One million Scots are living in poverty, but what does that really look like? For many who depend on Scottish charities it means daily trade-offs between food, fuel and friendship

It is not hard to find Tommy, Marissa and Symon in any town or city in Scotland. They are just three of the one million people defined as living in poverty facing a daily struggle to afford and pay for the things we ordinarily take for granted.

Their list of wants are depressing because to many of us they are basic needs: Symon dreams of buying a meal in a restaurant for his family, Marissa hopes to save enough to return to her native Indonesia while Tommy thinks holidays and cars are for rich people.

Everyday charities, community groups and campaigners help the likes of Tommy, Marissa and Symon. Where before the support offered by the third sector was seen as additional, it has now become vital.

Organisations as diverse as Citizens Advice bureaux, the Scottish Refugee Council, housing associations and addiction services have had to change the way they operate to deal with the paradox of a rich country living with the crisis of poverty.

Yet what became apparent after I’d spoken to these three individuals is that they have become isolated from society. Poverty has excluded them from the many daily interactions we take for granted – eating in a cafe; taking a train to visit friends; drinking in a bar – while the stigma of being poor has eroded their confidence and their own self-worth.

As Symon says, poverty is a marker which is pinned to you, one which follows you and one which everybody knows. Here are their stories.

Marissa Kenkap: the asylum seeker

Weekly income: £37.75

Each week Marissa carefully places three pound coins in a shortbread tin she keeps in a drawer. It has become a symbolic ritual in the hope one day there will be enough of the gold coins to pay the £700 fare to Indonesia to visit her home.

She presents the half-full box with both hands, encouraging me to inspect it, proud of the fact she has managed to build such a bounty despite receiving just £37.75 in benefits each week. But early last year Marissa’s normally iron constitution cracked. She doesn’t quite know why or what came over her but in one impulsive moment she boarded a bus to Glasgow armed only with the contents of the sacred tin and promptly spent it on a quite beautiful kebaya – the traditional costume of her country. Yet, Marissa has never worn the shawl; she has never even tried it on. Taking pride of place on the wall of her two bedroom shared flat, it remains a poignant reminder of better times.

“It is a piece of home,” she says. “It is an Indonesian tradition for our people to always carry a symbol of home wherever we go. When I look at it I am back home, happy,” she smiles. “I speak to my family as often as I can but I can’t see my country – I can’t be there. This takes me there.”

As an asylum seeker currently fighting extradition, Marissa feels ashamed when she indulges in things that make her happy. Even thinking what she calls “rich thoughts” brings on a guilt she scolds herself over. She confides to me: “Sometimes I see nice things and I have dreams they can be mine.”

Sometimes I see nice things and dream they can be mine

I ask what kind of things. “Jewellery, a headscarf, even cars,” she confesses. “I used to have beautiful clothes at home. Some were handed down from my grandparents. I felt so close to them when I wore them.”

When Marissa came to Scotland two years ago she had nothing except what she wore and the shoes she stood in. Fleeing a dangerous, violently abusive relationship, she has spent her entire time in the UK at the mercy of a system which has no room for empathy. Currently appealing the Home Office’s decision refusing her asylum, she feels life is against her.

Women asylum seekers fleeing domestic violence can find it very difficult to open up about the issue because the countries they left often defend the abusers. “I don’t tell the whole story,” she tells me. “But I’m getting help to do so – people are supporting me and I have a lawyer. I’m grateful for the help I have received.”

Supported by women’s groups, her local Citizens Advice Bureau – which she describes as her saviour – and various refugee charities, Marissa is humbled by the support she has received yet still faces a daily struggle to cope with an income most of us would casually spend on a night out. It is a far cry from the life she left in Indonesia where she worked as a book-keeper in her father-in-law’s transport company.

“We were very thankful for our life,” she tells me. “I could afford anything I needed although I never wanted for much. My husband looked after money but we could take holidays and afford a car. I hope that one day I can get the same life here.”

Some weeks Marissa gets scared she won’t be able to afford the Friday trip to Edinburgh’s Central Mosque. It’s a vital release from the isolation she faces in Denny where, as a relative newcomer to the town, she knows few people and seldom socialises.

The round trip costs £10 and some weeks if she misjudges her energy usage, the prepaid gas and electricity meters take precedence and she has to forego her weekly trip to the capital. She hates those weeks; she has made many friends at the mosque, some of whom are refugees from her hometown and without that one afternoon of socialising each week, she finds it hard to cope with the loneliness.

“If I had money I would travel on the train to other towns,” she says. “I could visit my friends, see new places. But it is not to be.”

Nevertheless Marissa has the most basic of hopes. “I want to pay for myself and to have money to have independence. That is all I hope for: enough money – earned not given – to allow me to do normal things and to one day visit my family back home.”

Tommy Paulson: the alcoholic

Weekly income: £90

When Tommy got sanctioned last year it nearly cost his life. For two months he battled peritonitis, a deadly condition brought on after drinking medical ethanol. He knew it was dangerous: two of his drinking buddies had died after downing the luminous pink liquid normally used to sterilise hospital equipment. With his money stopped, it was the only hit he could get his hands on.

This is the side of poverty you rarely hear about: how easily the vulnerable are pushed towards life-threatening situations when their meagre resources are affected. But this is the everyday reality where normally innocuous, arbitrary decisions push poor people to the brink.

I know of Tommy because he sits feeding birds while swigging cider in Glasgow’s Gorbals where I park my car and always gives a friendly wave. A bit of a legend with his white hair, nicotine-stained beard and weathered looks, locals tell me he had some kind of high-flying job he eventually lost to the bottle.

Knowing he was supported by NHS addiction services, I contacted his care manager to make sure it was okay to feature him as a case study. “As long as you’re kind to him,” she remonstrates. “He’s a lovely bloke who’s had some terrible bad luck. Career? He was a painter’s labourer I think. He’ll tell you; he loves to talk.”

And it’s true: Tommy is lovely. So talk we do, for two solid hours in Anne’s café where he often gets a free feed and where he seems to know everyone. This time I’m paying but the café’s extensive menu isn’t something he cares for much.

“I get food from the church’s foodbank because you need referred by the social for the others. They’re good; they know me, they know the stuff I like and always make sure there’s one my favourite – a tin of pease pudding,” he says smiling.

When I get evicted who hears me complain?

Like many in his situation, Tommy doesn’t see poverty as his biggest problem. On a normal day he’ll drink three litres of cider and a half bottle of vodka – a more pressing problem which he very candidly accepts. Poverty he says is what people talk about when they want things they can’t get. I ask him what he means. “Holidays, cars, houses,” he says. “I don’t want these. I can’t get them but I don’t need them. Just drink – it’s all I need.”

With booze taking priority, what’s left of Tommy’s £90 a week pays for gas and electric, though he often goes prolonged periods without either. “It’s bad in the winter,” he says. “I don’t mind the cold but I don’t like sitting in the dark. So I’ll go out instead.” He doesn’t have a TV, only a radio and has never owned a mobile phone. When he was younger he enjoyed overhauling old cameras and still occasionally treats himself to a glossy photography magazine if he can afford it.

Evicted five times in the last 15 years, Tommy blames over-zealous landlords for harshly ending his tenancies. “They don’t care when they throw me out,” he says.

“I’m not a big man – so when I get sent packing who hears it when I complain?”

For the last 16 months he’s felt more secure as his one bedroom flat in Oatlands is owned by a housing association supporting people with addiction problems. He swears this time he will abide by the rules. “I’m my own worst enemy, I know this,” he concedes.

The cycle of alcoholism and eviction has left deep emotional wounds. At 64, he lives without hope. Underneath the scars is a whole history blanked out as it hurts too much. He tells me as much as he can. There’s a wife who died tragically from heart disease who cut him out of her life because of his drinking. There’s two grown up children he never sees but naturally still loves. And there are countless friends and relatives, too many to remember, who have dwindled away through his unreliability brought on by his dependency on booze.

Near the end of our conversation Tommy tells me something troubling. In the small hours he sometimes has panic attacks. They wake him and in those moments he doesn’t feel like he can continue with this life. Over the last few years they’ve got worse.

He sweats and cries when they come. They make him face reality, he tells me, a reality that is full of despair and very little optimism. And that’s the saddest part of Tommy’s life.

Symon Deyna: the low-paid worker:
Weekly income: £390

It wasn’t easy meeting Symon. “Why would I want to boast about being poor?” he initially asked as we exchanged emails. It was clear he had a lot on his plate, working long shifts and looking after his family, so I assured him that telling his story was a brave move and if he spoke out he’d help others in the same predicament. Selflessly he agreed. “Okay – you’ll need a lot of time to listen to my story,” he told me. “If I’m going to tell it I need to tell it all. If I can help others I will.”

Symon says he has always wanted to take his wife and boy to the eatery where we meet, Shawlands’ Glad Café, but could never afford to. “Eating out for a family would cost £30,” he says. “That’s my electricity for a week. It would make no sense. I watch how people just spend money on coffee on beer and food in cafes and bars. I would love that life.”

That’s what it boils down to: if spending any amount while living on the breadline doesn’t make sense then it doesn’t happen. Every penny Symon spends has a purpose.

As we chat it is immediately apparent how the stigma of being poor is as bad as the financial implications. He tells how his son Lukas, 12, had to be taken out of the school he loved after being bullied for being a “skank” – Glasgow shorthand for poor. Yet Lukas dresses like any other lad his age, has parents who give him their all and he doesn’t appear to want for anything. It’s not enough says Symon. “Children quickly pick up on anything that might be considered different and are quick to make even the smallest thing an issue,” he says.

A proud Bulgarian who came to the UK with his brother 15 years ago, Symon has worked seven days a week most of his adult life and thinks nothing of doing so. He used to be a welder but new technology has made it a dying trade, so for the last 11 years he has taken a number of agency jobs, mostly on zero-hours contracts, to make ends meet.

You can’t pretend to be normal when you’re not

For the last three years he has worked as a dishwasher and chef’s assistant in a busy restaurant kitchen in Paisley. Working 10 hour shifts five days out of seven, often over the weekend, he earns £390 a week for what he calls “tiring and difficult” work. His wife Irena can’t work because of health problems and misses out on a number of benefits because Symon is employed full time.

Rent is Symon’s biggest outgoing, taking up half of his weekly wage. He rents privately while on the waiting list for social housing. He pays as much as he can afford on a flat because he wants Lukas to go to a good school in a good area and fears his education would be at risk if he took a house in a less salubrious area.

“When you have children the way you see the world changes overnight,” Symon says. “All our decisions are around what is best for Lukas. I joke with him how he costs me a fortune. Of course that’s what a father does, provides for his family.”

Some weeks he has to cut back on shifts as Irena needs him in the house when she has particularly bad health episodes. A devoted husband, he accepts that as part of life. “It’s just difficult when it happens,” he says. “It means we really struggle.”

There’s hope though. Good with his hands and a master of DIY, Symon has been offered a job as a handyman at Glasgow University paying £12 an hour for a 40-hour week. It offers the chance of overtime, a small annual bonus and is just a subway ride away. It means he can spend more time with his family and be there for his wife.

“Sometimes when I work all week it makes her ill,” he says. “It makes her anxious. I don’t like doing it. This job will help.”

Ironically on the day we meet there is news that the payday lender Wonga – to which Symon owes money – is about to collapse. Momentarily he is elated his debts could be cancelled until I tell him that unfortunately outstanding payments will be passed to another company. “At least it gave me hope for a whole two minutes,” he laughs. “That’s about as good as it gets in this life.”