**70s Housing Council Estate**
As the chaos of a frantic woman shouts, screams from pain inflicted by a monster, cries of agony yearning for help, echoed as if you were in a deep cave, reverberated around the crescent.
To enforce order, like water flowing over a bitterly cold waterfall, the police would rush into my home with their Billy clubs, ready to inflict bruises and pain. Equally, my father would try to fight them off.
Like a big brown American bear, I always understood that my father was strong when I saw him punch through a wall like soft butter when he fought off four or five police officers.
I later realised the difference between a brick and plasterboard when I tried the same as a kid. Children will only do what their parents show them and defend themselves by whatever means necessary, like anybody else.
As an intelligent society, we should not have to fear ourselves.
What surprised me most was that after my father had been to a mental institution and jail, the council moved him into a flat six doors away from my council home.
My mother would sit at home looking out the window, fearing my father whenever my mother did see him, like James Bond ordering a drink. My mother would shake and not stir, or was it shivering?
She shuddered as if she had just come out of a cold shower, like a leaf in a vicious storm. My mother would not go out for weeks and had a five-hundred-yard court injunction on him. He lived less than one hundred yards away.
On the only occasion when my tall, skinny-looking father came knocking on the door to say hello, carrying bags of food, which my mother was not agreeable with, what could she do?
Fortunately, it seemed like he got better. He wasn’t much of a problem.
**Generation Windrush**
My step-grandad was tall and heavy-set. He had broad shoulders, a slightly grey, slim moustache, low-cut hair, and a deep, gentle, reassuring voice.
He always advised and told me, ‘John, give your father a chance; he’s not well. You must remember, for all his might and strength.
No man is greater than you, no man is lower than you, and we are all equal.
Now don’t forget that John.’
With his words of wisdom, I always forgave my father for his wrongdoings toward my family. I hope he can forgive me, too.
As I got older, I became stronger. I felt no fear for my father when I defended my family.
I felt adventurous when I was around six or seven years old. I decided to walk to 146 Great Western Street, Moss Side, my grandmother’s home on my father’s side of the family.
**Old Hulme Crescents**
As I walked, I would look up at the tall high-rise flats in Hulme, pass my school, and cross over the busy Chichester Road.
Depending on the weather or my mood, I’d visit one of the many adventure playgrounds in the area that are considered unsafe. If I didn’t walk around, I would go through the busy Moss Side shopping centre, locally known as the Precinct.
The market hall showcases a diverse range of colourful, exciting products, cultural diversity, and people from all over the world gathered in one place.
Indians, Irish, Caribbeans, a few Africans, and one or two Chinese people selling a wide range of exotic tropical food.
As a young boy, I would pass a record shop along the mall at the Limbeck Crescent entrance, where my mother bought my first record from Murray’s record shop. Much later, he moved to Princess Road.
When I was about nineteen years old, I discovered another record shop in the market hall. The first time I heard Oliver Chatman’s ‘Get Down Saturday Night,’ I had to buy the track.
Upon entering the shopping centre, walking towards the main square hall to your left led to the sports hall, where my primary school took us for swimming.
To the right led to Kwik-Save, and on the opposite side was a library I never used as a kid. The library was adjacent to the Moss Side Community Centre, where activities for the area were made available.
I didn’t use the facilities; it had the bad boy gangster element outside.
In the early nineties, a new business concept called Chicken Run started. It delivered Caribbean food to your door.
On the odd occasion, I’d attend one or two promotional events for big London sound systems, such as Saxon Sound System at the community centre. They had one of the deepest basslines, not dissimilar to a creeping rumbling earthquake.
Many other sound systems played at the Community Centre. Taurus, Baron, and Mega Tone are all great Manchester reggae sound systems.
On the odd occasion, I would attend when R&B was being played by the biggest sound system in Manchester at the time, Soul Control from Longsight.
As I walked through the precinct, there was an upper level in the main square that was not used much, with no shops, no conveniences, no facilities, nor services, just empty shops, a sign of recession, decline, and downturn in the economy.
Can’t you tell it’s Thatcherism, a woman with an iron will?
Walking across the large square shopping hall, the walkway led past a few shops and out of the building towards the right. But if you turned to the left, the precinct walkway turned like a dog’s leg back on itself.
This is where drug dealers and other bad boy business would unfold outside the bookmakers. I’d walk past the betting shop to see my father occasionally to say, ‘Hello.’
Although he was a sick, violent man when I was younger, now, he’s older. He has mellowed out, and he takes his medication; I have always shown him respect.
After all, he is my father.
On my way out of the shopping centre to your left, you could walk to the sports hall, but if you turned right below the walkway, there was an underground garage and a short walk away down towards Moss Lane East. At the Princess Road junction, there is the fire station.
In the early seventies, next to the fire station, there was the Big Alexander pub. It was a very old Victorian boozer; I never went in; I was too young when it stood proudly as a local landmark.
Across the dual carriageway of the A5103 on the opposite side to the Big Alexander pub, there’s the brewery... To be continued.
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