Sometimes we didn’t have a loaf of bread in the house ... Marcus has given so much
RASHFORD’S MUM MELANIEE ON HOW LIFE HAS CHANGEDD
MARCUS Rashford’s mum has spoken about how she can sometimes ‘sit and cry in her room’ as she takes stock of how her family’s life has changed.
Melanie appears in her son’s BBC One documentary, Marcus Rashford: Feeding Britain’s Children, which follows the journey of his campaign to end child poverty.
This year, the United star has hit the headlines off the pitch for forcing two government U-turns that guaranteed crucial free school meals for kids during the holidays.
Marcus, from Wythenshawe, has since been recognised with countless awards and been honoured by The Queen with an MBE for all his efforts. But the England international has always hailed his mum as the driving force behind the use of his platform to be a voice of change for kids who face a similar situation to what he did growing up in Greater Manchester.
Melanie, who brought up her five children as a single mum, recalls a time when she ‘didn’t have a loaf of bread in the house’.
“Marcus has provided a home for me and I sit in my room sometimes and I just cry,” she said.
“You just sit there crying on your own because you’re thinking about where you’ve come from to where you are now.
“Sometimes we didn’t even have a loaf of bread in the house. It’s embarrassing to say but we didn’t.” Melanie continued: “But I wouldn’t tell someone I was struggling. It was embarrassing. “That’s why I had three jobs. I just had to try and work and get money from working.
“You wouldn’t come out and say ‘Oh God, I’m struggling’. A lot of people who knew me, when that came out, they were ringing me saying ‘I didn’t know you were struggling’. “You don’t go and talk about anything that happens at home. Because you’re not really supposed to do that, are you?” Melanie says she was working for
Ladbrookes, where she worked for 21 years, and took on a second job cleaning the bookies before doing pot washing on a Saturday.
“I used to say to the kids sometimes that I had already eaten because they’d say to me, ‘Have you had yours?’
“And I’d say yes, but I hadn’t. As long as they got something to eat, that was more what I wanted to do.”
Marcus has spoken openly and emotionally about his mum throughout the year as his campaign gathered pace and his actions off the pitch became more widespread.
He has said previously: “She lived the struggle. That is why it means the world to me that she is happy now and she is right next to me with everything that I do, she believes as strongly as I do that things need to change.”
I wouldn’t tell someone I was struggling. It was embarrassing Melanie Rashford