I hadnt even been given the right to make that known. Im shouting at the TV, but no one is listening. Im wrapped in a blanket and chain-eating orange Calippos because my baby is making me crave ice which I later discover is because my iron levels are as depleted as my spirit. And apparently eating ice helps who knew? The other women in the room dont seem to share my concerns. They say things like our vote wouldnt have made a difference anyway and all political parties are the same. They say nothing is going to change. They say everything always stays the same. Everything always stays the same for women like us. And it does, I say until it doesnt . Until one morning you wake up and realise you have zero autonomy over your life and something has to change. And this is when and where I realised that.