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Phil Bell was born in 1949 in the Ancoats district of Manchester.
My grandma died in her sleep at the age of fifty-four. My mother found her dead in bed in the morning. My grandma was always up to make the fire and put the kettle on for tea, that morning she wasn't. That's why my mam went to see her.
All I remember is my mam screaming at the top of her voice, 'Mam, Mam no-no please God no', I jumped up and ran in the bedroom, she was shaking her, she looked like she was asleep, her hand propping up her chin, she always slept like that. My dad tried to comfort my mother and he took her downstairs. Jeff and Steve were crying. The next few hours were a blur with different neighbours running in and out.
I had to go and stay next door. I remember my granddad coming home from work, someone must have phoned him. He looked in a daze. My grandma stayed in the house for a week, no chapel of rest then. The sweet sickly smell of death permeated every corner of the house.
I went to my bedroom to get something, I remember my granddad coming up the stairs and entering their bedroom. I peeped in, my granddad was holding my grandma's hand, a white sheet covered her entire body and he was sobbing softly.
He wasn't a demonstrative man my granddad, he lived his life in a quiet dignified way. I didn't go to the funeral; I wasn't asked or allowed to participate. I still wonder why.
My Auntie Millie said to my mother, 'its no good crying over spilt milk, you'll have to get on with life'. Fatal words as she was then ostracised from my mothers very being. The house was never the same, it couldn't be and my mother sunk into a depression that couldn't be lifted.
Why did the summers seem warmer then? Those glorious summers nights when all the kids invented their own forms of amusement. The girls would throw their skipping ropes around the gas lamps cast iron shoulders, using the ropes as swings, going first one way then the other.
These were the kind of nights when any child's dreams and wishes could come true, everyone happy, all those you loved so dearly sat outside. Chairs usually confined to kitchen were brought outside.
Some sat on the doorsteps with cups of tea, chatting with neighbours catching up on gossip. No arguing, no bad tempers, just peace. The smell of hops brewing in Wilson's brewery's yard, Radio Luxembourg coming from one of the houses 'we are the Ovaltinies little boys and girls'.
Life was poor in money but rich in love and affection, few material possessions, but a wealth of concern and warmth.
These were working class nights in a working class street, in a working class town, a night when nothing could spoil the bliss, apart from the wail of 'time for bed, come on in'.
My mother blamed everyone and everything for the death of her mam. Her attitude would gradually get worse over the next few years; she would not tolerate anyone and vented her feelings on my father, but only when my granddad wasn't there.
We moved from 22 Emmet Street back to Ancoats, into a maisonette two floors up with a balcony, my brothers were still babies. We moved from a house with a garden to this tenement. But couldn't stand living in the house where her mother had died.
What my mam said was law. Our home life in Ancoats consisted of 75% arguing and fighting and 25% peace between my parents. The 25% was when my granddad was there. My mother had developed some form of schizophrenia; she always wanted to go to the cemetery.
I went to the cemetery on a Sunday with my granddad. A quiet walk there and a quiet walk back.
The leaving of my childhood in Emmet Street was a wrench for me, I was going to a new school, we had a new house and I had to make new friends. My cushion against the brutality of the world, my gran, had died and left me.
Ancoats was a great place to live when you were kids, a true adventure playground. We were surrounded by two canals, a chemical works, a coal pit, a gas works, a coals fired power station, a coke works, hundreds of mills, foundry's, engineering factories, plastic and rubber factories and Victorian cemetery and a large park.
Beat that if you can. Can you imagine the smell from the factories, the acrid and rancid atmosphere and the thick green fog? If you put clean clothes on they were dirty in no time.
We were then still a rather unhygienic nation, a bath maybe once a week, that's if you had one, your clothes washed once a week, that's if your mam went to the washhouse or had a boiler.
It was the way it was for our class. The women would go down Woodward Street with their trolleys to the New Issy washhouse, fast on the way there and slow on the way back.
The clean air act had come into force, no more coal burning. Even with electric and gas fires it took another eight years before we stopped having thick pea-soup fogs.
The land clearances of the sixties were taking place, entire communities were being ripped up and transferred to unfamiliar areas. The sense of community was becoming extinct. Familiar landmarks were being erased, all in the name of progress.
Phil Bell, Greater Manchester, 2001
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