Obtuse World #4

Heat Lumps…..While writing my memoir, Small victories and Inner smiles, I was advised to ‘set to and the memories will flow’ by my brother Neil who ‘knows his Onions’ as they say. The only problem with such advice to an untrained mind was I jumped too far on occasion and realised during read through there were gaping gaps which to the unknowing reader would be a leap too far. And without wishing to repeat myself life is mundane, so without wanting to state the bleeding obvious, one day follows another, and no matter how mundane, the writer must ensure nothing of note is left out. Not necessarily every second of every minute and so on, but stuff which doesn’t mean too much personally, but to the reader who is probably interested how others get through life it could prove to be the life blood of their purchase.

It wasn’t too long before I was up to my elbows in boxes of memories and photographs which although rekindling past days and forgotten times, and although we laugh, or maybe cringe at what has gone before, clambering down from our overburdened loft left me with feelings of haunting melancholia. For sure help was needed but at my time of life, and knowing full well that what is in front of me pales into insignificance compared to what I have left behind I paused at the bottom of the loft ladder and found myself absent mindedly staring into the abyss where my mind zeroed in on the endgame instead of clouting me around the ears and reminding me what today has to offer. My low spirits seemed to sink deep into the recently purchased wool carpet beneath my feet and I needed an instant lift, so like all depressives I dragged out my recently purchased Cafetière and sipped on a triple Arabica espresso; it worked and soon enough I was flying.

“I’m just off to the shops love, we need one or two things, and I won’t be long,” Viv whispered over her shoulder whilst pulling the exterior door shut behind her. ‘Good!’ I thought to myself as she disappeared along the avenue, ‘that’s at least 2 hours I have to root through the past.’ I skipped back upstairs and brought down the years. I was searching for that large Manilla envelope stuffed with my ‘Letters to the editor,’ I had promised to put in an album for safe keeping and abjectly failed to do. Previously I had replicated each missive in a chapter of my 2nd book, ‘Jump the Red River,’ so each was saved for posterity, but being the old-fashioned type and still of sound mind I haven’t lost that intrinsic need to be able to touch and feel my thoughts and opinions through the years. Some letters are yellowing, especially the most important one I sent in March 1972 roasting the council for leaving me and my young family amongst the ruins of Dalkeith Street, Gorton during the decimation of my educational Alma Mater in life. We never wanted to leave so accepted the nearest district available, unfortunately Beswick was not the tree-lined, green-tinged, pastoral refuge the artist had envisioned after accepting the council contract and designing those sylvan posters.

Whilst rummaging through and putting aside the few I have replicated for certain Facebook groups in an effort to stir memories and create interest, a certain byline caught my eye, it read ‘Happy days,’ and posed the question, ‘whatever happened to heat lumps?’ When you read the letter which I’ll post below it will all become clear, and I believe apposite judging by the hysteria whipped up amongst the popular press regarding blood sucking Bed Bugs. In fact, if as they state these creatures are craftily and surreptitiously shifting with ease between houses, streets, districts, towns, cities, countries, continents, even planets, where have these Columbus-like explorers been for the last few decades. We Pointon’s had them in our first slum, in the flats and when Viv and I moved into our first marital home, yes folks, they were bloody well waiting for us there, knives and forks at the ready. We were advised to throw petrol on them, and they came out on motorbikes.

I once read whilst complaining about how newspapers over-exaggerate stories, that the modern credo for editors is, ‘if it bleeds it leads,’ well writing about Bedbugs fits snugly between those print lines. I should imagine every slum terraced street was lousy with all sorts; I know we could have opened a mini zoo with what was creeping about ours while we slept. I laugh when reading about how they hitch a lift in suitcases from foreign lands, I know by the time I was in my thirties the nearest I got to foreign lands was eating a Sivori’s ice-cream cornet. My dad used to say soldiers brought all sorts of wildlife home in their kitbags. But no discerning bloodsucker would be seen dead creeping around our ex-flop house lumpy flock mattress or sharing blankets that felt like emery cloth, not like the modern divans and warm duvets of today. Our BB’s were classless. When my dad went for a job he picked British Rail because they gave him 2 overcoats which fitted our bed perfectly. I recall one particularly snowy night our bare floored bedroom was so cold my face was stuck to one of the silver buttons and I went to school with the letters BR imprinted on my cheek.

Looking back, I suppose they could be described as ‘happy days,’ but only because somehow we survived, which set us up nicely for a working-class existence which requires us all to be of the same mind and positivity. We knew how to enjoy ourselves, and reading the letter above again I am reminded how much I enjoyed the taste of something as simple as California Syrup of Figs, our parents sharing the same philosophy in life, “yer’ll never ‘ail as long as yer mek sure yer keep a good road through yer!”

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Part two…. Carrying on from Obtuse World Number 3. Sunday league football was pure enjoyment played by many thousands of enthusiastic amateurs throughout the land. It was a pastime which served many purposes, encouraged by pub landlords and landladies to bring custom to the bar, the opportunity to rid oneself of all the frustrations and aggro employment threw up during the week, dreaming we were far better than we really were (in the main that is) and yes, another excuse for a good piss-up.

My personal career began at the Prince of Wales pub on Gorton Lane. I was a keen full back but not the overlapping type, more the clogger. We ran from this busy little Marston’s public house for about 3 seasons, and if my memory serves me right never won a game. That is correct, we were consistent. The landlord Tommy had so much faith in us as a team he offered to buy each player a pint of beer when we eventually gain our first point. In fact, it was such a wager that it brought on the demise of our short career under his stewardship. We drew a game 5-5 against a team called Frankensteins (yes, a small company from nearby Newton Heath) and ran back to the pub without even having a shower or changing clothes to collect the bounty. The landlord reneged on his wager stating it was statute barred after 104 weeks to which one of the lads took umbrage and smashed up his One-armed Bandit and Jukebox. That was it, the endgame, and so we were homeless, evicted with these famous last words still ringing in our ears, “My Alice is sick to death of cleaning mud and picking up sweaty socks and shitty underpants left underneath the tables in the best room! Now Fuck off.” I tried to explain that the same team beat us 12-0 about 6 weeks previous which made our draw even better, but he just stared at the mangled machines in the lobby while shaking his head and called me a cheeky twat. One final riposte was our goalie Steve throwing a half-brick through the pub window just as those smug faced after time topers were settling down to their post-midnight session. He was chosen being the fastest runner.

The next day I bumped into him in the local chippy, him being my next street neighbour. We chatted and laughed whilst waiting for fish and I asked him his escape route. “I could see ‘em through the frosted glass queuing up for their pints at the bar beneath the window so I launched the half-brick as hard as I could and ran that fast I had reached the back entry behind Corfields Chippy down the street before the glass shattered. I galloped past the Medical Centre, jumped the fence into the new gardens and shot across the bowling greens half hidden by the privets and before I knew it I’d reached Bill’s café.” We were both laughing by this time, and he rejoined, “I swear I nearly tripped over about 5 courting couples lay on the grass in the blackness but thank fuck I was in the house before the smug bastards could get the glass fragments out of their quiffs and come looking.”

We stepped out onto Queens road, and turned down our street when I remarked thoughtfully, “Gorton girls hey! Don’t they make you proud?”

“Why.” He asked whilst blowing at a hot chip and rolling it around his tongue.

“Well,!” I quipped, “Being able to climb over a 5-foot wire fence in a tight skirt, high heels and nylon stockings after about 8 glasses of lager and 4 Cherry B’s takes some friggin doing!”

He agreed and added, “While smoking a pipe!”

As a team we needed a base and so moved on about 500 yards east along Gorton Lane where Gerry and Kath, mine hosts of the New Inn at the corner of Crossley Street welcomed us with open arms. The window-cleaner, who was stood at the bar supping tea while waiting to be paid listened in as we sealed the deal then chipped in by begging us not to fall out with them as he had a wife and 5 kids to support and only a small round. We laughed but Gerry nodded in agreement.

It wasn’t long before the black clouds of Compulsory Purchase and eventual demolition were swirling and gathering over the heads of West Gorton and Gorton folk. These were only rumours at first but soon the letters would be dropping through letterboxes, eagerly anticipated initially but forever since despised. And as what seems to occur when teams set up we enlisted a few new players, which saw us improve immeasurably, and I somehow kept my place, mainly because George the manager was a good friend of our family. Training, or more like playing football until it went dark continued apace in Gorton Park every Thursday evening. People would come and go because it was more relaxed than professional, and every so often this diminutive guy with some weird nickname turned up and being a decent player caused quite a few arguments over whose side he kicked with. He was much younger than the majority of us and his confidence was backed up by the ability and a fondness for scoring numerous goals. But ‘Pub’ football could be a rough-house game and doesn’t lend itself to impudent lads small in stature no matter how good, so we didn’t take his impudence to heart and laughed along whenever somebody else was the fall guy. And we were also realistic enough to know that by our time in life there was to be no real improvement no matter how much we played, or how many press-ups the manager wanted us to do. Amateur teams paid for the privilege of playing within organised frameworks professionally managed by others who used previous experience and season end emoluments to make things run like clockwork. And because eventually and in double quick time even though we play our part in maintaining the teams financial existence, after all ‘it is only a bit of fun,’ one ends up a Jack of all trades; Putting up and taking down the nets, pumping up the balls, making the corner flags, collecting subscriptions, marking out the odd pitch, paying the referee, slicing oranges, providing drinking water or handing out fags at half-time; oh! And praying to heaven nobody breaks a leg.

By order of the management: all injuries must be signalled immediately by the player falling down and screaming but must only require being treated with a bucket and wet sponge: Rolling over and pummelling the ground with both fists is acceptable, but jumping up and laughing just when the Bucket Man reaches you is not. That bucket is very heavy. Thank you. That was a notice I designed and pinned up near the bar once but took down after a few weeks having been accused of not taking things seriously enough.

‘Roote’ as the young Jackanape wanted to be known, became a familiar if not every time attendee at the park sessions, especially summer nights out of season, and it was accepted that each and every person was of equal merit no matter their reputation, especially on the Dartboard in the Red Lion afterwards. In other words, his skill set was such that he enjoyed ‘taking the piss’ in the modern vernacular, but his impish impudent way of doing things was accepted with good heart, mainly because to kick him you would firstly have to catch him, no mean feat. In fact, there came a time where we considered crossing Hyde road and asking Belle Vue’s famous clown Charlie Cairoli could we have a pair of his old clown shoes to slow the sod down. I even asked Viv to sew my trousers legs together to stop him putting the ball through and shouting ‘get us a loaf.’

Sadly, for us, Gerry and Kath were eventually offered a larger, busier public house on Ashton New Road in recognition of their excellent stewardship of the New Inn, and once again their move found us out on a limb. They left in the summer which gave us little breathing space to move on.

It was around this time that the Bessemer Pub, equidistant from the New Inn as that was from the Prince of Wales began putting on Drag Shows during Sunday lunchtimes when licensing hours were sadly short between 12 noon and 2pm, and where we used to call in for a niche experience and good-humoured fun. The pub could only be described as cavernous, with a large concert room, another side room only slightly smaller, a vault and very large bar behind which numerous barmaids beavered away, one of whom was Myra Hindley’s mother. We behaved ourselves. East Manchester was the industrial bedrock of the country, and all those hard-working people were thirsty, hence the large number of extra-large licensed premises. I regularly watched men drink 5 pints of mild in less than 1 hour at lunchtime and turn steel on a lathe to within a 1000th of an inch. Yes! another feather in the Gortonian caps.

The pub had recently been taken over by Eric, a corpulent character of great energy and vigour who also owned 2 donkeys and a small menagerie of animals which he used to good effect whenever impatient children with drinking parents became restless. He’d also resurrected use of the concert room and tirelessly supported many local charities, in fact I soon learned to not engage in meaningful conversation with him because it usually ended up with me having a pocket full of Raffle tickets and his collection box a few bob heavier. In fact, some reckon when Neil Armstrong descended the ladder to be first man on the moon Eric was waiting rattling his box.  

Roy Steele and Steven, a comedic musical drag act and personal friends of the landlord soon became the resident artists, a unique and cutting-edge pastiche of cross-dressing, double-entendre and outrageous asexual connotation and cosplay. What my Auntie Ethel would describe while rolling her eyes and placing hand on hip as, ‘yer know, them funniosities.’ For us it was new, daring, very funny and quite disconcerting. Especially after the team found this new home to represent and were encouraged to share the largely unused room for changing into their football colours, especially before friendly games which were played across the lane on Preston Street, a facility without facilities; and after we’d pushed the Donkeys out into the backyard. Soon enough ‘Hide the sausage,’ and ‘Strapadictome’ were comments invariably thrown needlessly into every conversation, and to which Roy and Steven invariably rose to the challenge and whose riposte’s were far, far wittier. I was just pleased Roote wasn’t about yet.

Things were now moving apace and in April 1972 we were offered a new place in Beswick after I had written to the Manchester Evening News complaining we had been left behind while Gorton had moved on. Many of my friends had also moved into Fort Beswick as it was colloquially known and eventually we become to spend much of our leisure time in our new area instead of tripping back. Many of those great public houses, bars and clubs in West Gorton and Gorton were being demolished and a new adventure had begun. It was a challenge having to move and begin again, and looking back one could argue we weren’t improving our lot due to the poor quality and subsequent demolishing of the so called modern housing expected to shelter Gorton’s disparate community for many more years to come. But once again new friendships and adventures would be realised, and this mainly due to the realignment with Sunday League Football, and many acquaintances from days of old.

To be continued…..