Hilda Hinton

It's been a revolving door since my sister moved in when she was about 14 and all her friends followed.

My children grew up and during their tumultuous teenage years, various friends would come and stay for varying amounts of time while they fixed up what was happening that left them a

I think with the exception of one, everyone's left better than when they arrived.

It is.

It's autobiographical fiction and I draw on my experiences of visiting my mum who stayed either at Parkville Hospital

private or Royal Park, sort of in the 70s.

And that was at a time where children just sort of were allowed to visit and be dropped off and roam the hallways.

And I tried to sort of reflect some of those experiences, not in a sort of trauma way, because it was also sort of fun and irreverent at times, although occasionally dark.

Yeah, it had a really big effect on me because I felt disconnected from my peers, even my dad in a way, because I didn't understand why nobody spoke about it or talked about it.

You know, certainly my peers weren't interested in that sort of thing.

They were too busy worrying about Duran Duran or whatever.

So I felt very isolated but I also felt like I was part of something when I was there and that included when mum was home in her flat, often with the same people I saw in the hospital's

all sort of gathered together during their up periods.

Yeah, I felt it normalising.

There was a stark difference between the two.

The private one was much more pleasant, not just in the

sort of decor and the fittings, but the staff were friendly and interactive and the patients didn't quite seem, yeah, they seemed a little more accessible and a little more together actually.

So I much preferred going there to Royal Park where it felt sort of dark and chaotic.

Well, I guess I stopped writing when family responsibilities took over.

I wrote when I was young.