Reflective Piece: Shaped by Place, Time — and a Mind That Wouldn’t Sit Still

I was born at the end of August 1976, in Rotherham — a town that carries the memory of steelworks, coal mines, and the working-class backbone that once powered Britain’s industry. From the moment I took my first breath, my life has been stitched into the social fabric of a community built on resilience, pride, and a deep sense of solidarity.

Like many from South Yorkshire, my sense of fairness and loyalty was forged in the shadow of the miners’ strike, the steelworkers strikes and the slow decline of local industries. These weren’t just news stories — they were the conversations around the kitchen table, the picket lines, the harsh lessons that taught me that when systems fail, you stand by your own.

Growing up with inattentive ADHD, though undiagnosed for decades, meant my mind was always wandering — always half-here, half-somewhere-else. At school, the labels stuck: lazy, away with the fairies, not living up to potential. My handwriting — “less legible than if a spider had run through the ink and crawled all over the page,” as one teacher put it — told the world my mind never quite fit the lines.

I longed for precision and purpose, and I found that hope in my grandmother. She’d been a draughtsman’s assistant and a gifted artist — her steady lines and eye for beauty were everything I craved but couldn’t quite hold onto. She was deaf, her hearing a sacrifice gladly given as she riveted Lancaster Bombers into life during WWII, our conversations as we baked rock buns in her kitchen, forever interspersed by the screech of her hearing aid playing up. 

By the time I left school, those draughting jobs in Rotherham had vanished with the industry that had shaped our town. I fell, as expected, into a foundational engineering course — living down to the labels I’d been given.

And then came Harold Shaw — old-school, sharp-eyed, refusing to let me coast. He took one look at my first assignment — all chicken scrawl — and gave it straight back to me. “You’re far more capable than this shows,” he said. “You’ve got the weekend to prove it.” So I did. I sat there, hour after hour, forcing my hand to unlearn cursive, forcing each letter into simple, clear print. My fingers blistered and bled, but by Monday morning I’d written it out the way he knew I could. He showed me that sometimes it takes an unflinching mentor to see past your mess and demand your best and I shone in that limited environment.

Music was my other teacher. While the world belted out Britpop, I found calm in Michael Bolton and Kenny G — soft edges for a restless mind — and rebellion in Led Zeppelin and The Who, slipped to me by my uncle, proof that contradiction is not weakness, but depth.

Later, as I fell from job to job, I carried all these lessons until I eventually found myself working in schools. Long before the papers screamed about the Rotherham child exploitation scandal, we were there: listening, watching, raising the alarm, and being ignored. We stood by the girls whose pain was buried and by the boys who were groomed to groom them — children failed by the very people who should have protected them. That experience taught me what real fairness demands: staying when it’s uncomfortable, refusing to flatten people’s stories, fighting for those no one wants to see.

Rotherham gave me grit. My grandmother showed me the power of care and detail. Harold Shaw made me prove my potential, one bleeding line at a time. And my inattentive ADHD — with its drifting focus, its constant connections, its sideways way of seeing — turned out to be my greatest gift for noticing what others miss.

But it comes with its own weight, too. Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria — that hidden thread — means I’ve always felt other people’s words and judgments like sharp edges under the skin. A passing comment, a teacher’s label, a door closed too quickly — they stick around long after they’re spoken. That fear of letting people down shaped how I masked, how hard I tried to please, and why loyalty means so much to me now. It’s why I stand up for people who get written off, because I know how easy it is to believe the worst about yourself when no one stands beside you.

And then there’s time blindness, another quiet part of this mind. It’s both blessing and curse. I can drift away from the clock, lose whole years in the blink of an eye — and then reconnect with old friends like we’ve never been apart, as if no time has passed at all. But some connections slip away while I’m looking elsewhere, and not every door can be reopened once it’s shut. It’s taught me to hold tight to the moments that matter, because time — like trust — can run out if you don’t keep watch.

So here I am: loyal, plain-spoken, sometimes drifting but never disloyal, and never afraid to see what others overlook. Because if this place, these kids, my grandmother, Harold Shaw, and this mind that won’t sit still have taught me anything, it’s this: when people stand together — and refuse to accept “good enough” — there’s no injustice that can’t be brought into the light.