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Phil Bell was born in 1949 in the Ancoats district of Manchester.
My friend, John Minice was a quiet studious boy, the amount of facts he knew was staggering, he knew everything about anything. His mam had died when he was a baby and his gran and dad brought him up.
His dad had a tic and we knew how to set it off. If you shouted to him when he wasn't expecting it he would twitch and if he couldn't see you he twitched even more. His head would start nodding like a woodpecker.
We did this until his nephew caught us. He was really fat with bright red hair, thick glasses and loads of black heads and pimples. He caught us and took us back to his house. Our punishment was to be made to eat a spider's web. He forced it in our mouths, shoving it in with his thumb. He also pinched my ear and it was red for a month.
Phil Bell was born in 1949 in the Ancoats district of Manchester.
My cousin Graham was the definitive ladies man, he could pull the girls, he was smart, good looking and had the gift of the gab. We all used to stand in the Co-Op doorway on Varley Street, with or without girls.
The music revolution had started, we were the founder members of Joynson Memorial Youth Club and we re-painted it in more fashionable colours than the Victorian brown and the 1930s green. The Joynson was a disused Baptist Chapel on Hooton Street. This was where our introduction to chatting the girls up was refined.
We all sat around in Barry Harrison's house listening to Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Stones, Donovan and The Searchers, we were hooked. I had a Dansette and a Grundig Reel to Reel Tape recorder.
We were now young men, although every now and again the child broke through. Especially when we went on expeditions on the Seven Wonders or the canal, on the patch of no mans land between the gas works on Bradford Road and Ashton New Road.
This was the place where fear was either concreted into you or dispelled. I have spoken to men well over seventy years of age and they did the same things we did on the Seven Wonders. Tasks set by our peers must have been handed down through generations.
The first dare was to swim across the canal in front of the barge turning to the wood yard. The second was to walk across the bridge that went over the canal until you reached the highest part of the stalwart where you had to touch the far wall. It was a fifty-foot drop down to the River Medlock.
The third and final task was to walk through the tunnel under Hulme Hall Lane in Manchester, then on to the graveyard. The distance was about a mile. I don't know anyone who ever attempted it.
I walked part way into the canal with John Dunn and then got scared. I pretended I had twisted my ankle, John Dunn said OK lets go back then, he was as brave as me! Some coffins had washed down the tunnel from the graveyard in the bad floods of the last century. I admit that was in the 1890s but you never know do you!
One dare was to climb up the gasometer. They had steel stairs and a banister. Anthony Barlow told me to do it at night.
I went up with him three-quarters of the way and then came down again saying 'Bollocks. Bollocks to that Tony'. Thank goodness it wasn't in the daytime, to climb at night meant you couldn't see down, and we had got the furthest up.
In '62, '63 and '64 they did an awful lot of filming around where we lived. 'A Taste of Honey', 'Hell is a City', 'The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner', and a couple of others, they were called 'kitchen sink' dramas.
We saw them setting up the equipment near Royales Bridge over the Rochdale canal. Huge lights, trucks, wagons and all the paraphernalia needed to make a film and to keep us mesmerised
They started filming on a Tuesday morning in the Easter holidays. We arrived at the canal, 'what's the film called mate' we shouted, they ignored us, 'hey Mister, what's it called then' he turned and said 'A Taste Of Honey, now be quiet. Please!' he demanded.
We stood there gawking at them, and then a smell permeated the atmosphere, the smell of hamburgers and onions. Like the 'Bisto Kids' we followed the scent. In the middle of the pile of trucks stood a van that had been converted a food van.
'Hey mate. Can we have a hot dog or an hamburger?' 'Piss off' was the two-word reply. 'Go on mate, give us one'. 'Piss off or you'll get a clout' the chef mumbled.
'Quiet on the set, action' someone shouted, 'Go on mate give us a hamburger, don't be tight,' Brian Macdonald shouted. 'Quiet Please!' someone shouted. 'Go on you've got loads'. The chef pointed at us with a knife in a threatening gesture. Brian Macdonald shouted 'get stuffed' and then we got chased.
A man walked over to us and said in cultured and slightly feminine voice, 'Please, young men, we are filming, its a really important scene, and we all need to be really quiet don't we, so boys lets see if we can all be quiet OK' and with that he turned and with his nose in the air walked off.
'Hey mate can we have an hamburger then?' Brian Macca said. The posh man turned with nostrils flaring. 'I'll get the police, I'll show you, I will I'm not kidding'.
'Give us some hamburgers and we'll go away' Macca interrupted. Then we all started in unison 'give us food, give us food' the truce was sealed. A delegation from the film company brought us our grub. We got a hamburger and hotdog each, nothing has ever tasted that good.
Then we positioned ourselves on Lomas's scrap yard wall to watch the action. Arthur Sheldon was picked to do a scene. He had to walk up the canal throwing stones in the water.
We decided to join him, throwing stones bricks and any old thing we could find. We were chased up the canal, but if you look closely you can see a few kids near the locks, that was us, film stars!
Phil Bell, Greater Manchester, 2001 We had to get our own back on him. I had a great idea, it was summer and he occasionally slept in a tent in the garden.
We had a fence that separated our house from next doors it was made of wood, and it was rotten. Inside the rotten part of the fence there were earwigs. I caught four of them in a matchbox in readiness for the big offensive against John Minice's evil cousin.
The next day I came home from school and retrieved my matchbox from behind the air-raid shelter. The next part of the plan was to slide in between the fence that was at the bottom of the garden and make my way to the tent in the garden.
I climbed under the tent and placed the matchbox, slightly open, in his pillow. My job was done, now it was up to the earwigs.
According to folklore the earwigs would climb into your ear and eventually penetrate your brain. I Doubt it worked! In fact it categorically didn't work as he passed his eleven plus and went to grammar school, never mind, you can't win them all!
Manchester seemed to be populated by an eccentric compilation of folk. There was the man who had a sweet shop near our school. He had a huge lump on the side of his neck, my granddad said he ate a potato too quick and it went down the wrong hole, 'but don't stare at him'.
Being told not to stare was the worse thing to say to a kid. I told all my pals about how the lump got there, it was a talking and 'staring point' for weeks!
There were old women who had 'trestle legs' as they used to call them. Their legs were a genuine Z shape. I found out later it was caused through bad diet and rickets.
There were old men who had been gassed or injured or affected in some way from the World War I. A man who lived around the corner ran around the streets with not a stitch on! John Minice's dad was always twitching, old men shouted to themselves in the street and some people pulled their tongue out for no apparent reason.
Another man walked down the road swearing and flinging his arms in every direction like a human windmill and there was a man who we called 'electric legs', who used to fling his legs in every direction.
All the family had nicknames for everyone and everything. Mrs Yates was called 'Cornbeef Legs' because her shins were mottled through years of sitting in front of an open coal fire.
Phil Bell, Greater Manchester, 2001
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