Linda van Nooijen interview transcript
a family at sea
"I was brought up in Great Homer Street and all my family, the male members of my family on my mother's side, were all seafarers. My uncles were 'Cunard Yanks', they, you know, used to bring me wonderful things from America; lovely clothes and always had comic books.
I used to love it when they came home from sea because we lived with my grandparents, so they of course being the sons would come home and then come and see their father, who was my grandfather, and always bring gifts and there was always money. And I just loved them.
All I ever wanted to do was go to sea because my grandfather was a mariner, my uncles were, and it just seemed the thing to do. I wanted to go and travel and I think that was just to get away from the constraints of home life, because my mother was very controlling."
all I wanted to do was travel!
"The way it used to work then, if somebody was on a ship and a position came up for like a cabin boy, or a deckhand, or a young person, then whoever was on the ship would speak for them, you know, and say 'I've got a son', 'I've got a nephew', whatever. Then they would, the next trip, they'd take the person with them, and that's how they got on.
So I watched all my cousins one by one, you know, the one that was two years older than me - he went away, the one that was one year older than me - he went away, then when it was my turn, when I was like fifteen or sixteen, and something came up, the cousin who was younger than me went away to sea! And I was furious, because at that time, in what, the 60s, if you were female you had to be twenty-five to go and work on the liners. And the jobs available there were looking after children, or being a stewardess, and you know, when you're sixteen, twenty-five is like a 100 years away!
I just couldn't bear the thought of it, and all I wanted to do was travel and be like them. I was so jealous when they'd come home and tell you big tales about, you know, they'd been to Venezuela, and they'd been here and you know, 'haven't you ever been in a motel?' and you know, really winding me up because, you know, there was no chance of me ever doing it."
new horizons
"I was also brought up being told, or learning, that no one was ever going to give me anything, that there was no money, we were poor, there was no rich uncle that was going to give me anything, and anything I ever wanted in life, I was going to have to work for.
So, I realised that if I wanted to go away travelling, the only way I could do it would be through work.
So even though I couldn't bear the thought of waiting until, you know, I was twenty-five, I thought 'right, when you go away, you have to work somewhere in a, nursery' and I did love kids, I had no brothers and sisters - I always wanted to have a brother or a sister. And I thought, 'right, I'll do nursery nursing, I'll train as a nursery nurse, I'll have a qualification I can then get work abroad as a nanny or whatever until I'm old enough to go away to sea' [laughs] and that's what I did.
I went after I finished school, I worked in public health day nurseries and in education nurseries, you know, nursery schools. I'd put my name with an agency, you know, that found people work and one day completely out the blue I got a letter from a woman in Bermuda saying 'do you want to come and be my nanny?'. So when I was twenty I went off to Bermuda and looked after two little girls there. So I was there for a year, at the end of that year I found out that my dad had been ill for quite some time, so I came back home 'til, you know, I realised everything was sorted out.
And then I got a job in London working for an actress, looking after her two children, and you know, I'm still in touch with her now, its Prunella Scales you know. I saved up while I was working for her and then went off travelling, you know, because it was just, the late 60's and early 70's and I'd met a Scottish girl, we became friends and we went hitch hiking all over Europe. But I came back to London and then got a letter from Bermuda saying 'would I go back?', you know, because I'd been away two years or something, and they wanted me to go back and work for them again. Foolishly I did, because it didn't work out very well, but I was there almost two years that second time.
Then I came back home and even more foolishly got married, so I married somebody that I'd known when I was about seventeen. I didn't like him much at that time, I should have stuck to my first instinct [laughs] but we did get married and after a year, both of us had a bit of gypsy in us I think, and after a year we went travelling again. As you might realise, by this time the idea of going away to sea had gone right out of the window, you know, my travelling and the idea of going away on a liner just didn't seem as glamorous at all, as it had done when I was much, much younger."
HIV and AIDS
"My father had died in 1985. He'd been very ill for quite a long time and he'd started to deteriorate really, really badly and nobody could figure out what was wrong with him. Further on down the line, years and years down the line, they discovered something was wrong with his blood, he had no white blood cells, which of course means he had no immunity, so he was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. They were pumping him full of anti-biotics, nobody knew what the problem was, it was just hideous to watch him, and of course, after he died and the whole AIDS scare started, I realised, and my mother realised, that what he actually had died of, was AIDS.
We think it must have been from contaminated blood, because in those days they didn't realise at all, you know, the AIDS virus was only isolated in 1982, and at the time it was thought to be specifically to do with homosexual sex and it had nothing to do with any other group of society, and it wasn't until much, much later that of course it was discovered that, you know, there are various ways of it being transmitted. So when I actually discovered what had happened to him I thought 'I've got to do something, I want to get involved with this, I want to find out more about it.' So I applied to the Merseyside AIDS Support Group, which had only been founded just on a year. I applied there to become a 'buddy'. I did training with them around HIV and AIDS and somebody I knew, or I'd met through the Merseyside AIDS Support Group, worked for the health authority in Sefton and told me he knew that I wanted a job and he told me that they would be advertising shortly for outreach workers. This job would be to work with drug users and the women who were on the Dock Road who, you know, used to service the seafarers on the ships. At that time, in the late 80s, the Government decided to be seen to be doing something about HIV and AIDS so they gave all the health authorities around the country a certain amount of money, a pot of money which was to be for 4 years, and each health authority could spend the money whichever way they saw fit as long as it was HIV and AIDS prevention work.
So I was employed to work in the south Sefton area. My remit was to work with, to set up and ensure the smooth running of a static needle and syringe exchange scheme. To constantly make contact with new clients, to maintain and develop relationships with old clients, and to work on the Dock Road with all the women, anyone; the seafarers, the lorry drivers, anyone on the Dock Road, you know, the dock community, around issues of HIV and AIDS. And to, you know, to talk to them about it, to encourage them to use condoms, and if there were any drug users down there, to deal with that as well. So that's how I came to work on the Dock Road first."
the hazy grey of the Dock Road
"So I started my job in June 1989. At first it just entailed going around seeing people, introducing myself to various groups, and developing relationships with people on the Dock Road. So what I did at first was, every Wednesday afternoon I used to go into The Dominion (pub).
There were a number of pubs along the Dock Road which I knew, you know, just by reputation, just knew, that women went in there. All these pubs had strippers on, exotic dancers they were called, to cater for the lorry drivers and the seafarers. And so the women would go there because there'd be people there ready to cop off with. So what I did first really was go to The Dominion every Wednesday afternoon. So I did this for what, three maybe four weeks, and the woman who ran it she said to me, which I knew would happen, eventually she said 'oh, you're becoming a regular here aren't you?' you know, 'do you work round here, do you?' you know, 'are you working in an office or something?', you know. And that gave me the opportunity to say 'well, actually I work for the Health Authority' and showed her my little badge - my ID, and explained to her what I was doing. I said 'my job is to do with HIV and AIDS prevention. I know that some of the women that come in here, you know, cop off with the sailors or go on the ships and my job is really to just, you know, talk to them about health and, you know, I'm prepared to bring condoms and, you know, give them out' and it started from there. So she said 'come on a Monday' because that's the night that they sort of were all guaranteed to be there, and they kind of had a night off if you like.
You see, I don't think you can say it's as black and white as like a girl standing on the street corner and dipping down to look into a car as it goes past saying 'do you want business?' That's really up front, and very black and white. You know, it's the same as the women who work in the saunas, or the parlours. A guy comes in, pays his money, looks at the women and says 'here you are, I'll have her' and it's all cut and dried and straight forward. Around this whole issue of the Dock Road, seafarers whatever, it's all kind of muddled up and a hazy grey, you know. So it really gets on my nerves when people look down their nose and say, you know, this that and the other and define a situation like that as prostitution. But the woman who won't you know, give the husband his conjugal rights until he's painted the bathroom, isn't a prostitute."
highlights and high hopes
"I did that kind of work, for four years - I left in 1993, I then spent three years at John Moores University. I think probably the highlight of the whole thing was when we did the 'Safer Sex Night' in Nina's and the place was jammed packed because, when we'd advertised it and everything, I think they thought it was going to be a live sex act! [laughs] but we had a captive audience. The interesting thing about that night, it started out - it was jammed packed - it was full of like, there were lorry drivers, there were seafarers, there were loads of the women who worked, there were just like the general community that live in this area and go down on the Dock Road for a drink, you know - married couples, you know - fathers and sons, whatever.
The place was jammed packed and a lot of people we talked to, at first when we tried to talk to start to talk to them would say 'don't talk to me, I know everything there is to know about sex.' It ended up by the time we'd gone round, given out our packs and talking to people - the people who were saying 'you can't tell me anything' were saying 'My God!, I thought I knew everything there was to know, and my eyes have been opened tonight.'
I finished working down there in 1993, so I went and started working on the gay scene trying to find out what was happening in Liverpool with young lads who were renting. I was based at the Amistead project which was the health initiative. They wanted me to work at the Amistead providing I would carry on with the 'Safe in the City' work, that's working with the young men who were renting, set up a group in Southport for people who were HIV positive, just a support group, and to go back onto the Dock Road to find out what was happening because somebody in Sefton, somebody in the Health Authority in Sefton had become concerned because the rates of sexually transmitted infections had gone so high in Liverpool they thought it might be something to do with the seafarers coming in or the lorry drivers coming along and just wanted someone to go along and try to find out what was going on.
When I left the Amistead my big concern about the Portside Project was that it would all just fizzle and die, because that's actually what happened the first time I left Bootle, the first time I stopped working on the Dock Road in 1993. Though I've recently been told that Portside Project is going to be given a lot of money - well certainly enough to employ a separate little crew to just deal with the Dock Road area - so hopefully the work will carry on and improve and, you know, alter as the situation alters."
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