I noticed it the first time I walked into one. Proper newsroom, not the chaotic kitchen table I used to write from in my mum’s flat. This one had glass walls and people who said “shall we” instead of “shall we or what.” The air was different. Cleaner. Like someone had polished the ambition until it shone. I stood there in my cheap black coat that I’d bought from Primark because it looked smart enough, holding a notebook that still had Tesco receipts stuffed in the back, and I thought, these people have never had to choose between heating and a new pair of shoes.
That was years ago. I’m 29 now. I’ve got bylines in places that used to feel like they belonged to another planet. Novara, the odd Guardian piece, HuffPost when they still paid properly. My Substack ticks over. People share my threads. And yet the second I step into certain rooms I still feel like I’ve snuck in through the fire exit.
Basildon doesn’t leave you. Not really. Council estate, two-up two-down, thin walls so you heard every argument next door and every time the neighbour’s dog went mental at 3 a.m. My mum worked nights at the supermarket for a stretch. Dad was around until he wasn’t. We weren’t the poorest on the street, but we weren’t far off. Sunday roast was the one meal that felt like we were winning. Chicken if we were flush, whatever was on offer if we weren’t. I still go back every other weekend. Sit at that same table, eat too much gravy, listen to my mum tell me I look tired. She means it kindly. I always look tired.
School was the first place I clocked the difference. Some kids had packed lunches with proper Tupperware and fruit that wasn’t bruised. I had a white bread sandwich and a bag of crisps if I was lucky. Teachers spoke to the quiet ones from the nicer streets like they were already going places. The rest of us got “try harder” and a look that said they weren’t holding their breath. I was loud even then. Talked too much, asked too many questions, got told to pipe down. Essex girls who don’t shut up are a problem. I learned that early.
University wasn’t an option in the way it was for other people. I did bits of college, night classes, taught myself the rest. Journalism felt like a way out and a way to shout back at the same time. I started writing for local rags that paid in experience and the occasional free sandwich. Then the bigger sites. Progressive ones, the ones that talk about class a lot until an actual working-class person walks in and starts talking like they actually come from it.
The first proper newsroom job I landed, someone asked me where I’d gone to school. I said Basildon. They smiled that polite smile people do when they’re trying to place you on a map they don’t really know. Later I overheard two of them talking about “regional voices” like it was a charming novelty. Regional. Like I was a tourist attraction. I went home that night and sat on the edge of my bed in Hackney, still wearing my work clothes, and felt this hot tight thing in my chest. Not quite anger. More like I’d been caught out.
Accent is the giveaway. Mine thickens when I’m tired or pissed off or had two pints. I’ll say “innit” without thinking. “Bare” instead of “very.” “Melt” when someone’s being an idiot. In certain meetings I can feel people clock it. Their eyes do this little flicker. Some of them find it endearing. Others look like they’re waiting for me to say something unprofessional so they can nod sagely about standards. I used to try and flatten it. Practised in the mirror like a mug. Now I let it rip. If they can’t handle “babes” in the same sentence as a serious point about housing policy, that’s their problem.
The chip on my shoulder is real. I know it’s there. I carry it like extra luggage. Some days it makes me sharper. I’ll stay later, write harder, chase the story no one else wants because they think it’s too small or too common. Working-class stories. The ones about people who don’t have the language or the contacts to tell them themselves. I get those. I lived them. Other days the chip just sits there heavy and I wonder if I’m performing my own background for an audience that claps when it’s convenient.
There’s a particular kind of loneliness in it. You leave the estate and the people you grew up with start treating you different. Not nasty, just careful. Like you’ve gone posh even though you’re still skint half the month. Then you get to the newsroom and you’re the one who has to explain why a story about benefit sanctions actually matters, why it’s not just “another sad tale.” You end up translating your own life for two different crowds and never quite belonging to either.
I remember one pitch meeting. I wanted to do a piece on the women who work the early shifts at the big distribution centres out near the M25. The ones who get the bus at 4 a.m. and still have to pick their kids up from school. Someone in the room said it sounded “a bit grim.” Grim. Like hardship is a tone you can opt out of. I sat there with my blue nails tapping the table and thought about my mum coming home with her feet killing her and still putting a roast on. I didn’t say what I wanted to say. I smiled and said I’d think about a different angle. Afterwards I went to the toilet and stared at myself in the mirror for a full minute. Glasses slightly steamed. Hair in that messy bun I never quite get right. I looked like someone who’d snuck in.
Money is the other quiet divider. Unpaid internships were never an option. I worked bar jobs, retail, whatever paid that week. Other people my age were “finding themselves” in Berlin or doing placements at broadsheets because their parents could cover rent. I was calculating whether I could afford the travelcard and still eat. Even now, when a piece lands and the money comes in, part of me banks it like it might disappear. Scarcity thinking. It doesn’t switch off just because you’ve got a byline.
The language thing never really goes away. I’ll write a sentence in my head the way I’d say it out loud and then have to translate it into something that looks respectable on the page. Not because the original is wrong. Because the original sounds like me, and me still feels like a risk in certain rooms. I’ve had editors “tighten” my copy until the voice is gone. They call it professional. I call it sanding off the bits that make it true.
Home is the only place it doesn’t feel like a performance. Mum doesn’t care about word counts or engagement metrics. She cares if I’ve eaten. She’ll put a plate in front of me and ask about work in that way that means she wants the version that doesn’t worry her. I give her the cleaned-up one. The one where everything is fine and I’m doing well. Then I sit there eating roast potatoes and feel twelve again. Safe and small and known. The contrast with the rest of the week is almost funny. One minute I’m arguing with some columnist about structural inequality. Next minute I’m being told to wrap up warm because the weather looks iffy.
I don’t hate the people in those newsrooms. Most of them are trying. Some of them are good. But there’s a current that runs underneath everything. A assumption that certain ways of speaking, certain backgrounds, certain kinds of hunger are the default. Anything else is an addition. A flavour. I am tired of being flavour.
Some nights I lie in bed in Hackney, vape on the windowsill, city noise leaking through the glass, and I replay conversations. The ones where I laughed along when I should have said something. The ones where I made myself smaller so the room would stay comfortable. Then I get angry at myself for caring. Then I get angry at the fact that I still have to care. It’s a loop. My therapist used to ask me what I wanted from it. I never had a clean answer. I still don’t.
The work itself is the only bit that feels honest. When I’m writing, properly writing, the accent doesn’t matter and neither does the estate. The sentence either works or it doesn’t. That’s the closest I get to forgetting the rest of it. Unfortunately the rest of it is always waiting when I close the laptop.
I think about the kids on my old street sometimes. The ones who were brighter than me and never got the chance. The ones who got stuck. I got out, sort of. Far enough to see the view and close enough to still smell the chip shops. That in-between place is where I live now. Not quite one thing, not quite the other. Useful, I suppose, if you’re trying to explain one world to the other. Lonely if you’re trying to just be a person in either of them.
Last time I was home I stood in the kitchen while mum mashed the potatoes and she asked if I was happy. Proper question, no wrapping. I said yeah. She looked at me like she didn’t quite believe it but wasn’t going to push. I wanted to tell her the truth. That some days the chip on my shoulder feels like the only solid thing I’ve got. That other days I wish I could put it down and just write without wondering whether I sound like I belong. I didn’t say any of that. I stole a roast potato off the tray and she slapped my hand and we both laughed. That’s the version she gets. The one that doesn’t make her worry.
Back in London the newsrooms keep smelling the same. Coffee and paper and that faint polish of people who never had to check the price of electricity before they turned the heating on. I walk in, coat still a bit cheap, notebook still a bit battered, and I do the work. I bring the voice they didn’t ask for. Sometimes they like it. Sometimes they tolerate it. Either way I’m still here. Still talking too loud. Still saying “innit” when I mean it. Still carrying the estate with me like a second pulse.
It fuels me. Until it doesn’t. Then it just sits there, quiet and heavy, reminding me that getting in the door was only the first part. Staying in the room without disappearing is the bit no one writes about. That’s the part I’m still figuring out. One byline at a time. One Sunday roast at a time. One moment of catching my own reflection and thinking, yeah, you’re still that girl from Basildon. You just learned how to type faster.
