A small child in a big world
To understand me, you need to see my past. Let’s start by describing how I became aware of my surroundings.
As a young boy, I can’t say I had a troubled childhood; my only difficulty was with my neighbour, Peter Patterson.
We were the same height and age. He was dark, just like me. He had a husky voice, with two front top teeth missing in his head, a bit like Bugs Bunny gone wrong from Loony Tunes.
His first comment when we met was, ‘The world’s going to end in the year 2000.’
When he said that, I wore my Bay City Rollers flared chequered pants in green, yellow, and black, not forgetting my brown turtle shell five-inch platform shoes. At five years old, I could barely count, so I made a quick calculation, which turned out to be incorrect.
My thoughts rang out in my mind, ‘Hey, I just got here. I’m too young to die.’
Peter lived at 128 William Kent Crescent, and we went to the same educational facility, Royce County Primary School, built on the original site of Rolls-Royce. Although we were friends, we were always fighting for one reason or another.
He was a bit of a bulldog bully in school, mainly by his own will, wanting things that did not belong to him and not sharing anything of his own. He consistently threw his child-like weight around at the other kids in the playground.
We were separated as much as possible in primary and secondary school. Peter was seen as a bad influence on me and is now doing life.
As for my mother’s relationship with my father, that was a problem. I lived with my loving mother at 129 William Kent Crescent, Hulme, Manchester.
My mother is only five feet five inches, slightly overweight for her size, which is an understatement. My mother has a lighter complexion than I.
She may have come from the Caribbean when she arrived in the United Kingdom at seventeen in 1964, but she speaks English better than the Queen.
I always remember my mother cooking for her one and only son, and being a little black boy who loved rice, peas, and fried chicken.
I have two younger sisters, Anne Marie and Sharon. Sharon was difficult to have a good relationship with. She would challenge or confront me when I made decisions as the older brother.
Tiny Anne Marie, the younger of the two, always looked up to her big brother with respect. The three-bedroom house was in the middle of the crescent-shaped tower block of flats on the first floor.
As you approached my home, walking along the public veranda, overlooking large patches of green playing fields, where we played football or cricket.
Two paths led to a small park in the middle of the crescent for younger kids, with climbing frames, swings, a slide, and a seesaw. The two paths led towards Royce Road, which has four fields, two on either side of the tarmac.
Walking along the veranda to my home, a balcony was above the walkway, which only gave access to the family living within that house.
To my memory, my father would usually come around at some late hour when my family was sound asleep. He would climb to the veranda like a black leopard, which gave entrance to our home, and smash the window like a wild, deranged bear frothing from his gaping jaws.
Then, he’d beat nine bells and ten more out of my mother; it was hell at my door. There have been many times with fear in my heart from the tender age of seven, I’ve had to fight physically, punch my father with my skinny arms and tiny glass fists, in the defence of my family.
Along with my step-granddad, Mr. Ernest Walker, who was a well-built, disciplined, and patient ex-boxer in his youth. He lived with his second wife after being a widower.
Mrs. Gertrude Walker was a small, round woman, a regular churchgoer, and a fantastic cook. Every year on my birthday, I received a birthday cake and a Jamaican fruitcake with icing for Christmas.
Mrs. Gertrude Walker, or Gee, was the name my step-granddad used to call her whenever she lost her patience.
My grandmother was my mother’s mother. Every Sunday, she would take my sisters and me to Sunday school at Saint John’s Church in Longsight, opposite the market on Dickenson Road.
The hustle and bustle of diverse cultures buying Caribbean foods in the market and the smell of the tropics were delightful. When I was about eight years old, I stopped going to church.
My grandparents lived on the third floor at 513 William Kent Crescent, where they could hear my mother and father fighting.
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