After he’d died, my gran used to go and visit my great-grandmother every day, taking her a jug of Guinness from the pub, which she’d sit by the fire and drink – for the iron, she said. It must have worked because, despite living for most of her life opposite a chemical factory that was spewing out all sorts of fumes, she lived to be nearly ninety. Eventually, her house was pulled down and she was moved to the top floor of a fourteen-storey block of flats. I remember visiting her there, looking out at the view from the balcony and thinking, Wow, this is fantastic, you can see for miles. All the cars on the streets below looked like Dinky toys and I could see the hills and the countryside beyond the city: to me as a boy it was magical, but of course for an old woman like my great-grandmother, way up there on the fourteenth floor, a long way from anything, it turned out to be more like a prison.
My Auntie Amy stayed on to look after my great-grandmother. All her siblings had married and she effectively gave up her own life in order to help her. It seems that when she grew too old to marry it dawned on her what she’d missed. In dedicating herself to her mother’s welfare, her own life had passed her by, and that realization caused a breakdown that left her in Prestwich mental hospital for the next thirty-two years. Occasionally, Auntie Amy would slip out from the hospital unnoticed and head for our house. When she appeared at the door my mum would send me upstairs, telling me to shut my bedroom door and push the bed behind it. I was to stay there until she told me it was safe to come out. I’d hear Auntie Amy saying that a man was coming round with an axe to kill us all, how she’d come to warn us that we were all going to die. My mum would keep her talking until the police arrived and she’d be taken back to Prestwich. It was heartbreaking. All my other aunties were kind, warm and bubbly, and that’s the kind of woman Auntie Amy should have been too.
I had lots of friends on Alfred Street, like Raymond Quinn, David Wroe and Barrie Benson, not to mention more members of my family who lived there as well. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but my Auntie Doreen lived next door with my cousins David and Stephen and across the road was my Auntie Ruth, who had a daughter, inevitably also called Ruth. My Auntie Ada and Auntie Irene lived on the same street too, with their children, so I had a very sociable childhood. We spent most of our time on the streets. We were always kicking a ball around, hanging out on the corner getting into trouble and wondering what was going on in the other parts of town. What was out there?
While it was a pretty normal working-class Mancunian upbringing in many ways, the thing that set our family apart was my mother’s condition. As well as the obvious physical problems she faced, she was also a very angry person. Whether this was because she was frustrated at her disability, maybe even suffered from depression – something that was rarely diagnosed in those days – I don’t know for sure, but whatever the cause, her anger was usually focused on me, to the point at times of something close to cruelty.
With my grandparents being such warm, kind people, I was drawn more to them emotionally than I was to my mother, and this may have contributed to her anger. I had lots of friends locally and was no better or worse behaved than anyone else, but I seemed to be on the receiving end of more, and more severe, punishments than anyone I knew.
I was rarely allowed to go out: when the other kids went to the park or the cinema I wouldn’t be allowed to go with them. For some reason, even though ours was a close community with plenty of kids my own age who had plenty of people watching out for them, my mother wanted me pretty much where she could see me. I was allowed out into our street and the immediate vicinity, but there were very strict boundaries as to how far I could go. Kids love to roam, and the children round our way were no exception, but while others would go into Manchester or over to Heaton Park, I’d have to stay put, left on a street corner watching the others disappear into the distance in a laughing, noisy rabble.
I hardly ever went against my mother’s wishes through sheer fear of what would happen if I did, but one day I did dare to cross the boundaries she’d set for me. I didn’t go very far, just a couple of streets away with a gang of kids, but somebody spotted me and word got back to my mother, who went absolutely ballistic as soon as I walked through the door. I was made to swallow cold, sour tea, leaves and all, until every last drop had gone and then told to stand and face the wall while she told me at length and in no uncertain terms what an awful child I was, something I was made to repeat back to her. I stood there, hands behind my back, nose almost touching the wallpaper, the revolting bitter taste of cold tea still in my mouth and tears running down my face, trying to work out just why she thought I was so terrible. Granted, on this occasion, I had gone against her wishes, probably due to peer pressure more than anything else, but the level of invective being aimed at me as I stood there sobbing against the wall seemed to be about much more than me sneaking quietly out of the front door when nobody was looking. This kind of thing would happen fairly often.
I was far too young to understand at the time of course, but in hindsight I wonder if she was angry at me because my father had disappeared from her life. My mother’s circumstances were unusual enough, given her disability, but she was also an unmarried mother, something fairly uncommon in the fifties and sixties. How and why their relationship ended I don’t know: my father was never mentioned. Maybe this was one source of her anger at me, that I was the living, breathing legacy of that relationship: I was a permanent reminder of him – maybe I even looked like him. Who knows, perhaps I was kept in because he’d gone out one day and never come back.
When, in the years since, I’ve tried to work out why she treated me the way she did, it’s occurred to me that the horrific Moors Murders might also have had something to do with it. They were going on around that time, so there would have been stories of Manchester kids disappearing. In any case, there were long periods during my childhood where I was kept on an incredibly tight rein. It reared up again when I was older, around sixteen, when my mother didn’t want me going to parties and staying out late. When I was allowed to go I’d have to be home by ten o’clock while my mates would be out till midnight.
Yet, for all I’ve thought about it, I still don’t really know why she treated me that way and I probably never will. To an extent, I kind of understand the way she was with me. She felt trapped by her disability: she was effectively a prisoner in her own body. In that situation, it’s perhaps understandable that any wrongdoing by me, perceived or actual, was blown up. Life in the working-class districts of Manchester was tough in those days at the best of times, but my mother was a single parent in a wheelchair and I can only guess at what that did to her state of mind. I remember seeing her trying to walk up the stairs: an image that in itself probably best illustrates my mother’s battle with what life had given her. She railed against her condition, doing everything she could to make things more bearable. She tried various homeopathic remedies and we’d regularly have all sorts of quacks calling at the house, but for all her efforts her life remained very difficult and she must have felt extremely frustrated. I suppose she had to take it out on someone. Unfortunately, that person happened to be me.
She wasn’t cruel all the time; there were definitely happier times and occasions: I remember we had some wonderful, magical Christmases, for example. But the moment I did something wrong, sometimes even the most trivial thing, she almost seemed to relish the prospect of punishing me for it. It didn’t fuck me up or anything, but my childhood was played out over a constant undercurrent of fear of my mother.
In 1961 she married a man called James Dickin, who also suffered from cerebral palsy and wore callipers on his legs. She got him to hit me pretty hard a couple of times. I’m sure it was common back then for fathers to hit their sons and I don’t really hold it against him, but it didn’t make me any less scared of her. The knowledge that, even though she couldn’t hit me, there was someone in the house who could made sure the fear was always there, even if most of the punishments were psychological rather than
physical.
There was one particular occasion when after some misdemeanour or other my mother had sent Jimmy looking for me. I ran upstairs and hid in my bedroom, where there was a tiny cupboard for the gas meter. Being very little at the time, I just about managed to squeeze in and shut the door. I could see through a gap that Jimmy was looking for me and vividly remember the cold fear in my stomach as he scanned the room, searching under the bed, everywhere. I could hear my mother’s voice from downstairs, saying, ‘Are you sure he’s up there? Are you sure he’s not gone out?’ I can’t even remember what happened in the end, whether Jimmy found me or I eventually came out of my own accord to face the music, but the terror of what lay in store for me was so vivid it’s stayed with me to this day.
To an extent I understand the way she was with me. I think it was probably borne more out of deep frustration than malice: I guess she felt trapped by her disability, as indeed she was. It was no easier for her than it would be for you or me. My mother wanted better, she deserved better, and was angry at the cards life had dealt her. Her situation, and I don’t mean just in terms of her disability, would have depressed anyone and defeated many less strong-willed people. She wasn’t angry all the time, only when she felt down – I think she may have suffered from depression – and I understand that. After all, anyone in a situation like hers would need a release of some kind and I think for that reason any perceived or actual wrongdoing by me was greatly amplified. I held it against her for many years until I had a period in my life where I suffered from depression and suddenly had an idea of how she must have felt. Life is hard for some people and much harder for others, and when I began to confront and cope with my depression it opened a door for me just a fraction on what she must have felt like. I forgave her completely.
I was always very conscious of how different she was from other mothers, and I didn’t like being marked out from the other kids by having a disabled mother. When you’re a child, you don’t want to draw attention to yourself, especially with something that could be perceived as a weakness. I wasn’t very fair to my mother: I wouldn’t even push her down the street in her wheelchair, and it must have bothered her – her own son effectively too ashamed to be seen with her. Lower Broughton was a tough area, and if there was something different about you, something they could get you for, some perceived weakness, you’d be singled out as the weak animal in the herd, and once you were separated from the herd you’d be fighting all the time. Of course, I’d always been taunted – ‘Your mum’s a spaz’, all that stuff – I just didn’t want to draw any more attention to it. These days, I’m ashamed I behaved the way I did. Despite my difficult relationship with my mother, I look back at Alfred Street and the times I spent there with a great deal of fondness. I had a tough time at home but, outside the front door, life was very convivial. In summer, on hot days, we kids would be wandering around in our underpants, someone would produce a hosepipe and we’d play in the spray – it was like being on holiday on our own doorsteps. The old people would place chairs outside their houses and sit there in the sun talking to each other. It was such a wonderfully gregarious way of living, the old ladies chatting across the street to each other, looking on happily at the kids running around screaming and shouting, all through the day and right up until midnight. That community spirit was a great thing: you knew the names of everyone in the street, all their foibles – you knew it all. I don’t know if they still have that kind of spirit in the few remaining streets like that in Manchester. I wonder if it still happens.
It wasn’t all cosy, though: like everywhere else, there were bad families in the area, the ones who’d have the old folk sucking in their cheeks and raising their eyebrows at the latest gossip. There were certain houses you had to be careful of as you walked past – I’ll call them the Whites, the Greens and the Pinks, though those aren’t their real names, but they were the ones to avoid if you could. They were huge families with loads of kids, with a near-endless supply of brothers and cousins who were really hard, so much so that you’d frequently plan your route so you wouldn’t have to go past their houses.
The Pinks in particular were incredible. Half the family was always in prison: I think they had nine kids, and there were always about four in the nick at any given time. I remember walking along the road late one night and hearing a strange hissing noise. I looked over at the Pinks’, and there’s one of them standing in the living room at the open sash window pissing out into the street. I once saw the Pinks roll out of their front door like a huge human football, a whole bunch of them all screaming and laying into each other. A young couple moved next door to them, which was a bad move. Apparently, there was some kind of altercation in a pub involving this new guy, and he’d glassed one of them, and shortly afterwards I saw one of the Pinks going at him in the street with an iron bar. He hit him so hard the iron bar ended up bent around his chest.
Mrs Pink had a boyfriend. When I was a bit older, we used to hang around the street corner opposite the Pinks’ house and, one night, the lights were on and the curtains open and we could see inside. They had sliding doors that divided the parlour from the living room and, as we watched, the doors slid open and there was Mrs Pink in stockings, suspenders and bra, with another woman dressed the same way. Our eyes were on stalks. Then we saw the boyfriend get up out of the armchair, go to the drinks cabinet, pour himself a drink and all three of them disappeared into the back. They were mad, the Pinks, and they didn’t give a fuck about anything.
They didn’t bother us much because my cousin Tommy, who lived opposite, was pretty hard himself. Tommy once had a fight with the oldest Pink in which an earlobe got bitten off, and we didn’t get any trouble from them after that. I was chased by two older lads once. They were about eighteen or nineteen, and I was only about nine, and they caught up with me and knocked me to the ground. Just as they were about to lay into me I realized they were two of the Pinks, and at the same moment they realized who I was. ‘Oh,’ one of them said, ‘didn’t know it was you. All right, leave him.’ Thanks, Tommy.
I still occasionally see my aunties and cousins from the street – Irene, Doreen, Steve, David, Lynn, Ruth and Tommy – but not frequently enough, I’m afraid.
Bonfire Night was always a highlight of the year for me. There was a bomb site behind my great-grandmother’s house, the legacy of the night a house in the next street had taken a direct hit. People were killed; one of my aunties had been buried in the rubble but was pulled out alive. Although I’d been frightened of my grandfather’s store room full of items left over from the war, the bomb site was pretty much the equivalent of our local park, and I loved it. They’d even set up a fairground every so often. In the early seventies it was turned into a proper adventure playground, but for the thirty-odd years after the war it was just a derelict expanse of rubble and scrubland ripe for acting out the fantasies of small boys.
Bonfire Night was the biggest night at the bomb site, and in the weeks leading up to it we used to go round all the houses asking people for any spare wood, then use it to build a huge bonfire with a special den at the top for a watchtower. We needed a watchtower because kids from the neighbouring areas would always come and try to rob our firewood for their own bonfires. A guard would be posted in the lookout and if any gangs with designs on our stack showed up, he’d summon the gang and there’d be a pitched battle, bricks and rocks flying in all directions. It sounds dangerous, but it was all really good fun. I loved it.
I have to admit we did a bit of stealing, too, things like lead from roofs – and, well, I’m not very proud of that. There was a dodgy scrap metal merchant known locally as No Names No Questions, and all the kids used to pinch things and sell them to him because, as his nickname implied, he wasn’t too fussed as to provenance. We’d always be on the lookout for things and when the council started pulling the houses down nearby it opened up a whole new market to us fledgling entrepreneurs. I remember exploring one particular abandoned house and finding an old upr
ight piano in the parlour. This is a terrible thing for a musician to admit, but I took a pair of mole grips and some wire cutters and set about this old piano, spending hours cutting out all the strings – nearly blinding myself several times from whiplash – to take to No Names. When we got to his yard, however, he took one look at our booty and sniffed, ‘Sorry, lads, it’s only copper plate. I can’t give you anything for copper plate.’
At this time I was hanging around with a lad called Barrie Benson who was – and is – a mate of mine. His grandmother lived next door but one to me in Alfred Street and Barrie lived over the back in Victor Street. He was pretty much the cock of the walk in the area but he seemed to like me and for the most part we got on. On one occasion we had our eye on a huge reel of copper telephone wire about an inch thick outside a local electrical contractors. It would, we decided, be worth a fortune. Eventually, the opportunity presented itself and Barrie and I managed to manoeuvre it into a sack and balance it on the saddle of my bike. We were wheeling it through Peel Park feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, when someone must have spotted us and called the police. As we came over the bridge, a police car screamed to a halt on the other side, sirens going and lights flashing. Thinking quickly, we dumped the bag, I got on the back of the bike and Barrie on the front and we cycled off before they could catch us. Once we were sure the coast was clear we went back to find that the police had just dropped the wire over a fence, so we loaded it back on to the bike and set off again. Keen we may have been, but experts in scrap metal we definitely were not: the dealer didn’t want this wire either, so we took it away and burnt it one Bonfire Night. As well as the main bonfire, we had little fires in which we’d bake potatoes to eat while admiring the fireworks and the magnificent blaze we’d spent the previous weeks defending from marauders. That night we cooked our spuds in this burning copper-plated wire, melted plastic and toxic waste dripping on to our dinner. To this day, I suffer a lot from indigestion. So does Barrie, come to think of it.
Chapter and Verse - New Order, Joy Division and Me Page 2