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Phil Bell was born in 1949 in the Ancoats district of Manchester.
My childhood gang The Black Hand gang changed to the Black Cat Gang, all because Sweaty Edwards had got a black cat with no tail, he said he had bitten it off, my granddad told me it was a Manx Cat, but I wouldn't argue with Sweaty Edwards. He was tough.
In the summer he wore rubber Wellington boots that had been cut down to look like shoes, he had red marks around the bottom of his legs. If anyone asked him what the red marks where his reply was that it was where his mam and dad kept him chained up at night!
It wouldn't have the same impact saying he had chap marks around his ankles, but on hindsight that's all they were. I asked my mam if I could cut my wellies down, all I got was the look!
Sweaty Edwards family were very poor, he had cast offs from cast offs. They were also the most peculiar looking family in the area. His sister had a face like an Eccles cake, she had some sort of skin complaint that needed liberal amounts of blue unction applied to it. His mother had something wrong with her mouth, possibly a tic, and she was always pulling her tongue out and looking like a gargoyle.
His dad was always in the Deadhouse, the pub on Oldham Road, so most of the money went down his neck. Sweaty used to go to anybody's house at meal times and knock on the door to ask if they were playing out. If the answer came 'they are just having their dinner or tea love' he would say 'can I wait for them please'.
Practically everyone would say OK and he would sit and stare at you while you were having your tea with a famished look on his face, until the inevitable question was asked, 'have you had your tea?', 'nah me mam's got no money', 'do you want a buttie?', 'yus please'. He wasn't backward at coming forward my gran always said. Sweaty didn't go short of provisions.
Sweaty Edwards was the toughest boy in the neighbourhood. He came walking up Emmet Street in Newton Heath one summers day in 1958, with his minions tailing behind him. He always had hangers on. As he past us we saw he had what looked like a bundle of rags under his arm.
'Where you going Sweat?' someone asked. 'Where does it look like I'm going?' he replied. John Minice piped up 'To the ragbone man'. What a stupid thing to say! Sweaty Edwards walked over to us and we all drew back, John Minice would be seeing stars. With a swift flick of the bundle, he said 'What do dese look like den huh?'
Actually and truthfully, they did look like the bundle of rags you might have taken to Cavana the Rag and Bone Man. Twinner Jones saved the day by saying asking if they were swimming trunks and a towel.
Sweat replied they were and asked if we wanted to go swimming too. When I asked which swimming baths they he was going to he looked at me with a venomous glance and announced 'no baths, I'm goin' swimin' on the clay hills'.
We were astonished. 'You can't go swimming on the clay hills, they've dug them up to build a new factory', John Minice replied. Sweaty fired back with 'I am swimin OK' and with that he marched off up the street. We followed shouting 'join ar gang, join ar gang' as we marched up the street to the building site.
Through the hole in the fence onto the building site, over to a huge muddy pool of strange coloured water, we all stood around in a semi circle waiting for the great event to take place.
Sweaty took his clothes off replacing his short trousers with the ripped and torn dirty grey swimming trunks full of holes. 'Stand back' he said. Everyone was jostling for the front position. With a slight bend in his legs he propelled himself from the brick strewn bank and vanished into the forbidding pool of stagnant water.
He emerged about twenty feet further down the trench covered from head to foot in liquid clay and dripping a thick puce coloured fluid, we all looked at each other with eyes like gob stoppers.
Some kid shouted 'Sweaty's turned into a clay man'. There was a stunned silence then panic set in, we had all seen what clay men were capable of doing in the Flash Gordon films, now we had a real one in our midst.
We all shouted and screamed in unison making a mad scramble for the hole in the fence, mass confusion, mass hysteria. 'He's got the lurgie, Sweatys got the lurgie' someone shouted, turning into a clay man with the lurgie caused even more panic!
Phil Bell, Greater Manchester, 2001
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