Early Life
Birth: it’s a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life.
Each year about 500,000 women die due to pregnancy and childbirth, 7 million have serious long term complications, and 50 million have negative outcomes following delivery.
We’ve long been told our genes are our destiny.
It’s now thought they can be changed by habit, lifestyle, and even personal finances.
After all, for decades we’ve all been told: you are what you eat.
You are what you drink. You are how much, or how little, you exercise; you are whatever toxins you imbibe or inhale.
Your genes may have destined you to a little baldness, or an increased susceptibility to some vulgar tumour, as health experts have cautioned repeatedly: you are a product of your own lifestyle.
Early Life for me started in Ashton-U-Lyne, a market town in Tameside, Greater Manchester. Manchester is a major city in the northwest of England with a rich industrial heritage.
The Castlefield Conservation Area’s 18th-century canal system harks back to the city’s days as a textile powerhouse, and you can trace this history at the interactive Museum of Science & Industry.
The revitalised Salford Quays dockyards now houses the Daniel Libeskind-designed Imperial War Museum North and The Lowry cultural centre.
Evidence of Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Viking activity has been discovered in Ashton-under-Lyne.
The “Ashton” part of the town’s name probably dates from the Anglo-Saxon period, and derives from Old English meaning “settlement by ash trees”. The origin of the “under-Lyne” suffix is less clear; it possibly derives from the British lemo meaning elm or from Ashton’s proximity to the Pennines.
In the Middle Ages, Ashton-under-Lyne was a parish and township and Ashton Old Hall was held by the de Asshetons, lords of the manor. Granted a Royal Charter in 1414, the manor spanned a rural area consisting of marshland, moorland, and a number of villages and hamlets. It was not until the introduction of the cotton trade in 1769, Ashton was considered “bare, wet, and almost worthless”.
The factory system, and textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution triggered a process of unplanned urbanisation in the area, and by the mid-19th century Ashton had emerged as an important mill town at a convergence of newly constructed canals and railways.
Ashton-under-Lyne’s transport network allowed for an economic boom in cotton spinning, weaving, and coal mining, which led to the granting of municipal borough status in 1847.
In the mid-20th century, imports of cheaper foreign goods led to the decline of Ashton’s heavy industries but the town has continued to thrive as a centre of commerce and Ashton Market is one of the largest outdoor markets in the United Kingdom.
I was born on one Wednesday the 15th February 1989, according to speculation, 396000 babies were born on that day around the world.
I guess not everything was bad about my birth, I was born in an industrial era in an area stricken with poverty and it does have an upside, I was born.
I came into this world full of joy, a blonde hair blue eyed baby from a master race, not that I believe in Nazi ideology.
My own delusions manifest into the thought that I am of a superior DNA and that I come from a far greater previous race, such as the Nibiru or Annunnaki.
The Egyptians were an intelligence race, the giant pyramids were carefully aligned towards the pole star, they are so accurately aligned with the points of the compass that only superior humans could have achieved this all those thousands of years ago.
You, probably think that I am delusional.
I don’t think anyone can remember their own early years, not from birth at least, maybe four or five years old onwards.
What I do remember, from what I have been told from family members, is that I grew up on a dangerous council estate with my parents who married the same year I was born.
I had a sister called Chantelle a year or two later and the marriage broke down.
It was unfortunate as unbeknown to my mother, my father was having an affair with another women, and whilst my sister was still developing in the uterus, a women involved with my father apparently had her assaulted, receiving blows to the stomach.
Luckily the birth of my sister went without difficulty, yet the birth came with many difficulties, one illness the doctors were unaware of is that Chantelle was not gaining weight, they could not understand why, and one cold night my mother walked into our room, looked in to the cot, where I was laying with my sister, and she was blue, lifeless, and dead.
Apparently, when Chantelle was born, her stomach lining was so soft, like tissue paper, every time she was fed, it caused a tear, a rip in her stomach, that grew bigger and bigger, eventually causing her to die of starvation.
I think the death of my sister played an important role in the health of my mother, she became paranoid and psychotic, depressed and unwell, yet the doctors did not understand that it was a mental illness at that time, and for some years she looked after me, to the best of her abilities.
I know young children can’t remember much from their past, I have one vivid memory of climbing up on the kitchen bench and getting cereal from the cupboard, pouring the milk into the bowl and making myself some breakfast, another time I tried to make myself a glass of coke, smashing the coffee table.
I remember an awful lot about my foster years, growing up with other foster children, being unloved and mistreated, I know I moved around a lot, at one point it was 5 different foster homes, in five years.
Life was difficult, I remember one family I lived with had a son and he thought it would be a great idea to blow air in a balloon, put my name and a short message on a piece of paper, something similar to “I am new here, looking for friends”, and tie it to the balloon.
The other boy blew the balloon out of the window, and a gust of wind sent it spiralling down the street.
What I did not know until many years later, is that the balloon we sent out the window, actually landed in a garden down the cul-de-sac, a little Jack Russell managed to get a hold of it, and the balloon popped in his mouth, the dog died of shock.
I spent many of my days visiting this garden, the old man teaching me how to grow plants, little did I know I killed his dog, and that he read my note.
I remember another time, I was naughty in school, apparently I stabbed a kid with a pencil in the hand, and we would be smashing glass milk bottles off other children during playtime, so my foster carers wanted me to move to another school, closer to the home.
The other foster boy I was living with at the time, thought it would be a great idea to go down to the new school, I would just call it peer pressure, and they pushed me to pick a brick up and throw it through the window of the school, BANG.
The window went through, with a giant smash, a gaping large hole in the window, the police were called, and I got into trouble.
From then on, I never trusted these boys.
I remember one night they came in my room and asked me for money, they wanted to raid my piggy jar, they were “running away”.
I was so happy that day, it got really late, and it was really dark, I was in bed and I heard vans outside slamming doors outside, a big bang at the door, "knock, knock, knock", they had been caught and returned.
I think back now and I can’t recall them ever getting into trouble again.
I heard one of the boys grew up and where he lived in Manchester they had to put locks on the fridges and cupboards, and found a stash of weapons under his bed, that was all I ever heard, I don't know what happened to him after that.
One day in September 1997 I moved in with my new adopted parents, I unpacked my socks and underpants, placed them in my new set of drawers in my brand new bedroom.
I was welcomed into my new world by a league of new friends and new family, they came bearing gifts and the words “Has he settled in yet?” and “Does he like school?”
Of course I settled in, I had unpacked my pants.
I did like my new school, I took the education system by the throat, swallowed it whole and spat it out.
The education system could not spit as far as I could, I was more experienced.