Strangers on a Bench - EPISODE 39: The Runaway

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Tom Rosenthal approaches a stranger on a park bench and asks if he can sit down next to them and record their conversation.This is what happened! Produced by Tom RosenthalEdited by Rose De LarrabeitiMixed by Mike WoolleyTheme tune by Tom Rosenthal & Lucy Railton Incidental music by Maddie AshmanEnd song : 'Disappear' by Lisa HanniganStream it here : https://ffm.to/disappear-soabListen to all end songs featured on the podcast (so far) on one handy playlist :https://ffm.to/soabendsongs------------------Instagram : @strangersonabench Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, sorry to bother you. Can I ask you a slightly odd question? I'm making a podcast called Strangers on a Bench where essentially I talk to people I don't know on benches for you up for that? Do you want to give it a go? What's your favourite day of the week? Um, Wednesday. That's a good one, right in the middle. Yeah. Why is it Wednesday? I don't know, I always have a good feeling because the blues of the Mondays, the caries all a bit on the Tuesday, by Wednesday you're up and about and ready to enjoy the rest of

the week. Yeah, so you're feeling good today? Yeah. Fantastic. Now what would you say is your kind of ideal Wednesday? Yeah. What's a really nice solid day for you? Well to wake up in the morning, you know, just do your own thing, go and collect the grandchildren from school,

which I love and then usually take them for a little bit of something to eat and find out what's going on in their little world, you know. They're 13 and 11 so. Oh lovely. And they keep you young. What's it like to be a grandparent? Oh it's lovely, the best thing in the world to be a grandmother. You know what it is, you can give them back when they annoy you. That's the magic isn't it?

You can spoil them rotten, fill them full of chocolate and everything, especially if your daughter's done something naughty on you. Give them Coca Cola, a good sugar rush and then send them home. That's very, that's, that I like it. Got your back. What, have you found yourself intervening at all with any of the grandchildren? Have you found yourself jumping in at any point? I do my 13 year old granddaughter because she's interested in boys now and everything like that and I keep on telling her it's okay to have boys to go out with and be friends with but don't get serious.

And don't get serious with boys in your own school, the fall out is terrible. That's quite wise, it's like not having a date with a colleague at work or something. Yeah. Did you get in trouble with boys at any point in your life? I was always in trouble with boys. How old were you when you got in trouble with boys? I ran away from home when I was 15. Did you? Yeah. Now that's interesting. Yeah. Can you tell me about that? Yeah I just woke up one morning and said to my mum we're going to town and then to Dublin, London. Whoa, how far away were you? Dublin. Okay now that is

running away. Yeah but that was in the days when you could hitchhike. Yeah, and that's what you did? Yeah, I hitchhiked, I got off a hollyhead, went to Glassbury Festival, bumped into Glassbury Festival. It was one of the first festivals. Amazing. Glassbury was only a little field, you know, and they had no such thing as security. Oh my God, amazing.

Yeah. So you, so many questions come into my head. How long he'd been planning to run away or was it an impetuous decision? No, I had a boyfriend and he was 19 and I was only 15. Where was the boyfriend? In Dublin. And you ran away together? No, no.

Oh, so you ran away from him as well? I ran away from him because my mum was threatening one of those court cases underage and everything, he was 19 and things like that. So I told him, Albert saved them all in a lot of trouble, it just went off. And then this went. Can you remember the moment you decided to go? As in did you just wake up and decide? No, I went into town and said that's it, I'm off. And I only had the clothes that I was standing in and about £10. Oh my god, do you remember who gave you lifts? Do you remember the conversation? A lot of lorry drivers and things like that wanted me,

you better go home and everything, that you shouldn't be on the road, you know, like you're very very young. So all these lorry drivers are saying go back and you said no? Yeah that was it and then my mum and dad didn't find me, they went to Interpol and everything and it was the Salvation Army. The nuns got you. Knocking at the door in Sheffield's Push after two years. Two years? Yeah. So okay, so I've just got this absolute mountain of questions in my head. You arrive in London as a 15 year old. Yeah. Do you remember that feeling of just landing?

I ended up in Labyrinth Grove in Finches at the pub in Labyrinth Grove, if you remember that. And I thought Labyrinth Grove was the whole of London. Yeah. Because Dublin was so small at that time, you know Ireland, so small. And I think this is the whole of London, this is it, this is where I am. And I only had a sleeping bag. And one of these two guys in the pub, and they were saying to me, you cannot sleep on the street, you're too young. Luckily, they took me back to their place and they were gay.

Oh, gay, that's useful. And I lived with them for a year. Amazing. They just adopted me, you know. And you were literally just by this pub? Yeah. And then they just adopted you for a year? Yeah, I got my own place after a year, but they adopted Captain I and me all the time,

you know, got me my first job in the roundhouse in London when it was only a barn. Yeah. You know, there was only sawdust on the floor in the back. Convinced them I was aging, got a job behind the bar. That was it. But I've seen so many. I've seen The Stones live, I've seen Mark Boland, I've seen Jimi Hendrix a lot, you know, because that's the way it was in those days.

So this gay couple who looked after you for a year, did you keep in touch with them? Yeah, yeah, they live in Portugal at the moment, you know, like he's getting on a bit, he's 90 now. Oh, so they're still around? Yeah, but his partner died, so that was sad. But what an amazing thing to do for someone. It was amazing, you know, like I always say to God, you know, somebody's up there looking after me, you know, because the scrapes and everything you could have got yourself into.

Did you have a kind of inner confidence at that point? No, I was really a shy, quiet kid, you know, really shy, but at that age I was very, very pretty so that can't be a way of murder, you know. But Danny, the gay guy, I was a child, I shouldn't be let out without a chaperone. And so they became kind of parental figures? Yeah, parents. All I had to do was housework, cook now and again for them. What did you learn from them? Compassion. A lot of compassion.

That day in Asia, gays weren't acceptable. And how they had to live and everything like that, you know? It's just a joke. Out of interest, did you have any perceptions about gay people that before you met them? The only one that I knew was gay and I remember saying in the conversation with my mother because she had a big thing about Rock Hudson and I said you know mum he's gay you know he doesn't like women and my mum said get into that bathroom and wash her mouth out with soap. Oh God.

That is such a dirty, horrible thing to say about that man. How can such a good looking man be? I said, it happens. So it was kind of an eye opener for you as well to live with a gay couple. Yeah, yeah. I've always said to my daughters when they're having children, you know, I would go, lucky me, my kids, get one of them. And I always say...

Get a gay one. Fingers crossed for a gay one, come on. Yeah. And it doesn't matter what your kids are, when they're happy. Exactly. That's it, happy and healthy. Health is the most important thing. 100%.

And so, right, we're living with the gays for a year, and then we are out, living on your own now, at 16. And so what was that like? That's when my mum found me, I had a flat in Sheffield's Butch. So your mum found you first, or the nuns? The nuns found me, and then they got in touch with my mum. My mum came over.

Do you remember, so you remember what, so you're waking one day, take me through that day where the nuns come. Shock! I was thinking that's it with my boyfriend and I was just knocking the door. I couldn't believe it, they traced me through the Salvation Army for some way, I don't know how they did it. How many nuns are we talking at the door? Two. And were they looking very serious? Yeah. You know, the Catholics. And do they take you away at that time? No, no, no. I was sixteen then, yeah. So then my mum came over and she wanted to take me back.

And I was like, no, no. But we made up. We weren't angry with each other anymore. We made up. But there was no point in me. I'm so used to London then, there was no point in me going home. And then I met my husband and I got married when I was 17 and my first daughter at 18. Oh, whoa. Love it.

Okay, straight in there. Okay, let's get back to 18 in a second. I just want to go back to your mum seeing you after all that time and what that was like. I mean, surely she must have been, what does she say to you? She was in bits. You don't realise the hurt because you're young, you want to do your own thing, you don't realise the hurt of course. And as my sister said, she was never the same after you disappeared. She went to pieces, she was never the same. And my sister always

blames me about my mum not being the mother that she could have been to her. Oh, that's tough though isn't it? Yeah, but you don't know at that age do you? You sat back and took time to think you wouldn't hurt people. Exactly. Well I mean what an amazing bold move to make as well at the 15. Okay, 18 you're having a child. What was it like to be a mother at 18?

Couldn't do it without my mother. Oh, so your mum then helped? Yeah, what happened was I got really bad antenatal depression. Oh dear. Really, really bad. What was that like? Oh, it was terrible. I couldn't stop crying. So my mum came over and she was three months old

and she said I'm taking her home with me. I didn't get her back for a year later. God. Yeah, because my mum thought I wasn't in a fit state of mind. Yeah, because the doctor put me on loads of medication for depression and things, but I couldn't function. Missing that first year of your daughter's life, almost. What was that like? Oh, it was terrible. I didn't feel she was mine. It took me ages to reconnect, you know?

And then I went home. After my marriage, I went home with her. I used to come back and cross, get jobs here and go back, and she saved my grandmother. And then when she was eight, I took her over to London completely. So my second one was like brand new again. Oh of course.

So it was like redemption. Yeah, that redemption. So what, being such a young mum, 18, I mean what, I suppose it changed the course of your life completely. Yeah, well that was 53 years ago. Yeah. My daughter's got 53 this year.

Oh wow. What's it like having a 53 year old daughter? She likes to play mother and I like to let her. To be mothering you? Oh that's sweet. The two of them are like that. The two of them mother me. Both my children and my granddaughters stepping on the wagon now. So you have an army of people in Buggary. Do you still have that sense of, I don't know, wild abandon? Oh yeah, I feel some days I could leave the house and not come back.

Do it again? What would you, what would you, what would you? I thought not at 72 you can't be doing things like that now. You can, you can. Where would you go? What would you do? Well I haven't got my passport now and we were thinking, my sister said, look if you get a passport we can go away, things like that. And my daughter started, passport? We might not see her for months.

Oh so they still have a fear that actually if you had a passport, you would be off. I've got this terrible habit, if I'm really down and I get one of my depressive moods, I won't pick up my phone, I won't talk to anybody. I just disappear into my own world. And I get my elder starting to phone, come on it's been six weeks now, I can see your bloody phone. Tell me about your depressive moods, how often they happen? They're terrible, it's like I haven't been diagnosed

but I've got a borderline personality but it's not towards anybody else, towards myself. I'm self-destructive. Yeah, do you know what triggers it at all? What brings it on? It's just like I could leave my daughter's house, this is what they can't understand, I can leave my daughter's house really happy, happy. Whatever happens to me the next day, if I wake up, the world seems a dark and dreadful place,

complete different mood swing. So you literally can wake up and just flick of a switch that day. Tell me how you, when you're in a depressive episode, what do you do to try and make yourself feel any better? Like what's your kind of go-to method? My go-to method is thinking, oh my God, my grandchildren are growing up and here am I feeling sorry for myself and they're growing up and they'll be teenagers soon,

which they are, two of them are now. I thought, hang on, and then one of them would come on the phone and the minute I hear those voices the mood switches. Oh that's nice. Yeah so I'm back in the land of the living. Do you get them to call you or do you call them? No their mum gets one of the kids during the meetings.

She knows, I might not answer to the adults but you know. So after a few times she's rang you you haven't picked up then she gets the kids. And it's like when I go to pick up the kids, my eldest daughter, I often say to her, look, I'll meet you and then I won't bother, you know. But like with the kids, she always say, make sure you're there. I said, I might leave you there, I wouldn't leave the kids. Tell me what you're doing in your life when you're feeling most alive. I'm usually out walking or I'm usually out with the grandchildren walking or doing them

at funfairs or doing crazy things with them. Where do you walk? What's your favourite walking route? Hamstead Teat, Primrose Hill, all the way around there because my daughter has got a Highland dog, you know, so we take her for walks. She got really attached to me because I had cancer hadn't I, you know, about five years ago, so breast cancer, so I had my breast removed. And the funny thing about the dog, just before the cancer was discovered, I kept jumping up and licking me all over my neck. I was like, what's wrong? The dog must have sensed it. And the funny thing, on the Friday I made the point with

the doctor the week after he did the scan. Yeah, left breast cancer. Oh my god, that's amazing. And then when I was on my keyboard, the dogs used to come up and my hair fell out. They used to come up and lick the top of my head. That's amazing. So when the dogs make a really big fuss of me and I start licking me hair fell out, it used to come up and lick the top of my head. That's amazing. So when the dogs make a really big fuss of me now, they start licking me on the head, I go away. Not now, not again. Don't lick me there, yeah.

Tell me what the experience was like of having cancer. Well my daughter when I told her she didn't believe me, she said I'm going to the surgeon with you. Why didn't she believe you? She thought, well it doesn't even run in the family, you know. She went to the doctor and found out what it is. So it was the operation, you know. And then they just... I'd seen the surgeon and they got her. He said, she's so lucky.

We got her, it's in the one place. And when I'd seen the surgeon after, he said, we got her all out. Fantastic. And then another year of chemo and everything else, which is horrible, you lose your hair, you know. My daughter's a hairdresser, so she said to me, come on, it's time to, it's coming out in patches. I woke up in the morning, was on the pillow.

So she said, I'm gonna shave her off. So she kept it shaved. What was that experience like of shaving your hair? I was expecting it. Yeah, but what does it feel like? I mean, what did it, you know, what was it? It is... Just get over it, you just have to think, well, it's saving your life.

Yeah. And then I was on so much chemo, I got blisters, huge blisters on my feet. Yeah. Which I couldn't walk. I went back into the doctor and he turned around and said, people, we've cooked you. But that's the banter we had, you know. Because when you go into a chemo ward, it's full of patients on chemo and everything. And some of them are really sad.

If you don't go and start laughing and making people laugh, because people that are dying have a very good sense of humour, you know. So I was the life and soul of the war, Joe. Oh, I bet. Let's imagine you have lots of years left, I hope. But what would you like to do with the rest of your life? It's very hard to strive to be happy and not even happy, you know contented You know you can have everything you want in life and there's something missing But you've got that feeling that okay. I'm content now. Yeah, it's very hard to achieve though

It is hard to achieve. Have you tried any new things recently to try and achieve it? My daughter signed me up to the gym once. How's that going? I've got three really physical grandchildren, right? They're like football, rugby. Do you shout from the sidelines? No. You're quite observant. Yeah, I know. I see them down in Stevenage when my little grandson plays.

They're terrible. You know, the parents having bus stops, you know, and you're thinking hang on this is a game, you know. I think they let out their repressed kind of, you know, they don't get they don't get to do it themselves. And then calling out the referee, I think it's disgusting, they're children, they're playing a game, you know. Yeah exactly, exactly. Who in your life, this is a bit of a random question, who in your life, sorry in your lifetime would you most like to say thank you to who you feel like you didn't thank enough? My mum. But it's too late. What would you, let's imagine if mother appeared from somewhere, what would you say to her?

Never thank her enough. Yeah. Yeah, and she died in Ireland. We got a phone call. My sister was in Ireland. She gave me a phone call. You better come now. I was an Ireland like, oh.

So, you never really get the chance, you know. Did you discover anything about your mum after she died that you didn't know about her before that? No, no I think I got my mum really good, yeah. Then my dad, my dad was in the British Army so. But yeah my dad was a beautiful looking man, six foot three and a half. But then again he was such a gambling habit. And the funny thing was about 15 years before he died, my mum kicked him

out after all those years. So she went through all the years of tough stuff and then she had enough? What was the straw that broke the camel's back, do you think? I think that nothing was going to change and she'd be better off without him, which in the end she wasn't. Because when she died, we had to get my dad in a wheelchair from the hospital because he was ill then and you know when the cars are passing so you could salute her. I'm thinking there the two of them are, who are worrying about him? Him at the funeral crying his eyes out. Just why didn't they stick it out?

What was the experience like of him dying? Yeah, he died in hospital so that wasn't too bad. My sister did most of that, but I did most of it. My mum, yeah. So that was it. And that's when they say to me, my daughter, what's going to happen after you die? I said, all you're going to do is go pure cremation. You can sprinkle me all around for myself. Oh, nice. So she said, we've got flowers and everything. I said, no, ridiculous, flowers are for the living. This is true. Do you know what you would want your funeral to look like?

No, because I won't be there. No, but do you have any desires? Very simple. Just go Primrose, round the hill, all the kids who's ever alive, take the urn up there, bring up a bottle of champagne or whatever you should drink and raise a glass and just let me go off the hill. That's lovely. That's just nice. The other one was just get the body, you know the way the Hindus do it, put it on a boat and put it on a lake and burn. Yeah. I think that's beautiful, but you don't do that in this country.

Give it a go. See if the family will do it. Yeah. Who's been the greatest love of your life, would you say? The greatest love of my life? What do you mean? Oh, romantically. Romantically, yeah. I used to have a boyfriend, you know, but the thing is, this was in Dublin, you know.

This wasn't the 19 year old? No. No. No, so I used to go and work in Dublin, come back here and work for a couple months, go back again, you know. So I had this boyfriend. I had to leave him in the end, you know. The thing is, you don't, you fall in love

with a married man. Oh, he was married? Yeah. All right, and what happened? How did it end? Well, funny thing, we were staying in this hotel out in Haught in Ireland. For some reason, the hotel seemed to go on fire. I'm not joking.

Fire? Yeah, fire. The fire brigade out and everything, they had to rescue me, bring me down the ladder, out of the window, to break the window because you're on the top floor, bring me down on the ladder and get him out. And the funny thing, his wife come around, where the hotel was, because she lived in Hote as well, and crashed her car just outside the hotel in an icy patch.

So, when the fire was happening? Yeah, his wife sees there's a fire? His wife's come out to look for his car. And she's in a car and crashes to her car? And crashes on the ice just outside the hotel and we're both, we're all in the hospital together. What a scene, what happens to her? She broke her arm and something to do with her jaw, you know, I was okay, you know, I was just smoke.

And so what she found out because of that, and you were both in hospital when she found out? Yeah. And more to the fact, I used to run one of those clubs in Grafton Street. I was at work one day and she came and started to ring in. She went crazy, I liked it. I've run down the road,

she got a long fox fur coat on, looking like Farrah Fossum. So I'vegged it. I've run down the road, she got a long fox fur coat on, looking like Farrah Fawcett. So I've raced out. My sister come running trying to stop her, but she pushed my sister out of the way. The bin man were going down the road, and he called me, hop on love. You got rescued by a bin man?

Yeah, they put me on the- From the hospital? No, no, this was later. Oh, so this is later, this is later. This is about a week later. Okay, okay, okay. I'm back at work. Oh, and she's come in? Yeah, I'm back at work.

She's come in looking for me to have it out. My sister tried to stop her. So I've legged out the door, the front door. I'm racing her away and she's shouting and cursing at me. The bin man just passed and got to be off on love. That's amazing. What a getaway, what a ghetto for the bin man. Yeah, that's what they said.

You're so bloody lucky. He said, don't go near her again. She hates you. I likey. And so was that the end of the relationship? Yeah, no, no, no. I said to him, this is no good. I mean, we were just hurting. He had two kids and that's what got to me.

You cannot do this. That was the end of that. Don't get involved with a married man. Yeah. I'm going to have to ask you the same thing. I always have the same start question and the same end question. The end question is, what are you going to do next? What am I going to do next? God knows. I don't know yet. I haven't got a clue what I'm going to do next, but I'm sure it's going to be something exciting. I bet it will be.

Thank you so much for talking to me. Thank you. What an interesting life you've had. What a lovely man. You know me, I disappear A puff of smoke into the air A lonely dear gone out to sea Close your eyes, count to three Would you hold on just a little longer?

Would you button down every hatch? Could you turn down what you can hold on to? Could you leave that door on latch? Every car is a getaway Every shit needs a stall weight Jumping fences, picking logs A beating heart is a ticking clock Would you hold on just a little longer? Would you batter down every hatch?

Would you tie down what you can hold on to? Could you leave that door on the latch? Would you leave that door on the latch? Raise a glass when I drip the wire Light the match or my funeral pyre You know me I disappear A ball of smoke

Into the air