POSSESSION AND OBSESSION

THE shocking case of a young woman who vanished on her way to work in Edinburgh ended in her former lover's arrest in connection with her murder.
Suzanne Pilley's body has not yet been found. But her ex, David Gilroy, was found guilty of killing her. During his High Court trial, disturbing evidence emerged of his actions in the days and weeks leading up to her disappearance.
This article appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News after a jury had returned their 'guilty' verdict.

 

THE REAL LIFE FATAL ATTRACTION

IT WAS supposed to be all over. When Suzanne Pilley told David Gilroy their relationship had finally come to an end, it should have been time for both to just move on.

Of course, what happened then is now a tragic chapter in Edinburgh's criminal history.

In the month before she went missing, married Gilroy, 49, bombarded bookkeeper Ms Pilley with more than 400 text messages. He turned up unexpectedly at her flat. And at one point, a neighbour told the court how a man fitting Gilroy's description was prowling around outside her home.

Far from taking "no" for an answer, twisted Gilroy seemed to take rejection as an invitation to relentlessly stalk and hound his ex-lover.

Tragically, it was a real-life fatal attraction that would have the most heart-breaking conclusion imaginable.

Now behind bars for Ms Pilley's murder, Gilroy will be sentenced on April 18 - by sheer chance the same day Justice Secretary Kenny McAskill will officially launch National Stalking Awareness Day at the Scottish Parliament, an event aimed at promoting zero tolerance of stalking.

Of course, most break-ups do not end in anything like the tragedy that unfolded for Suzanne and her grieving family. Yet it's estimated that there are more than 120,000 stalking incidents in the UK each year.

The Network for Surviving Stalking (NSS) believes ex-partner harassment - perpetrated by the likes of Gilroy - is the most prevalent type, in around 50 per cent of cases.
Clearly it's far from normal behaviour.

So what exactly is the root of the problem? What goes on in the minds of some that prevents them from simply accepting that a relationship is over? And why do they then resort to desperate - sometimes violent - measures to try and win their partner back?

According to Beverley Stone, a relationship psychologist and author of Stay or Leave? Six Steps to Resolving Your Relationship Indecision, it is love that is to blame. "It's simply because they're still in love. They can't understand their partner's feelings have changed and they're convinced they can change their mind," she says.

Pleading phone calls can follow, and "accidentally" turning up at the same places can start. They might even try and involve other parties. "Getting friends to talk to you and try to persuade you to change your mind isn't uncommon," warns Stone, adding that they're working on the theory your friends will make you realise that breaking up was a mistake.

Endless texts and phone calls, not necessarily containing obvious threats - Gilroy's apparent mode of attack - are another typical warning sign of an ex-partner who's failed to cope with romantic rejection.

While it's a giant leap between annoying, clingy behaviour to outright violence, according to psychologist Ann Moulds, who founded Action Scotland Against Stalking after being hounded by a stalker who'd send her vile, sexually explicit material through the post, ignoring their behaviour could be fatal.

"Some of the most dangerous stalkers never actually issue an overt threat," she says. "You can imagine them saying 'but all I did was send her flowers or a letter, there was nothing threatening', but this can be someone who has a total fixation on another.

"It's gender-based violence, it's cultural attitudes towards women. Think of fathers giving their daughter away to another man - possession," she adds."But there are also cases where it's a personality disorder. People who simply can't take rejection, there's jealousy and they need to have power."

Hoping they will just give up and go away can be a fatal mistake. Lynsey Methven, 31, was hounded by her ex, 43-year-old builder Frank Moore, after she ended their relationship in December 2010. Some phone messages were threatening, others desperate protestations of love.

Ms Methven and her new boyfriend, chef Stewart Taylor, 33, did not report his behaviour to the police. Instead, they hoped he'd eventually just go away.

But Moore didn't go away. He returned to Ms Methven's flat in the Grange in January last year, beat Mr Taylor, leaving him dead, and torched the property, leaving his ex-girlfriend badly injured.

According to Edinburgh-based chartered psychologist Ben Williams, there are certain characteristic traits that can have links to "stalking" behaviour. "First of all there's this egocentricity of certain people. Their rules seem to be 'I am right, you said you loved me'. They are not ready to change their minds.

"Others can't appreciate how other people feel, they are detached. They are not very empathetic to others. "Some people are prone to emotional fixations. They are so entangled with a boyfriend or girlfriend they can't let them go. They play the same records over and over again because it reminds them of when they first met. They go to the same places they used to go together, the same holidays.

"Even when they move on into a new relationship or even marriage, they will hear a record and go into a depressed state because it reminds them of that person."

A broken relationship sparks a kind of mourning process, he adds. "There is shock,
disbelief, rage and perhaps thoughts of revenge, fantasy - 'they'll come back to me' stage - depression, guilt and cold realisation that it's over.

"The problem is when some people get fixed at a point in that process - and if it's the rage stage, it can be when things turn bad."

Most recent Scottish stalking and harassment statistics available, from last year, show that five per cent of men and six per cent of women have experienced stalking and harassment. The report from Scotland's chief statistician also showed younger age groups are more likely than older to be victims - 11 per cent of 16 to 24 year olds reported at least one form of stalking and harassment in the previous 12 months, compared with two per cent of those aged 60 and over.

The majority - 62 per cent - of those who experienced stalking and harassment knew the offender, 12 per cent had seen them before but did not know them, while 23 per cent did not know them at all.

Scotland is ahead of England in dealing with stalking and harassment cases. A specific offence of stalking was created in December 2010, punishable by up to five years in jail.

More than 400 people were prosecuted in the first year.

Earlier this month, the sheriff court in Lithlithgow heard how stalker Lavakumar Ramathasan, 29, terrorised his ex-girlfriend, Simmy Panesar. Every day he waited for her at Linlithgow train station, sitting next to her and constantly pestering her as she travelled to Stirling University.

He also bombarded her with telephone calls on a daily basis. Ms Panesar eventually
called police and Ramathasan, who now lives in London, was arrested.
He appeared in court after earlier having pleaded guilty to engaging in a course of conduct which caused her fear and alarm.

However, according to Ann Moulds, it's virtually impossible to assess the full extent of stalking and harassment as many cases go unreported. "It can be very difficult to go to the police about someone who you've had a relationship with or, in Suzanne Pilley's case, who you work beside.

"Stalkers display obsessive, fixated or jealous behaviour and it's important to act because you don't know where it could lead - perhaps to violence, rape or murder," she adds.

"We know people still don't recognise stalking behaviour even when it's happening to them," says Network for Surviving Stalking chief executive Alexis Bowater. "Even though we may feel uncomfortable with someone's obsessive behaviour - all too often we put up with it.

"We think stalkers are sinister figures - like in films. In reality, stalkers can be ex-partners, friends or people you know."

She says more than one million women and 900,000 men report being stalked in the UK every year. But 77 per cent of stalking victims don't report the situation until more than 100 incidents have occurred - which could put lives at risk.

She advises erring on the side of caution and listening to our own alarm bells: "So often we don't trust our own instinct," she adds. "People make us feel uncomfortable but we've been conditioned to ignore it - laugh it off, hope the problem goes away."

*Picture posed by models.

Legal stance

Scotland has legislation in place to help take criminal action against stalkers and harassing behaviour. And civil courts can also provide support for victims. "You can go to court and get an interim interdict to prevent wrongful contact," says Steven Goldie of Brodie's solicitors. "And by attaching a 'power of arrest', should the person breach the interim interdict, they can be arrested."

The Scotsman Publications Limited Appeared Edinburgh Evening News, www.edinburghnews.com. 23 March 2012

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?

Every day medical science seems to push the boundaries further and further. Mother Nature is now tinkered with and tweaked, usually it's to our vast benefit, but sometimes questions may arise that make us wonder just whether we're pushing the limits that shade too far.
This interview with medical ethics expert and author Hazel McHaffie revealed the very personal story behind her own interest in a fascinating subject.

 

A LIFE OR DEATH DILEMMA

THE tiny bundle tucked safely in his cot was just three weeks old. Fragile, new, absolutely perfect, and proud new mum Hazel McHaffie couldn't resist a quick peek at her baby son as she got ready for her first outing to the shops since his birth.

It was 40 years ago. No wonder, though, that Hazel can't forget it. For there, lying before her was her perfect son, life seeping from his tiny frame.

"I found him moribund in his cot," she says, recalling events as if they happened yesterday. "He was in the process of dying."

A nurse and midwife, she was acutely aware that time was rapidly running out. So she bundled her tiny son into the family car and screeched, heart thumping, to the nearest hospital paediatric ward, swiftly bypassing accident and emergency where she knew her little boy stood no chance of surviving the delay.

There, Hazel watched a frantic attempt to find a vein in her baby's tiny arm before desperate staff gave up and sliced open his leg, a last chance bid to feed him vital antibiotics. "Staff went into overdrive," she recalls.

Of course, Hazel had far more knowledge than most of what was happening. And, in hindsight, perhaps that might not have been for the best.

For as baby Jonathan's young life tottered precariously on a knife edge, Hazel wondered whether the uphill battle to try to keep him alive might come with too high a cost.

Perhaps a more loving and kinder act would be to simply allow him to die.

Hazel now regularly recalls that dreadful dilemma as she delves into the kind of medical quandaries and life-or-death decisions that confront doctors, nurses and medical science every day.

For what happened to Jonathan in 1971 drove her to switch her career from the medical front line to become one of the country's most respected voices on issues of medical ethics. She would go on to write a BMA award-winning book which debated parents' involvement in medical decisions concerning their children's life prospects - today it's regarded as a bible among healthcare professionals - and became deputy director of Edinburgh University's Research Institute of Medical Ethics.

But while the issues surrounding medical ethics and so-called Frankenstein science are rarely out of the headlines - from questions over fertility treatments which discard dozens of healthy embryos on the road to creating one live birth to the sci-fi like possibilities of cloning and "designer" babies that await in the future - she discovered they had the greatest impact when she was able to move them from the laboratory and into real-life scenarios. Just like her own . . .

"People tend to switch off when listening to the theory behind it all," says Hazel, now retired and who has just published her second novel themed around the controversial issues of contemporary medical ethics.

"We're all much better at listening to real stories of people. But they are bound by the truth. So I thought a better way to get people to think about the issues that can affect us all, was to make them fictional."

Her latest in a series of medical ethics novels is Saving Sebastian, set in a fictional fertility clinic in Edinburgh, where the nightmare of a possible embryo mix-up has led to a couple becoming birth parents to someone else's child. While that issue threatens to tear staff and patients' lives apart, the tension is fuelled by another patient's plea for a "saviour sibling" baby, created from a specially selected embryo in order to help save the life of its desperately ill older brother.

Both are, says Hazel, very modern dilemmas which simply weren't around in 1971, while she stood by baby Jonathan's hospital bed and debated her own dilemma - whether death would be a blessed release from the nightmare life he might be facing.

"The consultant paediatrician came to see us," says Hazel, who lives in Loanhead with her husband David, a retired Telford College lecturer. "He said he was really sorry but we had to prepare for the worst.

"But, against the odds, Jonathan did survive for a few days."

But there was the underlying fear that such a fragile little life could hardly be expected to emerge from such a trauma unscathed.

"After three days the consultant showed me all the test results. He said 'Look, there is no chance he will be normal, he will be mentally or physically impaired'.

"I went home on the bus praying that if that was the case, he'd be better just dying. I didn't want that kind of life for him."

Against outrageous odds, Jonathan grew stronger. He was physically and mentally perfect, later he went on to go to university to gain a first-class honours degree and a PhD. Today he works in finance, is married and has a family of his own.

Hazel concedes that changes in practice - ironically largely due to her own research that has helped ensure parents' voices are heard at vital points in their children's care - means if it happened today, the outcome might have been different for her son.

"At that time, doctors did what they thought was right. If it had been later and I'd been consulted on my wishes, I'd have said 'don't continue with treatment, let's love him and wrap his short life up in love and care and give him the best life we can give him, but let him die'.

"And I would have deprived that child of a fantastic life and our family of a fantastic person."

The experience hovers in the background of every ethical issue she looks at, acutely aware that the decision-making process is so finely balanced, so fraught and so complex and the results, sadly, can sometimes be fatal.

"We are all very fallible in decision making," she agrees. "Doctors can be wrong. And I was wrong. Jonathan's a very mature thinking person. He understands that it was what I felt was right at the time."

But while that experience drove her to switch to researching medical ethics, even Hazel couldn't have imagined the scale of scientific developments that would eventually further blur the boundaries between nature and science.

Cloning in the 1970s was the stuff of science fiction, genetically engineered embryos and face transplants more likely to be the subject of Hollywood fantasy than real-life dilemma.

But today the ethics debate stretches across all areas of medicine, from the creation of embryos to assisted death, from the Frankenstein idea of head transplants - an issue already raised by one American surgeon - to the notion that one day we will be able to re-grow body parts.

"Society's expectations are very high. People have come to expect that everything will be done to save their loved one's life without fully appreciating all the consequences," Hazel points out. "People think 'Oh, they can do amazing things these days' and there's this sense of high expectation that has changed how we make decisions.

"And there's tremendous pressure on people's rights. People have a right to have children . . . Well, have they? Who says?" she continues. "There's an emphasis on equality, we have the right to have the latest things, the latest wonder drug, irrespective of costs and consequences.

"Take face transplants - how would you feel having someone close to you with someone else's face? If you can transplant a face, what about a head? Or a brain?

"All that is fuelling the changes we are seeing today."

There are, she says, endless ethical dilemmas and questions. The answers, however, are harder to find.

"The thing is, there's really very few definitive answers," she points out.

"It's about all of us looking at our own values, systems, beliefs, history and deciding ourselves where to draw the line."

n Saving Sebastian by Hazel McHaffie is published by Luath Press, GBP9.99. The book is being launched at Blackwell Bookshop, South Bridge, tonight at 6.30pm. For tickets, contact events@luath.co.uk.

Giving birth to ever more difficult debate

From the first time someone used a herb or a concoction to save another's life, medicine has been interfering with the nature's course. But pushing the boundaries of medicine can throw up a whole raft of ethical dilemmas.

Just yesterday it emerged that scientists have found stem cells in human ovaries from which it may one day be possible to produce an "unlimited" supply of eggs, raising the possibility of life-long fertility.

But while fertility programmes bring baby joy for millions, a report last year revealed more than 30 human embryos are created for every successful IVF birth. Hundreds of thousands have been destroyed in the name of research over the past 20 years.

The debate over "designer babies" selected for their sex, health and for potential to save siblings' lives - the theme of Saving Sebastian - rages on.

Cloning has dominated medical ethics debates since Dolly the sheep was cloned at Roslin Institute in 1996. And transplant advances are also fuelling the debate. In 2001 Professor Robert White from Ohio announced he had transplanted the whole head of a monkey on to a different body.

www.edinburghnews.com 28 Feb.2012

Sharing the tricks of the trade has me all fired up

THE boardroom - 16 candidates, each desperate to be chosen. There's the tension and the bitchiness, the caustic comment and a roll of the eyes from Nick. Lord Alan Sugar's damning forefinger. The shame accompanying those dreaded words, "You're fired."

At one point, Sharon McAllister yearned to be The Apprentice, selected by the then Sir Alan as the pick of the second series, and handed the opportunity to leave Scotland and work with him in the glamour and excitement of London.

A few years later, however, as she lay on a hospital bed, her unborn baby's life and hers dangling by a thread, the most important thing in the world wasn't a television reality show.

It wasn't the challenges and adrenaline kick of running her own thriving business.

It was simply surviving.

"I nearly died," she reveals. "It was a few days before I had my second son, Carter. I had septicemia and Bell's Palsy. At one point my parents were asked to come to hospital because the medics didn't think both me and my baby would survive. Or even if one of us would live.

"A couple of days later Carter was born - my wee miracle." The horror of staring death in the face and the nightmare of wondering what might become of her baby and her 11-year-old son Reece if anything did happen to her, a single mum, made her reassess life.

At one point fiercely ambitious - she once tried to persuade Madonna to endorse her baby clothes firm - she stepped back and took a year out to recover.

Paralysed in her face and arm for six months, there was little choice but to sell her interests in the internet television firm she ran and concentrate on just getting better.

Perhaps that experience of what matters most could serve as a lesson in real life for the next breed of eager, attention-seeking apprentices who last night strutted on to the nation's television screens.

The candidates, Team Sterling for the girls, Team Phoenix for the boys, set about splashing GBP500 of the boss' cash on blank mouse mats and mugs, teddies and bags to be printed with money- spinning motifs and slogans aimed at making some cash.

There was long and ill-informed debate among the boys over profit margins, which took priority over design. The girls squabbled over motifs at the expense of thinking through margins. There were poor quality products, toe-curling declarations of personal ability, some selling and one very public sacking.

Sitting at home, Sharon was among the eight million or so viewers who tuned in. As head of the Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Jewel and Esk Valley College, she has more than a passing interest in what the young business minds of today are thinking, even if it is whether to opt for a Union Flag design on a teddy or a red London bus on the front of a mug.

And she appreciates better than most that what we see on The Apprentice may not be the whole story. "

To be honest, last year's series was the first one I'd watched for a while," says Sharon, 35, who appeared in the 2006 series.

"I actually really enjoyed watching it. But things aren't always as they seem. In day-to-day life you'd go on the internet to search for something to help you. But on The Apprentice we didn't have access to that.

"In one task, we made calendars to sell for Great Ormond Street Hospital. Naturally, you'd want them to feature children, but Sir Alan decided the boys would get the babies to work with - no doubt for obvious reasons - and we'd get a lot of random things not necessarily connected with a children's hospital.

"On television, it looked like we were picking stupid things for our calendars, like we didn't have a clue what we were doing. Which, of course, made better television."

Sharon, who left a job with Forth Valley College to take part in the series, made it to week eight before getting the proverbial "finger".

It didn't particularly worry her. Instead, she drew on the positives of what she'd learned and enjoyed a string of lucrative opportunities - from public speaking appointments to giving business advice and, in 2007, launching a visionary Edinburgh-based internet television company.

It was while she was driving that forward that, in 2009 and heavily pregnant, life took a dramatic twist. "I was really very poorly," she recalls. "I was paralysed for six months. It was a miracle that we both survived."

As she recovered Sharon occupied herself taking a Masters in psychology. When she did venture back to work, it wasn't in the hothouse of the business world, but a civil service position with Health Scotland analysing addictive behaviour.

But while that was fulfilling, her real passion has always been education. And now, it appears, she's straddling the worlds of business and education, helping to mould the next generation of business minds.

Far from creating apprentices, what she has in mind is equipping business students with the vital skills to think for themselves, to launch their own businesses and push the Scottish economy into some kind of optimistic future.

Recently she unveiled the college's Nuclei business support unit, a base for up to ten new student companies, where those studying the vital components of running a firm can also have hands-on experience of actually doing it. Dubbed the "incubator", it provides office equipment and the support of the college's business lecturers.

Alongside that ground-breaking idea is her other pet project, a six-month course for 12 students, aged between 16 and 19, selected for a new style of learning which takes them out of the lecture theatre and into real-life business meetings and contact-building environments. The incubator is one way for people who want to start up a business in a safe environment, with experts around them to help," she says. "And I'm trying to set up courses so people have a business running from day one, so it's not all lectures and sitting in class.

"I want to promote enterprise and entrepreneurship," she adds. "So when people do leave the college they will have the ability to be agile and to problem solve and respond quickly - all key to working in industry."

She stuck her head above the parapet in 2006 to enter The Apprentice. And today she'd like to see more young people follow the lead - not necessarily on TV, but prepared to wear with pride their determination. "I'd like to see more ambition and more hunger in young people. They are at an exciting stage in their lives, there needs to be more ambition."

As for The Apprentice, she'll watch with the rest of us, grateful to have been among the select few who did it, and slightly envious of the next 16 to be put through their paces. "I'm glad I did it," she says. "I learned a lot about myself. I look back and I'm chuffed. It was all good. And, yes, I'd do it again."

The Apprentice, BBC One, Wednesdays at 9pm
Appeared Edinburgh Evening News, 21 March 2012
www.edinburghnews.com

It don't mean a thing..it's no more than a casual fling

SHE doesn't sound like some kind of scarlet woman. She doesn't purr or pout and drop saucy lines into the conversation. In fact, she could be the woman next door.

It's entirely possible that she be could your wife. Or, perhaps, it's your husband she's sleeping with. "Am I a mistress?," Christine* ponders the question for a second. Being labelled as someone's "bit on the side" doesn't fit her quite middle-of-the-road image. After all she's a mother in her mid-forties, married for ten years, in a professional, demanding job. Well-educated, politely spoken and, she insists, absolutely in control.

"A mistress in my mind - that's got financial and material benefits, it's a bit one-sided. So no, I definitely don't see myself as a mistress, more of a," she pauses, then adds: "a 'special' friend."

Perhaps even more at odds with the image of the "other woman", is the key element to what is motivating this middle-class mum from East Lothian to leap into bed with an equally married lover.

It is, she points out without a trace of irony, all about keeping her own wounded marriage alive.

"I was so fed-up with my husband neglecting me," she confesses.

"The sexual relationship died and we became more like friends. Now there are lies and deceit, that's true. But now I have more self-confidence and taking action and control of my life makes me feel good. It gives me optimism to go on with my marriage."

The notion that a marriage might actually be saved by an affair is an unlikely theory. But Christine maintains she's far from the only wife - or husband for that matter - in Lothian who's adopted drastic tactics to keep a wobbly relationship glued together.

"It's certainly not uncommon," she quickly points out. "There's a lot of it going on."

Since taking the plunge and logging on to a website that specialises in bringing unhappy spouses together for extra-marital flings, she's encountered quite a few married men who, just like her, have taken drastic action to boost an unhappy married life.

But can the theory that fractured marriages might not only survive but actually thrive with a third party in the background, really stand up to scrutiny? Or is an affair of the heart almost certainly the kiss of death for wedded bliss?

There's plenty of scope for a rescue plan to aid flailing modern marriages. January is, after all, prime-time for couples to head to the divorce lawyer.

This week's headlines confirm celebrities aren't immune - television presenter Andrea McLean and singer Seal and wife Heidi Klum have kicked off 2012 with news that married life has fallen by the wayside.

There's no suggestion that anyone else is involved in any of their relationships. But if Christine's theory is right, perhaps there should be.

"I amazed myself when I took the first step into doing this," she recalls.

"I thought 'hold on, what I have got with my husband is far too good to mess up'. I didn't want to break up the relationship, so this actually supplies that female need and in a lot of ways makes my marriage more stable."

According to a new survey for the internet dating site she joined, www.illicitencounters.com, cheating is more common than some might think: 17 per cent of married Scots say they've cheated at least once, while 21.41 per cent say they would if they were certain not to get caught out.

Of course, Christine's not suggesting having a fling can save every marriage. Indeed, perhaps vital to her relationship continuing may well be the fact that her husband is oblivious to what's going on behind his back.

"He doesn't know but even if he did, it wouldn't be in his nature to discuss it anyway," shrugs Christine. "I was annoyed at one point that he paid so little attention he didn't even notice, but now it actually makes my life a lot easier because I don't have to tell so many lies."

Modern working life of long hours and late meetings means it's easy for Christine to hide her secret dates with the lover she met via the website. "I work away from home, I generally don't have a regular time that I'm in at night. But there have been close calls," she adds. "I met one lovely man who turned out to stay on the same street as me. I said 'hold on, this isn't on', it was just too close to home."

Cheating isn't in her nature, says Christine, 47. Indeed it took an unusual chain of events to set her on course of sleeping with another man after ten years of marriage. "He discovered that his ex-wife had moved on into a lesbian civil partnership and the sexual side of our relationship died.

"He kept saying he would go for counselling, but didn't. Then while he was making excuses, I found out he was seeing another woman."

Stung but aware his betrayal resulted from his feelings of confusion, Christine asked herself what she wanted. She didn't want to split up, so the alternative, she says, was to have an affair. Now she has a relationship with a married man which, she says, isn't love but is "friends with benefits".

There is, of course, the not insignificant issue of his wife. Quite probably at home, juggling kids and housework, unaware of just what her cheating hubby is up to.

"The men I've met tend to be very genuine men," insists Christine. "Quite often their wives are involved in full-blown affairs.

"But I don't want to break up any relationship, which is why there's an understanding at the outset that we both have something to lose if we're not careful. Neither is calling the shots."

n *Names have been changed.


'The passion fizzled out. Sex became non-existant'

SO can a fractured marriage be saved from complete collapse by having an affair?

Like Christine, Peter*, 40, found himself in a sexless marriage but with no appetite to actually end it.

"I'm great friends with my wife, we get on really well, but there's a need that isn't fulfilled," he says.

"But I don't want to go through a divorce and hurt my family. Some might say it's a bit selfish, but in my own way I'm thinking of my partner and children and what impact breaking up would have."

His first affair last year lasted five months. Today he's in the unusual situation of being married but definitely "looking".

"I've been married for nearly 20 years," adds Peter, an architect. "We married young, the wee one came along, my partner went through an early menopause and sex became non-existent.

"We went for counselling but it hasn't helped. The passion in our marriage just fizzled out.

"This hasn't been an easy decision and it's very dangerous territory. But I thought, I'm still young, I still need a bit of excitement. Yes it's a big risk but I think a lot of people are going through the same thing."

According to Rosie Freeman-Jones, spokeswoman for dating site Illicit Encounters, people seek extra-marital flings for myriad reasons. "Many feel bored, which may not be any reflection on their partner. Most people who join us tend to have been married an average of eight years.

"I think a lot of them miss the sparky bits at the start of a relationship, meeting people and exploring sexuality. They miss having some fun without having to worry about the nitty-gritty of life."

Many have similar stories to Christine and Peter - that their own sex lives have dwindled but don't particularly want their marriage to fail, she adds.

"If people are genuinely unhappy in a relationship, then they'll leave because there's no stigma to divorce these days. It's more common that there's an element of relationship missing but they don't consider it a complete 'deal breaker'."

Tim McConville, practice manager of Couple Counselling Lothian, cautions against thinking an affair is "good" for a marriage: "People have to ask what would happen if their partner was doing the same. Is everyone playing by the same rules and if they are, then why not talk it through?

"And if they're not prepared to talk, then they might have to ask what are their feelings for their partner."

There can be devastating implications, he adds. "When a partner comes across an affair it's a time of devastation for them, there can be immense grief and it feels like something has died.

"Sometimes it forces them to look at the relationship anew and they might well stay with their partner but both agree to see other people. At least that means everyone's playing by the same rules."

Contact Couples Counselling Lothian at www.cclothian.org.uk or call 0131-556 1527

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News January 2012
www.edinburghnews.com

I'm proud to have put us back in the frame

THE cafe door at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery swings open and the noise is quite unexpected for a sprawling Victorian building in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

There's a clatter of coffee cups and a constant buzz of chatter. Young mums are negotiating buggies through packed tables and there, in the middle of it all, gallery director James Holloway is laughing, hands gesturing flamboyantly, dapper in three-piece tweed suit, nattering with a couple of female visitors.

The racket might not be quite at the same decibel level that Holloway is about to experience as he - surprisingly for a man more acquainted with the genteel world of art - roars off towards retirement on the back of a 1000cc Ducati motorbike, leaving behind the gallery he's just helped steer through a GBP17.6 million revamp. But, like the growl of that gleaming motorbike, the sound of a busy portrait gallery is one that Holloway can't get enough of.

"Isn't it great?," he grins, striding through the cafe where perhaps one of the gallery's oddest portraits of all - a curious figure clutching a Brussels sprout plant with a candle sticking out the top - stares down on mums struggling with toddlers, the pensioners, the students and those drawn to see just what all that money buys you in terms of a refurbishment.

That particular Richard Waitte painting, he says, remains one of his favourites in the entire gallery. It is, he explains, about role reversal. The man holding the sprout plant with the candle is the Earl of Cromarty in the role of his fool - a lesson that behind every image is a much deeper, more complex story.

Perhaps it's particularly apt, then, that it's this portrait that tickles Holloway most of all. Delve deeper and you'll find there's much more to this gallery boss than initially meets the eye.

For a start, there's the lifelong love of daredevil speed and motorbikes - soon the 63-year-old will leave the decorous art world behind for an epic journey on his Ducati through Europe to the Italian Dolomites.

But if leather-clad biker is diametrically opposed to the traditional image of staid gallery boss, then what of Holloway's gleeful recollection of his time in the wrestling ring, when he swapped the National Gallery on the Mound for smack downs in front of roaring crowds of burly blokes in grim industrial towns?

"It was an antidote to galleries," he says with a broad grin. "It's easy to work in a gallery, and it can be a bit 'precious'. Yet here was this other world out there that was interesting and engaging and I saw there was more to life."

One anecdote that perhaps best sums up how at odds this image of art expert turned grappler is could be this - it was 1972 and Sussex-born Holloway, 23, with his cut-glass accent, and fresh from the Court- auld Institute of Art in London, had just arrived to work as a research assistant at the National Gallery, "ignorant as a swan" about Scotland and her art.

Keen to keep fit, he went to Meadowbank and spotted some lads wearing tracksuits.

"They all had Milton written on their tracksuits. I liked that. I thought 'Oh! Paradise Lost by Milton!'" It's fair to say 17th-century poets were not on the minds of the young chaps he'd encountered. Soon he discovered that, of course, "Milton" actually referred to Milton Road West, where their wrestling club was based.

Holloway, spry and lean, joined their ranks. His fellow wrestlers figured he was simply an attendant working at the National Gallery.

"To most of them, Goya was perfume and Rembrandt a cigar, they didn't care what I did," Holloway reflects. Besides, the gap in social backgrounds would soon be overcome after his first bout. "It was at Garscadden Town Hall, in the seventies, it was pretty rough. Everyone was shouting 'Come on, Jimmy, kill him! Kill him!' I won and was quite pleased," he says. "Then I realised the guy I'd been wrestling was called Jimmy too. It wasn't me they were shouting for, it was him. So, yes, we did get out of there pretty quickly."

He was good enough to wrestle at national level. But, by 30, the demands of training four nights a week plus a move to work at the National Museum Wales put an end to wrestling.

However, Holloway already had another outlet for the pent-up energy that working behind the scenes in the world of art couldn't quite burn off.

He had loved motorbikes since his youth when he acquired a BSA Bantam 250cc, which "broke down every weekend, I thought that was what bikes did". In Edinburgh he encountered bike dealer Ernie Page, who introduced him to a 350cc Ducati, the start of a love affair spanning decades and thousands of miles, with the odd bump and bruise thrown in.

"Oh yes, I've had a few falls, nothing terminal though," he smiles. "I came off around two and half years ago. Hit a bird at about 60mph. It hit my hand and knocked me sideways.

"I remember sliding under the bike, going along the road and then along the verge and thinking that any second now my leg will break. Then suddenly the bike slipped into a gully below and I walked away."

There were two casualties, however. "As I skidded along the grass, I ripped my boots and trousers completely off. So there I was, totally bare!"

Hopefully there will be no similar dramas during his epic European bike tour. And at least he'll have expert company. Former police motorcyclist, Alistair McLean, from Gorebridge - who he met during a Scottish National Portrait Gallery project which looked at the police in Scotland - will be by his side. Prior to that, Holloway heads to India for a catch-up with friends and to Canberra in Australia for a lecture.

In between, he'll find time to play French horn with the Colinton Orchestra, attempt to conquer his inability to garden and plot some kind of vision for how he'll spend the rest of his retirement.

The fact that he's retiring right after the gallery's triumphant reopening - and being awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours List for services to the arts - is, he insists, entirely logical.

"I have always wanted to get the portrait gallery up and running and firing on all cylinders - to use a motorbike analogy. I was in charge for 14 years, I didn't want to coast," he adds. "I wanted to go out, if possible, on a high, feeling I've achieved something."

Visitor figures confirm the gallery is, indeed, on a high. There were 52,000 visitors in December - roaring towards achieving the 300,000 visitors per annum the gallery has set its sights on.

Still, Holloway concedes that he goes with mixed feelings. Sadness to be leaving hardworking staff and friends but delight to depart at the start of a revitalised era with his number two, Nicola Kalinsky, in his place as director. "In the early Seventies, this place was out of fashion, people disliked the Victorian architecture, and portrait was seen as terribly outdated," he points out.

"Now the whole thing is completely changed, it's one of the city's favourite buildings. Portraits, from being downtrodden and portrayed as a joke are now fashionable.

"At last the gallery is getting the appreciation that it deserves," he adds.

"It has a fantastic collection, brilliant staff. It's nice to go feeling it's finally going to be firmly placed on the cultural map."

Face to face

James Holloway retires after 14 years as director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

In that time he's overseen the building's refurbishment as well as placed commissions for new work, organised groundbreaking exhibitions and acquired coveted works of art.

But while the purchase of an Allan Ramsay portrait of philosopher David Hume is among his fondest memories, the loss of one painting still grieves him.

"We had a painting which had been with us for about 50 years," he says. "It was a portrait of an Arab princess and her African Negress slave painted in 1740 by Walter Frier.

"The story behind it was that John Henderson of Fordell in Fife was shipwrecked by pirates and rescued by this princess. He married her and brought her back to Scotland with her slave.

"I actually thought [the painting] belonged to us. Then suddenly out of the blue came a letter from the owner saying it would be removed as he was going to sell it.

"We tried to raise the money but couldn't. I don't know where it is now, possibly in the Middle East. I still kick myself over it."


Evening News 31 Jan 2012

You're left to wonder why, but the only one who knows is gone

FOR a long, long time Jacqui Walton craved answers. Torment gnawed at her, one word haunted her thoughts: Why? Questions niggled every waking moment. Was there something she should have done? Could she have stopped it, did she do something wrong?

What had happened was painfully real: her husband had killed himself. A harsh, horrible, agonising fact that plunged her into the deepest of grief and the darkest of places.

But with his death and the pain of mourning came endless questions. None of which, Jacqui eventually realised, could ever be fully answered.

"I wanted to find the answer to why he did what he did," she says softly, recalling the anguished hours she spent trawling websites about mental health issues and suicide and reading heartbreaking posts on grieving widows' forums. "But now I know that there is no answer. The only person that can answer that question is gone."

Today she still grieves quietly for her husband but time has made the 50-year-old mum-of-two stronger. She's come to understand that what drove Mike to take his life at the age of 44, was a complex jigsaw of events and thoughts. None of them terribly significant to most people, perhaps, but for Mike, utterly devastating.

Unravelling the reasons why someone might suddenly tip into the darkest of places where the only release from their misery is the most drastic of acts, borders on the impossible.

Yesterday heartbreaking images of Gary Speed's widow Louise following an inquest into his death in November - which was unable to conclude if his death was accidental or intentional - revealed the strain of her grief. Her long blonde hair curtained her face as she fought to retain composure after giving harrowing evidence in which she spoke of their final row.

The Wales boss, who hours earlier had appeared relaxed and jovial on a TV sports programme, had joined her at a party. It had ended with him being pushed into a pool fully clothed, but, according to Mrs Speed was "all good fun".

At home the couple rowed over something trivial - so slight that now she can't even remember what. She ended up locked out of the house, slept in the car and next day discovered her husband dead.

Sadly, the inquest coincided with news of another high-profile suspected suicide - that of The Bill actor Colin Tarrant, 59.

Today Jacqui, sadly, can appreciate what both men's families are enduring. Like Louise Speed, she too found her husband's lifeless body. There was the nightmare of breaking the news to their two children and family, official inquiries, paperwork and then long nights alone wondering why.

Mike, shy, quiet - "he kept his thoughts to himself," recalls Jacqui - had been diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and depression years earlier. He'd attempted to take his life back then, and the risk he might try again had cast a shadow over them.

Still, it didn't prepare her for the horror she was about to face.

"I couldn't make any sense at all," she recalls. "Mike had depression and also anxiety. We all get anxious from time to time. But for Mike, what seemed small to other people would be quite significant to him."

His depression was diagnosed in the early 90s. Mike, quiet and uncomfortable about making a fuss, was not the kind to "bother the GP".

"In some ways he was really laid back about things. But in others he got very caught up. I'd think 'what are you getting so upset about that for?'," recalls Jacqui, who lives in south Edinburgh.

"It came to a head when he had two attempts the same year. I got into a panic. You question yourself and wonder if you have done something to cause this. You try to keep focused and try to keep the children occupied as much as possible to let him have some peace and quiet."

Mike, a software engineer, was prescribed anti-depressants and treated at the Royal Edinburgh. He seemed to recover, but for the next 13 years Jacqui lived with the constant fear that one day she'd return home and who knew what she might find. . . "There were times when you just got on with life," she adds. "But you'd always be thinking ahead of yourself, trying to decide if I do this will he be OK or I wonder how he will feel about that? When you love someone, you put up with the ups and the downs."

It was 2006. A family bereavement and Mike's new job had brought stress and more responsibility - factors that may well have tipped him over the edge. This time, his suicide was complete.

Jacqui sought support from friends only to realise none could fully appreciate what she was going through. "I was aware that friends had their own families and I didn't want to be a burden on them," she adds.

So she shared her feelings with other widows in online support groups but found no mention of suicide or mental health as a cause of death. Jacqui sent out messages asking if any had experienced loss through suicide and replies slowly came in. A new support group began to take root.

She now runs Widowed by Suicide, a website that is helping more than 100 widows from across the globe through their grief.

She also shared her experiences through the Scottish Government's See Me campaign, which fights to end stigma surrounding mental illness and has started working in administration for local mental health charity, Penumbra.

"I feel as though I'm doing some good in the background," she explains. "I often find when I talk about Mike's suicide, the person I'm talking to usually knows someone who's completed suicide, attempted or is on medication for a mental health problem."

She points out that the only guarantee depression and, sadly, suicide, brings is that anyone, anywhere can be affected. "Sometimes the person will seem to have everything to live for: loving family, profession, financial security," adds Jacqui. "And it can take something terrible like that to happen to someone like Gary Speed for others to become more aware of these things."

For help dealing with the loss through suicide of a partner, go to www.widowedbysuicide.org.uk

Help at hand before sense of despair loses control

An estimated one in five of the Scottish population will experience depression at some point in their lives.

And each year around 300,000 Scots consult a doctor for help with feelings of depression.

Meanwhile, around one in ten suffers from anxiety or some kind of phobia, which can also lead to depression.

According to the Scottish Government's See Me campaign - which aims to end stigma and misunderstandings surrounding mental illness - one in four of us (28 per cent) will experience some kind of mental health problem at some point in our lives.

The campaign (www.seemescotland.org) adds that despite mental health problems being relatively common, many who have experienced them claim to have been confronted by physical abuse, discrimination, harassment and feelings of being stigmatised.

While the incidence of depression and anxiety is higher amongst women than men, Scottish statistics show that men are more likely to be driven to take their own lives.

There were 781 deaths by suicide in Scotland in 2010. The suicide rate for males that year was almost three times that of women.

According to Norman Craig, chair of support organisation the Samaritans in Scotland, people can be driven to desperate acts by many combinations of various events and feelings.

"Quite often it's a sense of despair in a situation which they feel that can't get out of," he says.

"Mental illness is a major factor in many of the calls we receive. Financial issues, relationships, childhood issues, abuse through relationships too.

"What's important is that people talk them through."

Samaritans in Edinburgh handles up to 60 calls every day from people struggling with suicidal thoughts. The organisation can be contacted on 087457 909090 or e-mail jo@samaritans.org. For more details, go to www.samaritans.org.

Meanwhile, today has been declared "Well Wednesday" by help organisation Breathing Space, which provides an online and telephone help service for people experiencing depression and anxiety issues.

It is aimed at anyone experiencing difficulties and unhappiness in their lives and their families.

Breathing Space can be contacted on 0800 83 85 87 or through www.breathingspacescotland.co.uk.
Appeared Edinburgh Evening News 1 Feb 2012
*picture posed by model

'My disability doesn't stop me being a thrill-seeker'

The pure white snow was crisp and the cool breeze which blew in Andrew Giffin's face as he careered down the challenging black ski run was fresh and clean.

Around him was breathtaking Austrian mountain scenery. And beneath him the crunch of virgin snow as his skis left snaking parallel curves on the pristine piste.

He was racing down the slope at around 40mph. Just the skis, the speed, and the skier in front, leading Andrew on one of the most thrilling ski runs of his life.

But the black run dash - the kind of adrenalin-fuelled run that would leave any experienced skier gasping for breath - was for Andrew just another action-packed episode in an impressively action-packed life lived, not with debilitating disability, but almost in spite of it.

For while cerebral palsy might have placed the strapping young man in the confines of his motorised wheelchair, what it hasn't done is prevent him embracing an action man, high-octane lifestyle of speed, danger and thrills.

His list of adventurous activities is exhausting: skiing, diving, hot air ballooning, even gliding. And it couldn't be further removed from the life of the young soldier, just a year older than Robin, whose ultimate sacrifice on a foreign field 70 years ago, has helped make Andrew's remarkable achievements possible . . .

"Andrew is amazing," nods his carer Audrey Taylor, a mum-of-three who works for support organisation the Thistle Foundation and has spent the past eight months working with Andrew, being regularly surprised by the 24-year-old as she tends to his needs at his home in Inverleith.

"It is incredible to see him on his bi-ski. He goes off-piste and does the black runs. His bi-ski is attached to another skier but he has to work at it as well. And the speed he gets to is incredible. There's no fear."

She saw it for herself when she accompanied Andrew on a thrilling week in picture pretty Niederau in Austria's Wildschonau Valley, set between the Kitzbuheler Alps and the Wilder Kaiser Mountains. There Andrew sped down black runs, savoured powdery snow off-piste and then, apres-ski, partied just like all the other skiers and snowboarders at the resort's nightclubs.

Desperate to enjoy more downhill thrills, he followed that up with a trip north to the Cairngorms to catch the last of the snow there, hooking up his bi-ski once again and embarking on run after run, manoeuvring his head and shoulders the way skiers flex ankles, knees and feet, as he expertly carved his way down the mountainside.

The pictures hanging on the walls of his comfortable ground-floor flat in Kinnear Road reveal skiing - challenging enough as that is - is far from Andrew's only experience of breathtaking adventure sports.

He may need round-the-clock care and support to help cope with the very basics of day-to-day life, but when it comes to thrill-seeking adrenalin kicks, nothing, it seems, is impossible. One photograph shows him soaring 6500ft above the African savannah in the wicker basket of a hot air balloon. Another has him sailing in the Forth in a two-man canoe.

Under the water, he's enjoyed snorkelling and, back on dry land, whizzed around Knockhill race track near Dunfermline in a Porsche. Soon he'll take to the skies again, this time taking off from Edinburgh Airport learning how to fly a glider.

And when he wants to unwind, he steers his motorised wheelchair to his favourite club, Mood, at Greenside Place, relaxes at nearby Walkabout or nips along to the cinema or a pop concert. Of course for any typical 24-year-old, none of that would be terribly remarkable. But for Andrew, whose brain and nervous system have been affected since birth by his condition, every day poses challenges that require constant help and endless support.

And it's support which is rooted in an organisation which evolved around the tragic fate of another young man, only a year older than Andrew.

The Thistle Foundation was launched in 1944 by Sir Francis Tudsbery and his wife Lady Isabella who had set up home at Champfleurie House and estate near Linlithgow, back when their son, Robin, was just a toddler.

The family had watched First World War servicemen returning from the front, battle-weary, injured and often in dire circumstances, and pledged to try to help. As they waved Robin off to do his own war duty, the couple busied themselves planning what would become the Thistle Foundation.

But while Britain celebrated the ceasefire in May 1945, terrible news arrived at Champfleurie - confirmation that Robin, 25, had been killed, one of the war's last victims, when his armoured car was blown up crossing a bridge in north-east Germany.

The grieving couple pushed on with their plans and created homes for ex-servicemen in a 22-acre site in Craigmillar. At its heart was a stunning memorial to their son, Robin Chapel. Every detail is a reminder of his brief life - down to candlesticks and the cross on the altar cast from melted silver taken from his personal possessions to the carvings of animals and birds reflecting his love of nature. Today it is a war memorial and a listed building.

But while the chapel is a touching reminder of a life cut short, Andrew, as he careers down the ski slope or sails high into the sky in a hot air balloon is a poignant modern example of how to live life - whatever hand it deals - to the full.

"He loves to be out in the fresh air," adds Audrey, who works for the Thistle Foundation. "Andrew does so many sports you lose track. When he's not busy doing all that, he's at the cinema or off socialising. I struggle to keep up with him. He's a lovely person and he's proof that having a disability doesn't mean you can't do what you want to do."

Audrey spends three days and two nights a week looking after Andrew as part of the Edinburgh-based charity's supported living service, which provides round-the-clock care.

When he's not seeking action-packed thrills, he's to be found in the much calmer surroundings of Drylaw Parish Church where raised beds in the grounds have been provided to enable wheelchair users to enjoy a spot of gardening. Or he'll be at Garvald Centre in Montpelier Terrace, which provides art and craft facilities, where Andrew has revealed a flair for creating quirky pottery penguins so impressive he's had people ask if he'll take orders for more.

According to Thistle Foundation spokesman Lawson Auden, Andrew is a striking example of how the organisation ensures even those with severe disabilities can lead fulfilling and often exciting lives.

"The ethos of the organisation has remained the same since it was founded. At that time it was very forward-thinking - the idea that injured veterans could live in their own home with their families while receiving medical support was quite unheard of.

"We have carried that forward and today we support people in their own homes. We still provide support for veterans, helping them make the transition from army to civilian life, but we now also support people like Andrew."

For action man Andrew, it means careering down an Austrian black run tucked into his bi-ski, a skill learned on the dry slope at Hillend.

"I love it," says Andrew, a huge grin spreading across his face. "I like going fast. I liked going up in the balloon too. It was amazing. I could see all the animals below me.

"I was very brave," he nods, "very brave".

For more details about the Thistle Foundation's work, go to www.thistle.org.uk

The facts

Cerebral palsy is caused by injury or abnormality in the brain, usually while the unborn baby is still developing in the womb.

The term covers a group of motor conditions which cause physical disability. Symptoms can range from very mild to more severe, as in Andrew's case.

In years gone by he could have faced life in an institution, but modern support and care meant Andrew was able to leave home like any other young man and live independently in his own surroundings, supported by Thistle Foundation live-in carers.

LEADING THE WAY

The Thistle Foundation was launched in 1944 and was visionary for its age in its determination to help provide accessible housing and medical support to enable disabled veterans to live in their own homes with their families.

Over the decades, the organisation has evolved and expanded to offer support to a wider population of people with disabilities and health conditions, through its supported living programme and health services.

It also runs a lifestyle management course for veterans to help ex-military personnel adapt to civilian life. It supports about 100 people between its Edinburgh and Renfrew bases.
Evening News 21 Mar 2012