In 1993 the Avondale Hotel in Eastbourne stopped taking in
holidaymakers to accommodate people receiving social security with nowhere else
to go. The Outsiders tells the story of four of them.
CARLA has "always liked being by the sea, it's nice - lots to look out to
in the mornings. Something to do when there's nothing to do". After a
turbulent childhood, she left home at sixteen. Taking drugs from about fourteen
onwards after seeing her friends doing the same she admitted she liked it so she
did it again, until she was taking drugs every day. After meeting GLEN, who
helped her get off the drugs she now finds herself pregnant, yet optimistic at
her situation. Realising that having a child will be "hard work and
expensive" it is nonetheless "something to look forward to".
Born in Eastbourne, Glen has also had an extremely difficult upbringing. From a
family of many schizophrenics, he suffers from epileptic fits. "I've got a
different brain to a normal person" he confides, admitting "I'm not
crazy as such, but I can be". Having witnessed his father beating up his
mother he carries with him a considerable amount of anger and hurt towards him.
"If I had the chance, I 'd shoot the f*****", he notes. Telling of the
considerable heart-ache his father caused him he remembers: "I didn't see
him until I was 14, he sent me a card every year, no present, just a card and it
weren't enough to make me feel I had a dad? it would have been nice to have a
few toys when I was younger, a nice few things to keep."
Similarly, JAMIE from Bristol had problems with his father: When he was eleven
or twelve his father "stopped coming round" to see him. "Maybe
this could be part of the story, I don't know" confiding that he thinks
what his father did was a "pretty gutless thing to do". In 1995 he was
sent to Horfield Prison in Bristol after a series of burglaries in nearby Bath.
At the time he was smoking crack cocaine and injecting heroin - he ended up
spending six months in a secure unit. Now he feels that the amphetamines he was
taking have had a permanent effect on his brain. Dearly wanting nothing more
than to be "level" and "normal", his desire is to:
"have a job, have a car, have a girlfriend, have a house, be normal, to fit
in with everyone else instead of being an outcast".
DARREN also bears the scars of being young and involved with drugs. "When I
was on the streets I used to glue sniff", he recalls. Later he took other
drugs and became homeless. "I've slept on junctions in the middle of the
night when it's pouring with rain ? on street corners, in some of most
ridiculous places where you wouldn't let your children sleep". In the
winter time, for instance, he would watch all the people returning home,
"all suited and booted" and remembers clearly "the loneliness and
the despair of it all, begging at sixteen". Beyond all of the despair was a
certain degree of incredulousness that it was actually happening to him.
Beginning to slash himself with razor blades, he would take anything to
"numb the pain" - a pain which was more mental than physical. "I
was hurting a lot" he remembers. Not being able to change this extremely
difficult past he looks forward now to doing the best he can with the future.
With someone to love him for the first time, the future is looking bright:
"Vicky is probably the first woman in my life to completely and utterly
stand by me"
Likewise Carla has only really found love through Glen: "I love him because
I haven't been treated so well before". Glen is less romantic: "I love
her because she's good looking sometimes" Despite this optimistic talk of
love, it is impossible to forget that the Avondale residents have real pressing
problems. When Glen doesn't take his medicine "then people I don't like
should watch out". It is clear also that Glen has much greater problems
than most people when he lists "sleeping" as his favourite occupation,
"because when you're asleep you don't have no worries".
With considerable style and grace, Dominic Savage's powerful and compelling film
depicts the obverse side of Cool Britannia - a section of society which almost
never gets a voice.
