Why poor means poorly and wealth buys health

David Proctor, 13, Cleveden Secondary School

"I live in Easterhouse (a peripheral estate on the east side of Glasgow) now, but I lived in Maryhill up to about two years ago, which is on the other side of the city. My parents send me to Cleveden (in a fairly well-off part of Glasgow) because it's a good school.

I'm up at about 7am, and I have breakfast - cereal or toast.

At lunchtime some people go to the school dinner hall (for lunch), but I stopped going because there isn't a good variety of food. It's the same stuff everyday, hamburgers, sausage, pizzas, just the usual things. I go to my gran's, just down the road, for lunch. Yesterday, I had gammon and mayonnaise, but sometimes I make up my own stuff like banana sandwiches and jam! Sometimes I have bananas or apples at my gran's, and my mum's always got fruit in the house - oranges, tangerines.

Some days there's a club I go to (after school) called Cyberzone 15, which is in Easterhouse. It's got computers with big eyebrows. They're just getting the internet installed. Sometimes I play with the computers, but sometimes I do my homework so that when I go home I've got the evening to myself and I can do whatever I want. My favourite computer game is Formula One, it's a motor-racing game, but I don't spend a lot of time playing computer games.

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Then I might go for a game of football, I play for the school. In Easterhouse, we organise a game of football on a Sunday night down at the pitches. Then I go home at about 6.30pm and have my dinner. I like steak and chips with vegetables, we often have that. Then I listen to the radio or watch TV.

I go to the snooker sometimes, especially on a Sunday, I've got membership to a good snooker hall. As long as I've done my homework, I've got the rest of the time for myself to watch television or listen to the radio.

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I'm not sure what I'll do when I leave school. I'll stay on in the sixth year unless I've got a good job I can go to. My mum and dad don't work - my mum's got a bad back and my dad's got ME. My brother, who's 19, works in the post office in Springburn.

I try to keep busy all the time - my mum and dad are always saying I'm awful restless, I can't stay doing one thing at a time. I help around the house and try to make things easier for my mum."