Our Stories of Home is a series of works by writers from the NHS Restart Project Writing Group in Bridgeton, Glasgow. As part of Arkbound’s Bridging Divides During the Cost of Living Crisis project in early 2025, one of our authors, John McGlade joined the NHS Restart Project’s long-running Writing Group for two sessions to work with the group on developing a piece of writing on a theme of their choosing. Together, they decided to focus on stories of home and produced some beautiful, personal pieces about places they call home.
Here is Craig’s piece about Greenock:
Greenock, America, The World!
Once, in another time, in another town, a tiny child sought shelter— within a home where safety was only a memory, a hope, a dream.
The move to Leven Road, Greenock should have been a new beginning, a move away from the scheme, from the rivalry of your ‘bit’, where children in school became enemies when the bell sounded. Children separated by sections of metal fencing and the barriers of religious bigotry, hate taught by parents who had been shaped by those who came before; parents shaping those young minds.
But Leven Road was not an escape to new beginnings. It was a slow walk to more misery, despite smiles, and the rejoicing of others.
The boy knew that nothing would change.
To the boy, the new home was a symbol, not of something glorious, not new beginnings, but of destruction, the ending of a marriage, the disintegration of a family unit. Despised by his half-siblings, mistakes made manifest by a man’s folly.
This street stretched for miles, homes stuck behind its expanse, homes that seemed to grab hold of the edge of the town, desperate to be included in its day to day pulse. The homes looked across the River Clyde to Helensburgh, and the rising Kilpatrick Hills and Arrochar alps, hills that reached to what seemed to be perpetual grey skies. In his mind it was an escape that he could not reach. He looked at the town of Helensburgh and saw not a town in retrograde, but instead the bright lights of America.
The homes of Leven Road sat depressed in their uniformity. But the people tried to differentiate themselves with the use of an overwhelming selection of colours: curtains that screamed poor seventies designs! But the world that thought the garish colours and designs were hip and trendy— a world hanging onto the ghost of peace and true love.
There were few hiding places within the homes of Leven Road. The two-storey back and front door houses, and the four bedrooms, crowded with people, offered no respite. Yet the boy found his place, below the stairs: there sat a cupboard.
But this was no Harry Potter affectation: this was my place, my escape from the smell of alcohol-laden breath, the hands that beat, the voices that screamed, and the looks of disapproval that could shatter a heart in a second. In my tiny hideaway I was safe, protected within a coccoon of shoes and jackets that no longer fit their owners.
The trick was to remain unseen, for the unseen cannot be beaten, the unseen cannot be screamed at, the unseen cannot have hope driven from their heart by an uncaring world.
The boy’s hideaway was not a sad place: it was a safe place. It’s light, from a bulb that swung to others’ movements, created shadows that would dance across the walls. In his hideaway, he had his books. His life took him among the Indians on the American plains; he sailed in The Pequod and smelled the sea air; walked in the shire amongst hobbits. In his quiet place, he learned to wear a mask, to hide his pain at such a young age, to play the game in a world that played for keeps.
Even now, in older age, he still lives in that cupboard, still hides from the world, still wears a mask for every occasion. He still visits the world in his mind, and enjoys the life he has grown into.