THIS IS WHO I AM
Quite a few people have often asked who is Stephen Edward Garside? I mean we know he writes for a living, well tries to, but what’s “his” story?
Quite a few people have often asked who is Stephen Edward Garside? I mean we know he writes for a living, well tries to, but what’s “his” story?
Well here’s a brief potted history of who I am and what I’m all about and please be warned, there are no stones unturned here and what you might find you might not like, so here goes…
The 60s.
I was born in a small terraced house in a little place called Mossley on the 26th February 1961, can’t remember sliding out of my Mum’s womb and she never told me so we’ll have to skip that bit.
The parts I do remember of my childhood are thus and like everyone else’s there are good parts and bad parts.
The 60s.
I was born in a small terraced house in a little place called Mossley on the 26th February 1961, can’t remember sliding out of my Mum’s womb and she never told me so we’ll have to skip that bit.
The parts I do remember of my childhood are thus and like everyone else’s there are good parts and bad parts.
The good parts were getting treated like royalty, for some reason and though there were three of us, an older sister (Carol) and a younger brother (David) Mum (Marion) seemed to always treat me a little differently. I suppose I must have been her favourite, isn’t there always one and yes you guessed it a proper little mummy’s boy.
I can still remember hiding behind my Mum’s coat or whatever she was wearing at the time, peering out at whoever it was she were talking to, swiftly hiding back behind her if there appeared to be even the slightest threat of danger.
I started school at five years old like most kids then and can actually remember the first day, Mum didn’t take me my grand parents did, I think the reason for that was Mum would find it too upsetting if I decided to kick off and start blubbering, but I did anyway so there.
I can still remember hiding behind my Mum’s coat or whatever she was wearing at the time, peering out at whoever it was she were talking to, swiftly hiding back behind her if there appeared to be even the slightest threat of danger.
I started school at five years old like most kids then and can actually remember the first day, Mum didn’t take me my grand parents did, I think the reason for that was Mum would find it too upsetting if I decided to kick off and start blubbering, but I did anyway so there.
Infants school was one of those dark Gothic type structures and I must admit, some of the happiest times of my life were spent under the tutelage of a lady called Miss Dawson. I were absolutely convinced Miss Dawson was the reincarnation of Enid Blyton.
Every Friday we’d bake gingerbread men and then all sit round in a circle on rubber mats drinking little bottles of milk, listening to Miss Dawson read stories like (the faraway tree) (the Wishing chair) and of course (Jack and the beanstalk)
In fact just outside the school playground and on the opposite side of large black wrought iron railings was a huge oak tree, I were absolutely convinced this tree "was" the magic faraway tree from the Enid Blyton stories and on climbing up the tree in order to see if the magic cloud had arrived at the top, I realised I couldn’t get down and consequently had to be rescued by the fire brigade.
Two years later and in the spring of 1968 I began to realise something was wrong with Mum. She kept falling over and complaining of a terrible pain in her chest and on quite a few occasions, along with my sister and brother and of course Dad (Edward/Ted) had to try and pick her up and get her to the sofa whilst Dad nipped next door or to the nearest telephone box to call an ambulance.
2
On the one of those occasions, it were I alone who held my Mum in my arms whilst Dad tried to phone for help, she didn’t look very well and to this day can remember what she said.
“I have to go somewhere darling, don’t be afraid and whatever you do, you be a good boy for your Dad ya hear.”
I promised her I would obviously not understanding what was going on, ( I were only seven) Two days later Dad sat all three of us down along with Grandma and Granddad and tried his very best to explain why we’d never see Mum again!!.
I cried like you’ve never seen anyone cry before and I honestly believe a piece of “me” also died that day and found it extremely hard to come to terms with the loss of someone I loved so very very much.
Life carried on, obviously not in the same way but it did and at that time I was in what we call junior school.
Every Friday we’d bake gingerbread men and then all sit round in a circle on rubber mats drinking little bottles of milk, listening to Miss Dawson read stories like (the faraway tree) (the Wishing chair) and of course (Jack and the beanstalk)
In fact just outside the school playground and on the opposite side of large black wrought iron railings was a huge oak tree, I were absolutely convinced this tree "was" the magic faraway tree from the Enid Blyton stories and on climbing up the tree in order to see if the magic cloud had arrived at the top, I realised I couldn’t get down and consequently had to be rescued by the fire brigade.
Two years later and in the spring of 1968 I began to realise something was wrong with Mum. She kept falling over and complaining of a terrible pain in her chest and on quite a few occasions, along with my sister and brother and of course Dad (Edward/Ted) had to try and pick her up and get her to the sofa whilst Dad nipped next door or to the nearest telephone box to call an ambulance.
2
On the one of those occasions, it were I alone who held my Mum in my arms whilst Dad tried to phone for help, she didn’t look very well and to this day can remember what she said.
“I have to go somewhere darling, don’t be afraid and whatever you do, you be a good boy for your Dad ya hear.”
I promised her I would obviously not understanding what was going on, ( I were only seven) Two days later Dad sat all three of us down along with Grandma and Granddad and tried his very best to explain why we’d never see Mum again!!.
I cried like you’ve never seen anyone cry before and I honestly believe a piece of “me” also died that day and found it extremely hard to come to terms with the loss of someone I loved so very very much.
Life carried on, obviously not in the same way but it did and at that time I was in what we call junior school.
This is the second step in the British educational system and the age parameters for this are from 7 to 11.
I did rather well at junior school and like at in the infants school got on with everyone, fellow pupils and teachers.
Then along came the ubiquitous school bully, this was to be the first and last occasion I would ever got bullied and here’s why.
I was in the classroom minding my own business when I suddenly felt the presence of someone behind me. It was a kid called Graham Renwick (Renni) and Graham was the cock of the school, meaning, you did as you were told and basically didn’t give him any shit.
He prodded me in my back, I was reading a Collins world atlas at the time and for anyone that hasn’t seen one of these atlases they’re bloody huge.
He prodded me again and informed me he was taking my break money, I totally ignored him, Dad had always said if you ignore bullies they’ll go away.
He didn’t and then proceeded to kick me in the back of my legs; I still ignored him trying my best to blank him out and carried on staring at a map of Australia.
Then Graham said something he really shouldn’t have, “What’s wrong Mummy’s boy, oh that’s right, “you haven‘t got one anymore.”
Even today kids can say really evil things and were no different then either, in a heartbeat I slammed shut the atlas, picking it up with both hands and all in one movement swung round and swiped Graham right across his clock.
He must have landed about ten feet away from where I struck him and walking over to him I more or less informed him if he were to mention my Mum to me again it would be the last thing he ever did on this planet.
He must have landed about ten feet away from where I struck him and walking over to him I more or less informed him if he were to mention my Mum to me again it would be the last thing he ever did on this planet.
What followed was instant respect and we grew up to be the best of pals and Renni stayed cock of both the junior school and later on High school. No one could beat him in a fist fight, hard as bleeding nails was Renni, however he never ever crossed me and if ever there was a lesson to be learned it’s never ever back down from a bully.
3
The 70s
Two years after my Mum had passed away thanks to lung cancer, Dad met someone else and shortly after that he married Kathleen Ashcroft.
I hated Kathleen and still do to this very day, even though she's now gone, the feeling was also mutual.
Not really sure what it was that started the mutual loathing for each other, I guess it were the fact “she” was trying to replace in my eyes the irreplaceable.
Strangely enough both my brother David and sister Carol not only accepted Kathleen, they actually took to her, however not me and what was to follow wasn’t pretty by any stretch of the imagination.
At first it were just a sullen silence, I could sulk for England, still can, for instance the porridge she made were too thick.
Also what was the deal with having sterilised milk over cereals, I wanted pasteurised, AKA cows milk, Margarine? No no no, only butter for his Lordship and on Sundays I wanted bacon sandwiches not sloppy crappy Weetabix.
Strangely enough both my brother David and sister Carol not only accepted Kathleen, they actually took to her, however not me and what was to follow wasn’t pretty by any stretch of the imagination.
At first it were just a sullen silence, I could sulk for England, still can, for instance the porridge she made were too thick.
Also what was the deal with having sterilised milk over cereals, I wanted pasteurised, AKA cows milk, Margarine? No no no, only butter for his Lordship and on Sundays I wanted bacon sandwiches not sloppy crappy Weetabix.
Confrontation followed confrontation and what started off as just the general rebellion against the new matriarch developed into a lengthy psychological battle of wits.
Kathleen was by all accounts a Roman Catholic, we (my sister, brother, Dad) weren’t and on many occasions she would demand Dad take “me” to see a Priest, she actually thought I was possessed!
Kathleen was by all accounts a Roman Catholic, we (my sister, brother, Dad) weren’t and on many occasions she would demand Dad take “me” to see a Priest, she actually thought I was possessed!
One reckoning for that ludicrous assumption was probably after being told to get out of the house and go and play, I decided to teach “her” and all her lady friends a lesson.
Acquiring a large empty Nescafe coffee jar I filled to the brim with what must have been at last fifty large and very angry Bumble Bees.
Sneaking into the house from the back door I surreptitiously placed the coffee jar in the kitchen, rapped loudly on the lounge door then after whipping the lid off got the hell out of dodge.
What followed was something that’d make any horror movie director swell with pride, bringing about of course the afore mentioned label as being, quote, “the devils child” unquote.
Acquiring a large empty Nescafe coffee jar I filled to the brim with what must have been at last fifty large and very angry Bumble Bees.
Sneaking into the house from the back door I surreptitiously placed the coffee jar in the kitchen, rapped loudly on the lounge door then after whipping the lid off got the hell out of dodge.
What followed was something that’d make any horror movie director swell with pride, bringing about of course the afore mentioned label as being, quote, “the devils child” unquote.
Was I remorseful?
No, not one jot and so carried on the battle between myself and the demon stepmother from hell.
There are of course many other incidences and clashes between myself and Kathleen and you know what! In all the time I lived in the same house as “her“, I never once called her Mum, both my brother and sister did and still do, I however did not, stubborn? Refusing possibly to accept the psychological aspect of moving on?
NO, I just didn’t bloody like the woman and wasn’t afraid to stand my ground, the problem was it was starting to drive a wedge between Dad and myself and as such he was forced to make a decision, his wife or his son?
4
There were three things that kept me going whilst engaging in a constant war with “the enemy” (My Stepmother) Football, Running and more than anything else, reading.
Even at ten years old I had already read most of Enid Blyton’s books, including the famous five series.
Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, 20,000 leagues under the sea and The Water Babies as well as all of the wonderful Dr Doolittle books written by the brilliant Hugh Lofting were among many others.
Football, I loved football, though nowadays at the tender age of 50 I tend more to watch it than play it.
Back then though all I did was play it, day in day out, we had a set of garages at the end of our street (The Willows) and sometimes for hours on end I would incessantly smack the ball repeatedly against the garage doors. God only knows how the neighbours coped with “that“, but they did, I guess they didn’t really have a choice.
There were other pastimes too and ones that unveiled the dark side of my nature.
We used to have gangs, not in the sense like you see in the states or like now where you see youngsters roam around in packs armed to the teeth with knives or even guns. No we were just groups of ten year olds who simply just loved to re enact war movies or westerns.
I was in charge of my gang and of course led from the front, I even made a makeshift 7th Cavalry flag, after just watching General Custer get slaughtered on the TV.
I say led from the front, however when the shit hit the fan as it invariably did, I led from the rear, as in heading off in the opposite direction as fast as my little legs could carry me.
4
There were three things that kept me going whilst engaging in a constant war with “the enemy” (My Stepmother) Football, Running and more than anything else, reading.
Even at ten years old I had already read most of Enid Blyton’s books, including the famous five series.
Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, 20,000 leagues under the sea and The Water Babies as well as all of the wonderful Dr Doolittle books written by the brilliant Hugh Lofting were among many others.
Football, I loved football, though nowadays at the tender age of 50 I tend more to watch it than play it.
Back then though all I did was play it, day in day out, we had a set of garages at the end of our street (The Willows) and sometimes for hours on end I would incessantly smack the ball repeatedly against the garage doors. God only knows how the neighbours coped with “that“, but they did, I guess they didn’t really have a choice.
There were other pastimes too and ones that unveiled the dark side of my nature.
We used to have gangs, not in the sense like you see in the states or like now where you see youngsters roam around in packs armed to the teeth with knives or even guns. No we were just groups of ten year olds who simply just loved to re enact war movies or westerns.
I was in charge of my gang and of course led from the front, I even made a makeshift 7th Cavalry flag, after just watching General Custer get slaughtered on the TV.
I say led from the front, however when the shit hit the fan as it invariably did, I led from the rear, as in heading off in the opposite direction as fast as my little legs could carry me.
It wasn’t that I were a coward or anything, it had more to do with the fact that Alan Caldwell was in the opposite gang and as in those days the weapons used were small bricks or large stones. And coupled with the fact Alan had this fearsome reputation of “never” missing a target, well if you’ve ever had a stone hit you on the side of the bonce you’ll know what I mean.
There was another occasion where my gang found the other gangs den, this den consisted of a large hole in the ground and then surrounded by big clogs of earth for walls, finished with a makeshift roof, this was usually corrugated iron or if not that, sheets of plywood or planks of timber.
I have to say even though we were only small kids; the ingenuity involved in building these dens would have impressed any construction company.
These dens had only one way in and of course only one way out. Sneaking up to the den and covered in Kiwi boot polish, this time "we" were an elite commando unit after just watching the guns of Navarone and surreptitiously placing rolled up pieces of newspaper through small cracks in the clogs of earth we set light to them and waited.
Of course as soon as the lit paper became alight it gave off unbelievable amounts of smoke and it wasn’t long before hoards of choking, coughing, red eyed rival gang members burst out of said den.
Met with and I still find this a tad disturbing, an orchestrated barrage of stone throwing, of course with the rival gang totally disorientated and confused it was like shooting fish in a barrel. boys eh?
5
There were many of these incidences that were seemingly perceived as happy childhood playing, though barbaric and disturbingly violent but the one other that stands out is on one occasion after being really bored I decided to perform an experiment on someone I didn’t particularly like at that time.
Terrance Connelly AKA Terry Tat, asked if he could play with me, as in play football, join my gang, hang out and the like. I immediately refused, you had to have either kudos to join my gang or access to goodies, such as biscuits, chocs, decent toys, you know the criteria?
It was then I decided to amuse myself so on convincing Terry he had to undergo an initiation test to join my gang, even though there were no one else present I persuaded him to head off to the local children’s park.
This small kids park consisted of a roundabout, swings and a large rocking horse, at the end was a large sand pit and quite a lot of sand, in fact enough to bury someone up to the neck which is what I did with poor Terry.
Why Terry didn’t suss out what was going on I’ll never know, even when an old steel mop bucket closed over the top of his head.
Finding an iron bar I proceeded with my experiment, I banged hard on the steel bucket and then lifted it to see what the resulting effect was.
Well needless to say poor Terry screamed, puzzled I asked him why he was screaming as it was the bucket I were striking and not Terry?
There was another occasion where my gang found the other gangs den, this den consisted of a large hole in the ground and then surrounded by big clogs of earth for walls, finished with a makeshift roof, this was usually corrugated iron or if not that, sheets of plywood or planks of timber.
I have to say even though we were only small kids; the ingenuity involved in building these dens would have impressed any construction company.
These dens had only one way in and of course only one way out. Sneaking up to the den and covered in Kiwi boot polish, this time "we" were an elite commando unit after just watching the guns of Navarone and surreptitiously placing rolled up pieces of newspaper through small cracks in the clogs of earth we set light to them and waited.
Of course as soon as the lit paper became alight it gave off unbelievable amounts of smoke and it wasn’t long before hoards of choking, coughing, red eyed rival gang members burst out of said den.
Met with and I still find this a tad disturbing, an orchestrated barrage of stone throwing, of course with the rival gang totally disorientated and confused it was like shooting fish in a barrel. boys eh?
5
There were many of these incidences that were seemingly perceived as happy childhood playing, though barbaric and disturbingly violent but the one other that stands out is on one occasion after being really bored I decided to perform an experiment on someone I didn’t particularly like at that time.
Terrance Connelly AKA Terry Tat, asked if he could play with me, as in play football, join my gang, hang out and the like. I immediately refused, you had to have either kudos to join my gang or access to goodies, such as biscuits, chocs, decent toys, you know the criteria?
It was then I decided to amuse myself so on convincing Terry he had to undergo an initiation test to join my gang, even though there were no one else present I persuaded him to head off to the local children’s park.
This small kids park consisted of a roundabout, swings and a large rocking horse, at the end was a large sand pit and quite a lot of sand, in fact enough to bury someone up to the neck which is what I did with poor Terry.
Why Terry didn’t suss out what was going on I’ll never know, even when an old steel mop bucket closed over the top of his head.
Finding an iron bar I proceeded with my experiment, I banged hard on the steel bucket and then lifted it to see what the resulting effect was.
Well needless to say poor Terry screamed, puzzled I asked him why he was screaming as it was the bucket I were striking and not Terry?
With large pleading eyes Terry muttered something about the awful noise coming from the bucket. On striking the bucket several more times to try to understand why, [I were an extremely inquisitive child and didn’t like mysteries] I finally gave up and let Terry go.
In later years Terry would inform me that the ringing in his ears never really went away and hates even the thought of going anywhere near sand let alone letting his kids play in it.
Running, I loved running too and was actually quite good at it; I used to practice for hours running around our block and even drew chalk lanes on the footpath like you see on a real athletics track all the way around the block.
Some of the neighbours not getting into the spirit of things would threaten to throw buckets of water over the chalk lines, miserable sods and they did. Retribution followed swiftly in the form of tying one end of a piece of rope to the front door handle and the other to a large tree in the garden. Then after knocking on the door hide and watch the ensuing struggle between man and nature…
You have probably noticed I haven‘t mentioned much about my Brother David and Sister Carol?
Well if I’m being really honest there isn’t really much too tell, don’t get me wrong I loved them both and still do, though more my sister who happens to be the most loving considerate human being on the planet bar none.
In later years Terry would inform me that the ringing in his ears never really went away and hates even the thought of going anywhere near sand let alone letting his kids play in it.
Running, I loved running too and was actually quite good at it; I used to practice for hours running around our block and even drew chalk lanes on the footpath like you see on a real athletics track all the way around the block.
Some of the neighbours not getting into the spirit of things would threaten to throw buckets of water over the chalk lines, miserable sods and they did. Retribution followed swiftly in the form of tying one end of a piece of rope to the front door handle and the other to a large tree in the garden. Then after knocking on the door hide and watch the ensuing struggle between man and nature…
You have probably noticed I haven‘t mentioned much about my Brother David and Sister Carol?
Well if I’m being really honest there isn’t really much too tell, don’t get me wrong I loved them both and still do, though more my sister who happens to be the most loving considerate human being on the planet bar none.
It’s just I “were” and “always” will be, though not totally by choice a bit of a loner, I had a considerable amount of friends as a child both at school and at home but usually more or less preferred my own company.
6
This was probably due to enjoying the things I liked best were more suited to being alone, such as playing keepy uppy, running and reading, so as a result, David and Carol did their thing and I did mine though I will say this.
You know that dark streak I told you about?
6
This was probably due to enjoying the things I liked best were more suited to being alone, such as playing keepy uppy, running and reading, so as a result, David and Carol did their thing and I did mine though I will say this.
You know that dark streak I told you about?
Well it wasn’t exclusively all my domain, no sirree, on catching me reading one of my sisters Cindy annuals and let me just get the record straight. I wasn’t reading it as such I were simply curious why Girls would possibly read such crap and wanted to just have a quick peek, nothing more.
All to no avail, my sister Carol insisted from that moment on, for one week, I would “volunteer” to do “all” her errands. Go to the shop, go to the Laundrette, do the washing up, you name it, she owned my soul for seven bloody days and there was “nothing I could do about it and if you’re reading this Carol that was awfully bloody evil and you know it!!
1971 and the start of the last five years at school and stage three in the state educational system.
I had actually passed my eleven plus which means to the un initiated that you’re eligible for Grammar school; this was a higher form of education and one that meant more or less you were guaranteed a place at university.
Enter stage left, [Kathleen] this is “her” talking to my Dad and explaining the rationality of “not” sending me to Ashton Grammar school which was a daily bus journey.
“Ted you know we can’t afford his bus fares and what’s the point of sending him all that way when there’s a perfectly good school right on our doorstep.
And furthermore “why” should “he” be any different than anyone else?”
She was of course referring to not only to my full blood siblings, David, Carol and my half sister Susan, who at this stage had not long been born, but the rest of Kathleen’s brood, Ian, Kathleen MK2, Joseph, Derek, Anne and Ruth.
Yep, you guessed it, what had once been “three” Garside’s had now become “ten,” one more and we could play a fucking football match.
So in “her” twisted yet in a financial way sort of sound logic, my dear step mother in one fell swoop destroyed any chance at all of ever reaching or aspiring to be the same as my Uncle Geoffrey who by the way graduated with honours and every fucking letter you can think of after his name.
Not only that Geoffrey Garside went on to work on the space program in Houston as well as designing various computer missile firing systems for NATO, yes a very clever man, who also incidentally hated with a passion my dear old step mother…..
September 21st 1972 and I walked probably one of the longest 500 yards of my entire life, yes you guessed it, time for the big school
For all those of you reading this I defy any of to say you weren’t scared on your first day at what was then secondary and is now “high” school, because I was bloody terrified.
So many people, kids and teachers, 600 in all and coming from a little primary school where there were 100 at best, well you can imagine the fear factor and I personally think that “that” particular jump from junior school to “high” school is the hardest of all.
7
The first year was OK and rather uneventful; the second year was too it was only really into the third year that things really changed both at school and at home in a rather momentous and cataclysmic way.
1974 and things where pretty much the same as in the two previous years, Renni was still beating people up for their lunch money only this time had some help.
This came in the form of a gang known simply as, “the mob“, the main characters where Ren himself of course, Maurice Maney, Martin Gilworth (Gillie) and a boy called Brian Lomas,
These fellas didn’t mess around and if you where to cross them you’d generally never forget it.
One of their favourite past times was that is apart from the usual extortion, intimidation and not doing what they were told to in any form was christening a new pair of Docs.
1971 and the start of the last five years at school and stage three in the state educational system.
I had actually passed my eleven plus which means to the un initiated that you’re eligible for Grammar school; this was a higher form of education and one that meant more or less you were guaranteed a place at university.
Enter stage left, [Kathleen] this is “her” talking to my Dad and explaining the rationality of “not” sending me to Ashton Grammar school which was a daily bus journey.
“Ted you know we can’t afford his bus fares and what’s the point of sending him all that way when there’s a perfectly good school right on our doorstep.
And furthermore “why” should “he” be any different than anyone else?”
She was of course referring to not only to my full blood siblings, David, Carol and my half sister Susan, who at this stage had not long been born, but the rest of Kathleen’s brood, Ian, Kathleen MK2, Joseph, Derek, Anne and Ruth.
Yep, you guessed it, what had once been “three” Garside’s had now become “ten,” one more and we could play a fucking football match.
So in “her” twisted yet in a financial way sort of sound logic, my dear step mother in one fell swoop destroyed any chance at all of ever reaching or aspiring to be the same as my Uncle Geoffrey who by the way graduated with honours and every fucking letter you can think of after his name.
Not only that Geoffrey Garside went on to work on the space program in Houston as well as designing various computer missile firing systems for NATO, yes a very clever man, who also incidentally hated with a passion my dear old step mother…..
September 21st 1972 and I walked probably one of the longest 500 yards of my entire life, yes you guessed it, time for the big school
For all those of you reading this I defy any of to say you weren’t scared on your first day at what was then secondary and is now “high” school, because I was bloody terrified.
So many people, kids and teachers, 600 in all and coming from a little primary school where there were 100 at best, well you can imagine the fear factor and I personally think that “that” particular jump from junior school to “high” school is the hardest of all.
7
The first year was OK and rather uneventful; the second year was too it was only really into the third year that things really changed both at school and at home in a rather momentous and cataclysmic way.
1974 and things where pretty much the same as in the two previous years, Renni was still beating people up for their lunch money only this time had some help.
This came in the form of a gang known simply as, “the mob“, the main characters where Ren himself of course, Maurice Maney, Martin Gilworth (Gillie) and a boy called Brian Lomas,
These fellas didn’t mess around and if you where to cross them you’d generally never forget it.
One of their favourite past times was that is apart from the usual extortion, intimidation and not doing what they were told to in any form was christening a new pair of Docs.
Again for anyone out there that doesn’t know what Docs are I’ll tell you, Doctor Martens were the fashion statement of 70s schools. Particularly amongst 5th formers and some of these boots had 18 lace holes and nearly came up to your knees so you can imagine the terror of some hapless target who had been selected for a christening.
Meaning if you had just acquired a new pair of Docs you had to christen them on some unfortunate pupils head, or any other body part of your choosing, ribs was good, back was OK; legs didn’t really produce the necessary screams required so most Christeners opted for the head and rib cage.
The mob would select a target if you had the necessary funds, or if you had a beef with another pupil, a long running vendetta then that too would facilitate the breaking in of your brand spanking new Doc Martens.
Meaning if you had just acquired a new pair of Docs you had to christen them on some unfortunate pupils head, or any other body part of your choosing, ribs was good, back was OK; legs didn’t really produce the necessary screams required so most Christeners opted for the head and rib cage.
The mob would select a target if you had the necessary funds, or if you had a beef with another pupil, a long running vendetta then that too would facilitate the breaking in of your brand spanking new Doc Martens.
One of the most unpleasant memories I have of school though if I’m being honest I didn’t have many, I really liked school and probably the main reason for that was because it was a convenient break from my otherwise wretched home life.
“she” was getting worse and I would be continually singled out for any misdemeanour, even if I hadn’t actually done it.
More errands, more chores, more beatings, yes, I on more than one occasion would get the living crap kicked out of me and Kathleen had long ago decided that the psychological battle wasn’t going to work so the gloves came off and Stephen got more than his fair share of some proper good hidings.
Going back to the school bit and the rather unpleasant memory.
“she” was getting worse and I would be continually singled out for any misdemeanour, even if I hadn’t actually done it.
More errands, more chores, more beatings, yes, I on more than one occasion would get the living crap kicked out of me and Kathleen had long ago decided that the psychological battle wasn’t going to work so the gloves came off and Stephen got more than his fair share of some proper good hidings.
Going back to the school bit and the rather unpleasant memory.
There was a boy in our form, 3H1, that was the name of the class and his name was Peter Robinson.
Peter was a good kid, a bit rough round the edges, he came from quite a hard family background but everyone liked him. Even the mob and Peter used to always come to “me,” to help him with his class work, which was a very regular occurrence, but I didn’t mind, Pete was Pete and everybody liked Pete.
8
We were in Maths one day, the teacher was a certain Mr Story, his nickname was (that bastard Story) or (Jack a fuckin nory) you didn’t let him hear you say that though. In those days teacher power meant just that and if you dared to question their authority you got a kicking, simple as that, oh and detention afterwards to lick your wounds.
There was a knock on the door and I’ll never forget this moment until the day I die, It was Mr Hibbert (his nibs) (Hitler) he had loads of nicknames but in reality Hibbert was the deputy head and he had something to tell the class and I swear even before the deputy head said anything I had a feeling it had something to do with my little pal Peter Robinson.
Peter had been regularly wagging it, which means playing truant, absent without permission and so forth and one of the reasons for that was his old man.
Peter was a good kid, a bit rough round the edges, he came from quite a hard family background but everyone liked him. Even the mob and Peter used to always come to “me,” to help him with his class work, which was a very regular occurrence, but I didn’t mind, Pete was Pete and everybody liked Pete.
8
We were in Maths one day, the teacher was a certain Mr Story, his nickname was (that bastard Story) or (Jack a fuckin nory) you didn’t let him hear you say that though. In those days teacher power meant just that and if you dared to question their authority you got a kicking, simple as that, oh and detention afterwards to lick your wounds.
There was a knock on the door and I’ll never forget this moment until the day I die, It was Mr Hibbert (his nibs) (Hitler) he had loads of nicknames but in reality Hibbert was the deputy head and he had something to tell the class and I swear even before the deputy head said anything I had a feeling it had something to do with my little pal Peter Robinson.
Peter had been regularly wagging it, which means playing truant, absent without permission and so forth and one of the reasons for that was his old man.
Peter's Dad used to collect scrap from old houses, mostly without the owners permission and it was on one of these occasions Peter was with his Dad, they had apparently gone into an old deserted house and on seeing an old copper boiler Pete’s Dad asked him to try and get it out.
Copper Boilers were and still are worth a lot of money so Peter proceeded to do what his Dad had asked him too.
The problem was though, the fucking boiler was still wired into the mains and the mains supply was still switched on!! I won’t go into anymore details and I’ll leave it your imaginations what subsequently happened to poor poor Peter.
What I will say is that there wasn’t much left of him and at his funeral it was definitely a closed casket.
Copper Boilers were and still are worth a lot of money so Peter proceeded to do what his Dad had asked him too.
The problem was though, the fucking boiler was still wired into the mains and the mains supply was still switched on!! I won’t go into anymore details and I’ll leave it your imaginations what subsequently happened to poor poor Peter.
What I will say is that there wasn’t much left of him and at his funeral it was definitely a closed casket.
At the funeral nearly “all” the school paid its respects, a lot went including myself and even though I had already experienced death first hand, I felt terrible. I suppose it was probably bringing everything back even though the death of my Mum was over six years ago.
A brief return to something that happened at home and then I will return back to school days, by the way what I am about to write has “never” been written before and “no one” knows about this particular episode of my life.
When you have read this particular piece you’ll probably ask why? Why would I let people know about something like that?
And you’d be right but I have lived with this now for over 35 years and still not sure why I allowed this to happen to me but happen it did and I’ll say again, if you’re the emotional or squeamish type, don‘t read on!!!!
At the time all this palaver was going on between myself and my dear old step mother I found that I were increasingly being driven apart from my Dad and of course that worked in “her” favour.
Now that Ted was onside it would only be matter of time before she won and broke my spirit once and for all and you know what, she very nearly did.
A brief return to something that happened at home and then I will return back to school days, by the way what I am about to write has “never” been written before and “no one” knows about this particular episode of my life.
When you have read this particular piece you’ll probably ask why? Why would I let people know about something like that?
And you’d be right but I have lived with this now for over 35 years and still not sure why I allowed this to happen to me but happen it did and I’ll say again, if you’re the emotional or squeamish type, don‘t read on!!!!
At the time all this palaver was going on between myself and my dear old step mother I found that I were increasingly being driven apart from my Dad and of course that worked in “her” favour.
Now that Ted was onside it would only be matter of time before she won and broke my spirit once and for all and you know what, she very nearly did.
That was when “someone” else caught my attention and gave me a glimpse into what life could be and should be like.
9
Gordon Smith! Gordon Smith lived at the end of our street on a road named Winteford, Gordon had recently lost his wife and had an only child, a son I think his name is Peter but I can’t exactly remember.
Well Gordon used to own a Mini car and one of my little perks as well as having a paper round was to earn a bit of extra cash and on regular occasions wash Gordon’s car, I loved it and afterwards Gordon would take me out for a spin, we’d go everywhere and given what was going on at home this came as bit of welcome relief, particularly in the long summer holidays when the distraction of school life wasn’t around.
The relationship between Gordon and I blossomed, not in the way you think but in a very fatherly son type way, he hardly saw Peter and with him losing his wife I think he felt very lonely.
9
Gordon Smith! Gordon Smith lived at the end of our street on a road named Winteford, Gordon had recently lost his wife and had an only child, a son I think his name is Peter but I can’t exactly remember.
Well Gordon used to own a Mini car and one of my little perks as well as having a paper round was to earn a bit of extra cash and on regular occasions wash Gordon’s car, I loved it and afterwards Gordon would take me out for a spin, we’d go everywhere and given what was going on at home this came as bit of welcome relief, particularly in the long summer holidays when the distraction of school life wasn’t around.
The relationship between Gordon and I blossomed, not in the way you think but in a very fatherly son type way, he hardly saw Peter and with him losing his wife I think he felt very lonely.
On the other hand I was full of beans and I suppose seemed like a breath of fresh air, I was 13 years old and bouncing with energy as well as that I made him laugh a lot and we got on very well, too well.
After about six months of washing cars and going out for spins to the peak district, Blue John mines were my favourite, it all came to a crashing halt.
After about six months of washing cars and going out for spins to the peak district, Blue John mines were my favourite, it all came to a crashing halt.
“she” didn’t like it, “she” said it wasn’t healthy, “she” said my Dad didn’t like it either though strangely enough Dad never said anything, by this time Dad had fallen in with everyone else and like everyone else agreed with everything Kathleen said.
Of course I was bloody heartbroken, the trips out, the extra cash, the little presents Gordon bought me, such as records, football programs, football cards, trips to the pictures. Gordon had retired and had been in a very good job, he’d worked for British aerospace, so had available plenty of cash.
So I decided like every other time to rebel and not tow the line, in my eyes the hateful bitch was just using another excuse to deny me any pleasure she could and threatened me with the loss of my paper round if I where to defy her and go round to Gordon’s.
It didn’t stop me, still did, usually at night time when none of “her” nosey neighbour friends could see me, they’d all be placed on Steve watch and would have had no problem at all in snitching me up.
Gordon at first was a bit nervous and in his defence asked me to stop coming round to the house in circumstances like these, he said he didn’t feel comfortable with it and who can blame him?
Of course I was bloody heartbroken, the trips out, the extra cash, the little presents Gordon bought me, such as records, football programs, football cards, trips to the pictures. Gordon had retired and had been in a very good job, he’d worked for British aerospace, so had available plenty of cash.
So I decided like every other time to rebel and not tow the line, in my eyes the hateful bitch was just using another excuse to deny me any pleasure she could and threatened me with the loss of my paper round if I where to defy her and go round to Gordon’s.
It didn’t stop me, still did, usually at night time when none of “her” nosey neighbour friends could see me, they’d all be placed on Steve watch and would have had no problem at all in snitching me up.
Gordon at first was a bit nervous and in his defence asked me to stop coming round to the house in circumstances like these, he said he didn’t feel comfortable with it and who can blame him?
However the lure of food, chocs, presents, money to go and watch Oldham Athletic. Liverpool were my team and still are, but at that time I were a little bit too young to be travelling by myself to Liverpool and with hating anything to do with Manchester United or City had to settle for the next best thing.
No one knew my little secret, I was very adept at making stories up and “always” had an alibi though when what was to follow happened I wished I hadn’t, strange thing hindsight isn’t it?
First it was a casual stroke on the neck and the comment, “have you any idea how I put myself out for you Stephen Garside?”
10
At the time I was watching Tarzan starring Johnny Weissmuller, as well as filling my face with Cadburys crème eggs and far too engrossed to bother about the roaming hand.
Then came the fingers through the hair and the casual “affectionate” kiss, all the time not realising that this was so very wrong, it sort of felt right and felt good, all the attention. Attention that I wasn’t getting anywhere else and though something deep down was trying to say “no” Stephen, “this isn‘t right“, I let it happen.
Then came the “you can lie down on my bed if you like, it’s much more comfortable than down here on the couch,” this was late at night, I were supposed to be sleeping at Kevin Lilly’s (a pal my own age) house and he would have covered for me.
But I wasn’t, I was in Gordon Smith’s bed, listening to Ray Coniff on the hi fi and having my genitalia fondled, there wasn’t any sexual contact, old Gordon was just getting his rocks off this way and I think that was enough for him.
I never went back, the reality and I think guilt at letting myself allow that to happen to me made sure I never went back and I never set eyes upon him again, I think He also was aware of the enormity of what he had done and even if I had gone back to his house I think he wouldn’t have ever let me in.
I have carried those memories like I said earlier for over 35 years and still feel guilty to this day as I did then, I allowed that to happen to me and though there was no sexual intercourse I “was” interfered with.
I suppose I should have told someone there and then but like I said, the embarrassment and the “fallout” would have been astronomical and had far more long term damage, of that I am absolutely certain.
I mean can you imagine the reaction at school following a probable court case, the “I told you so” from “her“, no I just wouldn’t have been able to hack it and to my sister Carol if you’re reading this, don’t you dare cry, I mean it!!!
Back to the school memories and by this time I had reached the 4th form.
A lot had already been achieved, I had built my own canoe, ran a marathon in record time and nearly died doing so. Played for the school football team read every volume of Lord of the rings in my English project.
However the most important bit was still to come, The School Teacher Crush!!!!
In all honesty there weren’t that many good looking female teachers at our school however one did stand out and for the life of me I can’t remember her name.
She wasn’t tall but she had jet black hair, it was always in a sort of Cleopatra style cut and more importantly, especially for a raging hormonal 15 year old, Miss wore skin tight trackie bottoms.
She was a PE teacher as well as teaching other subjects but she mainly taught the girls PE and a regular pastime was myself along with a few other boys, was to spy on Miss along all with all the other fifth form girls through the gymnasium window.
No one knew my little secret, I was very adept at making stories up and “always” had an alibi though when what was to follow happened I wished I hadn’t, strange thing hindsight isn’t it?
First it was a casual stroke on the neck and the comment, “have you any idea how I put myself out for you Stephen Garside?”
10
At the time I was watching Tarzan starring Johnny Weissmuller, as well as filling my face with Cadburys crème eggs and far too engrossed to bother about the roaming hand.
Then came the fingers through the hair and the casual “affectionate” kiss, all the time not realising that this was so very wrong, it sort of felt right and felt good, all the attention. Attention that I wasn’t getting anywhere else and though something deep down was trying to say “no” Stephen, “this isn‘t right“, I let it happen.
Then came the “you can lie down on my bed if you like, it’s much more comfortable than down here on the couch,” this was late at night, I were supposed to be sleeping at Kevin Lilly’s (a pal my own age) house and he would have covered for me.
But I wasn’t, I was in Gordon Smith’s bed, listening to Ray Coniff on the hi fi and having my genitalia fondled, there wasn’t any sexual contact, old Gordon was just getting his rocks off this way and I think that was enough for him.
I never went back, the reality and I think guilt at letting myself allow that to happen to me made sure I never went back and I never set eyes upon him again, I think He also was aware of the enormity of what he had done and even if I had gone back to his house I think he wouldn’t have ever let me in.
I have carried those memories like I said earlier for over 35 years and still feel guilty to this day as I did then, I allowed that to happen to me and though there was no sexual intercourse I “was” interfered with.
I suppose I should have told someone there and then but like I said, the embarrassment and the “fallout” would have been astronomical and had far more long term damage, of that I am absolutely certain.
I mean can you imagine the reaction at school following a probable court case, the “I told you so” from “her“, no I just wouldn’t have been able to hack it and to my sister Carol if you’re reading this, don’t you dare cry, I mean it!!!
Back to the school memories and by this time I had reached the 4th form.
A lot had already been achieved, I had built my own canoe, ran a marathon in record time and nearly died doing so. Played for the school football team read every volume of Lord of the rings in my English project.
However the most important bit was still to come, The School Teacher Crush!!!!
In all honesty there weren’t that many good looking female teachers at our school however one did stand out and for the life of me I can’t remember her name.
She wasn’t tall but she had jet black hair, it was always in a sort of Cleopatra style cut and more importantly, especially for a raging hormonal 15 year old, Miss wore skin tight trackie bottoms.
She was a PE teacher as well as teaching other subjects but she mainly taught the girls PE and a regular pastime was myself along with a few other boys, was to spy on Miss along all with all the other fifth form girls through the gymnasium window.
We nearly got caught once and it was right at the moment the girls were shinning up the ropes and we could see everything,
I know what you’re thinking? Little perverts? But that’s what teenage boys did/do and it were bloody fantastic.
I know what you’re thinking? Little perverts? But that’s what teenage boys did/do and it were bloody fantastic.
11
1976 and another earth shattering moment came to pass and one that rocked my world to its foundations, in fact there were two massive eruptions if you can call them that.
One was my brother David and a pal of his had, during the school holidays broken into the school. All it was really was a bit of thrill seeking, you know dares and stuff and the fact there was a snack bar in there packed full of goodies.
I actually went with them on the odd occasion but really didn’t like it, I wasn’t a wimp or anything it’s just that I really didn’t feel comfortable. My brother David and his mate John didn’t mind though and breaking and entering Mossley Hollins school became a regular occurrence in the long red hot summer holiday of 1976.
Until on one particular night, it was a Sunday evening and one I won’t ever forget. I can’t remember all the details but suffice to say both my brother and his pal John both smoked and on entering the science laboratory at the school decided to light up.
The problem being they had foolishly turned all the science lab “gas taps on” and of course, !!Whoosh!! Quite a large portion of that part of the school subsequently burnt to the ground.
I was mortified and immediately knew who was responsible but more than anything else I was worried about “my” skin, you see even though I wasn’t with them on that fateful occasion, I “had” been inside the school when I shouldn’t have and when the police knocked on the door I feared the worst.
Nothing happened, well not to me anyway, my brother and his mate John got 2 years in a young offenders facility (BORSTAL) But my hide had been saved because even at that age, we had a code of conduct, keeping your mouth shut and I will forever be eternally grateful for those two for not involving me in that debacle.
John wanted to at first, me and him weren’t bosom buddies, but my brother David made it quite clear that I wasn’t to be dragged into the same shit they were in and though we are not particularly close like some siblings are. I will never forget the fact that even though "his" life would be changed in the worst way possible, he was “protecting me,” like brothers do….
It wouldn’t be two years until I saw David and John again and in that time another pivotal moment came to pass.
Because of course of the constant battles being fought between myself and “her,” something had to give and it did. “She” brought in a social worker, I was getting older and I think she felt a little more threatened, not in a physical sense but in the fact I was beginning to tell the school what was going on at home and she didn’t like that, no she didn’t like that at all.
First I was fostered out, that worked for a little while but I missed Dad and of course missed all my school mates, with it being on the other side of Manchester it meant of course I would have to attend a brand new school.
Well at this stage of my life that just wouldn’t have been acceptable and I wasn’t having any of it either.
The problem was though being at home still wasn’t an option, not for “her” anyway and so plan B swung into operation, “the children‘s home..”
12
This place was called Tall Turrets and with it being only a few miles from my school and a relatively short bus ride I was duly packed off to Tall Turrets.
So called because well, it was a bloody big house/mansion and had these bleeding great pointy bits like they have on a castle, so I suppose that’s why it was called Tall Turrets.
I will never ever forget the inside of that place. As soon as you walked through the main doors, there was this huge sweeping staircase like you see in those great halls, or stately homes, never got to find out who it was that initially owned this house, but whoever it was had a lot of money.
My first introduction to this place was a kick in the teeth, literally, there was this guy, Paul Crone and he didn’t like me and vice versa so it wasn’t long before we were fighting. He was a lot more streetwise than me and unlike myself, he was in a children’s home for being a bad’n and Tall Turrets was just a stopping off point for somewhere better equipped to deal with an idiot like him.
Well after the kick to the head “he” disappeared and thankfully I never saw him again, most of the time there I really enjoyed it and because I were starting to approach 16 and now in my last school year, you were treated more or less like an adult at Tall Turrets.
I even got to see my Dad and Sister Carol especially at lunch times, with the school literally in sight of where I used to live.
Then came another earth shattering jolt to my what was at this point an already beleaguered and fragile psychological state of mind.
It was a Friday night and with it being 10pm had to go to bed, like everyone else.
There were rules at Tall Turrets and were usually strictly adhered to, on this occasion I along with a pal of mine had just come in from the cinema and was still buzzing over the movie we‘d just seen, think it was Death wish starring Charlie Bronson, can’t exactly remember.
Well on duty that evening where two of our guardians or as we had to call them, Aunt if a female and Uncle if a male of course.
Well like I say, on duty on this occasion were Uncle Chris and Aunty Jackie, both Jackie and Chris had a thing for each other and most of us at the home knew this and used it to our fullest advantage.
Creeping down the huge spiral staircase after of course we should have been in bed, a few us brave enough decided to try and catch Uncle Chris and Aunty Jackie “at it,” so to speak and we did.
Trousers round his ankles and giving Jackie the Full Monty, Uncle Chris suddenly became aware of a presence and we noticed that “he” has spotted us. We ran like no tomorrow of course but guess who had the unfortunate luck to trip and fall on the giant staircase?
Uncle Chris had in the blink of an eye sprung away from Aunty Jackie, pulled his pants back up and gave chase but he only caught one, me!!
Normally I would have been grounded, had privileges taken away, or even just a good old bollocking/telling off.
13
That would have been the “normal” way to deal with that situation, however Uncle Chris had been at the bottle, quite a bit at the bottle. In fact he were fucking steaming pissed and coupled with the fact he didn’t particularly like me anyway and I had just caught him shagging a member of staff. Well old Chris saw the red mist and proceeded to beat the living shit out of me.
Chris fractured my right cheekbone, cracked two of my ribs, blacked both my eyes and inflicted multiple bruises on the majority of both my legs and back.
That was the physical bit, you see when the punches were raining down on my head and by the way this was by a fully grown man on a 15 year old slightly built boy, well I thought Uncle Chris was going to kill me.
Chris had lost the plot big time and I don’t think it were just the booze that had turned him into a raging psychopath. I think it where the fact I had intruded on his “man” moment, you know, he was in “his” moment and there was this fair haired freckle faced little twat pointing at him in the middle of goosing his college and lover.
He obviously had just snapped. After I had been let out of the hospital the cops were waiting, they took statements and both Chris and Jackie tried everything in their power to get me to change the story and tell the police it was I that had provoked Uncle Chris and that most of my injuries had been caused falling down the great stairway.
I didn’t, I told the truth and Chris subsequently got the sack and was also prosecuted, I never found out if he went to prison, hope the bastard did though.
The problem being they had foolishly turned all the science lab “gas taps on” and of course, !!Whoosh!! Quite a large portion of that part of the school subsequently burnt to the ground.
I was mortified and immediately knew who was responsible but more than anything else I was worried about “my” skin, you see even though I wasn’t with them on that fateful occasion, I “had” been inside the school when I shouldn’t have and when the police knocked on the door I feared the worst.
Nothing happened, well not to me anyway, my brother and his mate John got 2 years in a young offenders facility (BORSTAL) But my hide had been saved because even at that age, we had a code of conduct, keeping your mouth shut and I will forever be eternally grateful for those two for not involving me in that debacle.
John wanted to at first, me and him weren’t bosom buddies, but my brother David made it quite clear that I wasn’t to be dragged into the same shit they were in and though we are not particularly close like some siblings are. I will never forget the fact that even though "his" life would be changed in the worst way possible, he was “protecting me,” like brothers do….
It wouldn’t be two years until I saw David and John again and in that time another pivotal moment came to pass.
Because of course of the constant battles being fought between myself and “her,” something had to give and it did. “She” brought in a social worker, I was getting older and I think she felt a little more threatened, not in a physical sense but in the fact I was beginning to tell the school what was going on at home and she didn’t like that, no she didn’t like that at all.
First I was fostered out, that worked for a little while but I missed Dad and of course missed all my school mates, with it being on the other side of Manchester it meant of course I would have to attend a brand new school.
Well at this stage of my life that just wouldn’t have been acceptable and I wasn’t having any of it either.
The problem was though being at home still wasn’t an option, not for “her” anyway and so plan B swung into operation, “the children‘s home..”
12
This place was called Tall Turrets and with it being only a few miles from my school and a relatively short bus ride I was duly packed off to Tall Turrets.
So called because well, it was a bloody big house/mansion and had these bleeding great pointy bits like they have on a castle, so I suppose that’s why it was called Tall Turrets.
I will never ever forget the inside of that place. As soon as you walked through the main doors, there was this huge sweeping staircase like you see in those great halls, or stately homes, never got to find out who it was that initially owned this house, but whoever it was had a lot of money.
My first introduction to this place was a kick in the teeth, literally, there was this guy, Paul Crone and he didn’t like me and vice versa so it wasn’t long before we were fighting. He was a lot more streetwise than me and unlike myself, he was in a children’s home for being a bad’n and Tall Turrets was just a stopping off point for somewhere better equipped to deal with an idiot like him.
Well after the kick to the head “he” disappeared and thankfully I never saw him again, most of the time there I really enjoyed it and because I were starting to approach 16 and now in my last school year, you were treated more or less like an adult at Tall Turrets.
I even got to see my Dad and Sister Carol especially at lunch times, with the school literally in sight of where I used to live.
Then came another earth shattering jolt to my what was at this point an already beleaguered and fragile psychological state of mind.
It was a Friday night and with it being 10pm had to go to bed, like everyone else.
There were rules at Tall Turrets and were usually strictly adhered to, on this occasion I along with a pal of mine had just come in from the cinema and was still buzzing over the movie we‘d just seen, think it was Death wish starring Charlie Bronson, can’t exactly remember.
Well on duty that evening where two of our guardians or as we had to call them, Aunt if a female and Uncle if a male of course.
Well like I say, on duty on this occasion were Uncle Chris and Aunty Jackie, both Jackie and Chris had a thing for each other and most of us at the home knew this and used it to our fullest advantage.
Creeping down the huge spiral staircase after of course we should have been in bed, a few us brave enough decided to try and catch Uncle Chris and Aunty Jackie “at it,” so to speak and we did.
Trousers round his ankles and giving Jackie the Full Monty, Uncle Chris suddenly became aware of a presence and we noticed that “he” has spotted us. We ran like no tomorrow of course but guess who had the unfortunate luck to trip and fall on the giant staircase?
Uncle Chris had in the blink of an eye sprung away from Aunty Jackie, pulled his pants back up and gave chase but he only caught one, me!!
Normally I would have been grounded, had privileges taken away, or even just a good old bollocking/telling off.
13
That would have been the “normal” way to deal with that situation, however Uncle Chris had been at the bottle, quite a bit at the bottle. In fact he were fucking steaming pissed and coupled with the fact he didn’t particularly like me anyway and I had just caught him shagging a member of staff. Well old Chris saw the red mist and proceeded to beat the living shit out of me.
Chris fractured my right cheekbone, cracked two of my ribs, blacked both my eyes and inflicted multiple bruises on the majority of both my legs and back.
That was the physical bit, you see when the punches were raining down on my head and by the way this was by a fully grown man on a 15 year old slightly built boy, well I thought Uncle Chris was going to kill me.
Chris had lost the plot big time and I don’t think it were just the booze that had turned him into a raging psychopath. I think it where the fact I had intruded on his “man” moment, you know, he was in “his” moment and there was this fair haired freckle faced little twat pointing at him in the middle of goosing his college and lover.
He obviously had just snapped. After I had been let out of the hospital the cops were waiting, they took statements and both Chris and Jackie tried everything in their power to get me to change the story and tell the police it was I that had provoked Uncle Chris and that most of my injuries had been caused falling down the great stairway.
I didn’t, I told the truth and Chris subsequently got the sack and was also prosecuted, I never found out if he went to prison, hope the bastard did though.
Jackie survived, but that incident changed the whole dynamic of how children’s homes were ran in the late 1970s and after that event the chap that ran the house, a Mr Whiteside wanted rid of me. His whole world had now become under a media microscope and he certainly wasn’t impressed and decided there and then, as soon as I left school on May 16th 1977, that would also be my last day at Tall Turrets……
Most people remember with fondness the day they left school, I don’t, I in all honesty didn’t want to leave, the world outside school already appeared to be cold and forbidding but the ever moving cycle of life relentlessly carried on and leave we did.
I was in fact one of the lucky few who actually had a job to go too, a few months earlier a local company visited the school who specialised in removing graffiti from buildings, walls, you name it.
The company was called Wrigley’s stone cleaning ltd and invited certain pupils, mainly fifth formers to help go around the town in a highly publicised clean up operation.
Well Robert (Bob) Wrigley was so impressed with moi he offered me a job on leaving school.
£65.00 a week was the princely sum then paid and for a fresh faced 16 year old in 1977, that was rather a lot of money.
That was the first of two major changes and introductions into the world of grown ups, the second was being told to sling my hook from Tall Turrets.
14
Like I mentioned earlier Mr Whiteside (The Manager) had already decided I and another boy my age had to leave Tall Turrets, the official explanation was that we were now old enough to go our own way and that the home really needed our beds for far more needy children.
Yea right, just left school, traumatic home life, still only in my mid teens and suddenly told to leave the sanctuary and safety, well it was until before and after the Uncle Chris incident, that we had to go and find somewhere else to live.
A couple of addresses where handed to us and we ended up at a large run-down old Victorian house in a place called Higher Openshaw, about 7 miles from the centre of Manchester.
Most people remember with fondness the day they left school, I don’t, I in all honesty didn’t want to leave, the world outside school already appeared to be cold and forbidding but the ever moving cycle of life relentlessly carried on and leave we did.
I was in fact one of the lucky few who actually had a job to go too, a few months earlier a local company visited the school who specialised in removing graffiti from buildings, walls, you name it.
The company was called Wrigley’s stone cleaning ltd and invited certain pupils, mainly fifth formers to help go around the town in a highly publicised clean up operation.
Well Robert (Bob) Wrigley was so impressed with moi he offered me a job on leaving school.
£65.00 a week was the princely sum then paid and for a fresh faced 16 year old in 1977, that was rather a lot of money.
That was the first of two major changes and introductions into the world of grown ups, the second was being told to sling my hook from Tall Turrets.
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Like I mentioned earlier Mr Whiteside (The Manager) had already decided I and another boy my age had to leave Tall Turrets, the official explanation was that we were now old enough to go our own way and that the home really needed our beds for far more needy children.
Yea right, just left school, traumatic home life, still only in my mid teens and suddenly told to leave the sanctuary and safety, well it was until before and after the Uncle Chris incident, that we had to go and find somewhere else to live.
A couple of addresses where handed to us and we ended up at a large run-down old Victorian house in a place called Higher Openshaw, about 7 miles from the centre of Manchester.
This was another one of those moments which I will never forget, bare in mind me and this other boy, I’ll call him Craig, were still only kids and all of a sudden we were in this big gloomy looking house full of strange men.
We were shown to our shared room and it must have been on the fifth floor, a tiny little shit hole with no windows and brown stains on the bed linen.
16 Gransmoor Avenue would be my home for the next year and a half and in that time I met characters in there I could write a separate book on.
Tom and Harry, Tom and Harry were buddies, only with each other though; they really didn’t like anyone else but themselves.
Tom was half Irish and on the one occasion I was telling lots of Irish jokes he came up to me and said.
“What’s black and blue, wrapped in barbed wire and lies under the pier at Blackpool?”
I said, “I don’t know Tom.”
He leaned over and into my face, which was pretty scary because Tom was a big guy and looked like a proper thug, “you,” if you tell anymore fucking Irish jokes ya little twat.”
Needless to say I didn’t, then there was Les, I really liked Les, everyone liked Les except Tom and Harry.
Les was an absolute genius with cars and used to race bangers at Belle Vue, that was and still is a race track near Manchester, it’s mainly used for Speedway now and Greyhound racing.
We were shown to our shared room and it must have been on the fifth floor, a tiny little shit hole with no windows and brown stains on the bed linen.
16 Gransmoor Avenue would be my home for the next year and a half and in that time I met characters in there I could write a separate book on.
Tom and Harry, Tom and Harry were buddies, only with each other though; they really didn’t like anyone else but themselves.
Tom was half Irish and on the one occasion I was telling lots of Irish jokes he came up to me and said.
“What’s black and blue, wrapped in barbed wire and lies under the pier at Blackpool?”
I said, “I don’t know Tom.”
He leaned over and into my face, which was pretty scary because Tom was a big guy and looked like a proper thug, “you,” if you tell anymore fucking Irish jokes ya little twat.”
Needless to say I didn’t, then there was Les, I really liked Les, everyone liked Les except Tom and Harry.
Les was an absolute genius with cars and used to race bangers at Belle Vue, that was and still is a race track near Manchester, it’s mainly used for Speedway now and Greyhound racing.
Les used to get a lot of stick for being lazy, he wasn’t really he was just laid back and “always” looked like he hadn’t had a wash. His nick names were Soap Dodger, Dirty Les and the one he hated the most was “the ferret,” don’t know why but he did.
I nearly electrocuted poor Les once, he wouldn’t respond to a question I asked him and he repeatedly kept ignoring me and pretended to be asleep whilst lying on his bed.
So I found an old cassette player lead, you know the ones, the connection on the end looks like a figure eight, well I wedged that bit down between Les’s big toe and another toe and plugged the other end into the mains.
I have never seen anyone in my entire life come off a bed as fast as Les did that day and with his hair stood out on end screamed that he was going to fucking kill me, he didn’t, I were already long gone.
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Frank, Frank was a star, old Frank we called him and he called me young Steve, Frank used to be a drop out, a tramp and one night whilst trying to keep warm he fell asleep drunk.
The problem was Frank forgot to move his feet away from the camp fire and consequently set them on fire; he walked with a limp to prove it.
Armed with that information I burst into Frank’s bedroom once and screamed the words “fire everybody out!!!”
Even I didn’t think that Frank would do what he would do next; he only leapt off the bed, opened the large sash type window and threw himself out of the fucking window.
I was absolutely stunned and believe me that took some doing I didn’t even dare to look out of the now open window to see if he were alright, I just legged it back to my room and pretended to watch TV as if nothing at all had ever happened. Frank by the way was OK, he landed on top of some privet bushes and commando rolled into a little garden at the front of the house.
Patrick and Brian, they were my favourites and we went everywhere together, Pat was a really clever guy from Dublin and being typically laid back Irish he was a real star, so was Brian.
Brian was just crazy, a hippy at heart and loved everyone, even Tom and Harry, but of course the feeling wasn’t mutual.
There were lots of others and too numerous to mention in detail, but I will in name, Fred and his brother Jimmy, Brian the Scottish drunk, he was like Braveheart on acid when he’d had a beer, a real fucking nightmare and wanted to fight “everyone,” including the landlady, the nutter..
Old Jimmy, Jimmy was only a really tiny little old guy, always wore the same old suit and he was “always” pissed, morning, noon and night, old Jimmy was always three sheets to the wind and as well as that he was nasty old bastard.
He had a walking stick and for no reason whatsoever and right out of the blue, he’d suddenly burst into the TV lounge and fucking threaten everybody, “ya want some a this ya fuckers?” He’d shout, that really did scare me the first time I saw that, but saw the funny side of it when other new guests that didn’t know Jimmy would arrive at the house.
A few months later Les found Jimmy as stiff as a board in bed and yes you’ve guessed it, in his hand was his trusty old walking stick. We all went to the funeral and when the curtain closed after the coffin had gone through it someone shouted, “who‘s the next act?”
Manchester humour, what can I say…..
The real character in that place though was the Guvner himself, the landlord Terrance McCann, or known more affectionately to us guests as Terry Mac.
I can’t remember Terry’s wife‘s name, but she was absolutely fantastic and it was a real shame when she and Tel separated, she went to run a B&B in Southport and Terry Mac stayed of course in Manchester.
Terry was, as well as being in charge of all us misfits was an actual “artist” and a bloody good one. In fact if I could get my hands on some of Terry’s stuff today I’m sure it would be worth an absolute fortune.
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He even had a shop just down the road from our digs and would sell his wares from that shop, some real crackers in there but if you didn’t know he was an artist you couldn’t have told beforehand.
What I mean is, a lot of artistic people come across all lovey dovey and sort of poncey, not our Tel, if anyone pissed him off and for whatever reason he’d turn up wielding a five pound lump hammer and say in that wonderful Belfast accent he had.
“You do that again and I’ll put you in the fucking ground” and he meant it, he might have only been a wee guy, but he were a vicious little fucker when roused.
I used to stare at some of his work and I asked him once what gave him the inspiration to create such beautiful works of art?
Know what he said?
Staring at me he said, “are taking the fucking piss Steve? Because if you are you can get the fuck out of the shop now, haven’t got time for fucking comedians.”
I left it that and never asked him again, wonder where he is now???
Back to the employment side of my story and things weren’t going to well at Wrigleys stone cleaning ltd……..
One of the things I haven’t mentioned whilst I have been boring you all with my past is the love I have for music and the very fact that music whether it be a song, instrumental piece or soundtrack from a movie, always brings back memories and in some cases especially if you happen to hear “that” song on the radio all of a sudden everything of what happened at that time comes flooding back, I know it does for me.
I have selected below a list of my all time favourite songs or pieces of music from the 1970s these range from 70 up til 77 and in effect are the ones that remind me most of the good times as well as the bad times of 1970s, “yea baby”.
70, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel.
We had to sing this in school assembly along with morning has broken and though I wouldn’t really class this song as a favourite. I do like it and it reminds me of that time when everyone in the school was together as one, singing our little hearts out, yes I know, very cheesey,lol
71, Theme from "Shaft?, Isaac Hayes.
This was a very cool tune and if you were into shaft at that time you were considered cool, of course that meant moi, even today I still cock an ear when I hear this wonderful rendition from the brilliant Isaac Hayes, you better dig it brother……
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72, Puppy Love. Donny Osmond.
Well I did say there would be no stone left unturned whilst I were writing this story so its fess up time again and “yes,” I really did like this song, never let anyone see me listening to it but when it came on the radio I’d surreptitiously sneak off, make sure no one was watching and then sing along with bloody Donny Osmond.
You can not imagine the stick I am going to get for revealing that dark part of my past, lol…
73, Killing Me Softly With His Song, Roberta Flack.
There’s really no contest here, this song meant and still does mean so much to me and I don’t really know why because the lyrics aren’t referring to what the song means to me if you know what I mean?
I was 12 then and we’d been in a neighbours house who had just recently died and we, me my sister, brother, step mother and the rest of her clan, were removing household items and packing them up to be sent away.
I found an old photograph frame and in it was a picture of the lady that had just died and standing at the side of her was a young boy.
Can’t remember who she was but the lady looked a bit like my Mum and of course given the reason why we were in that house and seeing the photo, well everything came flooding back and on the radio at that exact moment was killing me softly by the incredible Roberta Flack, strange eh?
74, Waterloo, Abba.
This was when Abba first burst onto the music scene and this record actually won the now discredited Eurovision song contest, though the best one they ever did in my opinion was Angel Eyes, terrific song.
75, The Hustle, Van McCoy and The Soul City Symphony.
Not often you hear this tune but I loved it.
A great little instrumental and along with Popcorn by Jean Michel Jarre I really did like lyric less tunes, the shuffle was cool too.
76, Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel, Tavares. If You Leave Me Now, Chicago. Love to Love You Baby, Donna Summer. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen. December, 1963 (Oh What A Night!), Four Seasons. Don't Go Breaking My Heart, Elton John and Kiki Dee.
As you can see there are a lot more here and I think its because a lotta shit went down in 76 and as a consequence probably remember more when songs from that era are played, by the way these are all cracking tunes and were pretty big hits at the time.
77, Lonely Boy, Andrew Gold. Telephone Line, Electric Light Orchestra. Sir Duke, Stevie Wonder. Gonna Fly Now (Theme from "Rocky", Bill Conti. Don't Give Up On Us, David Soul. Blinded By the Light, Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The Things We Do for Love, 10cc. Boogie Nights, Heatwave. Star Wars (Main Title), London Symphony Orchestra.
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Again a lot more than previously, Rocky and Star wars were “the” movies of 77 and Heatwave were the coolest band, but the one that stands out is the one at the front and will forever be “my all time number one.”
The reason? Well the title speaks for itself really and the first time I heard it, it was on my little transistor radio on my first night at Tall Turrets, after I had listened to it I cried like a baby.
I felt so alone and the enormity and seriousness of what was happening to me suddenly became apparent, all because of Andrew Gold and “that” song.
Anyway, back to the story in hand.....
Wrigleys stone cleaning limited was based in Mossley, my home town and was owned by a chap called Robert Wrigley.
Roberts’s father used to own a coal yard and Wrigleys were the main coal suppliers in and around Mossley when everyone had coal fires.
With the advent of smokeless fuel and everyone now having either central heating or gas fires, there wasn’t really a major call for coal, so with Robert junior now taking over the reigns he decided coal wasn’t king anymore, sandblasting and graffiti removal was.
I hated this fucking job with a passion, there weren’t any health and safety precautions at that time, well not at Wrigleys there wasn’t and the chap I was assigned to was an utter bastard.
Can’t remember his name, but he was from Mossley too and he didn’t like me from day one.
First off he’d put me on the most dangerous jobs, like sixty feet up scaffolding and then conveniently forget to leave the brakes on, it was portable scaffolding then and you could erect it and move it along to which ever building you were sandblasting.
How I never fell off I’ll never know?
On one occasion he’d done that I tried to get his attention but he was already in the van having a brew, fucking skiving more like.
So in an effort to get his attention I picked up a lump hammer and threw it off the top of the scaffolding towards the red Bedford van.
To be honest I’ve never been really good at throwing things and totally got the trajectory wrong, the problem is if you’re lobbing a ten pound lump hammer from sixty feet up in the air you’re just asking for trouble.
The idea was for the hammer to land harmlessly at the side of the van and get Jack’s attention that way [Hey
I just remembered his name]
It didn’t though, it landed plum square right in the middle of the fucking van’s windscreen, it didn’t go right through thank Christ, but it put a fucking big crack in it and caused Jack to scald his face with boiling hot tea.
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He screamed like a crazed animal and that was whilst he were still inside the van, he told the boss and I in my defence explained why I had thrown the hammer and my original intention wasn’t to permanently disfigure Jack.
In fact Jack swore I’d tried to do him in and vowed revenge, he got his revenge a few weeks later.
We were on an estate in Oldham called Abbey Hills and at that time Wrigleys had secured a lucrative contract with Oldham borough council to clean all the graffiti off the houses, after that the builders would take over and proceed to renovate the houses.
The way we did it was to daub acid onto the affected area and then leave it for a while to work than blast it off using high powered jet hoses.
That fucking acid, I hated it, it would get everywhere and we didn’t have any protective clothing.
After complaining about that Jack said he’d get me some of his, it wasn’t like Jack to be so charitable and I should have been suspicious at the time, however I have always been a trusting type of guy and I gratefully accepted the plastic type leggings and jacket.
What I didn’t know was there was already acid on the inside of the trouser leggings and within minutes of putting the leggings on the acid made contact with my jeans.
The acid burnt straight through the jeans and then straight through my skin, Jack had mysteriously disappeared and if it hadn’t have been for one the builders I would have probably lost my right leg.
He picked me up bodily and literally dunked me into a 40 gallon water barrel, feet first thankfully.
The hospital said it were a miracle I hadn’t been more seriously hurt and as a consequence advised me to either seek legal help as in suing the company or just plain leave, I took the latter option, I neither had the money or the inclination to pursue lengthy litigation so I just gave my notice and looked for another job.
To this day by the way there is a ghastly looking four inch scar at the rear of my right knee and I don’t think, I know old Jack smeared acid into those trousers and disturbingly he would have believed in his twisted mind that to have been the right thing to do all those years ago, revenge is sweet…..
Coming up, the next job, apprentice furrier, truck drivers assistant and my first stint at management, the sex shop!!!
After leaving Wrigleys stone cleaning ltd the idea obviously was to get another job as quickly as possible.
I did and this job was as an apprentice furrier, which means really that I was involved in making ladies fur coats.
I actually really enjoyed this and had no hang ups at all about the fact I was handling dead animal pelts.
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The skins (Mink, Chinchilla, Sable) would come to us in raw form, we would then wet them through with water and then using a compressor gun, nail them to a large board. The aim being they would be stretched into shape against the pattern on the board and then harden enough so that the machinists could sew them altogether to form a brand new fur coat.
The guy employing me was called Anthony Marshall and “he” was a real character, we’d all be beavering away doing our jobs when all of a sudden Anthony would throw a strop. You never knew when he was going to kick off and when he did it was pretty spectacular and yes, the fur really did fly, literally.
His father was usually the cause of it and that was a shame because I really liked Mr Stolberg. About 5 feet 5 inches tall, snow white hair and “always” immaculately dressed he “always” greeted everyone in the work shop with a huge beaming smile and say with the faintest foreign accent.
“Good morning everybody.”
We would all as one reply by saying, “good morning Mr Stolberg,” to which the smile would intensify to about five million candle watts and then raising both arms in the air, a bit like a conductor, he’d flutter his fingers and say, “thank you, now carry on everybody.”
Priceless and it reminds me of that brilliant TV show in the 70s, are you being served, Stolberg being of course Mr Grace, sadly I bet the old boy’s long gone by now…..
I stayed with Anthony Marshalls for about six months and then got another job with a lot more money.
This was at another company having the name Marshalls, no connection to the afore mentioned though.
This job was called a driver’s mate, which was exactly that, you assisted the driver on multi drop deliveries in and around the Greater Manchester area.
This job was actually a contract with a tobacco company called John Player, well known brands were No1, No6, Players special and today are Silk cut, Richmond super kings among many others.
This was a very well paid job, at the time tobacco companies were making a lot of money and probably still are and we were earning a lot more than most people employed in the world of transport.
Marshalls eventually lost the contract and had to make cuts, among those cuts were our jobs so yet again I joined the hunt for another job and again it didn’t take long.
Just a mile or so away was another transport firm called British road services [BRS] this again involved delivering boxes of cigarettes to various shops, wholesalers and the like all over the North West and like the previous position at Marshalls it was very well paid.
The contract though this time was with HD and HO WILLS and their brands were Embassy, Lambert & Butler, Golden Virginia and so forth.
By this time I had left Gransmoor Avenue which was a shame in one respect but a blessing in another,
Terry Mac was finding that running a guest house alone was starting to really get to him and as a consequence was flipping out at people more than he should have, on one occasion some fucking comedian had put someone’s boots in the soup pan.
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This pan was huge, like a big boiler, it had to be, there were about 30 men in that house and the soup was always made so that it lasted an entire week, I hated that fucking slop and so did everyone else.
In fact we all told Terry was he sure it wasn’t made from old boots, he just said if we didn’t fucking like it we could all fuck off.
Well the idiot that put the old boots in the soup boiler was I suppose just trying to make a point and prove indeed, that the slop in that pot was made from old boots.
Terry was serving us all that night and threw a fucking fit when he stuck the ladle in the pot and lifted a fucking a soggy old boot out. Everyone in the dinning room clapped and cheered and I have never seen a human being so angry in all my life.
He told us all the get the fuck out of the dinning room and then gave us all a weeks notice, we had only seven days to find somewhere else to live, that was everyone, all 30 of us, he was furious.
I found somewhere quite quickly, one of the drivers I worked with told me of this guest house he knew of and so I went there. By this time Terry Mac had calmed down and gave everyone a reprieve including me.
Too late though, the new digs looked a lot cleaner and a lot nicer and there were no boots in the fucking soup. So with all my worldly belongings in a black plastic bin liner, I set off for another large guest house, this time on top of a big hill called Barton Villa.
This was to be the last year of one turbulent decade and the beginning of another in the story of my life and let me just point out and clarify at this stage to anyone reading this biography.
Everything written down here is absolutely true and “really” did happen, just wanted to get that straight.
1979 and the best memories of music from 78 and 79 would have to be Video killed the radio star by the Buggles. I don’t like Mondays from the Boomtown rats and Sunday girl by Blondie. Night fever by the Bee Gees, With a little luck by Wings and my favourite, I feel love by Donna Summer, all brilliant hits.
Being 18 of course meant I could go into a pub without the fear of being thrown out for under-age drinking, this is a bit like the first wage packet, a very special moment and one that for me signified that I had finally come of age.
I can still remember walking into the Lamb hotel on Crescent road just outside my new home Barton Villa and armed with a pint of Heineken I proudly said to everyone in the pub, “it’s my birthday and I’m 18 today.”
All the lads in the pub said, “Congratulations, by the way you do know that means you have to buy everyone in the pub a pint?”
I said I didn’t know that, they said, “oh yea, its tradition when someone reaches the official drinking age of 18, they have to buy the whole pub a round.”
I said OK that’s no problem, taking a few more slurps of my pint whilst all the guys were grinning at me like I was an idiot. I said to the landlord, “get em all a pint will you mate.”
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The landlord looked at me almost sympathetically and said, “are you sure lad, it’ll cost you a packet, you know that don’t you?”
I said it was no problem and insisted that he do em all a whiskey chaser as well and that it was my birthday, had plenty of disposable income and was feeling rather generous.
Sighing and nodding his head in that, “there’s one born every minute look” the landlord started pulling pints. Finishing “my” pint, I said I wouldn’t be a minute and had to go for a leak.
The toilets were out at the back and also out at the rear of the pub was another exit. Laughing to myself I nipped out of the back door and crept round to the front of the pub and watched through the pub window.
Waiting until the landlord had placed all thirty odd pints and whiskeys on the bar, I rapped on the window and waved bye bye, then I legged it as fast I could, I might have been only 18, but I wasn’t stupid….
There were plenty of other places to go drinking and did so quite frequently. The job I had paid quite well and after paying my digs money everything I had left was my own to spend as I wanted and with not smoking, the main vice was going out and enjoying myself and another very important part of my life, well “anyone’s” life really was the moment I lost my virginity.
Obviously like every other adolescent male I had already acquainted myself with the first lady of my life, Miss Palm and five sisters, but of course the ultimate aim of any young and I liked to think of myself, virile male was to get laid.
I met the taker of my virginity in a night club in a place called the Memory Inn, which was ironic really because the only memories for most people that frequented that hole were bad ones. Crappy ale, over priced and full of psychotic nutters who looked like they’d all just escaped from Devils Island.
But of course that attracted the fairer sex and still don’t know why that’s the case but it did and my desire to get laid was becoming more urgent.
I really can’t remember the lady’s name I took home that night I really can’t, I can remember what she looked like but can’t remember her name, I can remember her asking for a breakdown on what I earned and what were my outgoings, you know, National insurance contributions, income tax, rent, so forth, of which I found rather strange it has to be said and she were still banging on about it after I had managed to sneak her in where I lived and up the stairs and into the Garside love chamber.
Luckily enough no one saw us. I would have been kicked out instantly, Doreen [the landlady] wasn’t crazy like poor old Terry Mac was but she was very serious about guests copulating in her bedrooms, in her words, “I don’t run a bleeding brothel.”
This girl had now stripped off and I can still see her, her blond hair spread all against the pillow, completely naked, arms folded and staring at me.
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“Well,” she said, “aren’t you gonna bleeding kiss me or what?”
I did and after a little bit more petting she pushed me away and said rather indignantly, “you’ve never done this before have you?”
I wanted to say I had but knew it would be pointless and rather sheepishly admitted that I hadn’t. “For fucks sake,” she muttered, “a fucking virgin, I shoulda fuckin known,” or words to that effect.
She stared at me and I swear on my mothers memory what happened next is true, she pushed the duvet away and pointing at her you know what then pointed at my you know what and said.
“That” goes in “this” and “you” bounce up and down, got it?”
I said I had and did actually do what she’d told me to, four times, she actually paid me a compliment and after leaving at 6am before anyone else in the house had risen she kissed me on the cheek and said she’d be seeing me again, she never did.
Later that day one of the cleaners came up to me and with a gleam in her eye said, “Haven’t lost anything young Stephen have you lad?”
I said not that I knew of and she said and this time winking, that disturbed me because she was a big overbearing woman and would often complain to Doreen if we [the guests] left even the minimum amount of mess anywhere. She was a lazy cow and we were all convinced she was nicking stuff from our rooms but could never prove it.
“Sure about that?” I stared in horror as she slowly reached into her overalls and produced a little pair of red knickers.
“Guess where I found these?” She said, her eyes were glittering, she was like a bleeding cat with a mouse, I said, “where?”
She said, “in your bloody bed that’s where and if Doreen found out you’d be in for the high jump lad you know that don’t you?”
I quickly got my head together and said, “no one else knows about this do they?”
She looked puzzled and replied that no one knew she’d just this minute found em, but Doreen would as soon as she saw her, she hardly got chance to finish the sentence off, that’s all I needed to know.
As quick as you like I snatched the knickers off her and legged it, as soon as I had gotten far enough away I found the nearest waste bin and threw them in, but not before I kissed em goodbye…..
The cleaning lady didn’t even try to rat me out to Doreen, she couldn’t, no evidence and from that day on she seemed to have found a new healthy respect for the youngest and newest guest at Barton Villa.
The 80s
This decade started off with a bang and would be the start of my everlasting thirst to travel. Even as kid I had always wanted to travel around the world and would avidly watch all the travel programs on TV, “Wish you were here,” “Holiday” and so forth.
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My first ever trip abroad was to a place called Porec; this is a little town on the north western Adriatic coast what is now Croatia but was then Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia of course at that time was still behind the iron curtain and in effect communist, not quite as rigid as all the other communist block countries but still authoritarian just the same and at the time I went it was just after the leader of that country had passed away, a chap called Tito.
On the flight out to Pula, which was the transfer airport for Porec was aboard a Russian built Tupelov 154 and seated opposite me was the first of many encounters with well known Celebs.
In this case it was Patricia Phoenix seated adjacent to my isle seat or better know to UK readers as Elsie Tanner in the long running soap Coronation Street.
Pat was a real star at that time and had a bit of a reputation for one thing or another but I found her quite charming and she even offered me a drop of her duty frees. The bleeding plane hadn’t even levelled out at cruising altitude yet, but there was old Pat and a female confidant lushing it up with a litre bottle of Gordon’s.
Porec was beautiful and even though I was only there for one week I’ll never forget the wonderful smells, the pine trees, the flowers outside the hotel and those amazing restaurant smells.
Don’t forget this was the first time I had ever set foot outside of the UK and the nearest I come to eating exotic or foreign type cuisine was Indian curries so this was a real treat.
The best bit though was the trip to Zagreb and some caves near it, on the way I spotted a Russian tank parked up in at the side of a road, taking a picture of it I never thought anything more of it until I got home and had it developed at Boots.
That picture was the pick of all my holiday snaps, no one was interested in pine trees or beaches, or architecture no no no, everyone wanted to see a commie tank.
The next trip abroad was the one I had always dreamed of, THE USA. This was probably the ultimate destination for most Brits, possibly the biggest lure being Disney world and Miami Beach.
Not for me however, my favourite city was and still is the Big Apple. From countless songs and pictures in books and especially in the King Kong movie, I had a real love affair with everything New York.
The first flicker of possibility was whilst still of course working for BRS was on working on the delivery route around southern Manchester; we’d also have to deliver to the airport, which meant we’d have to go airside.
That was my first real close up of the regular as clockwork daily British Airways flight to New York and from the first moment I saw that incredible plane gracefully leave the runway at Ringway I made my mind up, I was going to live and work in the USA!
It wasn’t until nearly five months later that my dream finally came true, on giving notice at BRS I had decided to take the plunge.
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I had acquired a B2 visa [indefinite] and saved up nearly one thousand pounds, that was a lot of money then and gives you an indication of how much money I was earning and also asks questions why my first sexual encounter never got back to me?
Having also purchased a “one way” economy class ticket to New York I bade my farewells to everyone at Barton Villa and at BRS of course. But not before the bastards at my former work place welded a ball and chain to my right leg and took me out around the town to get pissed. The bastards left that chain welded to my leg for two whole days before they finally cut it off, the ball and chain not the leg!!!!
On Friday 24th October 1980 BA flight can’t remember touched down at JFK and after an eight hour plane ride across the ocean I had finally made it, I was in America, a new start, a new beginning.
I felt like all those new arrivals you saw on the movies staring at the statue of Liberty as they entered New York harbour for the first time. Only the first time I saw it was from up in the air, still impressive though.
As soon as I had cleared immigration and customs and was in one of the famous yellow cabs heading over the George Washington Bridge I saw it!!!
There in all its glory, “The New York skyline” and with it being October and about 4pm local time it was starting to go dark and if you think Manhattan’s impressive during the day wait til you see it at night.
It was also then the penny dropped and the sudden realisation of what I had done came crashing down all around me.
I was terrified, I’d wanted to do this for so long but now I was here and staring out at that incredible skyline seated in the yellow cap speeding toward midtown Manhattan I felt fear. Real fear, fear of being so far away from everything that was familiar, fear of being alone in a foreign country but more so of the fact I only had a one way ticket so I suppose there was no going back, the return fare would have been just too expensive.
I’ll never forget the song that was being played on the taxi cab’s radio either [take the long way home] by Supertramp and that just made it worse.
However I was here and would wait and see after the weekend how I felt and decide then what I was going to do. Stay in the states and persevere with my original plan, or try to figure out how I could get back to England without breaking the bank.
New York!!! The city that never sleeps and believe me its true, if you have never been to the big apple then you must.
This was my first time here and it quite literally blew me away, the sheer size of the place not just in the height of the ever reaching sky scrapers that tower above everywhere but the whole place is just huge.
The roads, avenues, streets, cars, people, everything about New York to me was just in your face and I loved it.
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The hotel I stayed in was a basic affair, clean, spacious and “big,“ I can still remember checking in at the front desk and the desk clerk asking me if I needed anything else. I said I didn’t and for some reason I said, “by the way I’m English.”
He looked at me and pulling a face said, “Go figure and there’s me thinking you was French!”
I attempted to reply but suddenly realised he was being sarcastic, I arrived in my room absolutely wasted, jet lag was kicking in and I fell asleep fully dressed and didn’t wake up until the following morning when the cleaning staff were knocking on the door.
Saturday and my first real look at the great city of New York, problem was it was pissing it down and didn’t stop until Sunday.
I mean it was absolutely chucking it down and the cloud was that low you couldn’t see the tops of the sky scrapers. I sat in a diner eating an American breakfast watching two of New York’s finest chatting about how bad the weather was in upstate New York and that there had been substantial flooding in that area.
This was the first time also that I had been this close to Policemen wearing guns; they actually had unholstered them and placed them on the table next to the plates they were eating off and to me that was as alien as if they had been Martians.
The rest of the day was spent in my hotel room trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do, I kept looking at my money and even though I had only been in America one day I was starting to get homesick.
This wasn’t like a holiday, this was an all or bust move, taking a leap and as I stated earlier it was simply scaring me to death, was I doing the right thing, what was I thinking travelling all this way on my own?
I found my Uncle Geoffrey’s phone number and phoned him, he couldn’t believe it, in fact he sounded really shocked, he sounded even more surprised when I suggested I catch a greyhound bus and head on up to Canada to see him.
He made the excuse he was just about to depart for Saskatchewan for an important conference wherever that was and that my travelling all that way wouldn’t be such a good idea.
I told him I was getting cold feet and that to head back home would cost an absolute fortune. Geoffrey suggested I go to a travel agents on Fifth avenue and ask about a standby ticket on Freddy Lakers sky train. He said they cost as little as one hundred pounds which I could afford and still have enough money for rent wherever it was I ended up back in England.
After watching endless TV channels and ordering steak and fries from room service I made a decision and headed back out into the teaming rain and blaring police sirens of midtown Manhattan.
Eventually I managed to procure a ticket and though I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing, I felt an enormous sense of relief knowing that at least I now had the means to get back to England and could now enjoy what little time I had in this great city.
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The following day was a beautiful late October day and quite cold, the city was buzzing too, it was one of the great annual events in the big apple, “the New York marathon” and I have never seen such a palaver.
There were cops everywhere, in cars, in helicopters and in speedboats, all zipping around like angry wasps.
Nearly every TV channel was covering it and I think at that time, New York was one of very few cities in the world that staged such an event. Though London started its very first annual run fest a few months later in March 1981.
I saw the start of it but needed to do a bit of sightseeing, I couldn’t really do a lot the day before because of the rain and with my flight departing later today [Sunday] I had to move it along in the touristy department.
First I wanted to see the statue of Liberty, this structure was as iconic for me as much as the Empire State Building was but wasn’t sure where it was or how you got to it so I did what most tourists would or maybe should do, I asked a policeman.
“Fuck off,” I’m not joking, he was a traffic cop directing traffic at a busy intersection and he told me to go forth and copulate. Fucking charming, I have to say I was in a state of shock, where all the cops in New York as rude as he was?
So I reverted to plan b and headed off for the Empire state building, I already knew where that was and didn’t need no dickhead of a cop with attitude to tell me that either, so off I toddled.
The Empire state building was as impressive “inside” as much as it was “outside.” At that time the entire foyer area was covered in imported white and black Italian marble and painted onto that marble was the biggest mural I have ever seen in my life. And in my eyes was just as impressive as the whole point of that building, the view from the top.
It was a painting of KONG, King Kong and this particular mural was painted on at the time the original movie was first screened back in 1933 starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot. The building had only been just completed and even though the mural looked fabulous then when I were there in 1980, it must have looked even more so then in 1933 with everything brand spanking new and shiny.
After ripping my eyes away from that incredible 50ft mural, I ascended along with other countless millions in a stomach churning ride to the top of one of the most recognisable buildings anywhere in the world, probably thanks to that King Kong movie.
Words can’t really describe what you actually see when you enter onto the viewing platform, it just simply blows you away and always makes me think how on earth does man manage to build these things this high.
The slogan screams “THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, WHERE YOU CAN SEE INTO FIVE STATES!!!
And you bloody well can, I kept having to pinch myself that I was actually 102 stories up above the ground below, that’s 1,224 ft boys and girls and I know there are many more taller buildings now, but The ESB was and always will be my special favourite.
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I scooted around a little bit more, the Chrysler building, Macy’s, Times Square, Madison Square Garden that is actually round and of course Broadway. However time wasn’t on my side and I had to make my way back to JFK airport.
Five hours later I was in the air aboard a DC-10. This was actually one of the famous sky trains, a guy at that time called Freddy Laker had started cheap flights to and from the US to the UK and made it possible for millions of Yanks as well as Brits to travel cheaply across the Atlantic.
To be honest I owe a debt of gratitude To Sir Freddy and his amazing sky train because if it hadn’t been for his airline offering standby seats, well I don’t know what I would have done and would have probably been deported like a criminal for having insufficient funds and being an undesirable alien, so thanks Sir Freddy!!!
24 bone shattering hours later I opened the door at Barton Villa and walked into the dinning room. It was full of guests all tucking into their steak and kidney pie and I will never never ever forget the look on everyone’s faces, it really was a Kodak moment and all I said was, “Well, so what, shit happens.”
So started my second stint at Barton Villa and though I won’t mention everyone who stayed in that place along with myself I will mention a couple of them.
One in particular was a guy called Richard Price, Ricky to all and sundry and Ricky was a real character, a big guy, Ricky would sort of look out for me and if anyone gave me any grief then Uncle Rick would sort em out.
His last name wasn’t Price by coincidence; his friendship came at just that, a price!! Even though Rick pretended to look out for me, he also knew I was always usually working and usually had plenty of money, which meant Uncle Ricky was never far away when Stephen got paid.
I didn’t mind and knew Rick’s real interest’s weren’t just naturally for my welfare, but I really liked Rick, everyone did, he was a very funny witty guy and had been round the block quite a few times so made for a fascinating friendship.
The second real pal this time was a guy called Jeffrey Twentyman, yes that really was his name and Jeff was a complete loon, in the nicest possible way.
Jeff used to dress in a sort of army green combat jacket, “always,“ didn’t matter if he were working, going shopping, going out to the pub, Jeff would wear this jacket along with a pair of kaki pants and 18 inch hole Doc Martens.
He also wore a pair of rimless glasses, a la John Lennon which made his ensemble of couture look even weirder.
Talking of weird, in one of the breast pockets of his flack jacket was a small ornamental teddy bear, only small about three inches probably and this small bear would “always” be positioned inside Jeff’s left breast pocket with just the Teddy bears head poking out.
Obviously we all asked why and found it very amusing; all Jeff would say and with a very straight serious face was, “only people that don’t understand mock!!!!!”
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That was it, then he’d glance down at the fucking thing and smile saying, “let em laugh mate, we don’t care do we?” Then he’s adjust his glasses and shrug his head and shoulders forward as if physically substantiating that very fact. Bizarre..
Jeff was a terrifically funny guy and wherever he was there was sure to be utter madness, in fact you only had to look at Jeff to know that he was a complete nutter but everyone loved him and talking of love it was love that got him killed!
Jeff left Barton Villa to go and live with the love of his life, he really was in love with this girl, don’t know her name, but Jeff had been bitten by the love bug and bitten bad.
After about five or six months later, this lady fell out with Jeff and not only that, she kicked him out of the house too. He was mortified and never really recovered and given his somewhat unhinged state of mind, he committed suicide.
Eye witnesses say he actually tried to change his mind after making a makeshift noose out of a clothes line he’d placed around his neck and standing on a mop bucket took the tension.
Apparently, again according to witnesses, he then attempted to remove the noose from around his neck only to slip off the fucking bucket. I can only imagine how poor Jeff suffered and it still breaks my heart to attempt to picture that grisly moment in my mind, RIP Jeff lad!!!
Moving on and after being unemployed for about five months I needed another job and after purchasing The Manchester Evening News I spotted one.
*Book shop manager required to run busy store in the centre of Rochdale, please ring this number*
I did and the following day turned up in the centre of Manchester where the interviews were taking place.
I knew something wasn’t right when I arrived outside the shop, it was painted all blue and had no windows. But the thing that reaffirmed something wasn’t right was the name of the shop emblazoned all over it.
“Private shops,” plus the other stuff at the side of it, adult mags, toys, and videos.
I looked again at the address and yes it “was” the same address given to me over the phone, I nearly bolted, but I really needed this job and I had come all this way anyway, so plucking up courage accompanied with a large gulp I entered no 53 Oldham st.
There were magazines everywhere, I had never seen so many but the first thing that caught my eye was a large display cabinet. In that cabinet was an assortment of what can only be best described as leather thongs and chains, masks also made out of leather, studded collars again possibly made out of leather.
There was another large display case at the side of it but this one had the most bizarre looking objects. I moved a bit closer and realised they were actually Penisis’s made out of vulcanised rubber and they looked fucking real, veins, balls attached to them, some even had hair.
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I didn’t know what to do, to say I was in a state of shock was an under statement, then a voice shouted me and a chap with a face that looked like it had been modelled off a weasel came up to me and shook my hand.
“Stephen Garside?”
“Yea that’s me,” I said, still staring mesmercaly at the cabinet full of rubber dicks, “right come this way Stephen.”
We passed some dodgy looking guys all looking a bit nervous and shuffling about peering at various magazines and into what I suppose was the manager’s office.
Again my eyes which by the way were already being overworked to the max nearly popped out of my fucking head.
The guy with the weasel face ushered me to a chair whilst he sat in his and instantly noticed what it was that my bug eyes were staring at.
There was a collection of rubber dicks festooned all over his desk, some were small some were large, some were white some were black. But there was one in particular that stood out head and shoulders above the rest.
It was the biggest dick, or rubber dick I have ever seen, indeed it must have been at least three feet long and I’m not joking and it was as black as the ace of spades.
The weasel guy laughed and reaching over he picked it up, waving it around he said. “Fucking monster isn’t it, we call it “the King Kong Schlong.” Then he smiled a weird smile and said, “bring a fucking tear to your eye this son wouldn’t it?” Then raising it up in the air as if he were inspecting it he said, “they modelled this fucker off me ya know.” He laughed again and after tossing it aside he said, “no not really, be too fucking big, one look at that son and they’d run a fucking mile, still they do sell, rather well an all.”
I sat the rest of the interview out and a day later got confirmation that I had indeed become the new manager of the also newest and latest branch of private shops ltd in a town called Rochdale.
I started on the Monday and it was a Monday I’ll never forget. The shop address was no 8 Drake st, which was at the bottom of a hill not far from the local bus station and with not being able to drive I travelled the ten miles or so by bus and on the way into the bus station the bus passed the shop I would be managing.
I should have thought it strange then why there were hundreds of people gathered outside but in my own naïve way figured they were just eager customers waiting for an opening day bargain.
Plus the placards should have also given it away that these people weren’t potential customers but protesters and they were all mostly women.
I can still feel all those pairs of eyes burning into me as I walked passed them all and on my way into the shop. “Pervert,” shouted one, “aren’t you ashamed,” shouted another?
I hadn’t a bleeding clue what they were all on about and just carried on and into my latest place of employment.
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There were a few guys inside and they were mostly company people making sure the shop was stocked to the gills with. Errrm, products, but there were a couple of management people there too and it was at this point and for the first time I met one of the scariest looking dudes I have ever seen in my life.
His name was Brian Richards and Brian was one of the top men that worked for private shops. There were others of course but Brian was “the man” and he let everyone know that, he really was the stereo typed East End villain.
Smartly dressed, covered in gold, roller with BR1 as the registration number and though he was softly spoken, he had a real air of menace about him and it wasn’t until later on that I learned how dangerous these people were that ran this company.
The shop opened amid all the ballyhoo and though the protests carried on for a while they eventually died down and then petered out altogether. Business was business and though the products Private shops sold weren’t to be found on the local high street or at the local supermarket. There was a demand for them and as long as these companies stayed within the law there were no problems from the Police.
That didn’t stop them from raiding you though and they did on frequent occasions. A lot of managers found it quite stressful, coppers swarming round everywhere flashing search warrants and asking stupid questions like, had we got any animal porn on the premises or other section stuff that would have meant that not just myself, but the company itself ending up in the tower of fucking London, “forever.”
There were shall we say some fairly risqué stuff, hard core gay and heterosexual pornography but it always stayed within the bounds of the law, just.
You’d be surprised who frequented these places too, middle aged couples engaged in a mid life crisis. Single guys getting their rocks whether it be gay, hetro, or anything else. There were the occasional lesbian too, though they were quite rare I have to say.
And surprisingly enough nearly all our customers were extremely well behaved, even though the company was in effect ripping them off. A fact I was always very uncomfortable with. We were charging anything from £10 up to £75 for a VHS video cassette and usually it wasn’t anything at all what it said on the cover.
We couldn’t tell what was on them with not having a VCR on the premises but we damn well knew something wasn’t right when a red faced customer would storm into the shop and scream that he wasn’t paying 75 quid to watch sleeping fucking beauty.
We didn’t ever give money back, it simply wasn’t allowed, we had to somehow placate the now murderous customer into accepting something in exchange, or even buy something else and take more money off them, unbelievable.
That job lasted for just four months, I found it too stressful and though it wasn’t because of the ever increasing frequency of the police raiding us, it was because of rival local villains who weren’t exactly over enamoured about the fact London villains were taking over their patch.
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It started off with the odd visit and casual threats, then more guys would turn up and start threatening me personally. I of course told the company about it and they in turn said they would deal with it.
That’s what worried me and decided there and then I wasnt getting involved in any messy gang war. So working how much the company owed me in wages I took it of the till, banked the rest, jumped in a cab back home to Barton Villa packed my bags and then jumped into another cab, destination Manchester airport.
Four hours later a scheduled Lufthansa flight touched down at Frankfurt am main in of course West Germany, now you’re probably thinking why?
Well on realising that the company wouldn’t just be pissed off about the fact I left with barely if not any notice at all, they would also be probably mighty pissed off with the fact
that I had also helped myself to my wages out of the Jack and Jill.
Technically I hadn’t done anything illegally, but my young and still stressed mind was working overtime and I wasn’t taking any chances if the company decided to intervene personally why I had taken this course of action, I had already seen enough of what they were capable of.
So, June 1981 and there I was 7pm local time and abroad for the third time in another unfamiliar place, why Frankfurt you ask?
Simple, that was the only available flight at that time of day and one I could afford, a bit random yes, but “hey” isn’t that the way life is anyway?
A few hours later I checked into a small guest house in a wonderful little town just outside Frankfurt called Kelsterbach..
This is where I started to learn to speak German, I could speak it at school OK but you really don’t learn a language until you actually stay in that country and listen to the natives.
I stayed in Kelsterbach for a couple of days then I decided to head south, first back north a little and into Frankfurt itself. Then it was off to the train station and an overnighter heading due south to Munich.
Even then German trains were a lot superior to British trains, as in punctuality and cleanliness. Don’t get me wrong I loved our trains, but these big fast diesels were something else and within a day I had travelled nearly 600 miles right through the heart of West Germany and arrived in the Bavarian capital around 10pm and it was absolutely pissing it down with rain.
Finding a cheap hotel I got my head down for the night. The following day I did what most tourists did whilst in Munich; I stood in front of the Glockenspiel at exactly 11am and watched this amazing spectacle that happens at that particular time of day.
By this time money was starting to run a bit low so I knew I had to get some work and fast, so I started knocking on doors of restaurants and bars and believe me there are a lot of them in Munich. It wasn’t long before I was offered a position as Kitchen Porter in one of many steak houses in an area of Munich called Schwabing.
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This was a very popular area with both locals and tourists so meant it was a busy area too. The job came with accommodation and paid fairly well and even though I was only there for a couple of weeks I quite liked it.
The reason I left was the Chef, he was a bastard from the town of bastard in a country called bastard from the planet bastard, if you know what I mean?
He was also Turkish and he didn’t like the English, the Germans didn’t like the Turks either so because German’s in general couldn’t stand the Turkish minority and the Turks weren’t exactly in love with the English things didn’t bode well for me.
So two weeks later I left on my travels yet again, this time I had decided my foreign adventure would have to be over for the time being so I made the long trek back through Germany and towards Belgium.
Just before I crossed the border from Germany into Belgium I can remember a really nice young German couple whose car I had hitched a lift in asking me to stay over with them.
I gratefully accepted as I didn’t have enough funds for a hotel and they lived in the border town of Aachen.
On the way to their house they had to stop off at relatives and they kindly invited me in and that they wouldn’t be too long.
Whilst I sat down on a couch waiting for this delightful young couple to do what they had to do I noticed a photograph hanging on the wall.
Looking round to see if anyone were looking I stood up and looked at it. Well you can imagine the shock on my face when I saw that it was a picture of a man in an SS uniform and around his neck hung the iron cross.
Well I don’t care what anyone says but it isn’t everyday you get to see a real life photograph of someone’s relative who just so happened to be a major in the Waffen SS hanging on a wall.
Quite the experience that was and that young couple had no problem at all about telling me about some of his exploits in the 2nd world war. That was the first time I saw another side to what happened in that war too and although my Dad himself was in the Royal Navy fighting against Germans. I still got the feeling and from a lot of Germans I knew of then and got to know later, that they never really had a choice and from personal experience I realised that the last people on earth Germans wanted to fight were the British.
After enjoying that wonderful couple’s hospitality I headed home through Belgium and then across the channel to England. 24 hours later I knocked on the door again at Barton Villa only this time to be told there was no room at the inn.
So I turned to my beloved sister, she had recently married and though I hadn’t seen much of her I still kept in touch one way or the other. My new brother in law was called Tony Booth and my sister and her new husband (Tony) had just moved into a new house in a town called Ashton/Under/Lyne.
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I stayed a short while with both my sister and Tony, though in all honesty we (myself and Tony) never got on. We still don’t, well we do but we are never going to be blood brothers put it that way and so started six weeks of a tenuous relationship.
After brawling in the street and threatening to probably murder each other (myself and Tony) I left their house and through Uncle Ricky who by this time had also left Barton Villa and had himself shacked up with a lady who loved him very much and still does even though he’s not with us anymore.
Ricky knew a lot of people and a pal he knew had a spare room at his house on a road called Ladbrooke and still in Ashton.
Jim was a strange old dude and drank a lot, he was alright but would have terrible mood swings and though I was working by this time, in a place called the old Blue Pig. It was a pub and always paying rent, he kept asking me to leave and would keep throwing me out.
For no reason, he would come into the house after work and just kick off, after sleeping rough for a day or so he would take pity on me and let me back in the house. It was a real fucking nightmare and one I was getting tired off and as well as that my feet were starting to itch again.
After being laid off from the pub Jim got worse with his mood swings, probably in anticipation of not being paid his rent on time, so I decided enough was enough.
I never intended for Jim to die it just happened, I only wanted to frighten him but all I can say is the spade was just a bit too much on the heavy side!!!
HA HA HA HA, just joking folks, lol. Don’t worry good old Jimbo’s alive and well and probably still throwing lodgers out of his house, bet that woke you up though eh? Now sit up and pay attention whilst I carry on with the next part of “my story.”
March 18th 1982. Steve Davis was beating everybody at snooker. Mary Whitehouse tried to ban [The Romans in Britain] An Argentinian scrap metal dealer raised the Argentine flag in South Georgia and I was heading down the M6 motorway.
I only had £30.00 and even then that wasn’t a lot but I had decided to take the bull by its balls and go for it.
What “it” was I wasn’t quite sure but I knew my future belonged elsewhere and I he who dares and all that bollocks.
I managed to reach Dover eastern docks 12 hours later and a few hours after that I was sticking my thumb out at French motorists in the hope of cadging a lift to Paris.
I did, after reaching Paris I then negotiated the infamous Paris metro, the equivalent to our London underground and believe me it wasn’t easy, I hardly spoke any French which goes down like a lead balloon in France.
However I did finally manage to reach and on the advice of fellow hitch hikers a place called Orleans, this is situated in the southern part of I have to say a quite beautiful city.
Heading down Autoroute 6 I eventually managed to reach another very beautiful city called Lyon. This was achieved entirely by thumbing by the way, I needed to conserve what money I had for food, accommodation and so forth.
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Shortly after that I left Lyon and headed further south and by this time had an objective, “the south of France,“ or otherwise known as the “French Riviera,” or if you’re French, “the cote d' azure.”
18 exhausting hours later I managed to arrive in a little place called Antibes. Checking into a cheap b&b, I slept for nearly a full day, after that it would be the hotel park bench unless I found some work and fast…..
Antibes is a truly beautiful little part of the world and I have some excellent memories here. The town is sort of split into two and divided by a long duel carriageway. On one side you have the town itself , little winding streets with typical high pastel coloured Mediterranean style houses, most of them having verandas or balcony’s.
There were a few offices and shops and a smattering of bars and restaurants but not that many, if you wanted night-life you travelled five miles down the coast to a place called Juan- Les- Pins.
On the other side of the carriageway was the harbour which was called Port Vauben and this is where my particular interests lay.
At the top of the carriageway and looking over the harbour was a large pub called Le Yacht. This pub was actually British owned, a lot of Brits lived and worked in that part of the world before all the cheap property prices came available in Spain and Portugal.
In that pub of course frequented a lot of the resident ex pat community and with them being British and me being a Brit, they were more than helpful accommodating me find gainful employment.
There were some lads from London and they were roughing it in tents, they said it was OK to crash down with them for a couple of nights until I found work and this I did.
We pitched just outside Le Yacht on a grassy verge that ran alongside the duel carriageway and one thing I will never forget is waking up at 6am in the tent to the sound of what appeared to be running water. Sticking my head out of the tent flap I saw this fucking enormous poodle and it had a what looked like a diamond studded choker around its neck and it was all tarted up, you know, all its fur shaven like you see at dog shows like Crufts.
That wasn’t the problem, the problem was the fucking thing had its right rear leg up in the air and was pissing all the over the fucking tent and the snooty bitch of an owner couldn’t seem to care less.
The French have this thing with pets, especially down in that part of the world and believe me, seeing that fucking poodle pissing indiscriminately and with the blessing of the owner was nothing to what I were to see later when I actually attended the Cannes Film Festival, make you’re fuckin eyes water.
Three nights of Riviera camping began to take its toll and the tent was becoming a fucking piss magnet for all the other female dogs that were religiously walked every morning along Le Urine boulevard.
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I needed proper accommodation and the ultimate goal for anyone in that area seeking work was a live in crew job.
These weren’t easy to get, you usually had too have references or appear to at least to know something about boats. Whether it be sailing wise or Motor vessel wise, you were usually expected to be skilled at say, mechanical engineering, a Chef, or even a Butler, these were the customary questions asked when attending an interview.
I had wondered into Le Yacht and somehow managing to stump up 5 Francs I slurped on a kronenburg whilst looking at various employment opportunities on a job board fixed to the wall.
In the background I could hear a conversation and having excellent hearing I cocked my right ear, just like Mr ED did in the TV show of the same name.
These two guys were talking about a possible vacancy aboard a German Luxury motor vessel berthed on the other side of the harbour; they were looking for a cook but that they must be able to speak German.
The name of the Yacht was apparently called YUMMY II, well you have never seen anyone down a glass of lager and exit a bar as fast as I did that night and within a few moments I found her.
The skipper of this amazingly beautiful boat was called Robert Metley and he at this point had only one other crew member aboard and that was his nephew Wolfgang.
I sat in the crew’s quarters/galley and answered all the skips questions; I must have ticked the right boxes because he offered me the job there and then, the position? Ships cook; there was a problem though, I couldn’t cook !!!!
I told him or should I say “lied” to him that I was more than qualified to knock up anything he’d care to mention, German food? Ha, no problem.
Of course I couldn’t and I know there will be people reading this thinking and wagging the finger of judgement but what you have done in the same position?
I had nowhere to live apart from a piss ridden tent with five other sweaty drunken males, no income, no means of support which meant in those days you could be deported. Even though France and Britain were in the EEC, you still had to have French residency papers. So yes, I had no problem at all in delving into the Bullshitters Almanac and using section 5 paragraph 2, “get your feet under the table first then panic,” which is exactly what I did.
This boat was a beauty, she was about a 150ft from bow to stern, 20ft in width, 7,000 tons and a Tiger in the engine room that said we can hit 50 knots no problem and that my friends is fucking fast.
The wheelhouse as most ships/boats bridges are fondly called was completely circular, which meant of course you could see 360° and this at that time was completely unheard of. And not only that, Yummy II was also equipped with revolutionary bow thrusters, which meant she didn’t have to rely on tugs, or pilots to bring her into a tight space, in effect she could turn on a fucking sixpence.
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Inside this bridge, or as I personally renamed it, The Starship Enterprise, was a bunch of equipment that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the new space shuttles that were blasting off everywhere at the time.
Sat Nav, Sonar, Radar, global radio telephone link, you name it, this baby had it, but more importantly, well for me anyway she also had a library but to my extreme anxiety, there weren’t any fucking cookery books in it.
I eventually managed to scrounge some from another British boat and I swear to god the guy on that boat knew there and then I couldn’t cook as he handed them over, I know because he told me so with his eyes.
The owner of this £4 million boy’s toy was a chap called Herr Peter Dussman. He had a company that produced cleaning equipment to hospitals all over the world. In fact at that time he employed in and around the region of 30,000 people, he also owned a private jet, a Lamborghini and had an American Mistress called Dana.
I won’t ramble on about my time aboard Yummy II, it would just take too long, but I have to say some of the greatest sights and smells I have ever seen were witnessed on that amazing boat and in all of just 4 months.
Just before I do that though I think its only fitting I mention some of the famous people I saw down there.
David Niven, Robert Wagner, Roger Moor, Phil Collins among many others. Niven and Wagner were filming one of the Pink Panther films and Moor and Collins owned their own boats in Antibes, I often wonder if they mention in “their” memoirs that they actually saw moi whilst sunning themselves on the aft deck of a million pound plus Motor Yacht, I doubt it lol.
So here’s a condensed version of where we went and what we saw…..
Though the boat was based in Antibes she was a boat and boats aren’t meant to stay in one place for too long and here is a list of places Yummy II travelled to whilst I was onboard her. Cannes, for the French film festival, women dressed like steaks but looked like liver, you get the picture, whilst walking their ornamental poodles dripping in diamonds past homeless beggars.
Monte Carlo, it was the 1982 Grand Prix and Nigel Mansel was in it, he didn’t win, but I saw and heard it all, we were right alongside the race track in the harbour itself.
Santa Margarita, this is in Italy, near Genoa and truly truly beautiful, no wonder they named a pizza after it.
Corsica, we went to quite a few places in Corsica but the one place I’ll never forget is a place called Bonafacio, this place is at the bottom of the Island and home to the French Foreign Legion, you really have to see these boys close up and in the flesh to realise they are the real deal, believe me.
The Costa Smeralda in Northern Sardinia, on the trip from Corsica to Sardinia I saw something I will never ever forget.
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It was the USS Nimitz, 1,095ft long, 101,000 tons and crewed by 3,200, she was engaged in exercises along with other NATO ships. You really have to see up close how big this monster aircraft carrier is to appreciate it, talk about impressive, wow!!
Then west to Minorca, Majorca, Ibiza. Ibiza is were we finally parted company and all because I had a strop on and didn’t like doing as I was told. How silly and a mistake I will carry around with me for the rest of my life.
So after saying a tearful goodbye, I bade farewell and caught a scheduled ferry back to Alicante on the Spanish mainland, to begin yet another long trek back to good old blighty.
Reaching Alicante I then travelled by train to the Spanish French border and arrived in a little place called Cerbères.
I didn’t have any more liquid money available so I would have to hitch all the way to Lyon. I had a cheque, for over a thousand pounds, but it was only cashable in a Credit Lyonaise bank and the nearest one was in fucking Lyon, 500 miles away.
A day later and absolutely devoid of sleep as well as starving hungry I walked across one of the many bridges that straddle the magnificent Rhone river in and in my opinion one of the most beautiful city’s in the world.
It was early on a Saturday Morning and on finally reaching a branch of the Credit Lyonaise in the centre of Lyon itself a horrible thought dawned on me. It was Saturday!!, Banks close on Saturday, well in England at that time they did.
Instant panic set in and just as I was already contemplating a weekend of dossing down under a bridge or in a park the main bank door opened and a sign went up saying, ouvert!
A short while after that and feeling like a millionaire, I did have 10,000 French Francs in my pocket, I found a really nice hotel and after a wonderful hot shower ordered steak and fries. It was still only 9.30 in the morning so you can imagine the looks I got, but I was starving and after that I hit the sack.
After spending the weekend in Lyon I travelled to Paris and then made my way back to the channel port of Calais. Heading once again into the harbour at Dover I stared at the not so white cliffs and contemplated what to do next.
You see, even though I had my sister, my brother, though at this stage I hadn’t a clue where David was, I didn’t really feel I belonged anywhere. There was my Dad of course, but that meant an unholy reunion with the one person I hated more than anyone on the planet, so you can imagine the thoughts going through my head on that misty drizzly morning in Dover.
I made a decision, I still had a fair bit of money left so could afford to be choosey where it was I went and it was still only July. And that meant summer was still in full flow which meant of course there would be work available in the main seaside resorts scattered around Britain’s coasts.
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First I tried Brighton, didn’t like it, too many cockneys and too many Punks, then Bournemouth, didn’t like that either, too many old people. So I tried Torquay, that was a little better but there wasn’t any work, but was told there might be work further down and into the county of Cornwall.
So I arrived in Newquay, I instantly liked this place, beautiful scenery, gorgeous beaches, lots of women but more importantly there was work.
I stayed and worked in a hotel called, the Fistral, so called because it overlooked a beach which was also called Fistral. When I say stayed in the hotel; it was in effect live in accommodation which was quite the norm for the many seasonal staff that worked in Britain’s seaside resorts.
The boss was an asshole and the job was bloody boring, 10 days I lasted here. I loved Newquay but I didn’t particularly like the place where I was working and to be honest I was starting to get homesick again and really wanted to see my Dad.
Even if it meant engaging with the enemy, I really missed him and I suppose the last link with what might have been and once was in that oh so comfortable first seven years of shall we say an “unusual” life.
Heading up the M6 I had by this time with very little money left. I had spent what I had on bars, food,. I loved to eat in restaurants and go on dates, aren’t women expensive? Lol.
Somewhere north of Birmingham I guy picked me up and said he lived in Blackpool. After me telling him of my recent exploits he suggested I find work in Blackpool. He said there was “always” work in Blackpool and that I could stay with him until I found digs if I liked.
He wasn’t too impressed when I asked him if he were gay, because he thought I then might be and was checking if “he” was. When I explained that I were just making sure “he” wasn’t and that I wasn’t too, he laughed his head off, I must admit those few minutes trying to explain everything were very fucked up.
So this geezer who’s name I can’t remember took me to his house in a place called Poulton Le Fylde and with it just being a a couple of miles outside Blackpool it would be convenient to use the house as temporary base until I found something else.
Four days later I attended an interview at a fish n chip restaurant called THE TUDOR EATING HOUSE; this place was situated on a road called Foxhall and was almost parallel with the central pier.
After asking where I had been and what I had done and being rather impressed that I had actually cooked for a millionaire on his yacht [thanks to the cook books and brilliant improvisation if I say so myself] I was offered the position of Grill Chef.
August 1982 and shortly after securing employment I also found a new place to live, one that would be my home for several years on and off.
16 Clifford road North Shore which was just round the corner from the Imperial Hotel and a small guest house run by a lady called Patricia who really believed she was related to Elton John and married to a husband (Tom) who believed in nothing but the exquisite feel of folded banknotes.
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Both were from Hull in Yorkshire and had decided to set up this guest house business in Blackpool. They had in fact been only in the house a few months and to be honest, the first two years there were the best, it went downhill after that.
Possibly the reasons for that were that as a new business you’re always keener at first and want to make more of a fist of it. But as the years wore on they got fed up and as a result standards dropped and the end was only a matter of time, but I’m getting ahead of myself, lets stick to the Autumn of 1982.
The Tudor eating house was basically a large café, 150 covers and the mainstays of the menu were, surprise, Fish n Chips, but we did serve Lamb, Roast Beef, Chicken, Ham and Meat pie, all cooked or baked on the premises.
My job was to grill burgers, gammon steaks and basically plate food up as well as serve in the out sales department, which were usually fish n chips.
This restaurant was unbelievably busy, Blackpool was busy full stop, but where we were situated meant we were right in the thick of it and I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever worked in the catering business. But if they have and been in a very busy establishment you’ll know how stressful it can really get.
As well as having to serve customers and get the orders out on time, by the way I can still see all those little chitties the waitresses used to slide under the wire and physically see my Boss Tommy change psychologically. For instance.
4 orders on, not much reaction, just a flicker of concern, 10 orders on, noticeable increase in speed now and this is where we all start to play at fucking dodgems and perfect the art of body swerving.
15 and more arriving by the second, I just keep my head down and concentrate, no point in panicking, doesn’t get you anywhere does it?
Tommy Robinson, my boss however is and by this time Tom is sweating buckets and swearing quite loudly. The most orders I ever saw under that fucking wire were 40.
The first ten were all in a line so you could read them but the other 30 were stacked in a big bunch and that my friends was fucking soul destroying. Like pissing in the wind, pointless, but I stayed with it. Tom didn’t, he’d crack up and start throwing things around eventually disappearing, just like that.
After the rush had died down he’d return, red faced and smelling of cannabis, he said he had to smoke dope to keep sane, you know what, I believed him.
Like I was about to say earlier, it wasn’t just the stress of serving thousands of holidaymakers and day trippers, it was having to deal with difficult customers too, ones that just wanted to misbehave and try and spoil it for others, well we got plenty of those.
Here are a few instances and really gives an indication of how dangerous it can be working in in the hospitality sector.
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They’d range from quite minimal, such as someone returning a meal, but by airmail, throwing it over the counter, to quite serious. Such as large gangs of men all pissed up and all averaging about 16 stone.
“If you think we’re paying for that you can think again.”
The boss would go round, this time the proper boss, Tommy’s Dad, Paul Robinson. He was a huge man, 25 stone and an ex Gypsy prize fighter, though not very good on his feet Paul could still handle himself and had a formidable presence.
Paul always used to sit directly in front of the counter and it would always be in the same chair. He only ever got off that chair to go upstairs, or go for a piss, or in this case to deal with annoying customers.
When the latter happened it was a sort of signal for the rest of us to get ready, when I say us, I mean myself, Tommy jr and the rest of the lads in in the kitchen, all handy lads. Usually Paul would sort it out and usually the idiots that were causing trouble would pay up and leave, not this time however….
If you have ever seen those old western movies, you know the ones where all the cowboys are punching each other and breaking chairs over each others heads, well this is exactly what happened that late Saturday afternoon in the Tudor eating house.
Paul Robinson never really went to diplomatic school anyway so we knew the attempt at calming things down had gone badly wrong when one of the idiots heads got shoved into the steak and kidney pudding he was eating.
*BOOM*
Up went the idiots mates and I kid you not, Paul had already dropped three of em before we reached him. This is a 60 + year old man with bad legs, however the boss hadn’t forgotten how to brawl and I swear he had a fucking smile on his face as the fun really got going.
There were about twenty of these lads so we were vastly outnumbered. Sheila (Mrs Robinson) phoned the cops whilst we got stuck in. There weren’t any customers to help us either, a lot of them drifted off as soon as these morons entered the café, like rats leaving a sinking ship.
Until the cops arrived there was a full on battle and like I said before, we were outnumbered three to one, however we did have weapons.
Mine was a fish scoop, literally used for scooping fried fish out of the fryer and they call it in the trade a spiders web. So called because, well it does look like one and made out of metal with a long handle served as a cosh.
I had thought of dipping it in red hot fat but decided you could probably get away with whacking idiots around the head but also probably do a bit of stir for branding and consequently disfiguring the fuckers.
The other lads had long handled pans, usually made for making sauces. These weren’t as big as your normal domestic pan but had a copper bottom which of course made them heavier than normal and ideal for coshing morons over the head with.
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We sustained a few injuries before the cops got there, but not many, just a few black eyes, lump on the fore head, aching back where some bastard had sneaked a kick in but that was all really. The tools obviously returned the advantage to us, we had plates thrown at us but we used the restaurant chairs as makeshift shields so we weren’t too bad off.
They on the other hand were in a bad way, about 12 of em were unconscious, the rest were weren’t far away and the remaining ones were being beaten up by the riot cops.
You see Paul was very well in with the local constabulary and as such if ever there was trouble at any of his establishments and with Blackpool cop station just being around the corner, well they’d come running and as soon as they saw what was happening they got stuck in.
By the way the police back in the 80s were a lot different than they are now and wouldn’t thing twice about ramming a police radio in your ear or belting you over the head with a telephone directory if you weren‘t forthcoming with information, some villains deserved it I guess.
Back to the restaurant and it looked like a fucking war zone, the cops had dragged all those Muppets off to the nick and we had to clean the mess up, broken tables, broken chairs, as well as mop up blood and snot and even a few teeth.
There were numerous scenes like that one, not quite as bad but there were a lot over the five seasons I worked in Blackpool. The worst being the one on one fight outside the restaurant with a miner from Barnsley. In the ensuing tussle we both fell through a window, ok for me but not for the gorilla I was fighting with.
The glass from the window pain sheared his nose off nearly and I can still see it, flapping around and he was roaring like some fucking crazed lion. Very scary that was, he was a big man and it took five of his mates to drag him away.
We cleaned up again, blood removal, checking for wounds, sweeping glass up then it was off home, good job Tommy Robinson gave me a lift that night.
That guy who had his nose nearly removed had mates, lots of em and they came back asking for me. One of the waitresses must have shouted my name so they knew what I was called. Shouting through the window at Paul and his wife Sheila, they were the only ones in the restaurant now, everyone else had gone and of course they did live on the premises.
Paul knew who it was immediately and told them to fuck off. For some reason Sheila decided to ring the cops and its just as well she did, there must have been at least fifty of these fuckers outside and they wanted blood, “mine.”
First they tried forcing the front in, thank god for mortice locks, having no joy with that tried the back door, no joy with that either, so they then decided to break all the fucking windows in the restaurant.
This they did by acquiring long scaffolding poles which were just across the road from the restaurant, they then used them as battering rams to smash nearly every window in the joint, after that they scarpered.
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The first I knew of this was when I came into work the following day, the glaziers van gave it away and joiners hammering nails in doors in an effort to repair everything in time for the lunch time opening.
My boss wasn’t too pleased of course, but he really liked me and he also trusted me and believe me, Paul Robinson was a very hard man to please, but if he did, that was it for life.
There were also some very funny moments in that place too, like the time nearly 100 drunken holidaymakers came pouring out of the pub opposite and consequently poured into our café, “doing the fucking conga.”
Paul went ballistic and when he tried to get em all out, two women grabbed him and tried to get him in the fucking conga line, hilarious.
Customers were just staring open mouthed, food still on forks near mouths, you get the picture.
Then there were the fucking comedians, “how big are your fish mate?” They’d ask, knowing full well how big they were because they could seem em in the heat cabinet, like you see in any chippy.
Well it used to piss me off so Id resort to reaching into a small draw and on producing a tape measure I would measure the cod, or haddock and then inform the customer, “exactly” how big they were. To which the customer would then inform me, that it was I, who was the fucking comedian and leave in a strop.
Then there was the clown who suddenly burst into the out sales and swiftly picking up the vinegar bottle he drank it! The full fucking bottle, smacking his lips he said, “thanks mate, I needed that” and disappeared, fucking nutter.
The funniest one was the time Billy Vasey worked for us; it was only for a short time but an eventful one to say the least.
Billy wasn’t tall but he was wide, a big powerful looking man and with quite the reputation, you didn’t fuck around with Billy.
On this occasion with Billy being a KP he arrived in the serving area with a pile of freshly cleaned plates. As he was putting the plates under the counter a drunken customer shouted at him from the other side of the out sales counter.
“Hey Jock,” Billy was a Glaswegian, “hey Jock I’m talking to you, shake ma hand Jock, I’m fra Glasgow to, shake ma hand big man.”
Billy just ignored him and carried on putting the plates under the counter, his place was in the kitchen and didn’t particularly like being out in full show of customers and the public. Come to that none of the other kitchen staff did too. I think they just didn’t want to be seen, I’ll leave it to your imaginations why.
“Hey Jock, don’t you be fuckin ignoring me I wanna give ye a Glasgow handshake ya gobshite ye.”
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That did it for Billy, placing the remaining plates neatly under the counter he glanced at Paul sitting on the other side of the main serving counter. Paul nodded which meant Billy had permission to do what ever he had too. Before you did anything in that restaurant you had to get permission from the boss, he “was” the law and “everyone” respected him.
Billy walked over to the dunk on the other side of the out sales counter and held out his right hand as if to shake the other man’s hand.
The drunk customer now laughing said, “nae, I’ve changed me mind, made you come though didn’t I big man?”
Billy never moved a muscle; he stayed exactly still and said, “shake ma hand wee man,”
We were all watching now and I knew something was about to happen.
“Ah well, what the fuck,” the man now moved closer to the counter and raised his hand to shake Billy’s already outstretched right hand. Just as Billy’s hand coiled around the other mans hand Billy pulled him even closer into the counter and with his left fist popped the man square on the jaw.
Billy still had hold of the drunk’s hand and I swear to god and on my mothers memory you could hear the bones breaking in that man’s fingers. .He was already stunned with the punch so couldn’t react, but he screamed when Billy gave him a “Glasgow handshake.”
Billy by this time was ragging him back and forward and said, “nae laughing now are ye ya wee twat.” Billy then let go and the guy ran out of the out sales as quick as I’ve ever seen anyone run in my entire life, Billy nodded to Paul and Paul nodded back then Billy returned to the kitchen, just like that.
October came and that meant the end of the season, soon I would be out of work and with the soles of my feet itching again as well as desperately wanting my job back on Yummy II I made a decision to head off yet once more.
So having saved up a few hundred quid I said goodbye to everyone at the Tudor eating house and also at 16 Clifford road and yet again headed south to Dover and then caught the TGV to Nice in the south of France via Paris.
Finally arriving once again in Antibes I located the same birth where earlier in the year I sat my interview with the skipper Robert, you can imagine my surprise when I found out she wasn’t there and that she wasn‘t ever coming back!!!
I made a few enquiries with other boats and they confirmed that after making a short return, Yummy II wouldn’t ever be coming back to Antibes. According to the skipper, Robert, she was heading for a new base port and that would be, wait for it?
Martinique!! which to the uninformed is a beautiful island paradise in the Caribbean and my heart sank when I learned of this. It seemed I would never have the chance to redeem myself and get back the best job anyone could possibly have…
I hung around Antibes. By this time we weren’t far off December 1982 and managing to find day work I also had the fortune to be given a berth on a British skippered motor vessel.
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The Captain being a chap called Peter, he said I could stay on her for as long as the owners stayed in Switzerland, but would have to find somewhere else of course when they wanted to play with their multi million pound toy again.
This was an amazing experience because with Peter and his wife, I can’t remember her name, having their own apartment in Antibes so they obviously didn’t need to stay aboard [The Najade] which of course meant I had her all to myself.
She wasn’t as cutting edge space age type modern as Yummy II but she was still a luxury motor yacht owned by millionaires which meant with the only one living aboard her I could pretend it was my boat and I did.
Sundays were the best, even in December it gets quite warm in the south of France and particularly on a
Sunday you would get loads of tourists and locals walking along the quayside. Open mouthed and possibly dreaming what it would be like to own a fantastic boat like the ones they were gawping at.
When they got to, ahem, “my” boat, I milked it for everything I was worth, seated on the aft deck, in shorts and T shirt, shades and holding a large G & T, I’d wave casually and people would ask who I was and I’d say I was a famous movie star but daren’t tell in case the paparazzi found out and discovered my identity.
The fucking chicks loved it and on one occasion I had a whole group of Swedish female language students aboard, I was in perve heaven, that was until fucking Captain Peter turned up and went ballistic.
He gave me a right bollocking and asked if I were out of my fucking mind? I tried to explain that I were only showing them around, a sort of tour, but he wouldn’t have any of it. A couple of days later Peter suddenly informed me that the Najade had to leave Antibes and was in fact heading for the Red Sea. The owners were flying out to meet up with Cap’n Pete and his wife to do some scuba diving.
That meant I was in the shit, where would I live and it was only two weeks until Christmas? I began to panic when I suddenly remembered something.
On engaging on a previous a tour of the Najade (snooping) I recalled seeing a box inside the drinks cabinet. I’m not kidding there were more expensive drinks in that cabinet than you can ever imagine. There was one cognac that had a label on it saying 50 years, which meant of course it was a 50 year old vintage brandy, incredible and even then in 1982 would have cost an absolute fortune.
The point I’m making is that here I was, standing in a vessel worth millions and surrounded by wealth that most people only ever dream of and there sitting right in front of me was a little black box and inside that box there must have been at least over 20,000 French Francs.
I had to make a decision, would I stay in Antibes and take a chance someone would take me in at Christmas. There wouldn’t be any work so I would be entirely at the mercy of charity, or?
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Sweating profusely I closed the cabinet door and went for a long walk along the harbour, I was in a real dilemma. I wasn’t a thief and taking anything that isn’t yours is oh so wrong, but the alternatives were at least bleak.
Christmas was approaching and there were only two options, steal the money and get the fuck away from there rapido, or go to Peter cap in hand and ask for a loan, so I would at least be able to get home for Christmas, wherever home was?
I pressed the bell on Captain Peter’s apartment and looking at me like you do when you’ve just found something on the sole of your shoe, he told me he wanted me to speak to me and what a coincidence it was me turning up.
My hopes soared, he must have been giving me a reprieve, but that soon went out of the fucking window when he produced a Bill.
It was all fucking itemised, rent, water usage, electricity used and so forth, then he informed me he would also be charging me for drinking 24 cans of Heineken, along with 24 cans of Kronenbourg.
I couldn’t believe it and protested vehemently, I said that he told me to make myself at home and said it was OK to have a beer if and when it suited me and apart from anything else what the fuck was the rent deal all about?
“Peter you said I could stay for as long as I liked and make myself comfortable, OK I did drink more beers than I should have done but you said it was part of the boats manifest and wouldn’t be a problem?”
He wasn’t having any of it, he was obviously still pissed off over the Swedish student episode and I think he was fucking jealous I really do. He then said that another boat owner had spoken to the Najade’s owners and they in turn had been on the horn to Captain Pete complaining that what was the deal with strangers squatting on their boat?
Fucking squatting!! It was my turn to be mad now and Captain Peter then decided he’d had enough and told me to go back to the boat and in the morning I would have to leave. Forget about the bill, that would be overlooked, but I would have to vacate the Najade first thing in the morning.
Well you know what folks, I “vacated” the Najade that very night and with 20,000 French Francs in my sky rocket (pocket)
Yes I know, I stole, I still feel terrible after all these years and if there had been any other alternative, such as Captain Peter helping me out instead of destroying everything by getting all stroppy and jealous then of course I wouldn’t have had to.
I did leave an IOU and a note explaining to the owners of the boat what I had done as well as why I had and would take full responsibility and return the money as soon as I had the required funds from a job I had found in Genoa Italy.
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The IOU and the promise of returning the money were correct, the destination of where I had headed weren’t.
In fact I headed in another direction. In Antibes was a railway station and every evening an inter city train from Nice to Paris would stop here. Hugging the coast, the train would hit Marseilles then head north to Orange. Lyon and then due north back to the city of light.
I can not begin to tell you how I felt whilst I waited for that train to turn up and just before it arrived a couple of gendarmes arrived on the station platform.
I were convinced they were after me, but of course I were being paranoid, no one could possibly have known what I had done. I mean the owners were not even aware that money was there. These people have so much you’d be surprised at the contempt they treat it with.
That doesn’t give anyone the right to take it either and stealing is stealing, full stop, but I had done it now and there was no going back. The cops passed and eventually the Nice Paris express finally turned up, thank Christ!
20th December and shortly after arriving in Paris at the Gare Du Sud I again crossed the metro and headed for Charles De Gaul airport, from there I caught a scheduled Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.
An hour after that I was again in the same little town of Kelsterbach and the place was like a fairy land, lights everywhere and for all those of you who have never been in Germany at Christmas time, then believe me you don’t know what you’re missing, it’s magical…
24th December and I wanted to be in England, so I caught yet another flight to Manchester. A few hours later I was in the same house were Uncle Ricky lived with a lady and still a close friend of mine, the wonderful Annie Robinson, no not her, another one and a lot nicer. lol.
Christmas 1982 was a belter and having still over a thousand pounds was probably the reason for that, out every night and getting hammered and all on someone else's buck.
27th December and this time it was off to Frankfurt again, but Frankfurt wasn’t my final destination, Berlin was.
At that time Berlin was behind the infamous iron curtain and no German airline was allowed to fly in into Berlin. Only US, British or French carriers were allowed to fly down a 200 mile air corridor and if any dare stray outside that corridor, Russian Mig fighter jets would remind them that they really shouldn’t.
The one and only reason for the visit to this great old city was to see something that was of modern man’s making, THE BERLIN WALL.
I had heard and read so much about this incredible wall that snaked 45km across the city and kept prisoner millions of Berliners that lived in the eastern sector.
7 metres high, started in August 1961 and believe it or not as only a thin white painted line initiated by an East German border guard called private Hagen Koch. Shortly after that, large concrete blocks were strategically placed followed by barbed wire.
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Six months later a larger more substantial barrier was set up and some of the scenes of people jumping out of buildings and getting shot then tangled up in barbed wire whilst trying to escape will go down in history as some of the most graphic.
I really can’t find words to describe how I felt when I first saw this concrete monster. Think of the town or city where you live and looking at a map of it, get a pencil and draw a line right the way across it, sort of cutting it in half.
There were roads, streets, avenues and then all of a sudden they would stop because of this monster wall that suddenly reared up from nowhere. There were large wooden platforms built so you could actually climb up them and peer into an alien world.
Over the top of the wall were a sort of no mans land, past that were the machine gun nests, the mine fields and dog runs. If the unfortunate escapees managed to get past those, there were always the watch towers, always vigilant and always with blood thirsty armed guards on a bonus if they popped a defector on his/her way to the west, incredible…
After witnessing for myself one of man’s many icons of madness I stayed overnight in a cheap hotel then travelled back to Teigle airport.
About two hours or so later I landed in another great city, the city of Vienna, or Wien if you happen to be German; the reason for this? Was a lady.
This lady was called Elizabeth and I met Elizabeth earlier in the year on the way back from Ibiza to Alicante and after asking me to visit her one day she duly gave me her address, so here I was, a bit impromptu I know but here I was.
The problem with not having a telephone number though and being “impromptu” meant that Elizabeth had no prior knowledge to my arriving here in Vienna. So after knocking on the door of a very large house and being told the gorgeous Elizabeth was Christmas vacationing in Ibiza I did what anyone else would do with very little money left?
I panicked, well only for a little while and it was New Years Eve, though still very early into the 31st December 1982 it was still bloody New Years Eve and everyone would soon be partying.
With a heavy heart I decided yet again to make the long trek home and it literally would be. Vienna is an awful long way from Manchester and with not having a lot of money the only means would be yet again to use the trusty old thumb.
It was about 5pm and not too far away from the German border, it was bloody cold too, in this part of the world it’s all mountains (The Alps) and not the place to be for a lonely young English guy travelling light on New Years Eve.
At last a huge truck pulled up and in I jumped, the driver was a thirties something German guy and he was a long haul trucker. In fact he was on his way home after a very long trip to Baghdad in of course Iraq.
When I told him why I had flown to Austria and all about Elizabeth he said not to worry about it and that I could stay and celebrate New Year with him and his family. This I did and will never ever forget my new years eve in a little place called Passau.
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Passau isn’t too far away from the Alps and just over the border from Austria. After I had been showered, fed and wined at the house we all took off in the car. Myself, the trucker and his wife and two small children, then drove to a smaller village about 20 km away.
It was dark by this time but the village was lit up with brightly coloured lights and lots of
Brass bands playing all sorts of music.
I asked the trucker why we were here and he pointed high and up into the distance. There what must have been about a half mile away was a procession of lighted torches, as in real flaming torches all winding its way down the side of a mountain.
The trucker explained that this was done every year by the local high school kids and I’ll tell you what, it was an amazing site and one I’ll never forget. You can keep the fireworks, give me a torchlight procession down a mountain any New Years Eve.
After the traditional countdown we returned to the truckers house and after a nightcap I got my head down. The following day we enjoyed a traditional Bavarian lunch and also watched the skiing on TV from Garmisch Partenkirchen, which by the way wasn’t a million miles away from Passau.
The following day 2nd Jan 1983 I again headed off toward England, but not before saying goodbye to that wonderful German family who had made so much effort to make a complete stranger feel like one of their own family on New Years Eve.
The trucker dropped me at the nearest autobahn and soon enough I was again heading toward the North of Germany than Belgium and of course Oostende.
Two days later I had also yet again arrived back at 16 Clifford road in Blackpool and after signing on the dole (unemployment register) I decided to try some self employment which was at first in the form of a window cleaner.
The reason why there wasn’t any other work available such as in my former job at the Tudor eating house was because? Well there simply wasn’t any work like this in the winter, as in most coastal resorts most businesses shut down for the winter period and Blackpool was no exception.
Hence my new found love of window cleaning, I managed to get some flyers (leaflets) printed and after dishing them out everywhere I actually received one or two calls. Using my benefit money to purchase a squeegee and a bucket along with an Irish linen scrimming cloth I was ready.
Then Landlord Tom wrecked everything by asking if I owned any stilts?
I asked him what the hell did he mean, he said well seeing as how I didn’t own any ladders how was I going to clean upstairs windows??
Then it fucking dawned on me, of course, how else would I be able to reach high windows without a fucking ladder.
Tom said he had one I could lend, but it was an old wooden one and one or two rungs were missing and the ones that weren’t were loose, but other than that it was a perfectly good pair of ladders.
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The minute I saw those fucking things I knew they were a bleeding death trap. A sign of that was when I picked them up off the yard to stand them up against the wall, three fucking rungs fell out and clattered to the floor.
However, beggars can’t be choosers and at last, though with care I at least would be able to reach the high windows.
The first job/customer was the last job and my endeavour to make money out of cleaning windows came to a sudden and abrupt halt and rather spectacularly I have to say.
I had arrived at this street just off the promenade in a place called North Shore. The house’s windows which I were cleaning belonged to a little old lady and everything went swimmingly at first.
After cleaning the downstairs windows I positioned the dodgy ladders against the house and climbed. The rungs held and although I have never liked heights I stuck to the job in hand and cleaned thoroughly said windows.
Whilst I were cleaning the main bedroom window I noticed movement, as in the fucking glass moving in the window frame. It was hardly noticeable at first but move it fucking did and I stopped cleaning it immediately.
Shortly after descending back down the ladders I again saw movement above and this time it was the window I had just cleaned being opened.
She must be airing the bedroom out I thought to myself and just as I had rounded the corner I heard the most dreadful sound. I nearly shit myself, running back around to where my ladders were, I saw not only the fucking window pain I had just cleaned on the floor but the entire fucking frame.
I have to say it was like one of those silent comedy films but believe me I wasn’t fucking laughing and neither was the old woman that owned the house, she screamed in fact.
“What have you done to my window young man, I thought you said you were a window cleaner?”
I didn’t say anything, I think I were too shocked and didn’t even stay to see the old dear head for the telephone. Grabbing my buckets and the fucked up ladder I legged it all the way back to the guest house and I kid you not I needed a fucking oxygen tent by the time I staggered through the front door.
“How’d the window cleaning go Stevie?” Quipped landlord Tom. I just glared at him and figuring something had gone wrong he then said, he wasn’t responsible for anything and that if any coppers came knocking on the door, I had stolen “his” ladders, he said it wasn’t anything personal just arse covering and personal survival.
Early March and still a couple of months before the restaurant would open its doors for a brand new season so I had to try and make money somehow. Being on the dole paid the rent but that was about it. I liked to go out drinking and an expensive burger addiction.
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Just around the corner was a burger bar called ZIGGIES and believe me these bad bitches were the best “anywhere.“ The big Zee was my favourite, I think it was the relish they put on the beef patties and I bet with illegal amounts of monosodium glutamate in it, hence the fucking addiction, lol.
So the next get rich scheme was self employed painter and decorator. Painting I loved and was and still are quite good at it, the decorating bit though was a little harder as I were soon to find out.
This kitchen job was easy enough to start with, rub down all the woodwork, undercoat then gloss over, no problem, then came the papering.
The golden rule with wall papering is to “always” apply the paper in long vertical drops, no matter how small the area is, even under window sills, over doorways. “vertical” drops, not as was in my case “horizontal.” Painting I knew, papering I didn’t and yes something told my brain that after covering the whole kitchen in this quite expensive wallpaper that it didn’t “quite” look right.
I knew this for sure when the female owner of the house came home and screamed in a funny high pitched gargle type shriek. I rushed in to see if she was OK but she just stood there shaking as if she had epilepsy and the only discernible words were. “Fuck, god, kill,” I didn’t get chance to hear the rest, I cleared off and decided that painting and decorating was another no no on my get rich quick list.
I gave it a rest in the self employment sector for a bit and soon enough it was time to start the new season. This was again similar to 82 and after a long season of grease, blood and cracked ribs it was time to hit the road again.
This time however I only got as far as Calais, I think I was starting to get tired of roaming around and to be honest I wanted a girlfriend or regular partner. All this gallivanting is OK but after a while its all really superficial and we all need substance right?
Back to Blackpool and this time I spent Christmas at the guest house, this came and went and had a little fling here with another guest called Lorna. Leather Lorna as we all called her. She always seemed to be wearing a pair of really tight leather pants and I’ll be honest that’s what attracted me to her, I had a real weakness for women in tight leather.
Again the earlier part of 1984 started similar to the previous year though without being in the German Alps of course.
Another brand new season started and as twice before I again picked up my steak tongs and prepared to do battle with customer orders and the customers themselves when necessary. Except this time my term at the Tudor eating house was cut short, I had the travel bug again and so decided for one last time I would up sticks and depart for pastures new.
This time I got a bit further than Calais, Rimini in Italy to be precise and though I had run out of money it didn’t matter.
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The weather was so warm I were able to sleep outside with no problem, however there was the cops, the cops in Italy are proper vicious bastards and none in my experience liked the English.
Again and with a heavy heart it was yet another trek back to England. Though this time I made a decision check up on my Dad when I got back. He hadn’t been well and I knew if anything happened to him whilst I were gallivanting abroad, I would never forgive myself.
Three days and several trucks and cars later I finally reached home territory. I saw Dad, though “she” tried her best to make me feel uncomfortable I still sat with him and chatted. He seemed quite chuffed I had been travelling everywhere though of course if he’d known about the boat he would have been bleeding mortified.
Whilst I where there I bumped into Carol, my sister, I had seen Carol fairly on and off but not David, my brother, in fact I hadn’t seen David since the late seventies and wanted to see him again.
According to my sister he was living with a lady called Peggy on a council estate called Brushes in a town named Stalybridge about three miles away from Mossley.
Making my way there I weren’t sure whereabouts he lived and Carol wasn’t sure which house number it was either but I eventually found him, thanks to a little boy called Wayne, Wayne was the lady’s son my brother was living with and after telling me which house it was my brother were we had quite an emotional reunion.
I stayed at Peggy’s along with my brother for virtually the whole summer of 1984 and what a summer it was too. Not only would I be introduced to drugs for the first time but this is the part of my life where I fell in love for the very first time too!!
Two very pivotal moments here at this stage of my life and I’ll start with the drugs bit first.
Though up until this point I had never taken any illegal substances ever, I knew what drugs were and what kind of problems could occur if you got sucked into them.
Cannabis was always a no no partly because of the fact I didn’t smoke and partly because, well I just couldn’t stand the fucking smell of that shit.
Then the hardcore stuff like Heroine, Cocaine, LSD, smack was again a no go area but Cocaine or Charlie as everyone used to call it was often tried. Not by myself but by people around me.
My brother David actually used to deal the stuff, not coke, speed, or properly known as Amphetamine sulphate. When I say deal, I mean he didn’t deal on a large scale, it was just usually to people he and Peggy knew and actually made them a hell of a lot of money.
There was a downside to that enterprise though, it was illegal and usually if you dealt speed or Charlie you usually attracted members of the drug squad. You could probably go for a year or so and make a shit load of money, but sooner or later “the squad” would mark your card and *BOOM* In would go the front door one evening whilst you were watching Coronation street.
And ten or so very stern faced police officers telling you not to move a fucking muscle, I know this because on one occasion I were in the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed it for myself.
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The only drugs I took were speed and LSD, the speed was usually to help perk me up if I were going out to a gig or just needed to get things done. The rush was incredible and you can see why people get addicted, though the more you take the longer it takes to get high hence the danger of addiction.
I would take mine in a cigarette paper, pop into my mouth and take a swig of milk, about a half hour later I’d be bouncing around everywhere like an annoying fucking rubber ball. I have an active mind to start with and after taking some Billy Whizz I was on fucking fire, lol.
LSD, this is a lot more dangerous and to be honest I didn’t really enjoy the couple or so trips I had with this stuff. To take it safely you need to be with people you know and trust and also think happy thoughts. If you do it’s quite an enjoyable experience, if you don’t you become all melancholy and down which means a bad trip and you really don’t want one of those.
The weirdest thing I ever saw whilst I were tripping was trying to eat a fried egg the following morning. No matter how much I tried I could not eat it, there it was, just a single fried egg on a plate and me with a fork hovering over it and as much as I tried I couldn’t eat it. In fact the fucking yoke looked like it were breathing and I began to think the chicken had come back to life, it hadn’t of course but that’s what LSD does, scary stuff.
Peggy, the lady I lived with along with my brother had three kids, Martin was the youngest, then Wayne, the boy who told me were my brother David lived and lastly Marie, she was the eldest aged 12.
Peg also had a brother (Geoff) and two sisters, Pat and a lady called Aileen, it is the latter of these that instantly caught my eye the minute I set eyes on her and I instantly fell in love right there and then.
To this day I don’t know why I did, looks wise Aileen wasn’t anything special, she was a good looking girl and had a nice figure but I probably think it was because she were just fucking wild and different and that’s possibly why I were attracted to her.
In the summer of 84 she was actually with someone, a chap called Rod, or Rod the Mod everyone called him. So called because Rod had a scooter and dressed just like a Mod and if you’ve ever seen Quadrophenia you’ll know what I mean.
Rod was a drug dealer too, but I really liked Rod, he was a big guy, well tall and had a very laid back approach and was always amusing to be around with. Sadly drugs and mainly speed completely ruined him and all his teeth fell out along with an already receding hairline.
Even though Rod was with Aileen I couldn’t keep my eyes off her and though I suspected she knew I had the hots for her she never let on that she knew. She did of course and used that fact to its fullest and deadliest advantage and for years to come if ever I came in contact with any money it wouldn’t be long before Aileen claimed it.
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I didn’t mind of course, in my eyes she was a goddess and when you’re in love with someone it doesn’t matter what they do to you, you just can’t help doing anything they want you to. You sort of come to terms with it and if I’m being honest Aileen “never” would be the right woman for me. We were too different, but I didn’t see that until years later, but “hey,” that’s the fucking sugar bowl that is life eh.
1984 came and went and to my utter joy Aileen split up with Rod the Mod. Here was my opportunity I thought to myself. No fucking chance Aileen had already fixed her sights on another drug dealer, this one whose name I can’t remember right now was very wealthy. He dealt Charlie and with Charlie being expensive he made a lot of money and lived in a large detached house and had nice cars.
This chap also had the Aileen bug and became as fucking smitten as I was. The advantage he had though was the fact he were fucking loaded and that was the kind of thing Aileen loved. Next to horses and dogs, Aileen loved the folding stuff and didn’t I know that for a fucking fact.
Early 1985 the guy Aileen was living with had his house raided by the squad and a substantial amount of class A drugs were recovered. Which meant he was in the fucking shit, he didn’t even make bale and because Aileen was with him when the doors went in she was arrested too.
I was fucking mortified when it came to the trial, Aileen ran the real risk of doing a stretch and with trepidation I went to the crown court to see what would happen. Mercifully Aileen didn’t go down, she got however a 2 year suspended sentence but old chummy fared far worse, he got 4 years in the slammer and with her sugar daddy banged up, this of course caused Aileen to have a rethink.
It was approaching the spring and I was about to return once more to Blackpool. I somehow persuaded Aileen to come with me and still to this day can’t quite figure out how I managed to pull that off. But I did and I now had “my” Aileen all to myself and no fucking rich bastard interfering drug dealers could get near her, lol.
Aileen stayed for about three months, Uncle Ricky also turned up at 16 Clifford road which was fantastic at first. I had really missed Rick and always had time for him, that was until the curse of Aileen reappeared and Uncle Rick decided he might also have the hots for the love of my life.
Of course that was just fucking unacceptable and I let him know in no uncertain terms that he stay the fuck away from her or else. The response was a clubbing right hook to the jaw but it didn’t connect I were too fucking quick.
There was another incident and this time it was at work. Uncle Rick came into the out sales of the restaurant and taunted me saying he was going to go home and shower, then tart himself up ready for Aileen. He said she was starting to fall for him and you know what I believed him.
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Even though Ricky Price was well into his fifties he still was a good looking man and always had women after him. So it didn’t take much for the fucking seething green eyed monster to turn into unadulterated raging hatred.
I ran out of the side door and jumped on him, he threw me off as if I were a rag doll,. Ricky was a huge man but I stayed with him, a bit like a Jack Russell attacking a Great Dane.
The boss came out and broke that rather very unsightly melee up, it was only a while after that, that I realised what was actually happening to me and you know what, it scared the fucking shit out of me.
Aileen brought some friends over once from Manchester and one of them fancied her too. After having a row about something, she said that she had a good mind to dress in her tightest jodhpurs and boots ( my favourite) and walk past the restaurant where I was working. She said then she would get one of the guys to caress her arse whilst she was smiling at me inside the restaurant slaving away, so I could give her my wages at the end of the week and you know what, “she was right,” I did.
That nearly broke my heart and then suddenly Aileen decided that Blackpool wasn’t for her after all and shortly after the Live Aid concerts had finished in July she left 16 Clifford road to return back to Manchester.
I was devastated, really fucked up, my life seemed utterly fucking meaningless and now I know what it must be like to cold turkey when you’re a crack addict. Because to me Aileen was my crack addiction and I was handling it very badly.
I don’t know if anyone of you reading this can actually say you have fallen in love with anyone because believe me you’d know if you had or did.
It’s a bit like someone taking a piece of you away and it hurts it really does and all that bollocks that men don’t fall in love or hurt in the same way as women is down right silly. We do and I bloody well did.
I managed somehow to pull myself together but there wasn’t a day went by without thinking of Aileen and I would be like this for years.
Aileen re settled back in Manchester and got hitched up with a guy called Peter Green. Peter was an alright guy but I loathed him, for obvious reasons. Shortly after that, Aileen got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy called Damon, a year later Aileen gave birth again and again it was a boy this time named Warren.
I soldiered on and on days off from the Tudor eating house, I would travel to Manchester then stay overnight and guess where? Yes, at Aileen’s house, if I couldn’t be with her all the time at least I could still see her on the odd day off from work even if it meant travelling 120 miles.
Aileen still had a fondness for my money as well and I nearly tipped up all my wages every time I stayed at her house. Yes I know it was sheer madness, but “hey,” that’s what happens when you’re head over fucking heels.
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I would even take pictures of her and being the vain bleeder she was she’d quite happily pose and strut for the camera. The pictures would be for her but I would keep the negatives and get them printed out. Those piccies kept me going throughout the long summer season in Blackpool but also of course didn’t help the quell the constant burning flames of desire.
Into 1987 and this was to be the last year I would ever work at the Tudor eating house in fact, I actually left halfway through the season. The boss Paul Robinson never forgave me for this and stated quite clearly I had to get that fucking woman out of my head. He meant Aileen of course, but it didn’t matter, I had been given the opportunity of renting a house and it was only around the corner from where Aileen lived.
This didn’t last long, I found it hard to pick work up and the bits of work I found were either temporary or shitty horrible jobs like making plastic buckets in a factory or stacking shelves in a supermarket. Both these jobs were nights as well which I fucking hated with a passion. Nights are good for three things only, Bats Rats and silly Twats, lol.
Slowly but surely the Aileen love spell was starting to wear off and with struggling to keep up the payments on the house, I left and travelled once more abroad, this time it was Spain, as well as stopping off at Gibraltar.
A few months later I returned and with not having my own place I had to rely on friends letting me crash on their sofa’s or occasionally I would stay with my brother but that never lasted very long.
We’d be OK for a while and then with my brother still taking drugs he’d have a sudden mood swing and kick off. He once kicked the living shit out of me, I could have fought back but I didn’t, I just couldn’t bring myself to hitting or hurting in any way my own flesh and blood.
1989 and into probably the third stint at being a lodger with Aileen, it was always either Aileen or my brother’s. I landed a job at a place called the Cosmo Bingo and Social club.
This position was of Bars manager and I did very well here, the place was in a right state when I first got there but I soon licked it back into shape and increased the take as well as pissing all the patrons off by immediately putting the prices up.
The general manager was a chap called Bob Creek, I really liked old Bob, he was a tad eccentric being an ex guardsman but his heart was in the right place and we usually had a right good laugh.
The owner of this institution was called John Downs or Mr Downs as he liked to be addressed, the pompous asshole. I never really liked him and mercifully had little to do with him. Bob was above me so he would be the one to deal with John if any problems occurred.
I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever been to a bingo club but I always got the impression most folks would cock a snoot when you mentioned the fact you worked at one of these places.
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Not sure why, they were very busy places and on occasions we would have celebrities making guest appearances such as Jimmy Cricket (comedian) Sue Pollard (actress) as well as host of popular singers and entertainers.
So it was quite a happening place and equipped with two bars serving can you believe, Real Ale. There was a restaurant too and on top of all that you could win shit loads of money, I think the top prize then in the early 90s was about a hundred K, not bad eh?
I also nearly got smitten again here, “she” was called Jane and I really liked Jane, the problem was she didn’t particularly like me and the set to’s we had were quite spectacular to watch.
I think it was mainly me that would wind Jane up and on one occasion she lost it and tried to throttle me behind the downstairs bar and in full view of the customers. I suppose it were an occupational hazard of mine to somehow have this knack of always pissing the fairer sex off.
There was another occasion when I would storm into the cash office and demand why the fuck my change hadn’t arrived back at the bar when I had been waiting over half an hour for it?
Jane responded by picking up the big change bag and smiling, tipped it upside down and a thousand coins tumbled to the fucking floor, “ooops,” she said.
I took Jane’s picture once, I was really into photography and was actually quite good at it, I sat Jane on the main stage and took her portrait. I have to say she was quite pretty and though she were engaged to a really nice guy called Jason, if she had given me the sign I would have been up her like a rat up a drain pipe, boys eh!!
1992 and this my friends is another one of those biggies, one hell of a fucking year this and all I’ll say is, St Moritz, Playboy model, Hawaii and Prison, interested?
Just before I crack on with the 90s I have to go back three years to 1987 and there’s a very good reason for that, you see that’s when my Dad died!
Dad had been ill for some considerable time now and we all knew it were only a matter of time before he passed away.
He had just endured his fifth stroke and most folk struggle with one, but tough as old boots was Daddy, however his number was up even though he were only 65.
I was living as a lodger with Aileen at the time and I’ll always remember a song called “living on a prayer” by Bon Jovi. Maybe this song was synonymous with what had happened to my Dad or I just simply liked it I don’t know. But I do know every time that fucking track is played it brings back the night I’m about to tell you about.
It started with a telephone call from my sister Carol and even though you think you’re ready to deal with death, especially say your parents or wife, husband, brother and so forth you’re not really.
Like a fucking big smack across the face this one, though I weren’t as close to Daddy as I was Mum, it still rocked me to the core, especially when I went up to the ward to see him one last and final time.
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It’s awful, when someone has died because they leave the body there, whilst family, relatives and friends pay their respects.
Doesn’t stop the fuckers from mopping the floor though, I couldn’t believe it, there was my Dad, laid on a bed, dead and some twat was mopping a floor around him like it was the most natural thing in the world. You can imagine what I said, though it wasn’t really coherent it were more of a growl, the cleaner left pronto.
Dad looked like he was sleeping and as I were on my own now, I kneeled down at the side of the bed and spoke to him.
Through tears I told him I were so sorry at being a little bastard, for misbehaving and not accepting “her” and that I were so sorry for ever pissing him off. I probably said lots of other things too and shortly after that I leaned over and kissed him gently on the forehead.
About three hours later I realised I better stop walking or I’d never get home, I must have walked miles and not realised where I was or why? People react to death in varying ways, mine was to walk and cry in the middle of nowhere and this I did until about midnight on the 27th November 1987.
The 90’s
Or to be more exact 1992, this year started quite normally and ended fairly normally, it’s the bits in between that are fucked up.
Around sometime in the spring of 92 I was lodging again with my brother and it was at this point I decided to leave the Cosmo and start in collaboration with my brother a photography business.
I had been taking photos whilst I were still working at the Cosmo and selling them too. These were mainly landscape pictures, or photographs of buildings and these I would then sell to whoever wanted them.
I even took pictures of aspiring models, that bit was my favourite, lol
The business started OK, but then my dear brother decided he didn‘t want to play anymore and it all went down the pan. He had recently received an insurance payout, £35,000 and it was his money that paid for all the equipment, which by the way was the dogs bollocks.
So when David decided he wasn’t going to fund anymore photo shoots and sell the company assets (the cameras) That was that and whoever it was that said a partnership is the worst ship ever to set sail is a fucking genius because its bloody true.
June 92 and the old travel bug had bitten me again, there wasn’t any work available and I didn’t really want to go back to the Cosmo. They had a replacement anyway and I don’t believe in returning back to a stomping ground when you have left.
So the thumb came out of retirement and off I toddled back to the south of France. The problem was there was no fucking work there either and once the antidote of reality had cured the travel bug bite, I decided to head back to familiar ground.
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There was another problem though. The French farming suddenly community decided no one was going fucking anywhere and in true French style blockaded every road in France. I mean it, there were tractors on nearly every main road and it was an absolute nightmare. They even had them at airports, on railway lines, everywhere, the place was in a state of fucking anarchy.
Not to be thwarted I skipped over the border and into Monaco. Monaco is a principality and not governed by France so there weren’t an blockades here. My plan was to hitch a lift to Italy and then Austria, Germany Belgium and so forth.
I had only been waiting for an hour or so when a white Porsche 911 stopped, “yes,” every hitch hiker’s dream lift and more so because it was being driven by a woman and a very attractive woman I might add.
The Lady was called Vera and Vera was on her way back to St.Moritz in Switzerland after visiting friends in Monte Carlo. There was a little girl in the back seat asleep; she was called Vanessa, Vera’s step daughter.
Vera was in the process of a divorce and her ex husband was a multi millionaire called Pierre Dillier. Pierre owned a petrol chemical company so you can imagine how much Vera stood to get once the lawyers had finished taking their cut.
We drove through Northern Italy past Turin, Lugano, Como and over the border then eventually to St.Moritz. Vera said she really liked me and said I could stay and rest at the house if I liked. I debated a little, I mean would I go back to stay in the house of a beautiful woman or carry on hitch hiking in the freezing cold? Lol
The house Vera lived in was just fucking amazing, it wasn’t a house as such it was an apartment and I kid you not it’s the only apartment I have been in that has a 360 degree view and what a view.
St.Moritz is stunningly beautiful and most of the people that live there are too and filthy rich. It really is another world and strangely enough populated by a lot of wealthy Colombians.
Vera showed me to the guest bed room and I must have slept for over 25 hours I was really beat. The following day Vera asked me if I would like to stay a little longer, I said “absolutely” and dropped to my knees and looking at the ceiling thanked God, lol.
Vera by the way was Swiss Argentinian and extremely attractive, indeed Vera used to be a playmate at Hugh Hefner’s mansion. That was quite a bit ago but in honesty you’re never gonna stay at Hugh’s place if you look like a woodchuck and Vera certainly didn’t have that problem.
She was also extremely intelligent and could speak over six languages fluently. Vera was currently employed by Swiss TV as a presenter and if you look on the internet she’s still doing so and very good at it she is too.
We got on pretty well and it wasn’t long before Vera took me to bed and laid “me,” yes that’s right, she was on top. She said she preferred it that way and did I have a problem with that?
In a little squeaky voice I said I had no problem at all with this arrangement, she just smiled and continued to bonk my brains out.
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I stayed with Vera and Vanessa for about three months, I would have stayed longer but Vera was becoming increasingly dominant. Not that I had a problem with that, I love strong women but Vera was not only physically forthright she was psychologically too and believe me that takes some doing.
Eventually I decided to leave and though she wasn’t very happy about it she purchased an air ticket from Zurich to Manchester and yet again I turned up at my brother’s.
I know I know what the fuck was I on to leave that life and the fact Vera was soon about to be very wealthy. Well it looks good on paper but when you’re in that kind of environment and living it, it’s not always how it seems and that’s why I left. Still keep in touch to this day..
At the beginning of September 1992 I was offered the position of Night club manager in a place called Rochdale.
The club was called Oz, as in the Wizard of Oz, indeed the whole club resembled the various scenes and places from that famous old movie, i.e. the emerald city bar, the poppy fields lounge, the witches castle bar etc etc.
The owner of this club was a chap called Steven Powers and Steve was really quite the character, I could write a book on him alone.
Steve as well as owning Oz also owned several other establishments, in fact I think he owned about five different clubs and pubs in all. Steve was also bisexual, he was married and had kids but he liked to bat for the other side too and frequently did.
I had no problem with that, the problem “was,” quite a few of the staff that I inherited at Oz where that way inclined too and again I didn’t have a problem with that fact either. They could have had fucking leprosy for all I cared, as long as they did their jobs I couldn’t care less.
Now and again one or two of them would fall out with each other and unfortunately for them they’d take into work.
If you have never seen two effeminate gay men fight you don’t know what you’re missing. Like fucking girls, hair pulling, scratching, biting, name calling, un fucking believable and when you try and separate them they go for “you,“ fucking nightmare, so I fired the pair of em.
That didn’t go down too well with the boss, probably because he were shagging one of em, or had and still had a soft spot for “her,” lol.
Steve insisted I re hire them I insisted I didn’t and there followed a tense stand off. However Steve Powers was a business man before everything else and knew I were making him a substantial amount of money. Indeed within a month I had quadrupled the take and he was a very happy man.
One of the fondest memories of that place was standing at the top of the club and looking down at what must have been nearly a thousand people all dancing, the big hit then was “Rhythm is a dancer “by a band called Snap.
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It felt great, the euphoric feeling of being responsible for over a thousand people as well as the staff and including the bouncers.
Talking of Bouncers, Bouncers back then were a lot different to how they are now and didn’t have any negotiating skills whatsoever. If you lipped them you were out faster than a fucking hiccup, I mean it, these boys where from an agency and I swear to God before they turned to bouncing they were all in the French foreign legion.
One of the funniest moments was when a Police superintendent in full uniform turned up. Rochdale Police were implementing a safer responsible drinking initiative and even though there where vehement protestations from the bouncers, “he” still insisted “he” walk around the club and chat to various clubbers.
Fucking idiot, the minute he stepped into the main club area a Holsten Pils bottle whizzed past the superintendent’s right ear and after he came flying back to the office complaining. The bouncers where all laughing and wearing that told you so look on their faces.
October and the wind of change was about to blow once again. The club’s owner was very friendly with a pal of his called Peter Yates, Peter was a full on aggressive fairy and I really didn’t like this man at all.
He used to turn up at the club with Steve and always had a fucking knowing smirk on his face. I soon found out why and he had no problem at all in telling me he was after my job and it would only be a matter of time before he did so. The fucking wanker, I hated him.
Indeed I heard Steve and Peter in the office once discussing “my” future and it wasn’t one of secure employment on my part.
Every Sunday I would cash up the weekends take and then proceed to meet Steve in one of his other clubs, this one was in Ashton. Not far from where I lived so the idea was to take all the cash in a taxi from Rochdale to this particular club in Ashton and this was always done on a Sunday morning.
Sunday morning 4th October 1992 and there I sat in the club’s office staring at over £10,000. I had just finished cashing up and paid all the staff off.
The previous night Steve Powers had more or less informed me and in front of a grinning Peter Yates that the end was nigh and that this weekend would be my last as a manager at Oz night spot.
Again similar to that time on the Najade ten years ago I had a dilemma. No job, still living as a lodger and “there” sitting in the safe was over Ten Grand?
Ten minutes later I was heading toward Ashton and Steve’s club. Just as the cab was approaching Ashton I asked the cab driver to head for Manchester airport instead. Three hours later I was in the air on a British airways scheduled flight heading for Geneva and feeling very strange indeed, as well as wondering what the fuck had I had just done.
I were still in a state of shock even after I landed in Geneva, why Geneva you ask?
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Because it were the only available flight at that time and there was always the possibility that I had already been rumbled and even as I were perusing the duty frees, an all points alert had gone out.
I checked into a really nice hotel and you know what? I were in my element again. I were born to live like this, jet setting around, dossing in swanky hotels and drinking a very large G&T whilst watching a ferryboat chug its way across lake Geneva, bliss.
The reality of the matter though had kicked in if not at my end, back home in Manchester, indeed and when I look back on it rather humorously too.
According to friends much later on, as soon as the money had been discovered missing, there began a frantic search.
There were several of Steve’s employees all divided up into search teams in an effort to try and find moi. The funniest one was at some friends of mine in Stalybridge. One of Steve Power’s employees guaranteed a nice little payout if they could disclose my whereabouts. It was at that point one of my friends, Alan Butler, pointed at a jet passing overhead and said, “there he is.”
My brother was on thug watch, Steve Powers had quite the reputation so my brother with obviously being my brother and at the time living at his flat, was being cautious just in case any retribution came his way. He did this in the form of sitting at the top of his stairs, armed with a baseball bat and a dog if told would rip your arm off.
Meanwhile back in Switzerland Stephen had a plan.
I wasn’t sure at first what it was or where I wanted to go but I did now and after staying Sunday night in Geneva it was Monday and I was now 35,000 ft over the Atlantic and headed for New York.
Eight hours later Swiss air flight 110 touched down at JFK and shortly afterwards I was again in midtown Manhattan looking for a hotel.
It had been 12 years since I were last here and you wouldn’t believe the changes, this time I did get to see the statue of Liberty. In fact I climbed all the way to the top and peered out through the torch that Lady Liberty holds aloft.
I also ascended to the top of what would be the ill fated Twin Towers, I was in the south tower and the view from those buildings was utterly amazing and nine years later my heart would break when I saw the ensuing destruction caused by those airliners.
I stayed in New York for about three days and then decided to pick up on where I left off twelve years ago. You see a lot of folks think New York “is” America, particularly New Yorkers, lol.
But of course it isn’t and I wanted to see a whole lot more of this amazing country and the only way to do it and to meet the inhabitants is to travel by train. Which is exactly what I did.
On arriving at Penn station I purchased a USA rail pass for $300 and this gave me unlimited rail travel anywhere in the continental United States using Amtrak trains of course.
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You know in the movies when you see people boarding Amtrak trains and you hear the conductor bellowing “all aboard?”
Well they really do that and I can’t tell you how excited I was when I saw my cabin. It was like a portable hotel room and it had a pull down bed, just like in the movie THE SILVER STREAK.
The train departed Penn station New York and travelled west at first toward New Jersey then dipping south into Philadelphia. I had dozed off and I’ll never forget the sight I saw when I woke up.
It was the capitol building, where congress sits and with it being dark it was all lit up and then I saw the Lincoln memorial. Awesome stuff, of course (The Crescent) yes the trains have names over there, had arrived in the nations capital, WASHINGTON DC.
After stopping in DC we again travelled further south, this time through Virginia, the Carolinas and eventually the following day I woke up in Atlanta Georgia.
I stayed one night in Atlanta, the only place I were really interested in here was the Coca Cola museum, yes this is where those little red tins of pop originate.
The following day I reboarded The Crescent and again deeper and deeper into the great south. Nearly everywhere else in the states you see the star spangled banner fluttering proudly from rooftops. Not here in the south, the flags that are flying here are of the old confederacy stating to all and sundry, the south shall rise again!!
The reason why the train by the way was called The Crescent is because the train’s ultimate destination was The Crescent city, or better known as New Orleans. It has other nick names too, such as the Big Easy, Nola and so forth but to me it’ll be always good old New Orleans and I loved it.
I stayed here for about four days and relished every second. The best part was the bars and music venues, yes BB King does really play on Bourbon street. But it’s not all about the mega stars that frequent these places, the up coming acts are just as good and there was one young band from LA playing a rendition of Achy breaky heart much better the original Billy Ray Cyrus hit.
The night life was cool, the restaurants were even cooler, the speciality here is the shrimp, fresh out of the gulf of Mexico. And if you like seafood, you’d die to get your choppers around one of those babies, not forgetting the Gumbo (fish soup) Jambalaya (rice, veg and meat) and the giant crawfish, yummy.
I also attended a Cajun music festival here and I don’t know if you know but, Cajun music is native to this part of the world and is rather good. A sort of cross between country and jazzy piano, foot stompingly fabby baby, lol. I had a ball and after that I went to the zoo.
The Audubon zoo in New Orleans is one of the largest zoos anywhere in the world and with having a liking for exotic animals I really enjoyed my trip here. The alligator farm was my favourite, I saw a pure albino gator and I swear to God it looked like a statue, it just never moved a muscle the entire time I were looking at it.
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The best memory from there though was the Big Cat enclosure. When I say enclosure it were more of a large park all fenced off. But it had trees in it and sat up high in one of the trees was a rather large Leopard.
All of a sudden a bloody great Panther appeared from nowhere and running toward the tree scooted up it and what followed was the fucking cat fight to die for, lol.
Soon it were time again to board another train, this one was called The South west chief, so you can imagine where it was I were heading this time.
Across the Louisiana bayou then over the state line and into the Lone Star state, TEXAS. Here I only stayed briefly, a couple of days in Houston then a short stop over in El Paso and it was off again across New Mexico then into Arizona and the city of Phoenix.
After getting off the train at Phoenix I travelled by Greyhound bus to a place called Flagstaff. The reason for this? Flagstaff was the stopping off point for tourists who want to see one of greatest natural wonders of the world, THE GRAND CANYON.
This truly is a phenomenal piece of work by Mother Nature and you really have to see this spectacular gash in the earth to believe it.
I wanted to walk down right inside it but the Park Rangers strongly advised against it, due to a colony of Black Bears being in season and with getting frisky that made them not only horny but fucking dangerous.
I said goodbye to one of the seven wonders of the world and trekked back to Flagstaff. I still had to pinch myself, here I was on the trip of a fucking lifetime and all on someone else's dollar. Wrong I know but my new friend Bud Weiser soon made it all seem right, lol.
West again and through Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains eventually arriving in the city of Angels.
Didn’t stay in LA for long, I had another train to catch and this one had a name too. THE COAST STARLIGHT and this train took me all along the Californian Pacific coastline past places like Malibu, Santa Barbara and even the famous San Quentin prison where Johnny Cash famously sang for all the cons and wardens.
Finally I arrived in a place called Oakland, Oakland is part of San Francisco and you have to leave the train and a coach takes you across the Oakland bay bridge. Not to be confused with the more famous Golden Gate Bridge in Frisco itself.
I stayed in this wonderful city for a whole week and you know what, I didn’t want to leave. It’s a very beautiful part of the world and the restaurants and bars here among the best in the world.
Then there’s the magnificent scenery of course, but there was one place above all others that I really wanted to see and that was of course, ALCATRAZ. Made famous by those gangsters from the roaring 20s, such as Dillinger, George machine gun Kelly, Al Capone, to name but a few.
When you get there you are given little headsets telling you all about the prison’s former occupants. However my favourite bit was listening to the guides, you see “they” were former inmates now employed by the state of California as tour guides, how cool is that.
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After we had arrived back on the mainland I had lunch in the Alcatraz dinner and yes you sit in cell and are served by staff dressed as convicts, only in America.
I was a little bit in a dilemma at this stage, I had always wanted to go to Alaska, don’t know why and I know its bleeding cold, but the scenery is incredible and I have always wanted to see an Orca up close.
Killer whales are rarely seen anywhere else except of course in fucking sea world, but instead of opting for the great white north, I headed off to another dream destination, HAWAII.
Its two thousand miles from the west coast of America to the Hawaiian archipelago and about six hours, bloody worth it though.
You know when you see in movies where they drape flowers all over you when you arrive and say “Aloha,?” Well its really true, its then you realise you’re somewhere very special and the week I were here in Hawaii will forever be etched in my mind…
I checked into the Imperial hotel which was rather grand and this particular hotel was directly located on Waikiki beach.
The first time I witnessed an Hawaiian sunset was rather akin to having an epiphany and words can’t really describe how beautiful it is.
Honolulu is a very busy place and though there were other wonderful places in and around the island there was plenty to do here and I have to mention the heat at this point because it’s breathtakingly fucking hot here.
Even when the sun isn’t shining it really is boiling hot and I suppose a reason for that and for the first time in my life I had arrived in a tropical zone.
The main area of Honolulu is Waikiki beach made famous of course by the hit TV series Hawaii five 0 and mostly in the week I were here you would find me strolling down the esplanade and watching the sailing boats and outrigger canoes zipping about all over the bay.
This was the area also where I got propositioned by a hooker, but she wasn’t just any ordinary hooker she was drop dead strikingly fucking beautiful and it was all I could do to try and resist her, but I have never paid for it yet and never will do.
Pearl harbour.. No visit to Hawaii should ever be completed without having visited Pearl Harbour. This was the scene of course where the Japs decided to bomb the United States Pacific fleet in December 1941 and its only when you go on the tour and stare down at the remains of the USS Arizona that it brings home the horrific atrocity that happened on that fateful morning.
Indeed when you realise that there are several hundred sailors still down there and with it being a designated war grave you sort of leave that place with a completely different mindset to what you had before you arrived there.
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The week flashed passed and it was time to leave this island paradise and one of the things I will never forget was seeing the whole archipelago from the air, truly truly magnificent!!!
East this time and back to the continental United States. Destination Seattle and this was another one of those wonderful modern upcoming uplifting cities and home to some of the most recognisable companies on the planet, Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft just for starters.
Seattle is twinned with another city called Tacoma and sits in a sort of inlet where ferries ply to and fro to the many islands as well as the one owned by Canada, Victoria Island.
Again Seattle had many facets about it but the one I wanted especially to see was the Space Needle. This huge structure dominates the Seattle skyline and I just had to go up in the lift and admire the view.
Well you’ll never guess who I met in the elevator and I nearly fell over when I saw him? It was only George Takei or better known to all us oldies as Mr Sulu in the original Star Trek. Apparently there was a Star Trek convention going on and I actually managed to speak to him.
I asked why instead of using the lift like us mere mortals he didn’t just directly beam there instead? Well it went down like a fucking comedian at a funeral and he just stared at me rather uncomfortably, lol.
It was Halloween and as you know Halloween is celebrated in the states with gusto and it was on this particular evening I had dinner right at the very top of the space needle. And as a result got showed to my table by Freddy Kruger, served drinks and food by Jason whilst Count fucking Dracula played the piano, bizarre.
Again it was soon time to head off and again it would be in an easterly direction, first Portland Oregon and into Idaho then past Salt Lake City and eventually ending up in Denver Colorado.
This is sort of the halfway point in the US and also where the Rocky mountains are. These are quite spectacular and wherever you happen to be in Denver you can see them swelling up in the distance.
Whilst here I made a decision, I was going to go back home and face the music!! Made sense really, the money was starting to deplete and I knew unless I found work here, albeit illegally I would at some point have to go home and face the music, but that’s for later.
Redrocks amphitheatre is a natural haven for acoustics and it’s no wonder John Denver, U2 and Stevie Nicks amongst others played fantastic concerts here. Set between two huge dark red rocks I have to say it’s a very cool place to play a gig, especially with the city of Denver as the backdrop.
There was another must see attraction here too and one that reminded me of my childhood. It were William Cody’s grave or better known to all and sundry as Buffalo Bill and to be honest it’s just a simple affair, surrounded by little wrought iron railings.
Time to head yet further east and this time the train was called THE EMPIRE BUILDER.
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Rather fitting really because it was the rail road that paved the way for modern America to establish itself and enable it grow as a nation.
Lincoln Nebraska, Des Moines Iowa and the finally Chicago. Only a brief stop here then another Train called THE LAKE SHORE, aptly named really because this part of the world is surrounded by em.
Toledo, Buffalo, Syracuse and finally again having completed my mammoth trek across the United States of America I landed full circle back at Penn station New York city and with just two days left on my ticket.
I stayed in New York for about four days and did some more touristy stuff, walked across the famous old Brooklyn Bridge, had a buggy ride in central park and rode the Staten Island ferry.
But the one place I think everyone should visit and sadly I bet they don’t, is Ellis Island. This is in the New York harbour area and right nearby the Statue of Liberty, in Fact Lady Liberty is on an island too and yes it’s called Liberty Island.
The reason I have singled out Ellis Island is because this was usually the first point of arrival for most immigrants arriving in America for the very first time and on Ellis Island is a museum dedicated to displaying this fact.
I wont go into too much detail but suffice to say the main point is to get across the courage and fortitude of millions of these immigrants who were fleeing Europe. As well as Cuba, Russia for many varying reasons and on a wall in the main reception area is a huge map of the world with arrows showing where all these people came from and all with one objective in mind, “to make it in America.”
The bit for me that stood out though was the attraction directly in the middle of another huge hall. It was an airtight plastic bubble about 30ft high and about 20ft in diameter. Inside it was a myriad of peoples belongings that had been left on Ellis island by the various immigrants that were there being processed at the time and it were absolutely fascinating to see believe me.
Crunch time and the moment I stepped aboard that scheduled BA flight to Heathrow I wanted to jump off it again. But of course it was too late now and duly settled down with the courtesy headphones and wait for the in-flight meal.
Seven o clock in the morning and I was back on British soil, would I get arrested here or maybe somewhere else? I wasn’t sure and it was with some trepidation I walked past that beady eyed customs officer.
“Excuse me sir, would you like to come this way?”
Busted!!!
Or so it seemed, well that didn’t take too fucking long I thought to myself. Customs duly proceeded to check my luggage and informed me that they would be checking with the Police as well, as is standard procedure. I resigned myself to my fate and though I hadn’t broken any customs laws I had stolen over £10,000 and of course it would only be a matter of time before that customs officer came back and informed me of my rights.
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“Right Mr Garside you’re free to go, have a nice day!!!”
I nearly dropped fucking dead, he stared at me and asked me if I was OK. I swiftly recovered and said I were Honky fucking Dory then thank you very much and it were all I could do not to break into song and start fucking skipping.
A million questions were flying through my head, why hadn’t I been formally arrested, why weren't the cops looking for me and more importantly if that where the case and the Police hadn’t been involved in any way would that mean Steve Powers would seek his form of retribution?
I still had a thousand pounds left so I stayed in London for another week, again as in America I did the sights and enjoyed myself.
Whilst I were here I watched a world cup qualifier at Wembley stadium, England v Turkey. England won 4-0 so my first visit to our national stadium was a very favourable one.
A week later I arrived at Euston station and boarded a train to Manchester, a few hours later I knocked on my brother’s front door in Mossley and you should have seen the look on his face.
The following day I left for Rochdale and before I arrived at the Police station I turned up back at the club and staring at it suddenly realised it had been exactly two months since I did the deed.
I walked into Rochdale Police station and formally announced that I were the perpetrator of a robbery on the 4th October 1992 and waited to be arrested.
The desk sergeant just looked at me and asked me if I were joking, I told him I wasn’t and he again just stared at me in disbelief.
Eventually someone came to their senses and walking from around the counter informed me that I was now under arrest.
They placed me in a cell, but can you believe without closing the door! It wasn’t that they were lax or anything but they just really didn’t feel I posed a threat and they said it wasn’t every day that a fugitive handed themselves into their nick.
Shortly after I was interviewed and answered all their questions, it was all the officer that was interviewing could do not to burst out laughing.
You see, the Police knew all about Steven Powers and didn’t particularly care for him either. They knew he was up to all sorts and had been trying to get him on stuff for ages.
So when I popped up and handed myself in they found it rather amusing and saw it as form of sticking two fingers up at him which of course suited them.
I told them about any consequential threats or repercussions and they reassured me that if there was any of that nonsense they’d be down on him like a ton of bricks.
A few weeks later I was formally committed to Crown court at Rochdale magistrates and told I would learn my fate in May 1993..
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Christmas 1992 signified the end of a tumultuous year and to be honest I didn’t really enjoy this one, even though May was still five months away it was never far from my mind.
I had found digs again and this was at Peggy’s. She’d since separated from my brother and had other various flings with the odd guy and though I lived at Peggy’s I never saw her in a sexual way or any other, we were just good friends and I was a lodger simple as that.
It was around March 1993 that I found a job selling lottery tickets, these retailed at £1 and the idea was to try and raise money for a charity that involved brain injured children.
75 pence went to the charity less expenses, 25 pence went in my pocket and I did very well at this.
I used to dress up as a clown and spend a day in places like McDonald's holding a bucket. One particular day I sold a thousand tickets which meant of course I made £250 not bad for a days graft.
The guy in charge of this operation was a chap called Michael Haig. I really liked Mike and he had some brilliant ideas on how to make money and would later become a millionaire.
We worked from an office in Ashton/Under/Lyne and among the selling of lottery tickets we would try and come up with other ideas on how to make money. Like for instance designing scratch cards for sale to Masonic lodges and so forth.
Mike like myself had history too and indeed when I told him of my ensuing appointment with a Crown court judge he just shrugged his shoulders and regaled me with a story of his own encounter with the law.
Michael once owned a scrapyard and this was in partnership with another chap. Also at that time Mike’s wife was ill in hospital and with Mike also owning a newsagents found it hard to be everywhere all at the same time.
An ideal opportunity for someone with devious tendencies, which is what his partner at the scrap yard had. He proceeded to rip the business off for as much as he could and when Michael found out he wasn’t impressed.
His partner just laughed at Mike and stated that there was nothing he could do about it, he wasn’t laughing however when Mike had the guy on his knees with a shotgun barrel rammed down his throat.
He got away with it, suspended sentence I think and Mike used that experience to sort of reassure me that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion I would soon be gracing one of Her Majesty’s prisons.
Mike also promised to support me on the day of the trial, I could have had other people there if I had wanted, but I didn’t want friends and family witnessing me being sentenced to prison, if that were to be the case.
5th May 1993 and there I was standing in the dock flanked by two Prison officers. Even though I had resigned myself to the fact I were going down, I still found it disconcerting seeing two Prison Guards standing either side of me wearing that, “you’re going down mate” look on their faces.
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My Barrister tried his level best to get a deferred sentence but the Judge was having none of it. In summing up the case after listening to both the prosecution and the defence, the Judge said, “you spent £10,000 of someone else's money so therefore I have no alternative but to hand out a custodial sentence.
I have worked out that you also spent two months gallivanting off around America, so therefore I sentence you to prison for four months. Which means you will serve two months if you behave yourself, take him down.”
And that was it, I was officially a convict!! It doesn’t really sink in at first, you’re sort of in a state of shock, I expected it and but its still a shock. I have to say I feel sorry for the poor bastards that go up before the Beak and thinking they’re going home don’t, Jesus!!!
Before you actually go to prison you have to wait for the court to finish its business and because I were the first to be sent down, I would wait in a holding cell whilst all the other hapless sentenced victims would enter at various stages of the afternoon.
Some where OK, some were in pieces, you’d be surprised how people react once they know they’re going to Prison, it was an education just sitting in that cell watching them all come in, one by one…
There followed a series of procedures, an interview with my advocate who genuinely felt sorry for me and I can still hear his words. “Chin up, you got away lightly, I spoke to his Lordship in his chambers and believe me he wanted to send you away for at least two years. But he owed me one so you haven’t done too bad, just get your head down and you‘ll be out before you know it” at that point he winked, how fucking amazing is that?
After that you are psychologically assessed as well as administratively, so many fucking forms to fill in and I was starting to get the mother of all headaches.
Then came the teatime round up, which means around five o clock at the end of the days business, a prison truck arrives to take everyone that has been sentenced to prison.
This is where it starts to really dawn on you that you’re fucked, this is where the crashing reality that you’re about to do time really kicks in.
You’re all seated in little individual compartments and though nobody can see you through the windows, you think they can and it’s bloody awful.
About an hour later we arrived at HMP Liverpool or more commonly known as Walton Prison. This place holds about a thousand or so Convicted Category B prisoners as well as remand prisoners awaiting trial, and the minute you’re let out of the van it hits you. A row of Prison officers all lined up with large dogs awaiting for everyone to disembark and then you’re all led off in an orderly line to the processing centre.
Here you’re given more forms to fill out and any possessions you have are confiscated. You won’t be seeing them until the day you get released which at that time seemed a fucking eternity away.
I can still remember one of the prepossessing staff asking me if it where my first time inside, I said it was and he smiled and said, “exciting isn't it.”
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Fucking comedian, I didn’t need that. Afterwards you are showered, kitted out and fed, that’s if you can call it fucking food. Cold tea and some unrecognisable crap on a plastic tray, fucking disgusting and my moral was staring to visibly deplete by the minute.
Then you are showed to your room, along countless fucking walkways and up steel stairs. Lots of steel stairs then eventually to your en suite accommodation courtesy of her Majesty. The en suite bit by the was a fucking potty in the corner of your cell.
The minute that heavy steel door slammed shut I felt terrified, I know I fully deserved where I was and I’m not quibbling about that for one second. But it’s still a fucking terrifying experience once that door closes and believe me this is also the point when if your gonna crack up you will.
The reason I know that is because after about 30 seconds a little slat in in the door opened and two beady eyes stare at you for about the same time, satisfied you’re not gonna top yourself it closes.
I got my head down and I have to tell you, the worst part of being in there was waking up the following morning after being sentenced. Because for a few nano seconds you think your still at home, fucking nightmare, lol.
I stayed on my own in that cell for about two days after that I had a cell mate. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted one or not, sometimes it can help if you’re with someone in the same boat so to speak but I didn’t really care either way and slowly but surely I started to adjust to prison life.
The first person that sees you is the Governor. He or she goes through your case and asks you if you want to appeal, with not wanting to they then ask you if there are any psychological problems affecting you in any way, I said no again.
I was in Walton Prison for about two weeks and to be honest and contrary to popular belief, I didn’t witness anybody being shagged up the arse or being gang banged in the showers, that stuff just looks good on TV.
The food was even starting to taste better, but if you don’t eat you starve, simple as that. There are recreational facilities even inside a closed Prison, such as pool tables, TV, and so forth but I didn’t partake in any of that. I kept myself to myself and read books, the time went quicker and believe me, when your in Prison, “time” takes on a whole new fucking meaning.
Two weeks after being sentenced I was told I was being transferred to what’s called an open Prison; this place was called Kirkham Open prison in Lancashire, which meant exactly that.
Kirkham used to be an RAF base and is populated by a series of long huts; these were before it became an open Prison, billets for serving RAF personnel doing their National Service.
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Within the grounds of this place was also a series of buildings known as blocks. Canteen, offices, recreational and learning buildings too and it was mostly in these types of places where I served out the remaining six weeks.
I passed two courses, one in business studies and the other was in computing. I also read one of my all time favourite books whilst I was here and you will piss your sides when I tell you what it was.
The fucking Shawshank Redemption, I kid you not and it felt really strange reading about a prison whilst you were actually in one, lol.
Also here were quite a lot of greenhouses, these were mainly populated by tomato plants, but Lettuce, Cabbage, Carrots and other veg were grown here too. Which meant that the food in this place was fucking excellent and you got fed three times a day and its no wonder people put weight on when they’ve been inside.
I made a few friends whilst I were here too and let me just set the record straight here, just because your in Prison it doesn’t make you a bad person, oh I know there are lot of em in there, I know because I seen em of course.
But there are “good” people too, who have just fallen off the path for one reason or another, but fundamentally they’re still human beings and know very well “why” they’re in there but still carry out whatever sentence was given to them with dignity.
Talking of people who were in there, you’d be surprised how many Postmen there are, as well as Bank Managers and Lawyers; indeed they call Prisons like Kirkham white collar prisons because of that very fact.
There “are” Murderers, Rapists, Drug Dealers and Bank Robbers in there too, but they’re toward the end of their sentence and considered low risk, why would they want to escape after completing nine tenths of a fucking fifteen year stretch?
A lot did escape though, nearly every night and for the life of me I still don’t know why. All you had to do was jump over a fence and away you went. But if you were caught and you usually were, you’d lose all your privileges, go back to bang up nick and do the whole of your sentence instead of half of it, fucking madness.
The 5th of July 1993 is a day I will never forget and though Kirkham open Prison was an open nick and relatively relaxed compared to other prisons, it was “still that,” a Prison.
07.30 am and once again dressed in jeans and T shirt and not the regulation pinstriped shirt and blue prison issue pants you had to wear, I made my way past the gate and to “freedom.”
I had done it, I had done the crime and completed the time and I had done it with grace and honesty. Meaning not getting into any shit or other stuff like drugs, beatings, gang stuff, or anything else. I know it were only two months but it was still two months of my liberty and to anyone reading this who has done a stretch, “they’ll know exactly what I mean!!
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Onwards and upwards or so I thought. You see the problem with spending a while inside has other drawbacks, like for instance when you apply for job, or see people you know who also know where you were for the last two months.
My answer to both those questions is so what, what’s done is done and yes I broke the law and took someone's money. But I also paid the penalty by losing my liberty for a couple of months and though it were a short sentence it had an impact that still effects me to this day 18 years later.
The rest of 93 was spent sort of not knowing where I wanted to go and to be honest the middle 90s were nothing like as interesting as other parts of my life.
I travelled to London to work in a large pub called The Nags head, this was actually in a place called Welling if I’m being precise and I stayed here for about 8 months.
I returned home to Tameside again and once again stayed as a lodger either at Aileen's or some other friends I knew, as well as at my brother’s too.
1997 and of course the year Princess Diana died in that awful “accident” in Paris. By this time I were working for a company called Essentials, this company sold all sorts of cheap stuff from kiddies toys to gardening tools and at that time a lot of these shops were springing up everywhere.
I was a manager here but again the curse of change that has haunted me for so long struck again and because of a brand new shopping mall being built, it cut trade off from all the shops on our block so in effect we had to close.
Not to worry the old travel bug had bitten again and for the very last time I would drag the old thumb out of retirement and head south, this time it was to the channel island of Jersey, via the south coast port of Weymouth.
June 1997 and I landed in the islands capital, St. Helier, didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was going to stay, you see everything with me is fucking random, a constant swirling and mish mashing of thoughts and ideas all eventually ending up in the same direction, fucking nowhere, lol.
After a couple of days of sleeping rough and scratching around for work I found somewhere. This place was called the Bonne Nuit Hotel and was situated in the beautiful north of Jersey called the Parish of St.John.
Jersey by the way isn’t really part of the UK, it is defence wise and has very strong links to the British crown, but there it stops. The whole place is governed by itself which meant of course no sodding VAT and other such duties that are levied on all of us other suckers in the UK.
This is where I met the irrepressible Joe. Joe Vargem was the then manager at the Bonne Nuit hotel and if any of you out there know who Jose Mourinho is then you’ll know what Joe looks like. In fact he didn’t just look like the special one he fucking acted like him and if I didn’t know better I’d say the two were related.
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Joe of course was Portuguese and in fact there was quite a colony of Portuguese working and living on Jersey, still is, most of them come from another Island, this one being Madeira, yes the one with the wine not the fucking cake.
I started off as barman and I really loved running that little bar in the hotel, it would get awfully busy too especially when we had acts on. The best of them was a chap called Peter Platter, problem was he was absolutely bloody awful.
He could sing could Peter, but his jokes were dire, except if he’d had a drink, then they’d improve but the downside was they’d also get blue and very edgy.
There was one occasion I’ll never forget, when in trying to perform his Norman Wisdom act, Peter came staggering into the bar shouting. “Mr Grimsdale, Mr Grimsdale,” the problem was Peter suffered terribly from stage fright and always had to have a few scoops before a performance.
Well on this occasion Peter had really been on the sauce and as a consequence tripped over a trailing speaker cable and crashed head first into my fucking bar knocking himself out.
I calmly reached for a soda siphon and leaning over the bar squirted him back to consciousness. I kid you not and the fucking audience just clapped a round of applause, incredible.
There was another memorable scene in that hotel bar and one I’ll never forget.
In the corner was huge fireplace, this was one of those massive ones you could walk into and made out of solid Jersey granite.
Well it was approaching the end of my first season there and starting to get a bit nippy, the central heating was on but the hotel was very old and thus the radiators weren’t very good.
Staring one afternoon at the empty fireplace I had a brainwave, an hour later I stood back and admired the huge roaring fire all crackling and warm like.
A bit later on the first guests arrived for their early evening aperitif before the meal got served, they were really impressed at first until one of them asked why there was a blue haze in the bar?
Its true, I hadn’t noticed it at first with being outside bottling up and restocking the bar ready for the oncoming rush.
But there in the bar was now a hanging blue haze and it was getting thicker by the minute.
You see what had happened was, in my haste to get the fire going, which incidentally was already made up, logs and paper, everything, in fact all I had to do was light it.
But what I should have done and what I hadn’t, was “check the fucking flu.”
So of course the smoke had nowhere to go but back into the bar and by this time everyone were coughing their lungs out and you couldn’t see the restaurant for dense smoke.
Swiftly I filled a large bucket full of water and threw it all over the fire, that though just made it fucking worse, this time there was white smoke billowing out everywhere.
The guests who incidentally were all elderly were evacuated outside to the tea garden and I along with some staff proceeded to grab large flat serving trays and use them as hand fans in a vain effort to disperse the thick choking smoke.
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Of course there’s always a fucking comedian and when I got back to the bar I noticed a string had been erected across the top of the bar and hanging from it were some fucking kippers, like I said, there’s always one.
There are lots of other memories here, a management coup occurred and the new owner didn’t want Joe around. Which was a shame, he really was the type of character that place needed and I learned more about the restaurant business from Joe in four months than at any other stage of my life in the licensed trade, he was a star.
The Bonne Nuit catered for weddings, Christenings and anything else you wanted, even wakes, if you wanted feeding with a view and a good piss up, then you came to the Bonne Nuit hotel.
I also had a couple of flings here and one of those little flings was with a young lady by the name of Sarah Pearson.
Sarah was actually a fitness trainer for TV’s Gladiators and she really was a little stunner, indeed if the guests could possibly have known what I did to Sarah one night on the settee in the TV lounge it would have turned their fucking hair white, yes I really did get “down” and “dirty,” lol.
I stayed on the island of Jersey until early 1999, the hotel was about to be demolished due to an ecoli scare in the water supply so it was off back to England and yet another job as well as finally acquiring my own place to live.
6 Oakdale court in Stalybridge was my new little Chez Garside and it really was a flashy little pad.
Even though this place was only a bedsit it was a luxury bedsit as in the way it was decorated. Which was very nicely and the position it was situated, Mottram road was and is quite a prestigious place to live in my neck of the woods.
Shortly after moving in a vacancy arose and this one was and I know, irony of ironies, was working with the Police.
This job was purposely designed really for people who were from a retail background which is what I mostly did.
The job title was a CCTV operator and this was situated right in the centre of Manchester, I myself along with five more worked in pairs and in three eight hour shifts.
Not sure if anyone has ever been inside a CCTV room but this particular one was like the bridge in Star Trek. Thirty large 60 inch screens set against a wall with of course smaller monitors directly in front of the operator positioned on a desk.
The idea was to follow and monitor any behaviour that was deemed suspicious or out of the ordinary.
Well believe me there was and because there’s too many incidents to mention, below is a condensed list of what I saw or was involved in
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Various attempted murders.
Ram raids.
Football riots and mass disturbances.
Armed robberies.
A male shopper dropping dead just as I pointed the camera at his face.
Bag dippers, sneak thieves.
Shop lifters
Car chases
Police brutality
Yes even that was filmed and much to the disdain of the cops. They didn’t particularly enjoy that, it was OK to film villains and other stuff but Bobbies beating people up was a no no. We still filmed it though, wouldn’t have been right would it if we hadn’t?
A whole host of people came into this control room for one reason or another and because CCTV was rather new at this stage, as well as being controversial, it seemed to attract the news media which of course attracted the politicians, local and national.
I shook hands with the Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jack Straw, John two jags Prescott among loads of others, but the folks who I were fascinated by were the spooks.
Yes, we were actually visited by members of Her Majesties Secret Service on more than one occasion, mainly MI5.
At the time there were a lot of demonstrations against the fur business and this attracted a lot of animal rights members whom some were considered extremely dangerous.
So in came the spooks and I kid you not, you would never know these people were fucking spies, or whatever the hell they were supposed to be and they always turned up when you least expected them.
There was Special Branch too, these are the police who are always armed and are usually used to guard high ranking politicians as well as members of the Royal Family and it was one of these cops I had an affair with.
It was only a very brief affair but I really liked Denise and she always carried that fucking gun around. They had too, went with the territory and she used to jokingly say it was really to pistol whip me with if I weren’t up to scratch in fucking bed, lol.
Christmas 1999 and after getting into my shift in the control room I gotta call from reception downstairs, we were on the 3rd floor.
Puzzled I arrived in reception to see a smiling Denise there. Striding right up to me she planted her tongue straight down my throat and thrusting a bottle of Scotch in my hand she wished me a Merry Christmas, that’s the last I ever saw of her!!!
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The 21st Century
The CCTV job was very well paid but the problem was the shifts. Such as working from 6am til 2pm the first week, 2pm til 10pm the next and finally 10pm til 6am. There followed a whole week off after that and these were known as Police shifts, 3 on 1 off.
Now that might suit some but it didn’t me, there were some days I would wake up and my head would be up my arse, I suppose I were only ever designed for daylight work. It were the nights that screwed me up and how people manage to sleep a full eight hours in the daytime, particularly in Summer is totally beyond my comprehension.
Nine months after catching criminals I decided to leave and set up in another small business, this being a little newsagents in Stalybridge. I invested nearly £3,000 in this venture and it started off OK, but then the curse of change that’s followed me around for so long rose its ugly head and very soon it all went tits up.
First the road outside my shop got dug up because of some multi million pound renovation project, then Camelot [The National Lottery] decided they weren’t going to give me a lottery terminal after all.
And to top it all off, the fucking building’s owners kindly informed me that due to unforeseen circumstances they were unable to “re assign” the lease, have you noticed they always say kindly when its usually bad fucking news?
So after breaking several pint pots against the kitchen wall and swearing unspeakable curses on that pot bellied twat of an estate agent I finally wound HIGH STREET NEWS up.
I was sort of glad in one way because I really didn’t miss the 4.30am starts and miserable po faced customers giving me grief about their own life’s failings at seven o clock in the fucking morning. Then there were the thieving school kids, people constantly coming into the shop trying to sell me stolen goods and creditors wanting to reiterate that it were “they” that now owned my soul, not me.
After walking away from that nightmare I decided to do the same as the majority of the human race and work for someone else again.
QUIDS IN-- was a chain of shops that sold cheap goods in and around the Greater Manchester area and this business was owned by a partnership of two, Paul and Howard.
I did my training in Wythenshaw [South Manchester] and then a couple of weeks later and in early October 2000 took up the position of manager in my home town of Ashton/Under/Lyne.
This position was only ever going to be temporary and I knew this right from the off but we duly stocked the shop up to the gills and I hired the staff.
I have to say and even though this shop was only open for just over three months due to it being a temp lease arrangement.
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I have to say it were the hardest I have ever worked in my life and that was mainly down to the staff.
Yes I know what you’re going to say, “well you hired the fuckers.”
And yes I did, but when you only have so much time to get these people in and trained and being only paid the minimum wage. Then it’s usually the case you’re going to get fucking retards and Christ knows what else and believe me, this is exactly what I ended up with in this case.
There were quite a few incidences, too many too mention but the one that stood out above all was the Saturday before Christmas 2000.
On having a clandestine meeting, the official branch of Moron’s R us decided that “they” weren’t going to work on Christmas Eve for no less than “double” money.
I explained in a normal rational and calm way that with Christmas Eve falling on Sunday this year meant it was a normal day and that knowing the boss they would probably get treated anyway.
They wouldn’t have, Paul & Howard were as tight as a ducks arse and then some and swore by their own official company mantra, “promise” em diamonds “give” em fuck all, but I had a shop to run and would deal with the fall out later.
Of course the best laid plans and all that and they all fucked off, apart from one. Right in the middle of a busy Saturday afternoon and the one before Christmas, these fucking inbred, one stop from being a fucking miscarriage excuses for human beings left me in the shit, right up to my fucking eyeballs.
Well if that’s not the excuse “never” to go into retail management then I don’t know what is and the cheeky bastards had the effrontery to come back with their boy fiends. No I haven’t misspelled, husbands, cousins you name it and “demanded” that I pay them their wages.
I phoned the boss up and he arrived with reinforcements and eventually the situation calmed down, not pleasant though and at one point got quite nasty and still to this day when I see some of these people, I get abuse from them. In fact one of them, a woman, starts spitting and snarling like a fucking animal and as result am not sure whether to call a cop or some one from the RSPCA?
January 2001 and I parted company with Quids in, fucked the cruciate ligament up in my right knee and moved house, all in that order.
Six months later I started employment with a company called Supergifts, this was a chain of about 50 shops situated from as far north as Newcastle to as far south as Wolverhampton in the West Midlands.
Supergifts was owned by a parent company called Woolbro and this huge wholesalers imported container loads of cheap goods into the UK mainly from the peoples republic of China.
My first position here was in a shop situated in a town called Oldham in Lancashire and talk about baptisms of fucking fire.
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Oldham is mostly populated by white indigenous folks, however there is quite a sizeable Asian or as some like to say ethnic immigrant population too and after some spark ignited the fires of hate there followed a spate of full scale riots in and around the town.
It was on the back of these riots I started my career with Supergifts or as the shops were usually named, SUPERPOUND.
This is actually were I made quite the name for myself in the retail sector albeit in a usually unorthodox manner.
The shop in Oldham was initially staffed by lazy bastards and that meant a good old spell of gardening. Or should I say fucking weeding, as in getting rid of the shit, which is what I did with frightening ferocity.
Within only three months, the Oldham branch of Superpound had gone from being 25.5 per cent in the red to 12.5 per cent into the black, that’s a massive 38 per cent swing and in only a short space of time, a miracle??
No-- just a change in personnel and sticking the two hundred and fifty grand’s worth of stock that was sat downstairs in the warehouse onto the shelves upstairs instead, not rocket science was it?
That and selectively ordering what I wanted to sell and not what the fucking moron in the warehouse in Leeds who didn’t know Jack shit about shops wanted me too. Yes I know what you’re thinking and “yes” you’d be right, probably got called a lot worse too but hey,” that’s the way it is and even as an employee, particularly in management, you have to treat it as if it were your own business or it simply won’t work.
It wasn’t long before other companies became interested and in fact two other high volume retailers tried on more than one occasion to recruit me which I used to my fullest advantage.
As soon as these companies got in touch I contacted my bosses and told em what their rivals were offering me. Then after Superpound bettered it I would contact the other company and they in turn would increase their original offer.
If there were to be a suitable analogy for this scenario I suppose it would equate to being on top of a hill carrying a large pile of bricks, in other words being in the dominant position which is exactly where I wanted to be.
Eventually and having not only increased my portfolio or standing within Superpound I had gained an extra four thousand pounds on top of my salary and various other benefits attached to said new package.
I was also promoted to the firms flagship shop in a place called Middleton and the first task here was witness the incumbent manager get suspended for alleged misappropriation of till receipts. In other words he’s been caught with his fucking fingers in the till.
Again like all my other exploits in various other employment positions it would take me for ever to tell you about every one of them but there is one that will simply blow your socks off.
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One of many shops I managed for this company was in the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield and in this case the shop was called the 99p shop. The reason being a branch of Poundland decided to suddenly open up right next door thus forcing our company to re brand.
Again when I first got here and like nearly all of the shops I went into it were struggling and had staffing problems and like before it were only a matter of time before I sorted them out, which was what I did here.
Before I continue on I simply have to give a very special mention to a wonderful former work colleague and who I regard also as a true friend,
Her name is Samantha Heaton and is as hard a working, honest wonderful human being as your ever likely to meet and in all the time I were there in Huddersfield it was the lovely Sammy that probably kept me sane and my feet firmly planted on the ground.
Now back to the story and it’s the autumn of 2004 and I’m about to employ a serial killer!!!
The first time I met Desmond Lee or Des to you and I was at the back of my shop and I were politely enquiring to a member of my staff as to why that display they’d just put out resembled the rear of a Camel’s arse.
Standing there holding his CV Des informed that he’d come for a job and so forth, just before we arrived in my office he suddenly informed me that he had to tell me something .
Listening he then told me he had a past, “haven’t we all?” at the time I was drinking coffee and when on asking him what he’d done and Des replying that he’d once murdered someone I nearly fucking scalded myself.
Cutting a long story short he then went into detail of how 15 years ago he’d been in a gay relationship with this other young man and that the young man’s mother didn’t approve.
In fact she went to great lengths to put her point across until one day after Des had been drinking rather excessively, she proceeded to throw certain household items at Des.
Des responded by placing both hands around his future mother in laws throat and duly throttled the fucking life out of her.
I just sat there, I have to be honest, even after going through what I had already been through, well it’s not every day you sit in front of some one just candidly talking about committing the “ultimate” act is it?
After listening to him and also talking to his probation officer I made a decision. I employed him and the reason I did this is because like I said earlier and taking into consideration the fact he was still under strict licence, is that “everyone” deserves a second chance.
If you think about it, it was perfect in every way, because the vacancy was for a supervisor and that entailed handling cash. Which meant that there right in front of me was someone who I knew for a fact literally couldn’t step over the fucking line or it would be bye bye and back to the slammer, forever!!!
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So I took the plunge and never one for being shy when it came to making controversial decisions I stood by my actions.
I did tell my assistant manager Susan and eventually every other member of staff, though Sue supported me the rest of the staff didn’t. I suppose you could understand their consternation but they also had to understand who was in charge and as result respect my decision.
About three months later I had to let Des go, he hadn’t done anything wrong, in fact he were quite the model employee. It were the other members of staff constantly antagonizing him and making constant references to his errr, prior misgivings such as. “No way am I going in that warehouse alone with Deathly Des,” or “if I’m working with him I’m wearing a fucking neck brace” and even “do we get fucking danger money working with a convicted murderer!!
So of course I had to wipe my mouth before Des did actually revert to type and I had another fucking Halloween on my hands, lol.
Six years later after saying goodbye to Des he killed again, apparently this time it was someone he were seeing, lover, friend. Don’t know for sure but according to the press Des for reasons only he knows dispatched this hapless fellow in the most gruesome of circumstances.
There were of course other situations during my six year tenure at Supergifts and if I’m being completely honest, though I were and still am a bit of a maverick as in being unpredictable in the workplace. I did achieve some remarkable results whilst I were there and held the title of “the fixer,“ whenever anything was wrong with any of the shops, a title I’m quite proud of.
*****
THE END??
I nearly electrocuted poor Les once, he wouldn’t respond to a question I asked him and he repeatedly kept ignoring me and pretended to be asleep whilst lying on his bed.
So I found an old cassette player lead, you know the ones, the connection on the end looks like a figure eight, well I wedged that bit down between Les’s big toe and another toe and plugged the other end into the mains.
I have never seen anyone in my entire life come off a bed as fast as Les did that day and with his hair stood out on end screamed that he was going to fucking kill me, he didn’t, I were already long gone.
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Frank, Frank was a star, old Frank we called him and he called me young Steve, Frank used to be a drop out, a tramp and one night whilst trying to keep warm he fell asleep drunk.
The problem was Frank forgot to move his feet away from the camp fire and consequently set them on fire; he walked with a limp to prove it.
Armed with that information I burst into Frank’s bedroom once and screamed the words “fire everybody out!!!”
Even I didn’t think that Frank would do what he would do next; he only leapt off the bed, opened the large sash type window and threw himself out of the fucking window.
I was absolutely stunned and believe me that took some doing I didn’t even dare to look out of the now open window to see if he were alright, I just legged it back to my room and pretended to watch TV as if nothing at all had ever happened. Frank by the way was OK, he landed on top of some privet bushes and commando rolled into a little garden at the front of the house.
Patrick and Brian, they were my favourites and we went everywhere together, Pat was a really clever guy from Dublin and being typically laid back Irish he was a real star, so was Brian.
Brian was just crazy, a hippy at heart and loved everyone, even Tom and Harry, but of course the feeling wasn’t mutual.
There were lots of others and too numerous to mention in detail, but I will in name, Fred and his brother Jimmy, Brian the Scottish drunk, he was like Braveheart on acid when he’d had a beer, a real fucking nightmare and wanted to fight “everyone,” including the landlady, the nutter..
Old Jimmy, Jimmy was only a really tiny little old guy, always wore the same old suit and he was “always” pissed, morning, noon and night, old Jimmy was always three sheets to the wind and as well as that he was nasty old bastard.
He had a walking stick and for no reason whatsoever and right out of the blue, he’d suddenly burst into the TV lounge and fucking threaten everybody, “ya want some a this ya fuckers?” He’d shout, that really did scare me the first time I saw that, but saw the funny side of it when other new guests that didn’t know Jimmy would arrive at the house.
A few months later Les found Jimmy as stiff as a board in bed and yes you’ve guessed it, in his hand was his trusty old walking stick. We all went to the funeral and when the curtain closed after the coffin had gone through it someone shouted, “who‘s the next act?”
Manchester humour, what can I say…..
The real character in that place though was the Guvner himself, the landlord Terrance McCann, or known more affectionately to us guests as Terry Mac.
I can’t remember Terry’s wife‘s name, but she was absolutely fantastic and it was a real shame when she and Tel separated, she went to run a B&B in Southport and Terry Mac stayed of course in Manchester.
Terry was, as well as being in charge of all us misfits was an actual “artist” and a bloody good one. In fact if I could get my hands on some of Terry’s stuff today I’m sure it would be worth an absolute fortune.
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He even had a shop just down the road from our digs and would sell his wares from that shop, some real crackers in there but if you didn’t know he was an artist you couldn’t have told beforehand.
What I mean is, a lot of artistic people come across all lovey dovey and sort of poncey, not our Tel, if anyone pissed him off and for whatever reason he’d turn up wielding a five pound lump hammer and say in that wonderful Belfast accent he had.
“You do that again and I’ll put you in the fucking ground” and he meant it, he might have only been a wee guy, but he were a vicious little fucker when roused.
I used to stare at some of his work and I asked him once what gave him the inspiration to create such beautiful works of art?
Know what he said?
Staring at me he said, “are taking the fucking piss Steve? Because if you are you can get the fuck out of the shop now, haven’t got time for fucking comedians.”
I left it that and never asked him again, wonder where he is now???
Back to the employment side of my story and things weren’t going to well at Wrigleys stone cleaning ltd……..
One of the things I haven’t mentioned whilst I have been boring you all with my past is the love I have for music and the very fact that music whether it be a song, instrumental piece or soundtrack from a movie, always brings back memories and in some cases especially if you happen to hear “that” song on the radio all of a sudden everything of what happened at that time comes flooding back, I know it does for me.
I have selected below a list of my all time favourite songs or pieces of music from the 1970s these range from 70 up til 77 and in effect are the ones that remind me most of the good times as well as the bad times of 1970s, “yea baby”.
70, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel.
We had to sing this in school assembly along with morning has broken and though I wouldn’t really class this song as a favourite. I do like it and it reminds me of that time when everyone in the school was together as one, singing our little hearts out, yes I know, very cheesey,lol
71, Theme from "Shaft?, Isaac Hayes.
This was a very cool tune and if you were into shaft at that time you were considered cool, of course that meant moi, even today I still cock an ear when I hear this wonderful rendition from the brilliant Isaac Hayes, you better dig it brother……
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72, Puppy Love. Donny Osmond.
Well I did say there would be no stone left unturned whilst I were writing this story so its fess up time again and “yes,” I really did like this song, never let anyone see me listening to it but when it came on the radio I’d surreptitiously sneak off, make sure no one was watching and then sing along with bloody Donny Osmond.
You can not imagine the stick I am going to get for revealing that dark part of my past, lol…
73, Killing Me Softly With His Song, Roberta Flack.
There’s really no contest here, this song meant and still does mean so much to me and I don’t really know why because the lyrics aren’t referring to what the song means to me if you know what I mean?
I was 12 then and we’d been in a neighbours house who had just recently died and we, me my sister, brother, step mother and the rest of her clan, were removing household items and packing them up to be sent away.
I found an old photograph frame and in it was a picture of the lady that had just died and standing at the side of her was a young boy.
Can’t remember who she was but the lady looked a bit like my Mum and of course given the reason why we were in that house and seeing the photo, well everything came flooding back and on the radio at that exact moment was killing me softly by the incredible Roberta Flack, strange eh?
74, Waterloo, Abba.
This was when Abba first burst onto the music scene and this record actually won the now discredited Eurovision song contest, though the best one they ever did in my opinion was Angel Eyes, terrific song.
75, The Hustle, Van McCoy and The Soul City Symphony.
Not often you hear this tune but I loved it.
A great little instrumental and along with Popcorn by Jean Michel Jarre I really did like lyric less tunes, the shuffle was cool too.
76, Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel, Tavares. If You Leave Me Now, Chicago. Love to Love You Baby, Donna Summer. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen. December, 1963 (Oh What A Night!), Four Seasons. Don't Go Breaking My Heart, Elton John and Kiki Dee.
As you can see there are a lot more here and I think its because a lotta shit went down in 76 and as a consequence probably remember more when songs from that era are played, by the way these are all cracking tunes and were pretty big hits at the time.
77, Lonely Boy, Andrew Gold. Telephone Line, Electric Light Orchestra. Sir Duke, Stevie Wonder. Gonna Fly Now (Theme from "Rocky", Bill Conti. Don't Give Up On Us, David Soul. Blinded By the Light, Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The Things We Do for Love, 10cc. Boogie Nights, Heatwave. Star Wars (Main Title), London Symphony Orchestra.
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Again a lot more than previously, Rocky and Star wars were “the” movies of 77 and Heatwave were the coolest band, but the one that stands out is the one at the front and will forever be “my all time number one.”
The reason? Well the title speaks for itself really and the first time I heard it, it was on my little transistor radio on my first night at Tall Turrets, after I had listened to it I cried like a baby.
I felt so alone and the enormity and seriousness of what was happening to me suddenly became apparent, all because of Andrew Gold and “that” song.
Anyway, back to the story in hand.....
Wrigleys stone cleaning limited was based in Mossley, my home town and was owned by a chap called Robert Wrigley.
Roberts’s father used to own a coal yard and Wrigleys were the main coal suppliers in and around Mossley when everyone had coal fires.
With the advent of smokeless fuel and everyone now having either central heating or gas fires, there wasn’t really a major call for coal, so with Robert junior now taking over the reigns he decided coal wasn’t king anymore, sandblasting and graffiti removal was.
I hated this fucking job with a passion, there weren’t any health and safety precautions at that time, well not at Wrigleys there wasn’t and the chap I was assigned to was an utter bastard.
Can’t remember his name, but he was from Mossley too and he didn’t like me from day one.
First off he’d put me on the most dangerous jobs, like sixty feet up scaffolding and then conveniently forget to leave the brakes on, it was portable scaffolding then and you could erect it and move it along to which ever building you were sandblasting.
How I never fell off I’ll never know?
On one occasion he’d done that I tried to get his attention but he was already in the van having a brew, fucking skiving more like.
So in an effort to get his attention I picked up a lump hammer and threw it off the top of the scaffolding towards the red Bedford van.
To be honest I’ve never been really good at throwing things and totally got the trajectory wrong, the problem is if you’re lobbing a ten pound lump hammer from sixty feet up in the air you’re just asking for trouble.
The idea was for the hammer to land harmlessly at the side of the van and get Jack’s attention that way [Hey
I just remembered his name]
It didn’t though, it landed plum square right in the middle of the fucking van’s windscreen, it didn’t go right through thank Christ, but it put a fucking big crack in it and caused Jack to scald his face with boiling hot tea.
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He screamed like a crazed animal and that was whilst he were still inside the van, he told the boss and I in my defence explained why I had thrown the hammer and my original intention wasn’t to permanently disfigure Jack.
In fact Jack swore I’d tried to do him in and vowed revenge, he got his revenge a few weeks later.
We were on an estate in Oldham called Abbey Hills and at that time Wrigleys had secured a lucrative contract with Oldham borough council to clean all the graffiti off the houses, after that the builders would take over and proceed to renovate the houses.
The way we did it was to daub acid onto the affected area and then leave it for a while to work than blast it off using high powered jet hoses.
That fucking acid, I hated it, it would get everywhere and we didn’t have any protective clothing.
After complaining about that Jack said he’d get me some of his, it wasn’t like Jack to be so charitable and I should have been suspicious at the time, however I have always been a trusting type of guy and I gratefully accepted the plastic type leggings and jacket.
What I didn’t know was there was already acid on the inside of the trouser leggings and within minutes of putting the leggings on the acid made contact with my jeans.
The acid burnt straight through the jeans and then straight through my skin, Jack had mysteriously disappeared and if it hadn’t have been for one the builders I would have probably lost my right leg.
He picked me up bodily and literally dunked me into a 40 gallon water barrel, feet first thankfully.
The hospital said it were a miracle I hadn’t been more seriously hurt and as a consequence advised me to either seek legal help as in suing the company or just plain leave, I took the latter option, I neither had the money or the inclination to pursue lengthy litigation so I just gave my notice and looked for another job.
To this day by the way there is a ghastly looking four inch scar at the rear of my right knee and I don’t think, I know old Jack smeared acid into those trousers and disturbingly he would have believed in his twisted mind that to have been the right thing to do all those years ago, revenge is sweet…..
Coming up, the next job, apprentice furrier, truck drivers assistant and my first stint at management, the sex shop!!!
After leaving Wrigleys stone cleaning ltd the idea obviously was to get another job as quickly as possible.
I did and this job was as an apprentice furrier, which means really that I was involved in making ladies fur coats.
I actually really enjoyed this and had no hang ups at all about the fact I was handling dead animal pelts.
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The skins (Mink, Chinchilla, Sable) would come to us in raw form, we would then wet them through with water and then using a compressor gun, nail them to a large board. The aim being they would be stretched into shape against the pattern on the board and then harden enough so that the machinists could sew them altogether to form a brand new fur coat.
The guy employing me was called Anthony Marshall and “he” was a real character, we’d all be beavering away doing our jobs when all of a sudden Anthony would throw a strop. You never knew when he was going to kick off and when he did it was pretty spectacular and yes, the fur really did fly, literally.
His father was usually the cause of it and that was a shame because I really liked Mr Stolberg. About 5 feet 5 inches tall, snow white hair and “always” immaculately dressed he “always” greeted everyone in the work shop with a huge beaming smile and say with the faintest foreign accent.
“Good morning everybody.”
We would all as one reply by saying, “good morning Mr Stolberg,” to which the smile would intensify to about five million candle watts and then raising both arms in the air, a bit like a conductor, he’d flutter his fingers and say, “thank you, now carry on everybody.”
Priceless and it reminds me of that brilliant TV show in the 70s, are you being served, Stolberg being of course Mr Grace, sadly I bet the old boy’s long gone by now…..
I stayed with Anthony Marshalls for about six months and then got another job with a lot more money.
This was at another company having the name Marshalls, no connection to the afore mentioned though.
This job was called a driver’s mate, which was exactly that, you assisted the driver on multi drop deliveries in and around the Greater Manchester area.
This job was actually a contract with a tobacco company called John Player, well known brands were No1, No6, Players special and today are Silk cut, Richmond super kings among many others.
This was a very well paid job, at the time tobacco companies were making a lot of money and probably still are and we were earning a lot more than most people employed in the world of transport.
Marshalls eventually lost the contract and had to make cuts, among those cuts were our jobs so yet again I joined the hunt for another job and again it didn’t take long.
Just a mile or so away was another transport firm called British road services [BRS] this again involved delivering boxes of cigarettes to various shops, wholesalers and the like all over the North West and like the previous position at Marshalls it was very well paid.
The contract though this time was with HD and HO WILLS and their brands were Embassy, Lambert & Butler, Golden Virginia and so forth.
By this time I had left Gransmoor Avenue which was a shame in one respect but a blessing in another,
Terry Mac was finding that running a guest house alone was starting to really get to him and as a consequence was flipping out at people more than he should have, on one occasion some fucking comedian had put someone’s boots in the soup pan.
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This pan was huge, like a big boiler, it had to be, there were about 30 men in that house and the soup was always made so that it lasted an entire week, I hated that fucking slop and so did everyone else.
In fact we all told Terry was he sure it wasn’t made from old boots, he just said if we didn’t fucking like it we could all fuck off.
Well the idiot that put the old boots in the soup boiler was I suppose just trying to make a point and prove indeed, that the slop in that pot was made from old boots.
Terry was serving us all that night and threw a fucking fit when he stuck the ladle in the pot and lifted a fucking a soggy old boot out. Everyone in the dinning room clapped and cheered and I have never seen a human being so angry in all my life.
He told us all the get the fuck out of the dinning room and then gave us all a weeks notice, we had only seven days to find somewhere else to live, that was everyone, all 30 of us, he was furious.
I found somewhere quite quickly, one of the drivers I worked with told me of this guest house he knew of and so I went there. By this time Terry Mac had calmed down and gave everyone a reprieve including me.
Too late though, the new digs looked a lot cleaner and a lot nicer and there were no boots in the fucking soup. So with all my worldly belongings in a black plastic bin liner, I set off for another large guest house, this time on top of a big hill called Barton Villa.
This was to be the last year of one turbulent decade and the beginning of another in the story of my life and let me just point out and clarify at this stage to anyone reading this biography.
Everything written down here is absolutely true and “really” did happen, just wanted to get that straight.
1979 and the best memories of music from 78 and 79 would have to be Video killed the radio star by the Buggles. I don’t like Mondays from the Boomtown rats and Sunday girl by Blondie. Night fever by the Bee Gees, With a little luck by Wings and my favourite, I feel love by Donna Summer, all brilliant hits.
Being 18 of course meant I could go into a pub without the fear of being thrown out for under-age drinking, this is a bit like the first wage packet, a very special moment and one that for me signified that I had finally come of age.
I can still remember walking into the Lamb hotel on Crescent road just outside my new home Barton Villa and armed with a pint of Heineken I proudly said to everyone in the pub, “it’s my birthday and I’m 18 today.”
All the lads in the pub said, “Congratulations, by the way you do know that means you have to buy everyone in the pub a pint?”
I said I didn’t know that, they said, “oh yea, its tradition when someone reaches the official drinking age of 18, they have to buy the whole pub a round.”
I said OK that’s no problem, taking a few more slurps of my pint whilst all the guys were grinning at me like I was an idiot. I said to the landlord, “get em all a pint will you mate.”
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The landlord looked at me almost sympathetically and said, “are you sure lad, it’ll cost you a packet, you know that don’t you?”
I said it was no problem and insisted that he do em all a whiskey chaser as well and that it was my birthday, had plenty of disposable income and was feeling rather generous.
Sighing and nodding his head in that, “there’s one born every minute look” the landlord started pulling pints. Finishing “my” pint, I said I wouldn’t be a minute and had to go for a leak.
The toilets were out at the back and also out at the rear of the pub was another exit. Laughing to myself I nipped out of the back door and crept round to the front of the pub and watched through the pub window.
Waiting until the landlord had placed all thirty odd pints and whiskeys on the bar, I rapped on the window and waved bye bye, then I legged it as fast I could, I might have been only 18, but I wasn’t stupid….
There were plenty of other places to go drinking and did so quite frequently. The job I had paid quite well and after paying my digs money everything I had left was my own to spend as I wanted and with not smoking, the main vice was going out and enjoying myself and another very important part of my life, well “anyone’s” life really was the moment I lost my virginity.
Obviously like every other adolescent male I had already acquainted myself with the first lady of my life, Miss Palm and five sisters, but of course the ultimate aim of any young and I liked to think of myself, virile male was to get laid.
I met the taker of my virginity in a night club in a place called the Memory Inn, which was ironic really because the only memories for most people that frequented that hole were bad ones. Crappy ale, over priced and full of psychotic nutters who looked like they’d all just escaped from Devils Island.
But of course that attracted the fairer sex and still don’t know why that’s the case but it did and my desire to get laid was becoming more urgent.
I really can’t remember the lady’s name I took home that night I really can’t, I can remember what she looked like but can’t remember her name, I can remember her asking for a breakdown on what I earned and what were my outgoings, you know, National insurance contributions, income tax, rent, so forth, of which I found rather strange it has to be said and she were still banging on about it after I had managed to sneak her in where I lived and up the stairs and into the Garside love chamber.
Luckily enough no one saw us. I would have been kicked out instantly, Doreen [the landlady] wasn’t crazy like poor old Terry Mac was but she was very serious about guests copulating in her bedrooms, in her words, “I don’t run a bleeding brothel.”
This girl had now stripped off and I can still see her, her blond hair spread all against the pillow, completely naked, arms folded and staring at me.
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“Well,” she said, “aren’t you gonna bleeding kiss me or what?”
I did and after a little bit more petting she pushed me away and said rather indignantly, “you’ve never done this before have you?”
I wanted to say I had but knew it would be pointless and rather sheepishly admitted that I hadn’t. “For fucks sake,” she muttered, “a fucking virgin, I shoulda fuckin known,” or words to that effect.
She stared at me and I swear on my mothers memory what happened next is true, she pushed the duvet away and pointing at her you know what then pointed at my you know what and said.
“That” goes in “this” and “you” bounce up and down, got it?”
I said I had and did actually do what she’d told me to, four times, she actually paid me a compliment and after leaving at 6am before anyone else in the house had risen she kissed me on the cheek and said she’d be seeing me again, she never did.
Later that day one of the cleaners came up to me and with a gleam in her eye said, “Haven’t lost anything young Stephen have you lad?”
I said not that I knew of and she said and this time winking, that disturbed me because she was a big overbearing woman and would often complain to Doreen if we [the guests] left even the minimum amount of mess anywhere. She was a lazy cow and we were all convinced she was nicking stuff from our rooms but could never prove it.
“Sure about that?” I stared in horror as she slowly reached into her overalls and produced a little pair of red knickers.
“Guess where I found these?” She said, her eyes were glittering, she was like a bleeding cat with a mouse, I said, “where?”
She said, “in your bloody bed that’s where and if Doreen found out you’d be in for the high jump lad you know that don’t you?”
I quickly got my head together and said, “no one else knows about this do they?”
She looked puzzled and replied that no one knew she’d just this minute found em, but Doreen would as soon as she saw her, she hardly got chance to finish the sentence off, that’s all I needed to know.
As quick as you like I snatched the knickers off her and legged it, as soon as I had gotten far enough away I found the nearest waste bin and threw them in, but not before I kissed em goodbye…..
The cleaning lady didn’t even try to rat me out to Doreen, she couldn’t, no evidence and from that day on she seemed to have found a new healthy respect for the youngest and newest guest at Barton Villa.
The 80s
This decade started off with a bang and would be the start of my everlasting thirst to travel. Even as kid I had always wanted to travel around the world and would avidly watch all the travel programs on TV, “Wish you were here,” “Holiday” and so forth.
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My first ever trip abroad was to a place called Porec; this is a little town on the north western Adriatic coast what is now Croatia but was then Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia of course at that time was still behind the iron curtain and in effect communist, not quite as rigid as all the other communist block countries but still authoritarian just the same and at the time I went it was just after the leader of that country had passed away, a chap called Tito.
On the flight out to Pula, which was the transfer airport for Porec was aboard a Russian built Tupelov 154 and seated opposite me was the first of many encounters with well known Celebs.
In this case it was Patricia Phoenix seated adjacent to my isle seat or better know to UK readers as Elsie Tanner in the long running soap Coronation Street.
Pat was a real star at that time and had a bit of a reputation for one thing or another but I found her quite charming and she even offered me a drop of her duty frees. The bleeding plane hadn’t even levelled out at cruising altitude yet, but there was old Pat and a female confidant lushing it up with a litre bottle of Gordon’s.
Porec was beautiful and even though I was only there for one week I’ll never forget the wonderful smells, the pine trees, the flowers outside the hotel and those amazing restaurant smells.
Don’t forget this was the first time I had ever set foot outside of the UK and the nearest I come to eating exotic or foreign type cuisine was Indian curries so this was a real treat.
The best bit though was the trip to Zagreb and some caves near it, on the way I spotted a Russian tank parked up in at the side of a road, taking a picture of it I never thought anything more of it until I got home and had it developed at Boots.
That picture was the pick of all my holiday snaps, no one was interested in pine trees or beaches, or architecture no no no, everyone wanted to see a commie tank.
The next trip abroad was the one I had always dreamed of, THE USA. This was probably the ultimate destination for most Brits, possibly the biggest lure being Disney world and Miami Beach.
Not for me however, my favourite city was and still is the Big Apple. From countless songs and pictures in books and especially in the King Kong movie, I had a real love affair with everything New York.
The first flicker of possibility was whilst still of course working for BRS was on working on the delivery route around southern Manchester; we’d also have to deliver to the airport, which meant we’d have to go airside.
That was my first real close up of the regular as clockwork daily British Airways flight to New York and from the first moment I saw that incredible plane gracefully leave the runway at Ringway I made my mind up, I was going to live and work in the USA!
It wasn’t until nearly five months later that my dream finally came true, on giving notice at BRS I had decided to take the plunge.
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I had acquired a B2 visa [indefinite] and saved up nearly one thousand pounds, that was a lot of money then and gives you an indication of how much money I was earning and also asks questions why my first sexual encounter never got back to me?
Having also purchased a “one way” economy class ticket to New York I bade my farewells to everyone at Barton Villa and at BRS of course. But not before the bastards at my former work place welded a ball and chain to my right leg and took me out around the town to get pissed. The bastards left that chain welded to my leg for two whole days before they finally cut it off, the ball and chain not the leg!!!!
On Friday 24th October 1980 BA flight can’t remember touched down at JFK and after an eight hour plane ride across the ocean I had finally made it, I was in America, a new start, a new beginning.
I felt like all those new arrivals you saw on the movies staring at the statue of Liberty as they entered New York harbour for the first time. Only the first time I saw it was from up in the air, still impressive though.
As soon as I had cleared immigration and customs and was in one of the famous yellow cabs heading over the George Washington Bridge I saw it!!!
There in all its glory, “The New York skyline” and with it being October and about 4pm local time it was starting to go dark and if you think Manhattan’s impressive during the day wait til you see it at night.
It was also then the penny dropped and the sudden realisation of what I had done came crashing down all around me.
I was terrified, I’d wanted to do this for so long but now I was here and staring out at that incredible skyline seated in the yellow cap speeding toward midtown Manhattan I felt fear. Real fear, fear of being so far away from everything that was familiar, fear of being alone in a foreign country but more so of the fact I only had a one way ticket so I suppose there was no going back, the return fare would have been just too expensive.
I’ll never forget the song that was being played on the taxi cab’s radio either [take the long way home] by Supertramp and that just made it worse.
However I was here and would wait and see after the weekend how I felt and decide then what I was going to do. Stay in the states and persevere with my original plan, or try to figure out how I could get back to England without breaking the bank.
New York!!! The city that never sleeps and believe me its true, if you have never been to the big apple then you must.
This was my first time here and it quite literally blew me away, the sheer size of the place not just in the height of the ever reaching sky scrapers that tower above everywhere but the whole place is just huge.
The roads, avenues, streets, cars, people, everything about New York to me was just in your face and I loved it.
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The hotel I stayed in was a basic affair, clean, spacious and “big,“ I can still remember checking in at the front desk and the desk clerk asking me if I needed anything else. I said I didn’t and for some reason I said, “by the way I’m English.”
He looked at me and pulling a face said, “Go figure and there’s me thinking you was French!”
I attempted to reply but suddenly realised he was being sarcastic, I arrived in my room absolutely wasted, jet lag was kicking in and I fell asleep fully dressed and didn’t wake up until the following morning when the cleaning staff were knocking on the door.
Saturday and my first real look at the great city of New York, problem was it was pissing it down and didn’t stop until Sunday.
I mean it was absolutely chucking it down and the cloud was that low you couldn’t see the tops of the sky scrapers. I sat in a diner eating an American breakfast watching two of New York’s finest chatting about how bad the weather was in upstate New York and that there had been substantial flooding in that area.
This was the first time also that I had been this close to Policemen wearing guns; they actually had unholstered them and placed them on the table next to the plates they were eating off and to me that was as alien as if they had been Martians.
The rest of the day was spent in my hotel room trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do, I kept looking at my money and even though I had only been in America one day I was starting to get homesick.
This wasn’t like a holiday, this was an all or bust move, taking a leap and as I stated earlier it was simply scaring me to death, was I doing the right thing, what was I thinking travelling all this way on my own?
I found my Uncle Geoffrey’s phone number and phoned him, he couldn’t believe it, in fact he sounded really shocked, he sounded even more surprised when I suggested I catch a greyhound bus and head on up to Canada to see him.
He made the excuse he was just about to depart for Saskatchewan for an important conference wherever that was and that my travelling all that way wouldn’t be such a good idea.
I told him I was getting cold feet and that to head back home would cost an absolute fortune. Geoffrey suggested I go to a travel agents on Fifth avenue and ask about a standby ticket on Freddy Lakers sky train. He said they cost as little as one hundred pounds which I could afford and still have enough money for rent wherever it was I ended up back in England.
After watching endless TV channels and ordering steak and fries from room service I made a decision and headed back out into the teaming rain and blaring police sirens of midtown Manhattan.
Eventually I managed to procure a ticket and though I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing, I felt an enormous sense of relief knowing that at least I now had the means to get back to England and could now enjoy what little time I had in this great city.
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The following day was a beautiful late October day and quite cold, the city was buzzing too, it was one of the great annual events in the big apple, “the New York marathon” and I have never seen such a palaver.
There were cops everywhere, in cars, in helicopters and in speedboats, all zipping around like angry wasps.
Nearly every TV channel was covering it and I think at that time, New York was one of very few cities in the world that staged such an event. Though London started its very first annual run fest a few months later in March 1981.
I saw the start of it but needed to do a bit of sightseeing, I couldn’t really do a lot the day before because of the rain and with my flight departing later today [Sunday] I had to move it along in the touristy department.
First I wanted to see the statue of Liberty, this structure was as iconic for me as much as the Empire State Building was but wasn’t sure where it was or how you got to it so I did what most tourists would or maybe should do, I asked a policeman.
“Fuck off,” I’m not joking, he was a traffic cop directing traffic at a busy intersection and he told me to go forth and copulate. Fucking charming, I have to say I was in a state of shock, where all the cops in New York as rude as he was?
So I reverted to plan b and headed off for the Empire state building, I already knew where that was and didn’t need no dickhead of a cop with attitude to tell me that either, so off I toddled.
The Empire state building was as impressive “inside” as much as it was “outside.” At that time the entire foyer area was covered in imported white and black Italian marble and painted onto that marble was the biggest mural I have ever seen in my life. And in my eyes was just as impressive as the whole point of that building, the view from the top.
It was a painting of KONG, King Kong and this particular mural was painted on at the time the original movie was first screened back in 1933 starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot. The building had only been just completed and even though the mural looked fabulous then when I were there in 1980, it must have looked even more so then in 1933 with everything brand spanking new and shiny.
After ripping my eyes away from that incredible 50ft mural, I ascended along with other countless millions in a stomach churning ride to the top of one of the most recognisable buildings anywhere in the world, probably thanks to that King Kong movie.
Words can’t really describe what you actually see when you enter onto the viewing platform, it just simply blows you away and always makes me think how on earth does man manage to build these things this high.
The slogan screams “THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, WHERE YOU CAN SEE INTO FIVE STATES!!!
And you bloody well can, I kept having to pinch myself that I was actually 102 stories up above the ground below, that’s 1,224 ft boys and girls and I know there are many more taller buildings now, but The ESB was and always will be my special favourite.
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I scooted around a little bit more, the Chrysler building, Macy’s, Times Square, Madison Square Garden that is actually round and of course Broadway. However time wasn’t on my side and I had to make my way back to JFK airport.
Five hours later I was in the air aboard a DC-10. This was actually one of the famous sky trains, a guy at that time called Freddy Laker had started cheap flights to and from the US to the UK and made it possible for millions of Yanks as well as Brits to travel cheaply across the Atlantic.
To be honest I owe a debt of gratitude To Sir Freddy and his amazing sky train because if it hadn’t been for his airline offering standby seats, well I don’t know what I would have done and would have probably been deported like a criminal for having insufficient funds and being an undesirable alien, so thanks Sir Freddy!!!
24 bone shattering hours later I opened the door at Barton Villa and walked into the dinning room. It was full of guests all tucking into their steak and kidney pie and I will never never ever forget the look on everyone’s faces, it really was a Kodak moment and all I said was, “Well, so what, shit happens.”
So started my second stint at Barton Villa and though I won’t mention everyone who stayed in that place along with myself I will mention a couple of them.
One in particular was a guy called Richard Price, Ricky to all and sundry and Ricky was a real character, a big guy, Ricky would sort of look out for me and if anyone gave me any grief then Uncle Rick would sort em out.
His last name wasn’t Price by coincidence; his friendship came at just that, a price!! Even though Rick pretended to look out for me, he also knew I was always usually working and usually had plenty of money, which meant Uncle Ricky was never far away when Stephen got paid.
I didn’t mind and knew Rick’s real interest’s weren’t just naturally for my welfare, but I really liked Rick, everyone did, he was a very funny witty guy and had been round the block quite a few times so made for a fascinating friendship.
The second real pal this time was a guy called Jeffrey Twentyman, yes that really was his name and Jeff was a complete loon, in the nicest possible way.
Jeff used to dress in a sort of army green combat jacket, “always,“ didn’t matter if he were working, going shopping, going out to the pub, Jeff would wear this jacket along with a pair of kaki pants and 18 inch hole Doc Martens.
He also wore a pair of rimless glasses, a la John Lennon which made his ensemble of couture look even weirder.
Talking of weird, in one of the breast pockets of his flack jacket was a small ornamental teddy bear, only small about three inches probably and this small bear would “always” be positioned inside Jeff’s left breast pocket with just the Teddy bears head poking out.
Obviously we all asked why and found it very amusing; all Jeff would say and with a very straight serious face was, “only people that don’t understand mock!!!!!”
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That was it, then he’d glance down at the fucking thing and smile saying, “let em laugh mate, we don’t care do we?” Then he’s adjust his glasses and shrug his head and shoulders forward as if physically substantiating that very fact. Bizarre..
Jeff was a terrifically funny guy and wherever he was there was sure to be utter madness, in fact you only had to look at Jeff to know that he was a complete nutter but everyone loved him and talking of love it was love that got him killed!
Jeff left Barton Villa to go and live with the love of his life, he really was in love with this girl, don’t know her name, but Jeff had been bitten by the love bug and bitten bad.
After about five or six months later, this lady fell out with Jeff and not only that, she kicked him out of the house too. He was mortified and never really recovered and given his somewhat unhinged state of mind, he committed suicide.
Eye witnesses say he actually tried to change his mind after making a makeshift noose out of a clothes line he’d placed around his neck and standing on a mop bucket took the tension.
Apparently, again according to witnesses, he then attempted to remove the noose from around his neck only to slip off the fucking bucket. I can only imagine how poor Jeff suffered and it still breaks my heart to attempt to picture that grisly moment in my mind, RIP Jeff lad!!!
Moving on and after being unemployed for about five months I needed another job and after purchasing The Manchester Evening News I spotted one.
*Book shop manager required to run busy store in the centre of Rochdale, please ring this number*
I did and the following day turned up in the centre of Manchester where the interviews were taking place.
I knew something wasn’t right when I arrived outside the shop, it was painted all blue and had no windows. But the thing that reaffirmed something wasn’t right was the name of the shop emblazoned all over it.
“Private shops,” plus the other stuff at the side of it, adult mags, toys, and videos.
I looked again at the address and yes it “was” the same address given to me over the phone, I nearly bolted, but I really needed this job and I had come all this way anyway, so plucking up courage accompanied with a large gulp I entered no 53 Oldham st.
There were magazines everywhere, I had never seen so many but the first thing that caught my eye was a large display cabinet. In that cabinet was an assortment of what can only be best described as leather thongs and chains, masks also made out of leather, studded collars again possibly made out of leather.
There was another large display case at the side of it but this one had the most bizarre looking objects. I moved a bit closer and realised they were actually Penisis’s made out of vulcanised rubber and they looked fucking real, veins, balls attached to them, some even had hair.
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I didn’t know what to do, to say I was in a state of shock was an under statement, then a voice shouted me and a chap with a face that looked like it had been modelled off a weasel came up to me and shook my hand.
“Stephen Garside?”
“Yea that’s me,” I said, still staring mesmercaly at the cabinet full of rubber dicks, “right come this way Stephen.”
We passed some dodgy looking guys all looking a bit nervous and shuffling about peering at various magazines and into what I suppose was the manager’s office.
Again my eyes which by the way were already being overworked to the max nearly popped out of my fucking head.
The guy with the weasel face ushered me to a chair whilst he sat in his and instantly noticed what it was that my bug eyes were staring at.
There was a collection of rubber dicks festooned all over his desk, some were small some were large, some were white some were black. But there was one in particular that stood out head and shoulders above the rest.
It was the biggest dick, or rubber dick I have ever seen, indeed it must have been at least three feet long and I’m not joking and it was as black as the ace of spades.
The weasel guy laughed and reaching over he picked it up, waving it around he said. “Fucking monster isn’t it, we call it “the King Kong Schlong.” Then he smiled a weird smile and said, “bring a fucking tear to your eye this son wouldn’t it?” Then raising it up in the air as if he were inspecting it he said, “they modelled this fucker off me ya know.” He laughed again and after tossing it aside he said, “no not really, be too fucking big, one look at that son and they’d run a fucking mile, still they do sell, rather well an all.”
I sat the rest of the interview out and a day later got confirmation that I had indeed become the new manager of the also newest and latest branch of private shops ltd in a town called Rochdale.
I started on the Monday and it was a Monday I’ll never forget. The shop address was no 8 Drake st, which was at the bottom of a hill not far from the local bus station and with not being able to drive I travelled the ten miles or so by bus and on the way into the bus station the bus passed the shop I would be managing.
I should have thought it strange then why there were hundreds of people gathered outside but in my own naïve way figured they were just eager customers waiting for an opening day bargain.
Plus the placards should have also given it away that these people weren’t potential customers but protesters and they were all mostly women.
I can still feel all those pairs of eyes burning into me as I walked passed them all and on my way into the shop. “Pervert,” shouted one, “aren’t you ashamed,” shouted another?
I hadn’t a bleeding clue what they were all on about and just carried on and into my latest place of employment.
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There were a few guys inside and they were mostly company people making sure the shop was stocked to the gills with. Errrm, products, but there were a couple of management people there too and it was at this point and for the first time I met one of the scariest looking dudes I have ever seen in my life.
His name was Brian Richards and Brian was one of the top men that worked for private shops. There were others of course but Brian was “the man” and he let everyone know that, he really was the stereo typed East End villain.
Smartly dressed, covered in gold, roller with BR1 as the registration number and though he was softly spoken, he had a real air of menace about him and it wasn’t until later on that I learned how dangerous these people were that ran this company.
The shop opened amid all the ballyhoo and though the protests carried on for a while they eventually died down and then petered out altogether. Business was business and though the products Private shops sold weren’t to be found on the local high street or at the local supermarket. There was a demand for them and as long as these companies stayed within the law there were no problems from the Police.
That didn’t stop them from raiding you though and they did on frequent occasions. A lot of managers found it quite stressful, coppers swarming round everywhere flashing search warrants and asking stupid questions like, had we got any animal porn on the premises or other section stuff that would have meant that not just myself, but the company itself ending up in the tower of fucking London, “forever.”
There were shall we say some fairly risqué stuff, hard core gay and heterosexual pornography but it always stayed within the bounds of the law, just.
You’d be surprised who frequented these places too, middle aged couples engaged in a mid life crisis. Single guys getting their rocks whether it be gay, hetro, or anything else. There were the occasional lesbian too, though they were quite rare I have to say.
And surprisingly enough nearly all our customers were extremely well behaved, even though the company was in effect ripping them off. A fact I was always very uncomfortable with. We were charging anything from £10 up to £75 for a VHS video cassette and usually it wasn’t anything at all what it said on the cover.
We couldn’t tell what was on them with not having a VCR on the premises but we damn well knew something wasn’t right when a red faced customer would storm into the shop and scream that he wasn’t paying 75 quid to watch sleeping fucking beauty.
We didn’t ever give money back, it simply wasn’t allowed, we had to somehow placate the now murderous customer into accepting something in exchange, or even buy something else and take more money off them, unbelievable.
That job lasted for just four months, I found it too stressful and though it wasn’t because of the ever increasing frequency of the police raiding us, it was because of rival local villains who weren’t exactly over enamoured about the fact London villains were taking over their patch.
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It started off with the odd visit and casual threats, then more guys would turn up and start threatening me personally. I of course told the company about it and they in turn said they would deal with it.
That’s what worried me and decided there and then I wasnt getting involved in any messy gang war. So working how much the company owed me in wages I took it of the till, banked the rest, jumped in a cab back home to Barton Villa packed my bags and then jumped into another cab, destination Manchester airport.
Four hours later a scheduled Lufthansa flight touched down at Frankfurt am main in of course West Germany, now you’re probably thinking why?
Well on realising that the company wouldn’t just be pissed off about the fact I left with barely if not any notice at all, they would also be probably mighty pissed off with the fact
that I had also helped myself to my wages out of the Jack and Jill.
Technically I hadn’t done anything illegally, but my young and still stressed mind was working overtime and I wasn’t taking any chances if the company decided to intervene personally why I had taken this course of action, I had already seen enough of what they were capable of.
So, June 1981 and there I was 7pm local time and abroad for the third time in another unfamiliar place, why Frankfurt you ask?
Simple, that was the only available flight at that time of day and one I could afford, a bit random yes, but “hey” isn’t that the way life is anyway?
A few hours later I checked into a small guest house in a wonderful little town just outside Frankfurt called Kelsterbach..
This is where I started to learn to speak German, I could speak it at school OK but you really don’t learn a language until you actually stay in that country and listen to the natives.
I stayed in Kelsterbach for a couple of days then I decided to head south, first back north a little and into Frankfurt itself. Then it was off to the train station and an overnighter heading due south to Munich.
Even then German trains were a lot superior to British trains, as in punctuality and cleanliness. Don’t get me wrong I loved our trains, but these big fast diesels were something else and within a day I had travelled nearly 600 miles right through the heart of West Germany and arrived in the Bavarian capital around 10pm and it was absolutely pissing it down with rain.
Finding a cheap hotel I got my head down for the night. The following day I did what most tourists did whilst in Munich; I stood in front of the Glockenspiel at exactly 11am and watched this amazing spectacle that happens at that particular time of day.
By this time money was starting to run a bit low so I knew I had to get some work and fast, so I started knocking on doors of restaurants and bars and believe me there are a lot of them in Munich. It wasn’t long before I was offered a position as Kitchen Porter in one of many steak houses in an area of Munich called Schwabing.
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This was a very popular area with both locals and tourists so meant it was a busy area too. The job came with accommodation and paid fairly well and even though I was only there for a couple of weeks I quite liked it.
The reason I left was the Chef, he was a bastard from the town of bastard in a country called bastard from the planet bastard, if you know what I mean?
He was also Turkish and he didn’t like the English, the Germans didn’t like the Turks either so because German’s in general couldn’t stand the Turkish minority and the Turks weren’t exactly in love with the English things didn’t bode well for me.
So two weeks later I left on my travels yet again, this time I had decided my foreign adventure would have to be over for the time being so I made the long trek back through Germany and towards Belgium.
Just before I crossed the border from Germany into Belgium I can remember a really nice young German couple whose car I had hitched a lift in asking me to stay over with them.
I gratefully accepted as I didn’t have enough funds for a hotel and they lived in the border town of Aachen.
On the way to their house they had to stop off at relatives and they kindly invited me in and that they wouldn’t be too long.
Whilst I sat down on a couch waiting for this delightful young couple to do what they had to do I noticed a photograph hanging on the wall.
Looking round to see if anyone were looking I stood up and looked at it. Well you can imagine the shock on my face when I saw that it was a picture of a man in an SS uniform and around his neck hung the iron cross.
Well I don’t care what anyone says but it isn’t everyday you get to see a real life photograph of someone’s relative who just so happened to be a major in the Waffen SS hanging on a wall.
Quite the experience that was and that young couple had no problem at all about telling me about some of his exploits in the 2nd world war. That was the first time I saw another side to what happened in that war too and although my Dad himself was in the Royal Navy fighting against Germans. I still got the feeling and from a lot of Germans I knew of then and got to know later, that they never really had a choice and from personal experience I realised that the last people on earth Germans wanted to fight were the British.
After enjoying that wonderful couple’s hospitality I headed home through Belgium and then across the channel to England. 24 hours later I knocked on the door again at Barton Villa only this time to be told there was no room at the inn.
So I turned to my beloved sister, she had recently married and though I hadn’t seen much of her I still kept in touch one way or the other. My new brother in law was called Tony Booth and my sister and her new husband (Tony) had just moved into a new house in a town called Ashton/Under/Lyne.
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I stayed a short while with both my sister and Tony, though in all honesty we (myself and Tony) never got on. We still don’t, well we do but we are never going to be blood brothers put it that way and so started six weeks of a tenuous relationship.
After brawling in the street and threatening to probably murder each other (myself and Tony) I left their house and through Uncle Ricky who by this time had also left Barton Villa and had himself shacked up with a lady who loved him very much and still does even though he’s not with us anymore.
Ricky knew a lot of people and a pal he knew had a spare room at his house on a road called Ladbrooke and still in Ashton.
Jim was a strange old dude and drank a lot, he was alright but would have terrible mood swings and though I was working by this time, in a place called the old Blue Pig. It was a pub and always paying rent, he kept asking me to leave and would keep throwing me out.
For no reason, he would come into the house after work and just kick off, after sleeping rough for a day or so he would take pity on me and let me back in the house. It was a real fucking nightmare and one I was getting tired off and as well as that my feet were starting to itch again.
After being laid off from the pub Jim got worse with his mood swings, probably in anticipation of not being paid his rent on time, so I decided enough was enough.
I never intended for Jim to die it just happened, I only wanted to frighten him but all I can say is the spade was just a bit too much on the heavy side!!!
HA HA HA HA, just joking folks, lol. Don’t worry good old Jimbo’s alive and well and probably still throwing lodgers out of his house, bet that woke you up though eh? Now sit up and pay attention whilst I carry on with the next part of “my story.”
March 18th 1982. Steve Davis was beating everybody at snooker. Mary Whitehouse tried to ban [The Romans in Britain] An Argentinian scrap metal dealer raised the Argentine flag in South Georgia and I was heading down the M6 motorway.
I only had £30.00 and even then that wasn’t a lot but I had decided to take the bull by its balls and go for it.
What “it” was I wasn’t quite sure but I knew my future belonged elsewhere and I he who dares and all that bollocks.
I managed to reach Dover eastern docks 12 hours later and a few hours after that I was sticking my thumb out at French motorists in the hope of cadging a lift to Paris.
I did, after reaching Paris I then negotiated the infamous Paris metro, the equivalent to our London underground and believe me it wasn’t easy, I hardly spoke any French which goes down like a lead balloon in France.
However I did finally manage to reach and on the advice of fellow hitch hikers a place called Orleans, this is situated in the southern part of I have to say a quite beautiful city.
Heading down Autoroute 6 I eventually managed to reach another very beautiful city called Lyon. This was achieved entirely by thumbing by the way, I needed to conserve what money I had for food, accommodation and so forth.
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Shortly after that I left Lyon and headed further south and by this time had an objective, “the south of France,“ or otherwise known as the “French Riviera,” or if you’re French, “the cote d' azure.”
18 exhausting hours later I managed to arrive in a little place called Antibes. Checking into a cheap b&b, I slept for nearly a full day, after that it would be the hotel park bench unless I found some work and fast…..
Antibes is a truly beautiful little part of the world and I have some excellent memories here. The town is sort of split into two and divided by a long duel carriageway. On one side you have the town itself , little winding streets with typical high pastel coloured Mediterranean style houses, most of them having verandas or balcony’s.
There were a few offices and shops and a smattering of bars and restaurants but not that many, if you wanted night-life you travelled five miles down the coast to a place called Juan- Les- Pins.
On the other side of the carriageway was the harbour which was called Port Vauben and this is where my particular interests lay.
At the top of the carriageway and looking over the harbour was a large pub called Le Yacht. This pub was actually British owned, a lot of Brits lived and worked in that part of the world before all the cheap property prices came available in Spain and Portugal.
In that pub of course frequented a lot of the resident ex pat community and with them being British and me being a Brit, they were more than helpful accommodating me find gainful employment.
There were some lads from London and they were roughing it in tents, they said it was OK to crash down with them for a couple of nights until I found work and this I did.
We pitched just outside Le Yacht on a grassy verge that ran alongside the duel carriageway and one thing I will never forget is waking up at 6am in the tent to the sound of what appeared to be running water. Sticking my head out of the tent flap I saw this fucking enormous poodle and it had a what looked like a diamond studded choker around its neck and it was all tarted up, you know, all its fur shaven like you see at dog shows like Crufts.
That wasn’t the problem, the problem was the fucking thing had its right rear leg up in the air and was pissing all the over the fucking tent and the snooty bitch of an owner couldn’t seem to care less.
The French have this thing with pets, especially down in that part of the world and believe me, seeing that fucking poodle pissing indiscriminately and with the blessing of the owner was nothing to what I were to see later when I actually attended the Cannes Film Festival, make you’re fuckin eyes water.
Three nights of Riviera camping began to take its toll and the tent was becoming a fucking piss magnet for all the other female dogs that were religiously walked every morning along Le Urine boulevard.
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I needed proper accommodation and the ultimate goal for anyone in that area seeking work was a live in crew job.
These weren’t easy to get, you usually had too have references or appear to at least to know something about boats. Whether it be sailing wise or Motor vessel wise, you were usually expected to be skilled at say, mechanical engineering, a Chef, or even a Butler, these were the customary questions asked when attending an interview.
I had wondered into Le Yacht and somehow managing to stump up 5 Francs I slurped on a kronenburg whilst looking at various employment opportunities on a job board fixed to the wall.
In the background I could hear a conversation and having excellent hearing I cocked my right ear, just like Mr ED did in the TV show of the same name.
These two guys were talking about a possible vacancy aboard a German Luxury motor vessel berthed on the other side of the harbour; they were looking for a cook but that they must be able to speak German.
The name of the Yacht was apparently called YUMMY II, well you have never seen anyone down a glass of lager and exit a bar as fast as I did that night and within a few moments I found her.
The skipper of this amazingly beautiful boat was called Robert Metley and he at this point had only one other crew member aboard and that was his nephew Wolfgang.
I sat in the crew’s quarters/galley and answered all the skips questions; I must have ticked the right boxes because he offered me the job there and then, the position? Ships cook; there was a problem though, I couldn’t cook !!!!
I told him or should I say “lied” to him that I was more than qualified to knock up anything he’d care to mention, German food? Ha, no problem.
Of course I couldn’t and I know there will be people reading this thinking and wagging the finger of judgement but what you have done in the same position?
I had nowhere to live apart from a piss ridden tent with five other sweaty drunken males, no income, no means of support which meant in those days you could be deported. Even though France and Britain were in the EEC, you still had to have French residency papers. So yes, I had no problem at all in delving into the Bullshitters Almanac and using section 5 paragraph 2, “get your feet under the table first then panic,” which is exactly what I did.
This boat was a beauty, she was about a 150ft from bow to stern, 20ft in width, 7,000 tons and a Tiger in the engine room that said we can hit 50 knots no problem and that my friends is fucking fast.
The wheelhouse as most ships/boats bridges are fondly called was completely circular, which meant of course you could see 360° and this at that time was completely unheard of. And not only that, Yummy II was also equipped with revolutionary bow thrusters, which meant she didn’t have to rely on tugs, or pilots to bring her into a tight space, in effect she could turn on a fucking sixpence.
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Inside this bridge, or as I personally renamed it, The Starship Enterprise, was a bunch of equipment that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the new space shuttles that were blasting off everywhere at the time.
Sat Nav, Sonar, Radar, global radio telephone link, you name it, this baby had it, but more importantly, well for me anyway she also had a library but to my extreme anxiety, there weren’t any fucking cookery books in it.
I eventually managed to scrounge some from another British boat and I swear to god the guy on that boat knew there and then I couldn’t cook as he handed them over, I know because he told me so with his eyes.
The owner of this £4 million boy’s toy was a chap called Herr Peter Dussman. He had a company that produced cleaning equipment to hospitals all over the world. In fact at that time he employed in and around the region of 30,000 people, he also owned a private jet, a Lamborghini and had an American Mistress called Dana.
I won’t ramble on about my time aboard Yummy II, it would just take too long, but I have to say some of the greatest sights and smells I have ever seen were witnessed on that amazing boat and in all of just 4 months.
Just before I do that though I think its only fitting I mention some of the famous people I saw down there.
David Niven, Robert Wagner, Roger Moor, Phil Collins among many others. Niven and Wagner were filming one of the Pink Panther films and Moor and Collins owned their own boats in Antibes, I often wonder if they mention in “their” memoirs that they actually saw moi whilst sunning themselves on the aft deck of a million pound plus Motor Yacht, I doubt it lol.
So here’s a condensed version of where we went and what we saw…..
Though the boat was based in Antibes she was a boat and boats aren’t meant to stay in one place for too long and here is a list of places Yummy II travelled to whilst I was onboard her. Cannes, for the French film festival, women dressed like steaks but looked like liver, you get the picture, whilst walking their ornamental poodles dripping in diamonds past homeless beggars.
Monte Carlo, it was the 1982 Grand Prix and Nigel Mansel was in it, he didn’t win, but I saw and heard it all, we were right alongside the race track in the harbour itself.
Santa Margarita, this is in Italy, near Genoa and truly truly beautiful, no wonder they named a pizza after it.
Corsica, we went to quite a few places in Corsica but the one place I’ll never forget is a place called Bonafacio, this place is at the bottom of the Island and home to the French Foreign Legion, you really have to see these boys close up and in the flesh to realise they are the real deal, believe me.
The Costa Smeralda in Northern Sardinia, on the trip from Corsica to Sardinia I saw something I will never ever forget.
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It was the USS Nimitz, 1,095ft long, 101,000 tons and crewed by 3,200, she was engaged in exercises along with other NATO ships. You really have to see up close how big this monster aircraft carrier is to appreciate it, talk about impressive, wow!!
Then west to Minorca, Majorca, Ibiza. Ibiza is were we finally parted company and all because I had a strop on and didn’t like doing as I was told. How silly and a mistake I will carry around with me for the rest of my life.
So after saying a tearful goodbye, I bade farewell and caught a scheduled ferry back to Alicante on the Spanish mainland, to begin yet another long trek back to good old blighty.
Reaching Alicante I then travelled by train to the Spanish French border and arrived in a little place called Cerbères.
I didn’t have any more liquid money available so I would have to hitch all the way to Lyon. I had a cheque, for over a thousand pounds, but it was only cashable in a Credit Lyonaise bank and the nearest one was in fucking Lyon, 500 miles away.
A day later and absolutely devoid of sleep as well as starving hungry I walked across one of the many bridges that straddle the magnificent Rhone river in and in my opinion one of the most beautiful city’s in the world.
It was early on a Saturday Morning and on finally reaching a branch of the Credit Lyonaise in the centre of Lyon itself a horrible thought dawned on me. It was Saturday!!, Banks close on Saturday, well in England at that time they did.
Instant panic set in and just as I was already contemplating a weekend of dossing down under a bridge or in a park the main bank door opened and a sign went up saying, ouvert!
A short while after that and feeling like a millionaire, I did have 10,000 French Francs in my pocket, I found a really nice hotel and after a wonderful hot shower ordered steak and fries. It was still only 9.30 in the morning so you can imagine the looks I got, but I was starving and after that I hit the sack.
After spending the weekend in Lyon I travelled to Paris and then made my way back to the channel port of Calais. Heading once again into the harbour at Dover I stared at the not so white cliffs and contemplated what to do next.
You see, even though I had my sister, my brother, though at this stage I hadn’t a clue where David was, I didn’t really feel I belonged anywhere. There was my Dad of course, but that meant an unholy reunion with the one person I hated more than anyone on the planet, so you can imagine the thoughts going through my head on that misty drizzly morning in Dover.
I made a decision, I still had a fair bit of money left so could afford to be choosey where it was I went and it was still only July. And that meant summer was still in full flow which meant of course there would be work available in the main seaside resorts scattered around Britain’s coasts.
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First I tried Brighton, didn’t like it, too many cockneys and too many Punks, then Bournemouth, didn’t like that either, too many old people. So I tried Torquay, that was a little better but there wasn’t any work, but was told there might be work further down and into the county of Cornwall.
So I arrived in Newquay, I instantly liked this place, beautiful scenery, gorgeous beaches, lots of women but more importantly there was work.
I stayed and worked in a hotel called, the Fistral, so called because it overlooked a beach which was also called Fistral. When I say stayed in the hotel; it was in effect live in accommodation which was quite the norm for the many seasonal staff that worked in Britain’s seaside resorts.
The boss was an asshole and the job was bloody boring, 10 days I lasted here. I loved Newquay but I didn’t particularly like the place where I was working and to be honest I was starting to get homesick again and really wanted to see my Dad.
Even if it meant engaging with the enemy, I really missed him and I suppose the last link with what might have been and once was in that oh so comfortable first seven years of shall we say an “unusual” life.
Heading up the M6 I had by this time with very little money left. I had spent what I had on bars, food,. I loved to eat in restaurants and go on dates, aren’t women expensive? Lol.
Somewhere north of Birmingham I guy picked me up and said he lived in Blackpool. After me telling him of my recent exploits he suggested I find work in Blackpool. He said there was “always” work in Blackpool and that I could stay with him until I found digs if I liked.
He wasn’t too impressed when I asked him if he were gay, because he thought I then might be and was checking if “he” was. When I explained that I were just making sure “he” wasn’t and that I wasn’t too, he laughed his head off, I must admit those few minutes trying to explain everything were very fucked up.
So this geezer who’s name I can’t remember took me to his house in a place called Poulton Le Fylde and with it just being a a couple of miles outside Blackpool it would be convenient to use the house as temporary base until I found something else.
Four days later I attended an interview at a fish n chip restaurant called THE TUDOR EATING HOUSE; this place was situated on a road called Foxhall and was almost parallel with the central pier.
After asking where I had been and what I had done and being rather impressed that I had actually cooked for a millionaire on his yacht [thanks to the cook books and brilliant improvisation if I say so myself] I was offered the position of Grill Chef.
August 1982 and shortly after securing employment I also found a new place to live, one that would be my home for several years on and off.
16 Clifford road North Shore which was just round the corner from the Imperial Hotel and a small guest house run by a lady called Patricia who really believed she was related to Elton John and married to a husband (Tom) who believed in nothing but the exquisite feel of folded banknotes.
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Both were from Hull in Yorkshire and had decided to set up this guest house business in Blackpool. They had in fact been only in the house a few months and to be honest, the first two years there were the best, it went downhill after that.
Possibly the reasons for that were that as a new business you’re always keener at first and want to make more of a fist of it. But as the years wore on they got fed up and as a result standards dropped and the end was only a matter of time, but I’m getting ahead of myself, lets stick to the Autumn of 1982.
The Tudor eating house was basically a large café, 150 covers and the mainstays of the menu were, surprise, Fish n Chips, but we did serve Lamb, Roast Beef, Chicken, Ham and Meat pie, all cooked or baked on the premises.
My job was to grill burgers, gammon steaks and basically plate food up as well as serve in the out sales department, which were usually fish n chips.
This restaurant was unbelievably busy, Blackpool was busy full stop, but where we were situated meant we were right in the thick of it and I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever worked in the catering business. But if they have and been in a very busy establishment you’ll know how stressful it can really get.
As well as having to serve customers and get the orders out on time, by the way I can still see all those little chitties the waitresses used to slide under the wire and physically see my Boss Tommy change psychologically. For instance.
4 orders on, not much reaction, just a flicker of concern, 10 orders on, noticeable increase in speed now and this is where we all start to play at fucking dodgems and perfect the art of body swerving.
15 and more arriving by the second, I just keep my head down and concentrate, no point in panicking, doesn’t get you anywhere does it?
Tommy Robinson, my boss however is and by this time Tom is sweating buckets and swearing quite loudly. The most orders I ever saw under that fucking wire were 40.
The first ten were all in a line so you could read them but the other 30 were stacked in a big bunch and that my friends was fucking soul destroying. Like pissing in the wind, pointless, but I stayed with it. Tom didn’t, he’d crack up and start throwing things around eventually disappearing, just like that.
After the rush had died down he’d return, red faced and smelling of cannabis, he said he had to smoke dope to keep sane, you know what, I believed him.
Like I was about to say earlier, it wasn’t just the stress of serving thousands of holidaymakers and day trippers, it was having to deal with difficult customers too, ones that just wanted to misbehave and try and spoil it for others, well we got plenty of those.
Here are a few instances and really gives an indication of how dangerous it can be working in in the hospitality sector.
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They’d range from quite minimal, such as someone returning a meal, but by airmail, throwing it over the counter, to quite serious. Such as large gangs of men all pissed up and all averaging about 16 stone.
“If you think we’re paying for that you can think again.”
The boss would go round, this time the proper boss, Tommy’s Dad, Paul Robinson. He was a huge man, 25 stone and an ex Gypsy prize fighter, though not very good on his feet Paul could still handle himself and had a formidable presence.
Paul always used to sit directly in front of the counter and it would always be in the same chair. He only ever got off that chair to go upstairs, or go for a piss, or in this case to deal with annoying customers.
When the latter happened it was a sort of signal for the rest of us to get ready, when I say us, I mean myself, Tommy jr and the rest of the lads in in the kitchen, all handy lads. Usually Paul would sort it out and usually the idiots that were causing trouble would pay up and leave, not this time however….
If you have ever seen those old western movies, you know the ones where all the cowboys are punching each other and breaking chairs over each others heads, well this is exactly what happened that late Saturday afternoon in the Tudor eating house.
Paul Robinson never really went to diplomatic school anyway so we knew the attempt at calming things down had gone badly wrong when one of the idiots heads got shoved into the steak and kidney pudding he was eating.
*BOOM*
Up went the idiots mates and I kid you not, Paul had already dropped three of em before we reached him. This is a 60 + year old man with bad legs, however the boss hadn’t forgotten how to brawl and I swear he had a fucking smile on his face as the fun really got going.
There were about twenty of these lads so we were vastly outnumbered. Sheila (Mrs Robinson) phoned the cops whilst we got stuck in. There weren’t any customers to help us either, a lot of them drifted off as soon as these morons entered the café, like rats leaving a sinking ship.
Until the cops arrived there was a full on battle and like I said before, we were outnumbered three to one, however we did have weapons.
Mine was a fish scoop, literally used for scooping fried fish out of the fryer and they call it in the trade a spiders web. So called because, well it does look like one and made out of metal with a long handle served as a cosh.
I had thought of dipping it in red hot fat but decided you could probably get away with whacking idiots around the head but also probably do a bit of stir for branding and consequently disfiguring the fuckers.
The other lads had long handled pans, usually made for making sauces. These weren’t as big as your normal domestic pan but had a copper bottom which of course made them heavier than normal and ideal for coshing morons over the head with.
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We sustained a few injuries before the cops got there, but not many, just a few black eyes, lump on the fore head, aching back where some bastard had sneaked a kick in but that was all really. The tools obviously returned the advantage to us, we had plates thrown at us but we used the restaurant chairs as makeshift shields so we weren’t too bad off.
They on the other hand were in a bad way, about 12 of em were unconscious, the rest were weren’t far away and the remaining ones were being beaten up by the riot cops.
You see Paul was very well in with the local constabulary and as such if ever there was trouble at any of his establishments and with Blackpool cop station just being around the corner, well they’d come running and as soon as they saw what was happening they got stuck in.
By the way the police back in the 80s were a lot different than they are now and wouldn’t thing twice about ramming a police radio in your ear or belting you over the head with a telephone directory if you weren‘t forthcoming with information, some villains deserved it I guess.
Back to the restaurant and it looked like a fucking war zone, the cops had dragged all those Muppets off to the nick and we had to clean the mess up, broken tables, broken chairs, as well as mop up blood and snot and even a few teeth.
There were numerous scenes like that one, not quite as bad but there were a lot over the five seasons I worked in Blackpool. The worst being the one on one fight outside the restaurant with a miner from Barnsley. In the ensuing tussle we both fell through a window, ok for me but not for the gorilla I was fighting with.
The glass from the window pain sheared his nose off nearly and I can still see it, flapping around and he was roaring like some fucking crazed lion. Very scary that was, he was a big man and it took five of his mates to drag him away.
We cleaned up again, blood removal, checking for wounds, sweeping glass up then it was off home, good job Tommy Robinson gave me a lift that night.
That guy who had his nose nearly removed had mates, lots of em and they came back asking for me. One of the waitresses must have shouted my name so they knew what I was called. Shouting through the window at Paul and his wife Sheila, they were the only ones in the restaurant now, everyone else had gone and of course they did live on the premises.
Paul knew who it was immediately and told them to fuck off. For some reason Sheila decided to ring the cops and its just as well she did, there must have been at least fifty of these fuckers outside and they wanted blood, “mine.”
First they tried forcing the front in, thank god for mortice locks, having no joy with that tried the back door, no joy with that either, so they then decided to break all the fucking windows in the restaurant.
This they did by acquiring long scaffolding poles which were just across the road from the restaurant, they then used them as battering rams to smash nearly every window in the joint, after that they scarpered.
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The first I knew of this was when I came into work the following day, the glaziers van gave it away and joiners hammering nails in doors in an effort to repair everything in time for the lunch time opening.
My boss wasn’t too pleased of course, but he really liked me and he also trusted me and believe me, Paul Robinson was a very hard man to please, but if he did, that was it for life.
There were also some very funny moments in that place too, like the time nearly 100 drunken holidaymakers came pouring out of the pub opposite and consequently poured into our café, “doing the fucking conga.”
Paul went ballistic and when he tried to get em all out, two women grabbed him and tried to get him in the fucking conga line, hilarious.
Customers were just staring open mouthed, food still on forks near mouths, you get the picture.
Then there were the fucking comedians, “how big are your fish mate?” They’d ask, knowing full well how big they were because they could seem em in the heat cabinet, like you see in any chippy.
Well it used to piss me off so Id resort to reaching into a small draw and on producing a tape measure I would measure the cod, or haddock and then inform the customer, “exactly” how big they were. To which the customer would then inform me, that it was I, who was the fucking comedian and leave in a strop.
Then there was the clown who suddenly burst into the out sales and swiftly picking up the vinegar bottle he drank it! The full fucking bottle, smacking his lips he said, “thanks mate, I needed that” and disappeared, fucking nutter.
The funniest one was the time Billy Vasey worked for us; it was only for a short time but an eventful one to say the least.
Billy wasn’t tall but he was wide, a big powerful looking man and with quite the reputation, you didn’t fuck around with Billy.
On this occasion with Billy being a KP he arrived in the serving area with a pile of freshly cleaned plates. As he was putting the plates under the counter a drunken customer shouted at him from the other side of the out sales counter.
“Hey Jock,” Billy was a Glaswegian, “hey Jock I’m talking to you, shake ma hand Jock, I’m fra Glasgow to, shake ma hand big man.”
Billy just ignored him and carried on putting the plates under the counter, his place was in the kitchen and didn’t particularly like being out in full show of customers and the public. Come to that none of the other kitchen staff did too. I think they just didn’t want to be seen, I’ll leave it to your imaginations why.
“Hey Jock, don’t you be fuckin ignoring me I wanna give ye a Glasgow handshake ya gobshite ye.”
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That did it for Billy, placing the remaining plates neatly under the counter he glanced at Paul sitting on the other side of the main serving counter. Paul nodded which meant Billy had permission to do what ever he had too. Before you did anything in that restaurant you had to get permission from the boss, he “was” the law and “everyone” respected him.
Billy walked over to the dunk on the other side of the out sales counter and held out his right hand as if to shake the other man’s hand.
The drunk customer now laughing said, “nae, I’ve changed me mind, made you come though didn’t I big man?”
Billy never moved a muscle; he stayed exactly still and said, “shake ma hand wee man,”
We were all watching now and I knew something was about to happen.
“Ah well, what the fuck,” the man now moved closer to the counter and raised his hand to shake Billy’s already outstretched right hand. Just as Billy’s hand coiled around the other mans hand Billy pulled him even closer into the counter and with his left fist popped the man square on the jaw.
Billy still had hold of the drunk’s hand and I swear to god and on my mothers memory you could hear the bones breaking in that man’s fingers. .He was already stunned with the punch so couldn’t react, but he screamed when Billy gave him a “Glasgow handshake.”
Billy by this time was ragging him back and forward and said, “nae laughing now are ye ya wee twat.” Billy then let go and the guy ran out of the out sales as quick as I’ve ever seen anyone run in my entire life, Billy nodded to Paul and Paul nodded back then Billy returned to the kitchen, just like that.
October came and that meant the end of the season, soon I would be out of work and with the soles of my feet itching again as well as desperately wanting my job back on Yummy II I made a decision to head off yet once more.
So having saved up a few hundred quid I said goodbye to everyone at the Tudor eating house and also at 16 Clifford road and yet again headed south to Dover and then caught the TGV to Nice in the south of France via Paris.
Finally arriving once again in Antibes I located the same birth where earlier in the year I sat my interview with the skipper Robert, you can imagine my surprise when I found out she wasn’t there and that she wasn‘t ever coming back!!!
I made a few enquiries with other boats and they confirmed that after making a short return, Yummy II wouldn’t ever be coming back to Antibes. According to the skipper, Robert, she was heading for a new base port and that would be, wait for it?
Martinique!! which to the uninformed is a beautiful island paradise in the Caribbean and my heart sank when I learned of this. It seemed I would never have the chance to redeem myself and get back the best job anyone could possibly have…
I hung around Antibes. By this time we weren’t far off December 1982 and managing to find day work I also had the fortune to be given a berth on a British skippered motor vessel.
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The Captain being a chap called Peter, he said I could stay on her for as long as the owners stayed in Switzerland, but would have to find somewhere else of course when they wanted to play with their multi million pound toy again.
This was an amazing experience because with Peter and his wife, I can’t remember her name, having their own apartment in Antibes so they obviously didn’t need to stay aboard [The Najade] which of course meant I had her all to myself.
She wasn’t as cutting edge space age type modern as Yummy II but she was still a luxury motor yacht owned by millionaires which meant with the only one living aboard her I could pretend it was my boat and I did.
Sundays were the best, even in December it gets quite warm in the south of France and particularly on a
Sunday you would get loads of tourists and locals walking along the quayside. Open mouthed and possibly dreaming what it would be like to own a fantastic boat like the ones they were gawping at.
When they got to, ahem, “my” boat, I milked it for everything I was worth, seated on the aft deck, in shorts and T shirt, shades and holding a large G & T, I’d wave casually and people would ask who I was and I’d say I was a famous movie star but daren’t tell in case the paparazzi found out and discovered my identity.
The fucking chicks loved it and on one occasion I had a whole group of Swedish female language students aboard, I was in perve heaven, that was until fucking Captain Peter turned up and went ballistic.
He gave me a right bollocking and asked if I were out of my fucking mind? I tried to explain that I were only showing them around, a sort of tour, but he wouldn’t have any of it. A couple of days later Peter suddenly informed me that the Najade had to leave Antibes and was in fact heading for the Red Sea. The owners were flying out to meet up with Cap’n Pete and his wife to do some scuba diving.
That meant I was in the shit, where would I live and it was only two weeks until Christmas? I began to panic when I suddenly remembered something.
On engaging on a previous a tour of the Najade (snooping) I recalled seeing a box inside the drinks cabinet. I’m not kidding there were more expensive drinks in that cabinet than you can ever imagine. There was one cognac that had a label on it saying 50 years, which meant of course it was a 50 year old vintage brandy, incredible and even then in 1982 would have cost an absolute fortune.
The point I’m making is that here I was, standing in a vessel worth millions and surrounded by wealth that most people only ever dream of and there sitting right in front of me was a little black box and inside that box there must have been at least over 20,000 French Francs.
I had to make a decision, would I stay in Antibes and take a chance someone would take me in at Christmas. There wouldn’t be any work so I would be entirely at the mercy of charity, or?
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Sweating profusely I closed the cabinet door and went for a long walk along the harbour, I was in a real dilemma. I wasn’t a thief and taking anything that isn’t yours is oh so wrong, but the alternatives were at least bleak.
Christmas was approaching and there were only two options, steal the money and get the fuck away from there rapido, or go to Peter cap in hand and ask for a loan, so I would at least be able to get home for Christmas, wherever home was?
I pressed the bell on Captain Peter’s apartment and looking at me like you do when you’ve just found something on the sole of your shoe, he told me he wanted me to speak to me and what a coincidence it was me turning up.
My hopes soared, he must have been giving me a reprieve, but that soon went out of the fucking window when he produced a Bill.
It was all fucking itemised, rent, water usage, electricity used and so forth, then he informed me he would also be charging me for drinking 24 cans of Heineken, along with 24 cans of Kronenbourg.
I couldn’t believe it and protested vehemently, I said that he told me to make myself at home and said it was OK to have a beer if and when it suited me and apart from anything else what the fuck was the rent deal all about?
“Peter you said I could stay for as long as I liked and make myself comfortable, OK I did drink more beers than I should have done but you said it was part of the boats manifest and wouldn’t be a problem?”
He wasn’t having any of it, he was obviously still pissed off over the Swedish student episode and I think he was fucking jealous I really do. He then said that another boat owner had spoken to the Najade’s owners and they in turn had been on the horn to Captain Pete complaining that what was the deal with strangers squatting on their boat?
Fucking squatting!! It was my turn to be mad now and Captain Peter then decided he’d had enough and told me to go back to the boat and in the morning I would have to leave. Forget about the bill, that would be overlooked, but I would have to vacate the Najade first thing in the morning.
Well you know what folks, I “vacated” the Najade that very night and with 20,000 French Francs in my sky rocket (pocket)
Yes I know, I stole, I still feel terrible after all these years and if there had been any other alternative, such as Captain Peter helping me out instead of destroying everything by getting all stroppy and jealous then of course I wouldn’t have had to.
I did leave an IOU and a note explaining to the owners of the boat what I had done as well as why I had and would take full responsibility and return the money as soon as I had the required funds from a job I had found in Genoa Italy.
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The IOU and the promise of returning the money were correct, the destination of where I had headed weren’t.
In fact I headed in another direction. In Antibes was a railway station and every evening an inter city train from Nice to Paris would stop here. Hugging the coast, the train would hit Marseilles then head north to Orange. Lyon and then due north back to the city of light.
I can not begin to tell you how I felt whilst I waited for that train to turn up and just before it arrived a couple of gendarmes arrived on the station platform.
I were convinced they were after me, but of course I were being paranoid, no one could possibly have known what I had done. I mean the owners were not even aware that money was there. These people have so much you’d be surprised at the contempt they treat it with.
That doesn’t give anyone the right to take it either and stealing is stealing, full stop, but I had done it now and there was no going back. The cops passed and eventually the Nice Paris express finally turned up, thank Christ!
20th December and shortly after arriving in Paris at the Gare Du Sud I again crossed the metro and headed for Charles De Gaul airport, from there I caught a scheduled Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.
An hour after that I was again in the same little town of Kelsterbach and the place was like a fairy land, lights everywhere and for all those of you who have never been in Germany at Christmas time, then believe me you don’t know what you’re missing, it’s magical…
24th December and I wanted to be in England, so I caught yet another flight to Manchester. A few hours later I was in the same house were Uncle Ricky lived with a lady and still a close friend of mine, the wonderful Annie Robinson, no not her, another one and a lot nicer. lol.
Christmas 1982 was a belter and having still over a thousand pounds was probably the reason for that, out every night and getting hammered and all on someone else's buck.
27th December and this time it was off to Frankfurt again, but Frankfurt wasn’t my final destination, Berlin was.
At that time Berlin was behind the infamous iron curtain and no German airline was allowed to fly in into Berlin. Only US, British or French carriers were allowed to fly down a 200 mile air corridor and if any dare stray outside that corridor, Russian Mig fighter jets would remind them that they really shouldn’t.
The one and only reason for the visit to this great old city was to see something that was of modern man’s making, THE BERLIN WALL.
I had heard and read so much about this incredible wall that snaked 45km across the city and kept prisoner millions of Berliners that lived in the eastern sector.
7 metres high, started in August 1961 and believe it or not as only a thin white painted line initiated by an East German border guard called private Hagen Koch. Shortly after that, large concrete blocks were strategically placed followed by barbed wire.
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Six months later a larger more substantial barrier was set up and some of the scenes of people jumping out of buildings and getting shot then tangled up in barbed wire whilst trying to escape will go down in history as some of the most graphic.
I really can’t find words to describe how I felt when I first saw this concrete monster. Think of the town or city where you live and looking at a map of it, get a pencil and draw a line right the way across it, sort of cutting it in half.
There were roads, streets, avenues and then all of a sudden they would stop because of this monster wall that suddenly reared up from nowhere. There were large wooden platforms built so you could actually climb up them and peer into an alien world.
Over the top of the wall were a sort of no mans land, past that were the machine gun nests, the mine fields and dog runs. If the unfortunate escapees managed to get past those, there were always the watch towers, always vigilant and always with blood thirsty armed guards on a bonus if they popped a defector on his/her way to the west, incredible…
After witnessing for myself one of man’s many icons of madness I stayed overnight in a cheap hotel then travelled back to Teigle airport.
About two hours or so later I landed in another great city, the city of Vienna, or Wien if you happen to be German; the reason for this? Was a lady.
This lady was called Elizabeth and I met Elizabeth earlier in the year on the way back from Ibiza to Alicante and after asking me to visit her one day she duly gave me her address, so here I was, a bit impromptu I know but here I was.
The problem with not having a telephone number though and being “impromptu” meant that Elizabeth had no prior knowledge to my arriving here in Vienna. So after knocking on the door of a very large house and being told the gorgeous Elizabeth was Christmas vacationing in Ibiza I did what anyone else would do with very little money left?
I panicked, well only for a little while and it was New Years Eve, though still very early into the 31st December 1982 it was still bloody New Years Eve and everyone would soon be partying.
With a heavy heart I decided yet again to make the long trek home and it literally would be. Vienna is an awful long way from Manchester and with not having a lot of money the only means would be yet again to use the trusty old thumb.
It was about 5pm and not too far away from the German border, it was bloody cold too, in this part of the world it’s all mountains (The Alps) and not the place to be for a lonely young English guy travelling light on New Years Eve.
At last a huge truck pulled up and in I jumped, the driver was a thirties something German guy and he was a long haul trucker. In fact he was on his way home after a very long trip to Baghdad in of course Iraq.
When I told him why I had flown to Austria and all about Elizabeth he said not to worry about it and that I could stay and celebrate New Year with him and his family. This I did and will never ever forget my new years eve in a little place called Passau.
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Passau isn’t too far away from the Alps and just over the border from Austria. After I had been showered, fed and wined at the house we all took off in the car. Myself, the trucker and his wife and two small children, then drove to a smaller village about 20 km away.
It was dark by this time but the village was lit up with brightly coloured lights and lots of
Brass bands playing all sorts of music.
I asked the trucker why we were here and he pointed high and up into the distance. There what must have been about a half mile away was a procession of lighted torches, as in real flaming torches all winding its way down the side of a mountain.
The trucker explained that this was done every year by the local high school kids and I’ll tell you what, it was an amazing site and one I’ll never forget. You can keep the fireworks, give me a torchlight procession down a mountain any New Years Eve.
After the traditional countdown we returned to the truckers house and after a nightcap I got my head down. The following day we enjoyed a traditional Bavarian lunch and also watched the skiing on TV from Garmisch Partenkirchen, which by the way wasn’t a million miles away from Passau.
The following day 2nd Jan 1983 I again headed off toward England, but not before saying goodbye to that wonderful German family who had made so much effort to make a complete stranger feel like one of their own family on New Years Eve.
The trucker dropped me at the nearest autobahn and soon enough I was again heading toward the North of Germany than Belgium and of course Oostende.
Two days later I had also yet again arrived back at 16 Clifford road in Blackpool and after signing on the dole (unemployment register) I decided to try some self employment which was at first in the form of a window cleaner.
The reason why there wasn’t any other work available such as in my former job at the Tudor eating house was because? Well there simply wasn’t any work like this in the winter, as in most coastal resorts most businesses shut down for the winter period and Blackpool was no exception.
Hence my new found love of window cleaning, I managed to get some flyers (leaflets) printed and after dishing them out everywhere I actually received one or two calls. Using my benefit money to purchase a squeegee and a bucket along with an Irish linen scrimming cloth I was ready.
Then Landlord Tom wrecked everything by asking if I owned any stilts?
I asked him what the hell did he mean, he said well seeing as how I didn’t own any ladders how was I going to clean upstairs windows??
Then it fucking dawned on me, of course, how else would I be able to reach high windows without a fucking ladder.
Tom said he had one I could lend, but it was an old wooden one and one or two rungs were missing and the ones that weren’t were loose, but other than that it was a perfectly good pair of ladders.
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The minute I saw those fucking things I knew they were a bleeding death trap. A sign of that was when I picked them up off the yard to stand them up against the wall, three fucking rungs fell out and clattered to the floor.
However, beggars can’t be choosers and at last, though with care I at least would be able to reach the high windows.
The first job/customer was the last job and my endeavour to make money out of cleaning windows came to a sudden and abrupt halt and rather spectacularly I have to say.
I had arrived at this street just off the promenade in a place called North Shore. The house’s windows which I were cleaning belonged to a little old lady and everything went swimmingly at first.
After cleaning the downstairs windows I positioned the dodgy ladders against the house and climbed. The rungs held and although I have never liked heights I stuck to the job in hand and cleaned thoroughly said windows.
Whilst I were cleaning the main bedroom window I noticed movement, as in the fucking glass moving in the window frame. It was hardly noticeable at first but move it fucking did and I stopped cleaning it immediately.
Shortly after descending back down the ladders I again saw movement above and this time it was the window I had just cleaned being opened.
She must be airing the bedroom out I thought to myself and just as I had rounded the corner I heard the most dreadful sound. I nearly shit myself, running back around to where my ladders were, I saw not only the fucking window pain I had just cleaned on the floor but the entire fucking frame.
I have to say it was like one of those silent comedy films but believe me I wasn’t fucking laughing and neither was the old woman that owned the house, she screamed in fact.
“What have you done to my window young man, I thought you said you were a window cleaner?”
I didn’t say anything, I think I were too shocked and didn’t even stay to see the old dear head for the telephone. Grabbing my buckets and the fucked up ladder I legged it all the way back to the guest house and I kid you not I needed a fucking oxygen tent by the time I staggered through the front door.
“How’d the window cleaning go Stevie?” Quipped landlord Tom. I just glared at him and figuring something had gone wrong he then said, he wasn’t responsible for anything and that if any coppers came knocking on the door, I had stolen “his” ladders, he said it wasn’t anything personal just arse covering and personal survival.
Early March and still a couple of months before the restaurant would open its doors for a brand new season so I had to try and make money somehow. Being on the dole paid the rent but that was about it. I liked to go out drinking and an expensive burger addiction.
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Just around the corner was a burger bar called ZIGGIES and believe me these bad bitches were the best “anywhere.“ The big Zee was my favourite, I think it was the relish they put on the beef patties and I bet with illegal amounts of monosodium glutamate in it, hence the fucking addiction, lol.
So the next get rich scheme was self employed painter and decorator. Painting I loved and was and still are quite good at it, the decorating bit though was a little harder as I were soon to find out.
This kitchen job was easy enough to start with, rub down all the woodwork, undercoat then gloss over, no problem, then came the papering.
The golden rule with wall papering is to “always” apply the paper in long vertical drops, no matter how small the area is, even under window sills, over doorways. “vertical” drops, not as was in my case “horizontal.” Painting I knew, papering I didn’t and yes something told my brain that after covering the whole kitchen in this quite expensive wallpaper that it didn’t “quite” look right.
I knew this for sure when the female owner of the house came home and screamed in a funny high pitched gargle type shriek. I rushed in to see if she was OK but she just stood there shaking as if she had epilepsy and the only discernible words were. “Fuck, god, kill,” I didn’t get chance to hear the rest, I cleared off and decided that painting and decorating was another no no on my get rich quick list.
I gave it a rest in the self employment sector for a bit and soon enough it was time to start the new season. This was again similar to 82 and after a long season of grease, blood and cracked ribs it was time to hit the road again.
This time however I only got as far as Calais, I think I was starting to get tired of roaming around and to be honest I wanted a girlfriend or regular partner. All this gallivanting is OK but after a while its all really superficial and we all need substance right?
Back to Blackpool and this time I spent Christmas at the guest house, this came and went and had a little fling here with another guest called Lorna. Leather Lorna as we all called her. She always seemed to be wearing a pair of really tight leather pants and I’ll be honest that’s what attracted me to her, I had a real weakness for women in tight leather.
Again the earlier part of 1984 started similar to the previous year though without being in the German Alps of course.
Another brand new season started and as twice before I again picked up my steak tongs and prepared to do battle with customer orders and the customers themselves when necessary. Except this time my term at the Tudor eating house was cut short, I had the travel bug again and so decided for one last time I would up sticks and depart for pastures new.
This time I got a bit further than Calais, Rimini in Italy to be precise and though I had run out of money it didn’t matter.
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The weather was so warm I were able to sleep outside with no problem, however there was the cops, the cops in Italy are proper vicious bastards and none in my experience liked the English.
Again and with a heavy heart it was yet another trek back to England. Though this time I made a decision check up on my Dad when I got back. He hadn’t been well and I knew if anything happened to him whilst I were gallivanting abroad, I would never forgive myself.
Three days and several trucks and cars later I finally reached home territory. I saw Dad, though “she” tried her best to make me feel uncomfortable I still sat with him and chatted. He seemed quite chuffed I had been travelling everywhere though of course if he’d known about the boat he would have been bleeding mortified.
Whilst I where there I bumped into Carol, my sister, I had seen Carol fairly on and off but not David, my brother, in fact I hadn’t seen David since the late seventies and wanted to see him again.
According to my sister he was living with a lady called Peggy on a council estate called Brushes in a town named Stalybridge about three miles away from Mossley.
Making my way there I weren’t sure whereabouts he lived and Carol wasn’t sure which house number it was either but I eventually found him, thanks to a little boy called Wayne, Wayne was the lady’s son my brother was living with and after telling me which house it was my brother were we had quite an emotional reunion.
I stayed at Peggy’s along with my brother for virtually the whole summer of 1984 and what a summer it was too. Not only would I be introduced to drugs for the first time but this is the part of my life where I fell in love for the very first time too!!
Two very pivotal moments here at this stage of my life and I’ll start with the drugs bit first.
Though up until this point I had never taken any illegal substances ever, I knew what drugs were and what kind of problems could occur if you got sucked into them.
Cannabis was always a no no partly because of the fact I didn’t smoke and partly because, well I just couldn’t stand the fucking smell of that shit.
Then the hardcore stuff like Heroine, Cocaine, LSD, smack was again a no go area but Cocaine or Charlie as everyone used to call it was often tried. Not by myself but by people around me.
My brother David actually used to deal the stuff, not coke, speed, or properly known as Amphetamine sulphate. When I say deal, I mean he didn’t deal on a large scale, it was just usually to people he and Peggy knew and actually made them a hell of a lot of money.
There was a downside to that enterprise though, it was illegal and usually if you dealt speed or Charlie you usually attracted members of the drug squad. You could probably go for a year or so and make a shit load of money, but sooner or later “the squad” would mark your card and *BOOM* In would go the front door one evening whilst you were watching Coronation street.
And ten or so very stern faced police officers telling you not to move a fucking muscle, I know this because on one occasion I were in the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed it for myself.
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The only drugs I took were speed and LSD, the speed was usually to help perk me up if I were going out to a gig or just needed to get things done. The rush was incredible and you can see why people get addicted, though the more you take the longer it takes to get high hence the danger of addiction.
I would take mine in a cigarette paper, pop into my mouth and take a swig of milk, about a half hour later I’d be bouncing around everywhere like an annoying fucking rubber ball. I have an active mind to start with and after taking some Billy Whizz I was on fucking fire, lol.
LSD, this is a lot more dangerous and to be honest I didn’t really enjoy the couple or so trips I had with this stuff. To take it safely you need to be with people you know and trust and also think happy thoughts. If you do it’s quite an enjoyable experience, if you don’t you become all melancholy and down which means a bad trip and you really don’t want one of those.
The weirdest thing I ever saw whilst I were tripping was trying to eat a fried egg the following morning. No matter how much I tried I could not eat it, there it was, just a single fried egg on a plate and me with a fork hovering over it and as much as I tried I couldn’t eat it. In fact the fucking yoke looked like it were breathing and I began to think the chicken had come back to life, it hadn’t of course but that’s what LSD does, scary stuff.
Peggy, the lady I lived with along with my brother had three kids, Martin was the youngest, then Wayne, the boy who told me were my brother David lived and lastly Marie, she was the eldest aged 12.
Peg also had a brother (Geoff) and two sisters, Pat and a lady called Aileen, it is the latter of these that instantly caught my eye the minute I set eyes on her and I instantly fell in love right there and then.
To this day I don’t know why I did, looks wise Aileen wasn’t anything special, she was a good looking girl and had a nice figure but I probably think it was because she were just fucking wild and different and that’s possibly why I were attracted to her.
In the summer of 84 she was actually with someone, a chap called Rod, or Rod the Mod everyone called him. So called because Rod had a scooter and dressed just like a Mod and if you’ve ever seen Quadrophenia you’ll know what I mean.
Rod was a drug dealer too, but I really liked Rod, he was a big guy, well tall and had a very laid back approach and was always amusing to be around with. Sadly drugs and mainly speed completely ruined him and all his teeth fell out along with an already receding hairline.
Even though Rod was with Aileen I couldn’t keep my eyes off her and though I suspected she knew I had the hots for her she never let on that she knew. She did of course and used that fact to its fullest and deadliest advantage and for years to come if ever I came in contact with any money it wouldn’t be long before Aileen claimed it.
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I didn’t mind of course, in my eyes she was a goddess and when you’re in love with someone it doesn’t matter what they do to you, you just can’t help doing anything they want you to. You sort of come to terms with it and if I’m being honest Aileen “never” would be the right woman for me. We were too different, but I didn’t see that until years later, but “hey,” that’s the fucking sugar bowl that is life eh.
1984 came and went and to my utter joy Aileen split up with Rod the Mod. Here was my opportunity I thought to myself. No fucking chance Aileen had already fixed her sights on another drug dealer, this one whose name I can’t remember right now was very wealthy. He dealt Charlie and with Charlie being expensive he made a lot of money and lived in a large detached house and had nice cars.
This chap also had the Aileen bug and became as fucking smitten as I was. The advantage he had though was the fact he were fucking loaded and that was the kind of thing Aileen loved. Next to horses and dogs, Aileen loved the folding stuff and didn’t I know that for a fucking fact.
Early 1985 the guy Aileen was living with had his house raided by the squad and a substantial amount of class A drugs were recovered. Which meant he was in the fucking shit, he didn’t even make bale and because Aileen was with him when the doors went in she was arrested too.
I was fucking mortified when it came to the trial, Aileen ran the real risk of doing a stretch and with trepidation I went to the crown court to see what would happen. Mercifully Aileen didn’t go down, she got however a 2 year suspended sentence but old chummy fared far worse, he got 4 years in the slammer and with her sugar daddy banged up, this of course caused Aileen to have a rethink.
It was approaching the spring and I was about to return once more to Blackpool. I somehow persuaded Aileen to come with me and still to this day can’t quite figure out how I managed to pull that off. But I did and I now had “my” Aileen all to myself and no fucking rich bastard interfering drug dealers could get near her, lol.
Aileen stayed for about three months, Uncle Ricky also turned up at 16 Clifford road which was fantastic at first. I had really missed Rick and always had time for him, that was until the curse of Aileen reappeared and Uncle Rick decided he might also have the hots for the love of my life.
Of course that was just fucking unacceptable and I let him know in no uncertain terms that he stay the fuck away from her or else. The response was a clubbing right hook to the jaw but it didn’t connect I were too fucking quick.
There was another incident and this time it was at work. Uncle Rick came into the out sales of the restaurant and taunted me saying he was going to go home and shower, then tart himself up ready for Aileen. He said she was starting to fall for him and you know what I believed him.
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Even though Ricky Price was well into his fifties he still was a good looking man and always had women after him. So it didn’t take much for the fucking seething green eyed monster to turn into unadulterated raging hatred.
I ran out of the side door and jumped on him, he threw me off as if I were a rag doll,. Ricky was a huge man but I stayed with him, a bit like a Jack Russell attacking a Great Dane.
The boss came out and broke that rather very unsightly melee up, it was only a while after that, that I realised what was actually happening to me and you know what, it scared the fucking shit out of me.
Aileen brought some friends over once from Manchester and one of them fancied her too. After having a row about something, she said that she had a good mind to dress in her tightest jodhpurs and boots ( my favourite) and walk past the restaurant where I was working. She said then she would get one of the guys to caress her arse whilst she was smiling at me inside the restaurant slaving away, so I could give her my wages at the end of the week and you know what, “she was right,” I did.
That nearly broke my heart and then suddenly Aileen decided that Blackpool wasn’t for her after all and shortly after the Live Aid concerts had finished in July she left 16 Clifford road to return back to Manchester.
I was devastated, really fucked up, my life seemed utterly fucking meaningless and now I know what it must be like to cold turkey when you’re a crack addict. Because to me Aileen was my crack addiction and I was handling it very badly.
I don’t know if anyone of you reading this can actually say you have fallen in love with anyone because believe me you’d know if you had or did.
It’s a bit like someone taking a piece of you away and it hurts it really does and all that bollocks that men don’t fall in love or hurt in the same way as women is down right silly. We do and I bloody well did.
I managed somehow to pull myself together but there wasn’t a day went by without thinking of Aileen and I would be like this for years.
Aileen re settled back in Manchester and got hitched up with a guy called Peter Green. Peter was an alright guy but I loathed him, for obvious reasons. Shortly after that, Aileen got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy called Damon, a year later Aileen gave birth again and again it was a boy this time named Warren.
I soldiered on and on days off from the Tudor eating house, I would travel to Manchester then stay overnight and guess where? Yes, at Aileen’s house, if I couldn’t be with her all the time at least I could still see her on the odd day off from work even if it meant travelling 120 miles.
Aileen still had a fondness for my money as well and I nearly tipped up all my wages every time I stayed at her house. Yes I know it was sheer madness, but “hey,” that’s what happens when you’re head over fucking heels.
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I would even take pictures of her and being the vain bleeder she was she’d quite happily pose and strut for the camera. The pictures would be for her but I would keep the negatives and get them printed out. Those piccies kept me going throughout the long summer season in Blackpool but also of course didn’t help the quell the constant burning flames of desire.
Into 1987 and this was to be the last year I would ever work at the Tudor eating house in fact, I actually left halfway through the season. The boss Paul Robinson never forgave me for this and stated quite clearly I had to get that fucking woman out of my head. He meant Aileen of course, but it didn’t matter, I had been given the opportunity of renting a house and it was only around the corner from where Aileen lived.
This didn’t last long, I found it hard to pick work up and the bits of work I found were either temporary or shitty horrible jobs like making plastic buckets in a factory or stacking shelves in a supermarket. Both these jobs were nights as well which I fucking hated with a passion. Nights are good for three things only, Bats Rats and silly Twats, lol.
Slowly but surely the Aileen love spell was starting to wear off and with struggling to keep up the payments on the house, I left and travelled once more abroad, this time it was Spain, as well as stopping off at Gibraltar.
A few months later I returned and with not having my own place I had to rely on friends letting me crash on their sofa’s or occasionally I would stay with my brother but that never lasted very long.
We’d be OK for a while and then with my brother still taking drugs he’d have a sudden mood swing and kick off. He once kicked the living shit out of me, I could have fought back but I didn’t, I just couldn’t bring myself to hitting or hurting in any way my own flesh and blood.
1989 and into probably the third stint at being a lodger with Aileen, it was always either Aileen or my brother’s. I landed a job at a place called the Cosmo Bingo and Social club.
This position was of Bars manager and I did very well here, the place was in a right state when I first got there but I soon licked it back into shape and increased the take as well as pissing all the patrons off by immediately putting the prices up.
The general manager was a chap called Bob Creek, I really liked old Bob, he was a tad eccentric being an ex guardsman but his heart was in the right place and we usually had a right good laugh.
The owner of this institution was called John Downs or Mr Downs as he liked to be addressed, the pompous asshole. I never really liked him and mercifully had little to do with him. Bob was above me so he would be the one to deal with John if any problems occurred.
I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever been to a bingo club but I always got the impression most folks would cock a snoot when you mentioned the fact you worked at one of these places.
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Not sure why, they were very busy places and on occasions we would have celebrities making guest appearances such as Jimmy Cricket (comedian) Sue Pollard (actress) as well as host of popular singers and entertainers.
So it was quite a happening place and equipped with two bars serving can you believe, Real Ale. There was a restaurant too and on top of all that you could win shit loads of money, I think the top prize then in the early 90s was about a hundred K, not bad eh?
I also nearly got smitten again here, “she” was called Jane and I really liked Jane, the problem was she didn’t particularly like me and the set to’s we had were quite spectacular to watch.
I think it was mainly me that would wind Jane up and on one occasion she lost it and tried to throttle me behind the downstairs bar and in full view of the customers. I suppose it were an occupational hazard of mine to somehow have this knack of always pissing the fairer sex off.
There was another occasion when I would storm into the cash office and demand why the fuck my change hadn’t arrived back at the bar when I had been waiting over half an hour for it?
Jane responded by picking up the big change bag and smiling, tipped it upside down and a thousand coins tumbled to the fucking floor, “ooops,” she said.
I took Jane’s picture once, I was really into photography and was actually quite good at it, I sat Jane on the main stage and took her portrait. I have to say she was quite pretty and though she were engaged to a really nice guy called Jason, if she had given me the sign I would have been up her like a rat up a drain pipe, boys eh!!
1992 and this my friends is another one of those biggies, one hell of a fucking year this and all I’ll say is, St Moritz, Playboy model, Hawaii and Prison, interested?
Just before I crack on with the 90s I have to go back three years to 1987 and there’s a very good reason for that, you see that’s when my Dad died!
Dad had been ill for some considerable time now and we all knew it were only a matter of time before he passed away.
He had just endured his fifth stroke and most folk struggle with one, but tough as old boots was Daddy, however his number was up even though he were only 65.
I was living as a lodger with Aileen at the time and I’ll always remember a song called “living on a prayer” by Bon Jovi. Maybe this song was synonymous with what had happened to my Dad or I just simply liked it I don’t know. But I do know every time that fucking track is played it brings back the night I’m about to tell you about.
It started with a telephone call from my sister Carol and even though you think you’re ready to deal with death, especially say your parents or wife, husband, brother and so forth you’re not really.
Like a fucking big smack across the face this one, though I weren’t as close to Daddy as I was Mum, it still rocked me to the core, especially when I went up to the ward to see him one last and final time.
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It’s awful, when someone has died because they leave the body there, whilst family, relatives and friends pay their respects.
Doesn’t stop the fuckers from mopping the floor though, I couldn’t believe it, there was my Dad, laid on a bed, dead and some twat was mopping a floor around him like it was the most natural thing in the world. You can imagine what I said, though it wasn’t really coherent it were more of a growl, the cleaner left pronto.
Dad looked like he was sleeping and as I were on my own now, I kneeled down at the side of the bed and spoke to him.
Through tears I told him I were so sorry at being a little bastard, for misbehaving and not accepting “her” and that I were so sorry for ever pissing him off. I probably said lots of other things too and shortly after that I leaned over and kissed him gently on the forehead.
About three hours later I realised I better stop walking or I’d never get home, I must have walked miles and not realised where I was or why? People react to death in varying ways, mine was to walk and cry in the middle of nowhere and this I did until about midnight on the 27th November 1987.
The 90’s
Or to be more exact 1992, this year started quite normally and ended fairly normally, it’s the bits in between that are fucked up.
Around sometime in the spring of 92 I was lodging again with my brother and it was at this point I decided to leave the Cosmo and start in collaboration with my brother a photography business.
I had been taking photos whilst I were still working at the Cosmo and selling them too. These were mainly landscape pictures, or photographs of buildings and these I would then sell to whoever wanted them.
I even took pictures of aspiring models, that bit was my favourite, lol
The business started OK, but then my dear brother decided he didn‘t want to play anymore and it all went down the pan. He had recently received an insurance payout, £35,000 and it was his money that paid for all the equipment, which by the way was the dogs bollocks.
So when David decided he wasn’t going to fund anymore photo shoots and sell the company assets (the cameras) That was that and whoever it was that said a partnership is the worst ship ever to set sail is a fucking genius because its bloody true.
June 92 and the old travel bug had bitten me again, there wasn’t any work available and I didn’t really want to go back to the Cosmo. They had a replacement anyway and I don’t believe in returning back to a stomping ground when you have left.
So the thumb came out of retirement and off I toddled back to the south of France. The problem was there was no fucking work there either and once the antidote of reality had cured the travel bug bite, I decided to head back to familiar ground.
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There was another problem though. The French farming suddenly community decided no one was going fucking anywhere and in true French style blockaded every road in France. I mean it, there were tractors on nearly every main road and it was an absolute nightmare. They even had them at airports, on railway lines, everywhere, the place was in a state of fucking anarchy.
Not to be thwarted I skipped over the border and into Monaco. Monaco is a principality and not governed by France so there weren’t an blockades here. My plan was to hitch a lift to Italy and then Austria, Germany Belgium and so forth.
I had only been waiting for an hour or so when a white Porsche 911 stopped, “yes,” every hitch hiker’s dream lift and more so because it was being driven by a woman and a very attractive woman I might add.
The Lady was called Vera and Vera was on her way back to St.Moritz in Switzerland after visiting friends in Monte Carlo. There was a little girl in the back seat asleep; she was called Vanessa, Vera’s step daughter.
Vera was in the process of a divorce and her ex husband was a multi millionaire called Pierre Dillier. Pierre owned a petrol chemical company so you can imagine how much Vera stood to get once the lawyers had finished taking their cut.
We drove through Northern Italy past Turin, Lugano, Como and over the border then eventually to St.Moritz. Vera said she really liked me and said I could stay and rest at the house if I liked. I debated a little, I mean would I go back to stay in the house of a beautiful woman or carry on hitch hiking in the freezing cold? Lol
The house Vera lived in was just fucking amazing, it wasn’t a house as such it was an apartment and I kid you not it’s the only apartment I have been in that has a 360 degree view and what a view.
St.Moritz is stunningly beautiful and most of the people that live there are too and filthy rich. It really is another world and strangely enough populated by a lot of wealthy Colombians.
Vera showed me to the guest bed room and I must have slept for over 25 hours I was really beat. The following day Vera asked me if I would like to stay a little longer, I said “absolutely” and dropped to my knees and looking at the ceiling thanked God, lol.
Vera by the way was Swiss Argentinian and extremely attractive, indeed Vera used to be a playmate at Hugh Hefner’s mansion. That was quite a bit ago but in honesty you’re never gonna stay at Hugh’s place if you look like a woodchuck and Vera certainly didn’t have that problem.
She was also extremely intelligent and could speak over six languages fluently. Vera was currently employed by Swiss TV as a presenter and if you look on the internet she’s still doing so and very good at it she is too.
We got on pretty well and it wasn’t long before Vera took me to bed and laid “me,” yes that’s right, she was on top. She said she preferred it that way and did I have a problem with that?
In a little squeaky voice I said I had no problem at all with this arrangement, she just smiled and continued to bonk my brains out.
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I stayed with Vera and Vanessa for about three months, I would have stayed longer but Vera was becoming increasingly dominant. Not that I had a problem with that, I love strong women but Vera was not only physically forthright she was psychologically too and believe me that takes some doing.
Eventually I decided to leave and though she wasn’t very happy about it she purchased an air ticket from Zurich to Manchester and yet again I turned up at my brother’s.
I know I know what the fuck was I on to leave that life and the fact Vera was soon about to be very wealthy. Well it looks good on paper but when you’re in that kind of environment and living it, it’s not always how it seems and that’s why I left. Still keep in touch to this day..
At the beginning of September 1992 I was offered the position of Night club manager in a place called Rochdale.
The club was called Oz, as in the Wizard of Oz, indeed the whole club resembled the various scenes and places from that famous old movie, i.e. the emerald city bar, the poppy fields lounge, the witches castle bar etc etc.
The owner of this club was a chap called Steven Powers and Steve was really quite the character, I could write a book on him alone.
Steve as well as owning Oz also owned several other establishments, in fact I think he owned about five different clubs and pubs in all. Steve was also bisexual, he was married and had kids but he liked to bat for the other side too and frequently did.
I had no problem with that, the problem “was,” quite a few of the staff that I inherited at Oz where that way inclined too and again I didn’t have a problem with that fact either. They could have had fucking leprosy for all I cared, as long as they did their jobs I couldn’t care less.
Now and again one or two of them would fall out with each other and unfortunately for them they’d take into work.
If you have never seen two effeminate gay men fight you don’t know what you’re missing. Like fucking girls, hair pulling, scratching, biting, name calling, un fucking believable and when you try and separate them they go for “you,“ fucking nightmare, so I fired the pair of em.
That didn’t go down too well with the boss, probably because he were shagging one of em, or had and still had a soft spot for “her,” lol.
Steve insisted I re hire them I insisted I didn’t and there followed a tense stand off. However Steve Powers was a business man before everything else and knew I were making him a substantial amount of money. Indeed within a month I had quadrupled the take and he was a very happy man.
One of the fondest memories of that place was standing at the top of the club and looking down at what must have been nearly a thousand people all dancing, the big hit then was “Rhythm is a dancer “by a band called Snap.
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It felt great, the euphoric feeling of being responsible for over a thousand people as well as the staff and including the bouncers.
Talking of Bouncers, Bouncers back then were a lot different to how they are now and didn’t have any negotiating skills whatsoever. If you lipped them you were out faster than a fucking hiccup, I mean it, these boys where from an agency and I swear to God before they turned to bouncing they were all in the French foreign legion.
One of the funniest moments was when a Police superintendent in full uniform turned up. Rochdale Police were implementing a safer responsible drinking initiative and even though there where vehement protestations from the bouncers, “he” still insisted “he” walk around the club and chat to various clubbers.
Fucking idiot, the minute he stepped into the main club area a Holsten Pils bottle whizzed past the superintendent’s right ear and after he came flying back to the office complaining. The bouncers where all laughing and wearing that told you so look on their faces.
October and the wind of change was about to blow once again. The club’s owner was very friendly with a pal of his called Peter Yates, Peter was a full on aggressive fairy and I really didn’t like this man at all.
He used to turn up at the club with Steve and always had a fucking knowing smirk on his face. I soon found out why and he had no problem at all in telling me he was after my job and it would only be a matter of time before he did so. The fucking wanker, I hated him.
Indeed I heard Steve and Peter in the office once discussing “my” future and it wasn’t one of secure employment on my part.
Every Sunday I would cash up the weekends take and then proceed to meet Steve in one of his other clubs, this one was in Ashton. Not far from where I lived so the idea was to take all the cash in a taxi from Rochdale to this particular club in Ashton and this was always done on a Sunday morning.
Sunday morning 4th October 1992 and there I sat in the club’s office staring at over £10,000. I had just finished cashing up and paid all the staff off.
The previous night Steve Powers had more or less informed me and in front of a grinning Peter Yates that the end was nigh and that this weekend would be my last as a manager at Oz night spot.
Again similar to that time on the Najade ten years ago I had a dilemma. No job, still living as a lodger and “there” sitting in the safe was over Ten Grand?
Ten minutes later I was heading toward Ashton and Steve’s club. Just as the cab was approaching Ashton I asked the cab driver to head for Manchester airport instead. Three hours later I was in the air on a British airways scheduled flight heading for Geneva and feeling very strange indeed, as well as wondering what the fuck had I had just done.
I were still in a state of shock even after I landed in Geneva, why Geneva you ask?
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Because it were the only available flight at that time and there was always the possibility that I had already been rumbled and even as I were perusing the duty frees, an all points alert had gone out.
I checked into a really nice hotel and you know what? I were in my element again. I were born to live like this, jet setting around, dossing in swanky hotels and drinking a very large G&T whilst watching a ferryboat chug its way across lake Geneva, bliss.
The reality of the matter though had kicked in if not at my end, back home in Manchester, indeed and when I look back on it rather humorously too.
According to friends much later on, as soon as the money had been discovered missing, there began a frantic search.
There were several of Steve’s employees all divided up into search teams in an effort to try and find moi. The funniest one was at some friends of mine in Stalybridge. One of Steve Power’s employees guaranteed a nice little payout if they could disclose my whereabouts. It was at that point one of my friends, Alan Butler, pointed at a jet passing overhead and said, “there he is.”
My brother was on thug watch, Steve Powers had quite the reputation so my brother with obviously being my brother and at the time living at his flat, was being cautious just in case any retribution came his way. He did this in the form of sitting at the top of his stairs, armed with a baseball bat and a dog if told would rip your arm off.
Meanwhile back in Switzerland Stephen had a plan.
I wasn’t sure at first what it was or where I wanted to go but I did now and after staying Sunday night in Geneva it was Monday and I was now 35,000 ft over the Atlantic and headed for New York.
Eight hours later Swiss air flight 110 touched down at JFK and shortly afterwards I was again in midtown Manhattan looking for a hotel.
It had been 12 years since I were last here and you wouldn’t believe the changes, this time I did get to see the statue of Liberty. In fact I climbed all the way to the top and peered out through the torch that Lady Liberty holds aloft.
I also ascended to the top of what would be the ill fated Twin Towers, I was in the south tower and the view from those buildings was utterly amazing and nine years later my heart would break when I saw the ensuing destruction caused by those airliners.
I stayed in New York for about three days and then decided to pick up on where I left off twelve years ago. You see a lot of folks think New York “is” America, particularly New Yorkers, lol.
But of course it isn’t and I wanted to see a whole lot more of this amazing country and the only way to do it and to meet the inhabitants is to travel by train. Which is exactly what I did.
On arriving at Penn station I purchased a USA rail pass for $300 and this gave me unlimited rail travel anywhere in the continental United States using Amtrak trains of course.
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You know in the movies when you see people boarding Amtrak trains and you hear the conductor bellowing “all aboard?”
Well they really do that and I can’t tell you how excited I was when I saw my cabin. It was like a portable hotel room and it had a pull down bed, just like in the movie THE SILVER STREAK.
The train departed Penn station New York and travelled west at first toward New Jersey then dipping south into Philadelphia. I had dozed off and I’ll never forget the sight I saw when I woke up.
It was the capitol building, where congress sits and with it being dark it was all lit up and then I saw the Lincoln memorial. Awesome stuff, of course (The Crescent) yes the trains have names over there, had arrived in the nations capital, WASHINGTON DC.
After stopping in DC we again travelled further south, this time through Virginia, the Carolinas and eventually the following day I woke up in Atlanta Georgia.
I stayed one night in Atlanta, the only place I were really interested in here was the Coca Cola museum, yes this is where those little red tins of pop originate.
The following day I reboarded The Crescent and again deeper and deeper into the great south. Nearly everywhere else in the states you see the star spangled banner fluttering proudly from rooftops. Not here in the south, the flags that are flying here are of the old confederacy stating to all and sundry, the south shall rise again!!
The reason why the train by the way was called The Crescent is because the train’s ultimate destination was The Crescent city, or better known as New Orleans. It has other nick names too, such as the Big Easy, Nola and so forth but to me it’ll be always good old New Orleans and I loved it.
I stayed here for about four days and relished every second. The best part was the bars and music venues, yes BB King does really play on Bourbon street. But it’s not all about the mega stars that frequent these places, the up coming acts are just as good and there was one young band from LA playing a rendition of Achy breaky heart much better the original Billy Ray Cyrus hit.
The night life was cool, the restaurants were even cooler, the speciality here is the shrimp, fresh out of the gulf of Mexico. And if you like seafood, you’d die to get your choppers around one of those babies, not forgetting the Gumbo (fish soup) Jambalaya (rice, veg and meat) and the giant crawfish, yummy.
I also attended a Cajun music festival here and I don’t know if you know but, Cajun music is native to this part of the world and is rather good. A sort of cross between country and jazzy piano, foot stompingly fabby baby, lol. I had a ball and after that I went to the zoo.
The Audubon zoo in New Orleans is one of the largest zoos anywhere in the world and with having a liking for exotic animals I really enjoyed my trip here. The alligator farm was my favourite, I saw a pure albino gator and I swear to God it looked like a statue, it just never moved a muscle the entire time I were looking at it.
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The best memory from there though was the Big Cat enclosure. When I say enclosure it were more of a large park all fenced off. But it had trees in it and sat up high in one of the trees was a rather large Leopard.
All of a sudden a bloody great Panther appeared from nowhere and running toward the tree scooted up it and what followed was the fucking cat fight to die for, lol.
Soon it were time again to board another train, this one was called The South west chief, so you can imagine where it was I were heading this time.
Across the Louisiana bayou then over the state line and into the Lone Star state, TEXAS. Here I only stayed briefly, a couple of days in Houston then a short stop over in El Paso and it was off again across New Mexico then into Arizona and the city of Phoenix.
After getting off the train at Phoenix I travelled by Greyhound bus to a place called Flagstaff. The reason for this? Flagstaff was the stopping off point for tourists who want to see one of greatest natural wonders of the world, THE GRAND CANYON.
This truly is a phenomenal piece of work by Mother Nature and you really have to see this spectacular gash in the earth to believe it.
I wanted to walk down right inside it but the Park Rangers strongly advised against it, due to a colony of Black Bears being in season and with getting frisky that made them not only horny but fucking dangerous.
I said goodbye to one of the seven wonders of the world and trekked back to Flagstaff. I still had to pinch myself, here I was on the trip of a fucking lifetime and all on someone else's dollar. Wrong I know but my new friend Bud Weiser soon made it all seem right, lol.
West again and through Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains eventually arriving in the city of Angels.
Didn’t stay in LA for long, I had another train to catch and this one had a name too. THE COAST STARLIGHT and this train took me all along the Californian Pacific coastline past places like Malibu, Santa Barbara and even the famous San Quentin prison where Johnny Cash famously sang for all the cons and wardens.
Finally I arrived in a place called Oakland, Oakland is part of San Francisco and you have to leave the train and a coach takes you across the Oakland bay bridge. Not to be confused with the more famous Golden Gate Bridge in Frisco itself.
I stayed in this wonderful city for a whole week and you know what, I didn’t want to leave. It’s a very beautiful part of the world and the restaurants and bars here among the best in the world.
Then there’s the magnificent scenery of course, but there was one place above all others that I really wanted to see and that was of course, ALCATRAZ. Made famous by those gangsters from the roaring 20s, such as Dillinger, George machine gun Kelly, Al Capone, to name but a few.
When you get there you are given little headsets telling you all about the prison’s former occupants. However my favourite bit was listening to the guides, you see “they” were former inmates now employed by the state of California as tour guides, how cool is that.
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After we had arrived back on the mainland I had lunch in the Alcatraz dinner and yes you sit in cell and are served by staff dressed as convicts, only in America.
I was a little bit in a dilemma at this stage, I had always wanted to go to Alaska, don’t know why and I know its bleeding cold, but the scenery is incredible and I have always wanted to see an Orca up close.
Killer whales are rarely seen anywhere else except of course in fucking sea world, but instead of opting for the great white north, I headed off to another dream destination, HAWAII.
Its two thousand miles from the west coast of America to the Hawaiian archipelago and about six hours, bloody worth it though.
You know when you see in movies where they drape flowers all over you when you arrive and say “Aloha,?” Well its really true, its then you realise you’re somewhere very special and the week I were here in Hawaii will forever be etched in my mind…
I checked into the Imperial hotel which was rather grand and this particular hotel was directly located on Waikiki beach.
The first time I witnessed an Hawaiian sunset was rather akin to having an epiphany and words can’t really describe how beautiful it is.
Honolulu is a very busy place and though there were other wonderful places in and around the island there was plenty to do here and I have to mention the heat at this point because it’s breathtakingly fucking hot here.
Even when the sun isn’t shining it really is boiling hot and I suppose a reason for that and for the first time in my life I had arrived in a tropical zone.
The main area of Honolulu is Waikiki beach made famous of course by the hit TV series Hawaii five 0 and mostly in the week I were here you would find me strolling down the esplanade and watching the sailing boats and outrigger canoes zipping about all over the bay.
This was the area also where I got propositioned by a hooker, but she wasn’t just any ordinary hooker she was drop dead strikingly fucking beautiful and it was all I could do to try and resist her, but I have never paid for it yet and never will do.
Pearl harbour.. No visit to Hawaii should ever be completed without having visited Pearl Harbour. This was the scene of course where the Japs decided to bomb the United States Pacific fleet in December 1941 and its only when you go on the tour and stare down at the remains of the USS Arizona that it brings home the horrific atrocity that happened on that fateful morning.
Indeed when you realise that there are several hundred sailors still down there and with it being a designated war grave you sort of leave that place with a completely different mindset to what you had before you arrived there.
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The week flashed passed and it was time to leave this island paradise and one of the things I will never forget was seeing the whole archipelago from the air, truly truly magnificent!!!
East this time and back to the continental United States. Destination Seattle and this was another one of those wonderful modern upcoming uplifting cities and home to some of the most recognisable companies on the planet, Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft just for starters.
Seattle is twinned with another city called Tacoma and sits in a sort of inlet where ferries ply to and fro to the many islands as well as the one owned by Canada, Victoria Island.
Again Seattle had many facets about it but the one I wanted especially to see was the Space Needle. This huge structure dominates the Seattle skyline and I just had to go up in the lift and admire the view.
Well you’ll never guess who I met in the elevator and I nearly fell over when I saw him? It was only George Takei or better known to all us oldies as Mr Sulu in the original Star Trek. Apparently there was a Star Trek convention going on and I actually managed to speak to him.
I asked why instead of using the lift like us mere mortals he didn’t just directly beam there instead? Well it went down like a fucking comedian at a funeral and he just stared at me rather uncomfortably, lol.
It was Halloween and as you know Halloween is celebrated in the states with gusto and it was on this particular evening I had dinner right at the very top of the space needle. And as a result got showed to my table by Freddy Kruger, served drinks and food by Jason whilst Count fucking Dracula played the piano, bizarre.
Again it was soon time to head off and again it would be in an easterly direction, first Portland Oregon and into Idaho then past Salt Lake City and eventually ending up in Denver Colorado.
This is sort of the halfway point in the US and also where the Rocky mountains are. These are quite spectacular and wherever you happen to be in Denver you can see them swelling up in the distance.
Whilst here I made a decision, I was going to go back home and face the music!! Made sense really, the money was starting to deplete and I knew unless I found work here, albeit illegally I would at some point have to go home and face the music, but that’s for later.
Redrocks amphitheatre is a natural haven for acoustics and it’s no wonder John Denver, U2 and Stevie Nicks amongst others played fantastic concerts here. Set between two huge dark red rocks I have to say it’s a very cool place to play a gig, especially with the city of Denver as the backdrop.
There was another must see attraction here too and one that reminded me of my childhood. It were William Cody’s grave or better known to all and sundry as Buffalo Bill and to be honest it’s just a simple affair, surrounded by little wrought iron railings.
Time to head yet further east and this time the train was called THE EMPIRE BUILDER.
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Rather fitting really because it was the rail road that paved the way for modern America to establish itself and enable it grow as a nation.
Lincoln Nebraska, Des Moines Iowa and the finally Chicago. Only a brief stop here then another Train called THE LAKE SHORE, aptly named really because this part of the world is surrounded by em.
Toledo, Buffalo, Syracuse and finally again having completed my mammoth trek across the United States of America I landed full circle back at Penn station New York city and with just two days left on my ticket.
I stayed in New York for about four days and did some more touristy stuff, walked across the famous old Brooklyn Bridge, had a buggy ride in central park and rode the Staten Island ferry.
But the one place I think everyone should visit and sadly I bet they don’t, is Ellis Island. This is in the New York harbour area and right nearby the Statue of Liberty, in Fact Lady Liberty is on an island too and yes it’s called Liberty Island.
The reason I have singled out Ellis Island is because this was usually the first point of arrival for most immigrants arriving in America for the very first time and on Ellis Island is a museum dedicated to displaying this fact.
I wont go into too much detail but suffice to say the main point is to get across the courage and fortitude of millions of these immigrants who were fleeing Europe. As well as Cuba, Russia for many varying reasons and on a wall in the main reception area is a huge map of the world with arrows showing where all these people came from and all with one objective in mind, “to make it in America.”
The bit for me that stood out though was the attraction directly in the middle of another huge hall. It was an airtight plastic bubble about 30ft high and about 20ft in diameter. Inside it was a myriad of peoples belongings that had been left on Ellis island by the various immigrants that were there being processed at the time and it were absolutely fascinating to see believe me.
Crunch time and the moment I stepped aboard that scheduled BA flight to Heathrow I wanted to jump off it again. But of course it was too late now and duly settled down with the courtesy headphones and wait for the in-flight meal.
Seven o clock in the morning and I was back on British soil, would I get arrested here or maybe somewhere else? I wasn’t sure and it was with some trepidation I walked past that beady eyed customs officer.
“Excuse me sir, would you like to come this way?”
Busted!!!
Or so it seemed, well that didn’t take too fucking long I thought to myself. Customs duly proceeded to check my luggage and informed me that they would be checking with the Police as well, as is standard procedure. I resigned myself to my fate and though I hadn’t broken any customs laws I had stolen over £10,000 and of course it would only be a matter of time before that customs officer came back and informed me of my rights.
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“Right Mr Garside you’re free to go, have a nice day!!!”
I nearly dropped fucking dead, he stared at me and asked me if I was OK. I swiftly recovered and said I were Honky fucking Dory then thank you very much and it were all I could do not to break into song and start fucking skipping.
A million questions were flying through my head, why hadn’t I been formally arrested, why weren't the cops looking for me and more importantly if that where the case and the Police hadn’t been involved in any way would that mean Steve Powers would seek his form of retribution?
I still had a thousand pounds left so I stayed in London for another week, again as in America I did the sights and enjoyed myself.
Whilst I were here I watched a world cup qualifier at Wembley stadium, England v Turkey. England won 4-0 so my first visit to our national stadium was a very favourable one.
A week later I arrived at Euston station and boarded a train to Manchester, a few hours later I knocked on my brother’s front door in Mossley and you should have seen the look on his face.
The following day I left for Rochdale and before I arrived at the Police station I turned up back at the club and staring at it suddenly realised it had been exactly two months since I did the deed.
I walked into Rochdale Police station and formally announced that I were the perpetrator of a robbery on the 4th October 1992 and waited to be arrested.
The desk sergeant just looked at me and asked me if I were joking, I told him I wasn’t and he again just stared at me in disbelief.
Eventually someone came to their senses and walking from around the counter informed me that I was now under arrest.
They placed me in a cell, but can you believe without closing the door! It wasn’t that they were lax or anything but they just really didn’t feel I posed a threat and they said it wasn’t every day that a fugitive handed themselves into their nick.
Shortly after I was interviewed and answered all their questions, it was all the officer that was interviewing could do not to burst out laughing.
You see, the Police knew all about Steven Powers and didn’t particularly care for him either. They knew he was up to all sorts and had been trying to get him on stuff for ages.
So when I popped up and handed myself in they found it rather amusing and saw it as form of sticking two fingers up at him which of course suited them.
I told them about any consequential threats or repercussions and they reassured me that if there was any of that nonsense they’d be down on him like a ton of bricks.
A few weeks later I was formally committed to Crown court at Rochdale magistrates and told I would learn my fate in May 1993..
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Christmas 1992 signified the end of a tumultuous year and to be honest I didn’t really enjoy this one, even though May was still five months away it was never far from my mind.
I had found digs again and this was at Peggy’s. She’d since separated from my brother and had other various flings with the odd guy and though I lived at Peggy’s I never saw her in a sexual way or any other, we were just good friends and I was a lodger simple as that.
It was around March 1993 that I found a job selling lottery tickets, these retailed at £1 and the idea was to try and raise money for a charity that involved brain injured children.
75 pence went to the charity less expenses, 25 pence went in my pocket and I did very well at this.
I used to dress up as a clown and spend a day in places like McDonald's holding a bucket. One particular day I sold a thousand tickets which meant of course I made £250 not bad for a days graft.
The guy in charge of this operation was a chap called Michael Haig. I really liked Mike and he had some brilliant ideas on how to make money and would later become a millionaire.
We worked from an office in Ashton/Under/Lyne and among the selling of lottery tickets we would try and come up with other ideas on how to make money. Like for instance designing scratch cards for sale to Masonic lodges and so forth.
Mike like myself had history too and indeed when I told him of my ensuing appointment with a Crown court judge he just shrugged his shoulders and regaled me with a story of his own encounter with the law.
Michael once owned a scrapyard and this was in partnership with another chap. Also at that time Mike’s wife was ill in hospital and with Mike also owning a newsagents found it hard to be everywhere all at the same time.
An ideal opportunity for someone with devious tendencies, which is what his partner at the scrap yard had. He proceeded to rip the business off for as much as he could and when Michael found out he wasn’t impressed.
His partner just laughed at Mike and stated that there was nothing he could do about it, he wasn’t laughing however when Mike had the guy on his knees with a shotgun barrel rammed down his throat.
He got away with it, suspended sentence I think and Mike used that experience to sort of reassure me that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion I would soon be gracing one of Her Majesty’s prisons.
Mike also promised to support me on the day of the trial, I could have had other people there if I had wanted, but I didn’t want friends and family witnessing me being sentenced to prison, if that were to be the case.
5th May 1993 and there I was standing in the dock flanked by two Prison officers. Even though I had resigned myself to the fact I were going down, I still found it disconcerting seeing two Prison Guards standing either side of me wearing that, “you’re going down mate” look on their faces.
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My Barrister tried his level best to get a deferred sentence but the Judge was having none of it. In summing up the case after listening to both the prosecution and the defence, the Judge said, “you spent £10,000 of someone else's money so therefore I have no alternative but to hand out a custodial sentence.
I have worked out that you also spent two months gallivanting off around America, so therefore I sentence you to prison for four months. Which means you will serve two months if you behave yourself, take him down.”
And that was it, I was officially a convict!! It doesn’t really sink in at first, you’re sort of in a state of shock, I expected it and but its still a shock. I have to say I feel sorry for the poor bastards that go up before the Beak and thinking they’re going home don’t, Jesus!!!
Before you actually go to prison you have to wait for the court to finish its business and because I were the first to be sent down, I would wait in a holding cell whilst all the other hapless sentenced victims would enter at various stages of the afternoon.
Some where OK, some were in pieces, you’d be surprised how people react once they know they’re going to Prison, it was an education just sitting in that cell watching them all come in, one by one…
There followed a series of procedures, an interview with my advocate who genuinely felt sorry for me and I can still hear his words. “Chin up, you got away lightly, I spoke to his Lordship in his chambers and believe me he wanted to send you away for at least two years. But he owed me one so you haven’t done too bad, just get your head down and you‘ll be out before you know it” at that point he winked, how fucking amazing is that?
After that you are psychologically assessed as well as administratively, so many fucking forms to fill in and I was starting to get the mother of all headaches.
Then came the teatime round up, which means around five o clock at the end of the days business, a prison truck arrives to take everyone that has been sentenced to prison.
This is where it starts to really dawn on you that you’re fucked, this is where the crashing reality that you’re about to do time really kicks in.
You’re all seated in little individual compartments and though nobody can see you through the windows, you think they can and it’s bloody awful.
About an hour later we arrived at HMP Liverpool or more commonly known as Walton Prison. This place holds about a thousand or so Convicted Category B prisoners as well as remand prisoners awaiting trial, and the minute you’re let out of the van it hits you. A row of Prison officers all lined up with large dogs awaiting for everyone to disembark and then you’re all led off in an orderly line to the processing centre.
Here you’re given more forms to fill out and any possessions you have are confiscated. You won’t be seeing them until the day you get released which at that time seemed a fucking eternity away.
I can still remember one of the prepossessing staff asking me if it where my first time inside, I said it was and he smiled and said, “exciting isn't it.”
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Fucking comedian, I didn’t need that. Afterwards you are showered, kitted out and fed, that’s if you can call it fucking food. Cold tea and some unrecognisable crap on a plastic tray, fucking disgusting and my moral was staring to visibly deplete by the minute.
Then you are showed to your room, along countless fucking walkways and up steel stairs. Lots of steel stairs then eventually to your en suite accommodation courtesy of her Majesty. The en suite bit by the was a fucking potty in the corner of your cell.
The minute that heavy steel door slammed shut I felt terrified, I know I fully deserved where I was and I’m not quibbling about that for one second. But it’s still a fucking terrifying experience once that door closes and believe me this is also the point when if your gonna crack up you will.
The reason I know that is because after about 30 seconds a little slat in in the door opened and two beady eyes stare at you for about the same time, satisfied you’re not gonna top yourself it closes.
I got my head down and I have to tell you, the worst part of being in there was waking up the following morning after being sentenced. Because for a few nano seconds you think your still at home, fucking nightmare, lol.
I stayed on my own in that cell for about two days after that I had a cell mate. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted one or not, sometimes it can help if you’re with someone in the same boat so to speak but I didn’t really care either way and slowly but surely I started to adjust to prison life.
The first person that sees you is the Governor. He or she goes through your case and asks you if you want to appeal, with not wanting to they then ask you if there are any psychological problems affecting you in any way, I said no again.
I was in Walton Prison for about two weeks and to be honest and contrary to popular belief, I didn’t witness anybody being shagged up the arse or being gang banged in the showers, that stuff just looks good on TV.
The food was even starting to taste better, but if you don’t eat you starve, simple as that. There are recreational facilities even inside a closed Prison, such as pool tables, TV, and so forth but I didn’t partake in any of that. I kept myself to myself and read books, the time went quicker and believe me, when your in Prison, “time” takes on a whole new fucking meaning.
Two weeks after being sentenced I was told I was being transferred to what’s called an open Prison; this place was called Kirkham Open prison in Lancashire, which meant exactly that.
Kirkham used to be an RAF base and is populated by a series of long huts; these were before it became an open Prison, billets for serving RAF personnel doing their National Service.
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Within the grounds of this place was also a series of buildings known as blocks. Canteen, offices, recreational and learning buildings too and it was mostly in these types of places where I served out the remaining six weeks.
I passed two courses, one in business studies and the other was in computing. I also read one of my all time favourite books whilst I was here and you will piss your sides when I tell you what it was.
The fucking Shawshank Redemption, I kid you not and it felt really strange reading about a prison whilst you were actually in one, lol.
Also here were quite a lot of greenhouses, these were mainly populated by tomato plants, but Lettuce, Cabbage, Carrots and other veg were grown here too. Which meant that the food in this place was fucking excellent and you got fed three times a day and its no wonder people put weight on when they’ve been inside.
I made a few friends whilst I were here too and let me just set the record straight here, just because your in Prison it doesn’t make you a bad person, oh I know there are lot of em in there, I know because I seen em of course.
But there are “good” people too, who have just fallen off the path for one reason or another, but fundamentally they’re still human beings and know very well “why” they’re in there but still carry out whatever sentence was given to them with dignity.
Talking of people who were in there, you’d be surprised how many Postmen there are, as well as Bank Managers and Lawyers; indeed they call Prisons like Kirkham white collar prisons because of that very fact.
There “are” Murderers, Rapists, Drug Dealers and Bank Robbers in there too, but they’re toward the end of their sentence and considered low risk, why would they want to escape after completing nine tenths of a fucking fifteen year stretch?
A lot did escape though, nearly every night and for the life of me I still don’t know why. All you had to do was jump over a fence and away you went. But if you were caught and you usually were, you’d lose all your privileges, go back to bang up nick and do the whole of your sentence instead of half of it, fucking madness.
The 5th of July 1993 is a day I will never forget and though Kirkham open Prison was an open nick and relatively relaxed compared to other prisons, it was “still that,” a Prison.
07.30 am and once again dressed in jeans and T shirt and not the regulation pinstriped shirt and blue prison issue pants you had to wear, I made my way past the gate and to “freedom.”
I had done it, I had done the crime and completed the time and I had done it with grace and honesty. Meaning not getting into any shit or other stuff like drugs, beatings, gang stuff, or anything else. I know it were only two months but it was still two months of my liberty and to anyone reading this who has done a stretch, “they’ll know exactly what I mean!!
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Onwards and upwards or so I thought. You see the problem with spending a while inside has other drawbacks, like for instance when you apply for job, or see people you know who also know where you were for the last two months.
My answer to both those questions is so what, what’s done is done and yes I broke the law and took someone's money. But I also paid the penalty by losing my liberty for a couple of months and though it were a short sentence it had an impact that still effects me to this day 18 years later.
The rest of 93 was spent sort of not knowing where I wanted to go and to be honest the middle 90s were nothing like as interesting as other parts of my life.
I travelled to London to work in a large pub called The Nags head, this was actually in a place called Welling if I’m being precise and I stayed here for about 8 months.
I returned home to Tameside again and once again stayed as a lodger either at Aileen's or some other friends I knew, as well as at my brother’s too.
1997 and of course the year Princess Diana died in that awful “accident” in Paris. By this time I were working for a company called Essentials, this company sold all sorts of cheap stuff from kiddies toys to gardening tools and at that time a lot of these shops were springing up everywhere.
I was a manager here but again the curse of change that has haunted me for so long struck again and because of a brand new shopping mall being built, it cut trade off from all the shops on our block so in effect we had to close.
Not to worry the old travel bug had bitten again and for the very last time I would drag the old thumb out of retirement and head south, this time it was to the channel island of Jersey, via the south coast port of Weymouth.
June 1997 and I landed in the islands capital, St. Helier, didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was going to stay, you see everything with me is fucking random, a constant swirling and mish mashing of thoughts and ideas all eventually ending up in the same direction, fucking nowhere, lol.
After a couple of days of sleeping rough and scratching around for work I found somewhere. This place was called the Bonne Nuit Hotel and was situated in the beautiful north of Jersey called the Parish of St.John.
Jersey by the way isn’t really part of the UK, it is defence wise and has very strong links to the British crown, but there it stops. The whole place is governed by itself which meant of course no sodding VAT and other such duties that are levied on all of us other suckers in the UK.
This is where I met the irrepressible Joe. Joe Vargem was the then manager at the Bonne Nuit hotel and if any of you out there know who Jose Mourinho is then you’ll know what Joe looks like. In fact he didn’t just look like the special one he fucking acted like him and if I didn’t know better I’d say the two were related.
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Joe of course was Portuguese and in fact there was quite a colony of Portuguese working and living on Jersey, still is, most of them come from another Island, this one being Madeira, yes the one with the wine not the fucking cake.
I started off as barman and I really loved running that little bar in the hotel, it would get awfully busy too especially when we had acts on. The best of them was a chap called Peter Platter, problem was he was absolutely bloody awful.
He could sing could Peter, but his jokes were dire, except if he’d had a drink, then they’d improve but the downside was they’d also get blue and very edgy.
There was one occasion I’ll never forget, when in trying to perform his Norman Wisdom act, Peter came staggering into the bar shouting. “Mr Grimsdale, Mr Grimsdale,” the problem was Peter suffered terribly from stage fright and always had to have a few scoops before a performance.
Well on this occasion Peter had really been on the sauce and as a consequence tripped over a trailing speaker cable and crashed head first into my fucking bar knocking himself out.
I calmly reached for a soda siphon and leaning over the bar squirted him back to consciousness. I kid you not and the fucking audience just clapped a round of applause, incredible.
There was another memorable scene in that hotel bar and one I’ll never forget.
In the corner was huge fireplace, this was one of those massive ones you could walk into and made out of solid Jersey granite.
Well it was approaching the end of my first season there and starting to get a bit nippy, the central heating was on but the hotel was very old and thus the radiators weren’t very good.
Staring one afternoon at the empty fireplace I had a brainwave, an hour later I stood back and admired the huge roaring fire all crackling and warm like.
A bit later on the first guests arrived for their early evening aperitif before the meal got served, they were really impressed at first until one of them asked why there was a blue haze in the bar?
Its true, I hadn’t noticed it at first with being outside bottling up and restocking the bar ready for the oncoming rush.
But there in the bar was now a hanging blue haze and it was getting thicker by the minute.
You see what had happened was, in my haste to get the fire going, which incidentally was already made up, logs and paper, everything, in fact all I had to do was light it.
But what I should have done and what I hadn’t, was “check the fucking flu.”
So of course the smoke had nowhere to go but back into the bar and by this time everyone were coughing their lungs out and you couldn’t see the restaurant for dense smoke.
Swiftly I filled a large bucket full of water and threw it all over the fire, that though just made it fucking worse, this time there was white smoke billowing out everywhere.
The guests who incidentally were all elderly were evacuated outside to the tea garden and I along with some staff proceeded to grab large flat serving trays and use them as hand fans in a vain effort to disperse the thick choking smoke.
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Of course there’s always a fucking comedian and when I got back to the bar I noticed a string had been erected across the top of the bar and hanging from it were some fucking kippers, like I said, there’s always one.
There are lots of other memories here, a management coup occurred and the new owner didn’t want Joe around. Which was a shame, he really was the type of character that place needed and I learned more about the restaurant business from Joe in four months than at any other stage of my life in the licensed trade, he was a star.
The Bonne Nuit catered for weddings, Christenings and anything else you wanted, even wakes, if you wanted feeding with a view and a good piss up, then you came to the Bonne Nuit hotel.
I also had a couple of flings here and one of those little flings was with a young lady by the name of Sarah Pearson.
Sarah was actually a fitness trainer for TV’s Gladiators and she really was a little stunner, indeed if the guests could possibly have known what I did to Sarah one night on the settee in the TV lounge it would have turned their fucking hair white, yes I really did get “down” and “dirty,” lol.
I stayed on the island of Jersey until early 1999, the hotel was about to be demolished due to an ecoli scare in the water supply so it was off back to England and yet another job as well as finally acquiring my own place to live.
6 Oakdale court in Stalybridge was my new little Chez Garside and it really was a flashy little pad.
Even though this place was only a bedsit it was a luxury bedsit as in the way it was decorated. Which was very nicely and the position it was situated, Mottram road was and is quite a prestigious place to live in my neck of the woods.
Shortly after moving in a vacancy arose and this one was and I know, irony of ironies, was working with the Police.
This job was purposely designed really for people who were from a retail background which is what I mostly did.
The job title was a CCTV operator and this was situated right in the centre of Manchester, I myself along with five more worked in pairs and in three eight hour shifts.
Not sure if anyone has ever been inside a CCTV room but this particular one was like the bridge in Star Trek. Thirty large 60 inch screens set against a wall with of course smaller monitors directly in front of the operator positioned on a desk.
The idea was to follow and monitor any behaviour that was deemed suspicious or out of the ordinary.
Well believe me there was and because there’s too many incidents to mention, below is a condensed list of what I saw or was involved in
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Various attempted murders.
Ram raids.
Football riots and mass disturbances.
Armed robberies.
A male shopper dropping dead just as I pointed the camera at his face.
Bag dippers, sneak thieves.
Shop lifters
Car chases
Police brutality
Yes even that was filmed and much to the disdain of the cops. They didn’t particularly enjoy that, it was OK to film villains and other stuff but Bobbies beating people up was a no no. We still filmed it though, wouldn’t have been right would it if we hadn’t?
A whole host of people came into this control room for one reason or another and because CCTV was rather new at this stage, as well as being controversial, it seemed to attract the news media which of course attracted the politicians, local and national.
I shook hands with the Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jack Straw, John two jags Prescott among loads of others, but the folks who I were fascinated by were the spooks.
Yes, we were actually visited by members of Her Majesties Secret Service on more than one occasion, mainly MI5.
At the time there were a lot of demonstrations against the fur business and this attracted a lot of animal rights members whom some were considered extremely dangerous.
So in came the spooks and I kid you not, you would never know these people were fucking spies, or whatever the hell they were supposed to be and they always turned up when you least expected them.
There was Special Branch too, these are the police who are always armed and are usually used to guard high ranking politicians as well as members of the Royal Family and it was one of these cops I had an affair with.
It was only a very brief affair but I really liked Denise and she always carried that fucking gun around. They had too, went with the territory and she used to jokingly say it was really to pistol whip me with if I weren’t up to scratch in fucking bed, lol.
Christmas 1999 and after getting into my shift in the control room I gotta call from reception downstairs, we were on the 3rd floor.
Puzzled I arrived in reception to see a smiling Denise there. Striding right up to me she planted her tongue straight down my throat and thrusting a bottle of Scotch in my hand she wished me a Merry Christmas, that’s the last I ever saw of her!!!
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The 21st Century
The CCTV job was very well paid but the problem was the shifts. Such as working from 6am til 2pm the first week, 2pm til 10pm the next and finally 10pm til 6am. There followed a whole week off after that and these were known as Police shifts, 3 on 1 off.
Now that might suit some but it didn’t me, there were some days I would wake up and my head would be up my arse, I suppose I were only ever designed for daylight work. It were the nights that screwed me up and how people manage to sleep a full eight hours in the daytime, particularly in Summer is totally beyond my comprehension.
Nine months after catching criminals I decided to leave and set up in another small business, this being a little newsagents in Stalybridge. I invested nearly £3,000 in this venture and it started off OK, but then the curse of change that’s followed me around for so long rose its ugly head and very soon it all went tits up.
First the road outside my shop got dug up because of some multi million pound renovation project, then Camelot [The National Lottery] decided they weren’t going to give me a lottery terminal after all.
And to top it all off, the fucking building’s owners kindly informed me that due to unforeseen circumstances they were unable to “re assign” the lease, have you noticed they always say kindly when its usually bad fucking news?
So after breaking several pint pots against the kitchen wall and swearing unspeakable curses on that pot bellied twat of an estate agent I finally wound HIGH STREET NEWS up.
I was sort of glad in one way because I really didn’t miss the 4.30am starts and miserable po faced customers giving me grief about their own life’s failings at seven o clock in the fucking morning. Then there were the thieving school kids, people constantly coming into the shop trying to sell me stolen goods and creditors wanting to reiterate that it were “they” that now owned my soul, not me.
After walking away from that nightmare I decided to do the same as the majority of the human race and work for someone else again.
QUIDS IN-- was a chain of shops that sold cheap goods in and around the Greater Manchester area and this business was owned by a partnership of two, Paul and Howard.
I did my training in Wythenshaw [South Manchester] and then a couple of weeks later and in early October 2000 took up the position of manager in my home town of Ashton/Under/Lyne.
This position was only ever going to be temporary and I knew this right from the off but we duly stocked the shop up to the gills and I hired the staff.
I have to say and even though this shop was only open for just over three months due to it being a temp lease arrangement.
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I have to say it were the hardest I have ever worked in my life and that was mainly down to the staff.
Yes I know what you’re going to say, “well you hired the fuckers.”
And yes I did, but when you only have so much time to get these people in and trained and being only paid the minimum wage. Then it’s usually the case you’re going to get fucking retards and Christ knows what else and believe me, this is exactly what I ended up with in this case.
There were quite a few incidences, too many too mention but the one that stood out above all was the Saturday before Christmas 2000.
On having a clandestine meeting, the official branch of Moron’s R us decided that “they” weren’t going to work on Christmas Eve for no less than “double” money.
I explained in a normal rational and calm way that with Christmas Eve falling on Sunday this year meant it was a normal day and that knowing the boss they would probably get treated anyway.
They wouldn’t have, Paul & Howard were as tight as a ducks arse and then some and swore by their own official company mantra, “promise” em diamonds “give” em fuck all, but I had a shop to run and would deal with the fall out later.
Of course the best laid plans and all that and they all fucked off, apart from one. Right in the middle of a busy Saturday afternoon and the one before Christmas, these fucking inbred, one stop from being a fucking miscarriage excuses for human beings left me in the shit, right up to my fucking eyeballs.
Well if that’s not the excuse “never” to go into retail management then I don’t know what is and the cheeky bastards had the effrontery to come back with their boy fiends. No I haven’t misspelled, husbands, cousins you name it and “demanded” that I pay them their wages.
I phoned the boss up and he arrived with reinforcements and eventually the situation calmed down, not pleasant though and at one point got quite nasty and still to this day when I see some of these people, I get abuse from them. In fact one of them, a woman, starts spitting and snarling like a fucking animal and as result am not sure whether to call a cop or some one from the RSPCA?
January 2001 and I parted company with Quids in, fucked the cruciate ligament up in my right knee and moved house, all in that order.
Six months later I started employment with a company called Supergifts, this was a chain of about 50 shops situated from as far north as Newcastle to as far south as Wolverhampton in the West Midlands.
Supergifts was owned by a parent company called Woolbro and this huge wholesalers imported container loads of cheap goods into the UK mainly from the peoples republic of China.
My first position here was in a shop situated in a town called Oldham in Lancashire and talk about baptisms of fucking fire.
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Oldham is mostly populated by white indigenous folks, however there is quite a sizeable Asian or as some like to say ethnic immigrant population too and after some spark ignited the fires of hate there followed a spate of full scale riots in and around the town.
It was on the back of these riots I started my career with Supergifts or as the shops were usually named, SUPERPOUND.
This is actually were I made quite the name for myself in the retail sector albeit in a usually unorthodox manner.
The shop in Oldham was initially staffed by lazy bastards and that meant a good old spell of gardening. Or should I say fucking weeding, as in getting rid of the shit, which is what I did with frightening ferocity.
Within only three months, the Oldham branch of Superpound had gone from being 25.5 per cent in the red to 12.5 per cent into the black, that’s a massive 38 per cent swing and in only a short space of time, a miracle??
No-- just a change in personnel and sticking the two hundred and fifty grand’s worth of stock that was sat downstairs in the warehouse onto the shelves upstairs instead, not rocket science was it?
That and selectively ordering what I wanted to sell and not what the fucking moron in the warehouse in Leeds who didn’t know Jack shit about shops wanted me too. Yes I know what you’re thinking and “yes” you’d be right, probably got called a lot worse too but hey,” that’s the way it is and even as an employee, particularly in management, you have to treat it as if it were your own business or it simply won’t work.
It wasn’t long before other companies became interested and in fact two other high volume retailers tried on more than one occasion to recruit me which I used to my fullest advantage.
As soon as these companies got in touch I contacted my bosses and told em what their rivals were offering me. Then after Superpound bettered it I would contact the other company and they in turn would increase their original offer.
If there were to be a suitable analogy for this scenario I suppose it would equate to being on top of a hill carrying a large pile of bricks, in other words being in the dominant position which is exactly where I wanted to be.
Eventually and having not only increased my portfolio or standing within Superpound I had gained an extra four thousand pounds on top of my salary and various other benefits attached to said new package.
I was also promoted to the firms flagship shop in a place called Middleton and the first task here was witness the incumbent manager get suspended for alleged misappropriation of till receipts. In other words he’s been caught with his fucking fingers in the till.
Again like all my other exploits in various other employment positions it would take me for ever to tell you about every one of them but there is one that will simply blow your socks off.
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One of many shops I managed for this company was in the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield and in this case the shop was called the 99p shop. The reason being a branch of Poundland decided to suddenly open up right next door thus forcing our company to re brand.
Again when I first got here and like nearly all of the shops I went into it were struggling and had staffing problems and like before it were only a matter of time before I sorted them out, which was what I did here.
Before I continue on I simply have to give a very special mention to a wonderful former work colleague and who I regard also as a true friend,
Her name is Samantha Heaton and is as hard a working, honest wonderful human being as your ever likely to meet and in all the time I were there in Huddersfield it was the lovely Sammy that probably kept me sane and my feet firmly planted on the ground.
Now back to the story and it’s the autumn of 2004 and I’m about to employ a serial killer!!!
The first time I met Desmond Lee or Des to you and I was at the back of my shop and I were politely enquiring to a member of my staff as to why that display they’d just put out resembled the rear of a Camel’s arse.
Standing there holding his CV Des informed that he’d come for a job and so forth, just before we arrived in my office he suddenly informed me that he had to tell me something .
Listening he then told me he had a past, “haven’t we all?” at the time I was drinking coffee and when on asking him what he’d done and Des replying that he’d once murdered someone I nearly fucking scalded myself.
Cutting a long story short he then went into detail of how 15 years ago he’d been in a gay relationship with this other young man and that the young man’s mother didn’t approve.
In fact she went to great lengths to put her point across until one day after Des had been drinking rather excessively, she proceeded to throw certain household items at Des.
Des responded by placing both hands around his future mother in laws throat and duly throttled the fucking life out of her.
I just sat there, I have to be honest, even after going through what I had already been through, well it’s not every day you sit in front of some one just candidly talking about committing the “ultimate” act is it?
After listening to him and also talking to his probation officer I made a decision. I employed him and the reason I did this is because like I said earlier and taking into consideration the fact he was still under strict licence, is that “everyone” deserves a second chance.
If you think about it, it was perfect in every way, because the vacancy was for a supervisor and that entailed handling cash. Which meant that there right in front of me was someone who I knew for a fact literally couldn’t step over the fucking line or it would be bye bye and back to the slammer, forever!!!
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So I took the plunge and never one for being shy when it came to making controversial decisions I stood by my actions.
I did tell my assistant manager Susan and eventually every other member of staff, though Sue supported me the rest of the staff didn’t. I suppose you could understand their consternation but they also had to understand who was in charge and as result respect my decision.
About three months later I had to let Des go, he hadn’t done anything wrong, in fact he were quite the model employee. It were the other members of staff constantly antagonizing him and making constant references to his errr, prior misgivings such as. “No way am I going in that warehouse alone with Deathly Des,” or “if I’m working with him I’m wearing a fucking neck brace” and even “do we get fucking danger money working with a convicted murderer!!
So of course I had to wipe my mouth before Des did actually revert to type and I had another fucking Halloween on my hands, lol.
Six years later after saying goodbye to Des he killed again, apparently this time it was someone he were seeing, lover, friend. Don’t know for sure but according to the press Des for reasons only he knows dispatched this hapless fellow in the most gruesome of circumstances.
There were of course other situations during my six year tenure at Supergifts and if I’m being completely honest, though I were and still am a bit of a maverick as in being unpredictable in the workplace. I did achieve some remarkable results whilst I were there and held the title of “the fixer,“ whenever anything was wrong with any of the shops, a title I’m quite proud of.
*****
2007 and this would be my last in the world of retail for quite some time, I did a bit of freelancing in pubs owned by people I know, but the last proper job was working for a chap called Peter Taylor.
No, not the football Manager, there’s only one Pete Taylor believe me and though I were only working for this guy for three months it was a memorable one.
Probably the most obnoxious human being I have ever had the misfortune to come in contact with and how Peter never got a smack from me I’ll never know. You do tend to calm down as you get older but believe me, my will got sorely tested during my employ with this Muppet.
May 2007 and the morning after my beloved Liverpool got beat in the champions league final by AC Milan I was told by the charming Peter that I were to be made redundant, his excuse was, times were hard and also had to lay others off too.
He was lying of course, three months later he advertised for another manager, I never bothered, to be quite honest I was getting to the end of my tether with retail and finally decided that the future for me lay in writing.
Just before I begin this what will be the last part, well for now anyway, I just want to quickly skip back to 2003.
This was whilst I were still managing the Oldham branch of Superpound and a moment really we all dread and hope will never happen.
And believe me I honestly don’t think I have ever been in a more stressful situation then I were that late Saturday afternoon nearly seven years ago.
I was downstairs in the bowels of the building if you like when it happened. One of the female staff ran toward me screaming that there was a little boy having some sort of fit on the shop floor.
I didn’t even stop to think and wonder why the boy’s parents or anyone else didn’t sort it out I just charged right through a circle of watching customers all ringing their hands and crying.
It was a little boy, about six years old and he hadn’t had a fit he were fucking choking to death!!
Apparently he’s bitten the top off of a small plastic toy and it was now lodged in his windpipe of course blocking the airway and stopping him breathing.
He was in a dreadful state, someone had already called the Paramedics but there wasn’t time, he had gone totally blue and as well as losing consciousness his lips had gone a funny colour too.
Barging my way through I grabbed hold of him and shook him awake. I can’t tell you how awful those fucking sounds were coming out of his mouth and if I had stop to think about that then it would have been game over.
I figured out pretty quickly he had swallowed something but wasn’t sure were it was or how far down?
Spinning the boy around I clattered him with the flat of my hand between his shoulder blades.
Nothing!! And I now I knew I had only fucking seconds before I lost him. Picking him up, by the way he had lost consciousness now, I grabbed him around his little waist and bear hugged him.
This is called the Heimlich manoeuvre and you’re not supposed to perform this on youngsters in case you damage the ribcage but desperate times call for desperate measures and this I did.
It fucking worked, the piece of plastic dropped into his stomach and instantly precious Oxygen came flooding into that little boys lungs. Shortly after, he regained consciousness and exactly the moment I handed him over to a very grateful Mother, the fucking Ambulance arrived.
It wasn’t until later I realised the seriousness of what happened there and I have the most amazing respect to those incredible people who not only do this day in and day out, but put their very lives on the line whilst doing so, hats off to ALL the emergency services!!
Well I can tell you I got very drunk that night and also very depressed at the thought of what if I had got that wrong and that little boy had died in my arms, fucking horrible thought and one I quickly got rid of.
What truly amazed me though was the amount of people standing and watching. They were obviously very frightened and worried about the unthinkable if they had committed themselves to having a go and I can fully understand that. But to be honest there wasn’t time to think, I just got on with it and often wonder how that boy’s doing, he’ll be a teenager now and probably a right little bastard? Lol.
That’s the vanity bit over and now on with the story.
July 19th 2007 and it’s at this particular stage of my life when I suddenly decide, fuck it!!
I’m gonna do what I were born to do and that’s steal money from rich people and live like a fucking Lord!!
Just Joking, lol.
What I really meant is I wanted to pursue a career in writing and if you’re reading my life story on Amazon kindle, check out the list of short fiction on that page too. They’re all there and there’s even a full length novel entitled JOHNNY DIGWEED of which is also available for sale...
To say I have never written anything before and had little or no support from anyone, professionally I mean, I don‘t think I have done too badly.
Indeed later on in the same year I started writing, THE WHISPERING TOWER which was broadcast after the Queens speech on local radio. Shortly after, the local newspaper wrote an article on that story. After I were interviewed on the same radio station.
Recent projects are all in the link provided and some of these works have won major competitions and have even been looked at by TV companies such as Sky, Channel 5 and even The BBC..
My current project is a short creepy story entitled A PERFECT WORLD and should be finished in a month or so..
I'd like to mention also that from The 30th November 2013 I have been working part time as a barman at The Fairfield Arms in Audenshaw near Manchester..
I really enjoy this work, even if it is knackering at times, but the customers and staff whom I work with make it all worth while and likely as not I will be here for quite some time to come..
Well there we are, I'm now 54 and you're all up to date with MY STORY and unless I get run over or suffer a heart attack, I'll be around a little bit longer.. LOL
Before I go I'd just like to give a special mention to people whom I know well and of course respect..
Stephen Jones
Paul the cleaner
Colin the digger
Kate Powell
Frank the fireman
Tony & Pam
Geoffrey Bean
Barry the Blue
All the guys I work with, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE..
Ian & Sam
Samantha Heaton
Chrissy, Judy, Duchess and Jennifer, as well as all my other many close friends..
And all the rest of the fabulous people I know whom there are too many to mention..
YOU ALL ROCK
THE END??
THE END??
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