Getting to Know You: Elaine Stewart

What’s your earliest memory?

My dad was a miner and my mum worked in the pit canteen, so my earliest memories are waking up in my gran’s and not remembering how I got there. They would wrap me up and carry me down before they went to bed. 

I would always wake up and my cousins would be there because gran was the caretaker for all of us. She had maybe 10 of us in the house at the one time. 

You’d either be going straight from school to gran’s and staying, or you’d be going down at night when they were on day shift. 

They worked predominantly at Pennyvenie and Minnivey, which were in the area that I live. My dad was there until they closed. 

What were you like at school?

I was a wee round character, quite shy and reserved. It wasn’t until I hit secondary school that I found solace in the punk movement. I ended up a punk rocker. 

I think that’s where my politics and activism come from. I suppose the anarchist in me came out. I was about 13 or 14 then.

It was a group of boys that sort of introduced me to it. They had their own band, one of them had blue and black hair and they wore dog collars. It was the dress and the music for me. I became good friends with them, and my other friends and I would hang about and listen to their music, which probably then we thought was fantastic. I don’t know what it would be like if we were to go back and listen to it now. I still listen to punk music, much to my son’s dismay. 

But yeah, when I was smaller, I was just wee and kind of chubby and quite a quiet child. 

What’s your most treasured possession?

My two dogs. I have a black lab called Jess and a French bulldog called Bella. I got Bella by default because of my son’s sister. I call her my daughter; she had quite a tragic past, her mum and dad died young. I took her in and she’s been with me for years. So, when she came, so did the French bulldog.

We’re all part of the family, we’re a blended family. 

What’s your guiltiest pleasure?

Love Island. You know, when you’ve been reading and speaking to people all day in meetings it’s nice at nighttime to blank out the world. Watching Love Island, you don’t really need to think about anything else. 

I enjoy those kinds of reality things at night. 

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

When I was 18 I went to live in New York. I had been working in a factory in the local area and I hated the routine of having to get up every morning and go and sew nightdresses. My friend had left to go to New York City to become a nanny and she’d come back in the summer and said to me ‘look, we can get you a job, do you want to come?’

I went and stayed out there for about a year, but I couldn’t apply for a green card, so I couldn’t stay. So, if I could go back in time, I would have been better at looking for a sponsor because she’s still there, now in Miami, and has a great life and I talk to her every other day. 

I kind of regret coming home, but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here, so things turn out for the best. 

Do you have any stories from your time in New York?

I stayed with a minister and a social worker and we lived down in the meat factory area. Years before that there were meat factories, where we lived had been renovated into a massive flat. 

I remember having the baby I was looking after with me, her name was Emily, and I would always go down the street and there was a wee barbers on the corner. The guy who worked there was called Scotty because he was from Scotland – Linlithgow. He shouted me in one day and asked if I was from Scotland. I said aye and he stuck the wee yin down in his chair and cut her hair – he’d given her bangs. I had to explain to her mum and dad, who had been trying to grow her hair out, that before I knew it, he just cut away. But they were raging.

I was barred from his shop by the family, but I dearly loved him. He was a wee old Scottish guy that reminded me of home. 

What’s the worst pain you’ve ever experienced?

I suppose it was watching my dad after my mum died. She died with breast cancer not long after she retired. She did everything, she paid the bills, went to the bank. So, for 17 years after she went, he was left. 

It was just watching him struggle to come to terms with living without her. That’s one of the worst pains. 

What’s your top film or TV programme of all time?

Titanic, because every Sunday night I used to go to bed with my boy when he was just wee. He’s now openly gay but at the time he just loved the film, and I always remember my mum watched it with him once and she told me when the Titanic came into the port he said, ‘oh Gran, look at Rosie’s hat’. So from then on, I knew he was gay. 

We watched it every Sunday night and I still love it because it reminds me of him being a wee boy. 

What was the last book you read?

It was Jess Phillips’ How to Become an MP.

You must have paid good attention to that. 

She did resonate with me, because she was working class, deciding to become an MP and the struggle of not having much money to do the campaigning. 

My favourite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. I left school with no qualifications, straight into a factory at 16, so I went back to school when I came back from America and we read that in my Higher English. I’ve read it a few times since then because initially it was for writing essays, but going back and reading it, it was about life and injustice.