I'm from a Bungalow! Now piss off!

This is Scotland in 2023, a world of food banks, a crumbling NHS and strikes. A time to count my many blessings and I do. At least, that is what I should do and probably would do, if I didn’t write. But I do write and I despair.

It’s not necessarily to do with money, or education but class and community certainly come into it. Within the arts I repeatedly find a culture that chimes with the behaviours of the rich, well connected and the cut-throat. Behaviours are expected of me that I reject and I won’t grovel.

I’m not going to define working-class and in so doing fit myself into it while excluding others. I'm not working class. Growing up, I shared a bedroom in a tiny bungalow on a long street of tiny uniform bungalows and semis, separated by drives no longer wide enough for the modern car. My dad worked in a library, my mum in medical records. Sometimes I tried to eat salad, we had little wooden bowls designed for the purpose. These bowls were rarely used. I was once tricked into eating an olive. It was horrible but I recovered in time.

As far as these bog-standard eyes are concerned, the arts present a maximum security, gated community. The path to ascend it is perilous. I don't kiss cheeks. Any cheeks, not one, not two and I certainly don't kiss arses.

I once worked with a man who sucked up to our bosses to a ridiculous degree. One day he took it too far.

‘It’s a pleasure to serve you sir, I only wish I could do more, happy to serve Sir.’

The colleague to my right, made a rude gesture, his upwardly curled tongue popped out of his mouth. He was banished from the office like a naughty boy.

In the worlds we had grown up in, a world of more modest means, being an arselicker is nothing to be proud of. It is degrading as it is alienating. A brown-noser is a person likely to drop you in the shit to aid their own advancement. To others, it is the standard path to advancement. I have little issue with authority. It is possible to work hard and respect the chain of command without toadying yourself before power. But there's more to it than that.

I briefly dated a boy whose family kept a beautiful home, lusted for money and despised New Labour. They expressed generosity by inviting us round for food, which was always very good. If they could get money, they made sure they did. I realized that whatever culture produced me, it wasn’t the same as theirs.

They offered me their youngest son’s old bike and I agreed before I learned they intended to charge me, after haggling, around £100. Months later word reached another member of the family that I needed a TV, they happened to be replacing theirs and would I like it? That was £50 and it broke within a month.

I was earning minimum wage and that wage had to cover rent and bills. I felt a pressure to agree to what I couldn’t afford and they were oblivious, believing they could not afford to give things away.

Everyone categorizes their poverty, their way and the rich are no exception.

My partner was born to teenage parents and grew up on a housing estate. He remembers rolling his matchbox car along the wall of the pub where his mum worked as a cleaner. In his household, budgeting was done with great care. And yet, if his parents could help us they did, unquestioningly. They supplied us with a lot of quality secondhand furniture and white goods. That mindset was something I almost took for granted. When a friend gave us his old leather sofa, he was apologetic about the slight scuffs from where his dogs had scratched. He could have sold it for hundreds, he gave it to us because we needed it and we kept it for ten years. As time has passed, we have found ourselves able to donate. There is a joy in taking away the stress you recognize from when it was you who was struggling. That spirit of generosity is something imbibed and appreciated by all who have benefitted from it.

The wealthy have never had to rely upon it. They fail to represent that generous world in publishing and the wider arts. They fail to understand that it gives us a different sensibility. This is the culture that responds to need, the culture that created food banks because the grasping culture of competition was driving so many to hunger.

I don’t often see that represented in fiction. The working-class families of modern fiction are;

· always angry, and generally bad communicators. (Or stupid, simple and cheerful)

· feel inadequate whenever they step beyond their estate.

· Wish to be middle-class.

It took ten years for some to grasp that we’ve moved beyond the Thatcher years of unemployment, that work is plentiful, the problem is surviving on what you get from it.

Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ features a working class hero with a chip on his shoulder. His dad is unknown to him, his saintly mum works as a cleaner. The hero saves up for a car. He needs the car to ultimately rescue the girl later on in the book. Without a parent to assist with lessons, they would all have to be paid for, a cost that greatly exceeds what a cleaner earns in an hour and even on passing, insurance is only affordable for a young driver if they can be added to parent’s insurance. Is that splitting hairs? I don’t think so. It significantly disadvantages the already disadvantaged, more so if we pretend this inequality can be bridged with one Saturday job. Perhaps writers and artists, fortunate to have parents able to foot these bills, could stand to have these inconsistencies pointed out. I’m sure if I imagined the debs ball with pigs in bondage and clay pigeons smashing through the canapes, I’d get pulled up on it. (Darling, there was once a pig and it was a chemise)

I hear Tony Benn (Viscount Stansgate) and Jeremy Corbyn (of Yew Tree Manor) often cited as inspirational to left wing activists, far more than the working class people who actually made a material difference. But change requires compromise, an unforgivable sin to the perpetual theorizers. Politics without the power creates ideal conditions for those who wish to appear radical while ensuring they need never adapt to the change they apparently demand but don't really want. It may explain why, on the council estate I once canvassed on, there was such support for Boris Johnson. They'd been let down by the people who claimed to represent them.

Nepotism is rife in the arts. Celebrities endorse books they have not read . It is simply playing the game they have always played. As they see it, it’s who you know in this competitive world. If you are not of that culture, you are disadvantaged by not playing.

If endorsement is not based on quality we all loose. (TV presenter describes, 'Rabies: Worse than you think' as an "absolute joy!". Others may be less subtle, "See my daughter's stand-up or I'll brain you!" says top political adviser.)

The reviews I have are good, it's getting them that is the problem. Frank Cottrell-Boyce is one of the best children’s authors around. He recently complained that his children’s fiction was not being reviewed. What chance then for the those looking to become established?

Getting published is hard enough.

I once thought, as all writers do, that I was onto something when I finished writing my book in 2013. I have symptoms of dyslexia and needed someone to cast their eye over an early draft. At that time, our tax credits had been drastically cut but still I dreamt of publication. I found an author in Edinburgh who would, for £250, review a chapter of a work in progress. The author would take half the fee, notify me when the report was completed and only release it on full payment. This would give me time to complete the installments in my own time. I should not have agreed to it but I naively imagined that it might help improve my situation in some way. The report came through very quickly without warning. It was cold, brief and largely useless. Then full payment was demanded. I was too ashamed to explain and after the third demand I paid. I’m already thousands in dept, I thought, what did it matter? Oh the things I could have done with that money. The days out I could have had with my children for that money.

So then came Cupids a Psycho. A book born of some experience. The welfare cuts that drove us deeply into dept, were just the tip of the iceberg. Young families were to be hit much harder and a few years later, the cuts imposed might even have led to the loss of my home. Again, I count my blessings . When I outlined the plot to the arts body, which existed to support new writing, I received a brief letter that took issue with the very issues I was dealing with. They recommended I strip it all back to something simple. The carefully crafted plot could no more have been reduced to one piece than any one character could be reduced to one event. Cupids a Psycho is not, by any means, about the extremes of poverty, it’s about love and common struggles in the age of austerity. Austerity didn't interest them.

Money had not changed hands but this experience wrung a few tears from me.

My hometown of Stirling is, when it comes to artists, much like everywhere else. I hoped that grass roots organization's just might present a way of fighting back. I found a programme of events at a pub I knew and asked about getting involved. My gentle voice, which has been an advantage in life, did me no favours on this occasion. I should have wheezed and spat like the Elephant Man.

The organizer told me there was no money. I hadn’t imagined for a moment that there was, but he remained stuck in that loop. Whenever I spoke, he focused a little behind me and chanted, ‘yeah uh-hu uh-hu uh-hu, yeah...’ before interrupting with yet another example of someone who wanted money and didn’t get it. I only managed to break this loop, by mentioning that I’d lived in Cornton. For a second, he stopped treating me like a stuck-up prick.

As a toddler I did briefly live in a council flat in Cornton. Cornton has had it’s problems with crime and poverty. Living there I had my struggles, instead of dancing along with Floella Benjamin I turned my back on her soothing voice and like a philistine, spun round in circles to the theme to Super Ted. I seethe to this day.

In other words, my living there should have no bearing on my involvement in a festival. I should have said;

‘I’m from a fucking bungalow. Now piss off!’