It rains up North. It rains in Manchester. It rains a lot. It rains all of the time. Even in the summer. Both weeks.....
I remember one typical September day in the North West of England....it was raining. Despite the fact that I was working in an office with no windows to the outside world (Dilbert would feel very at home in my cubicle), I could tell it was raining by the constant drumming, machine-gunning, against the corrugated, opaque plastic of the skylights that the Company had kindly installed in the ceiling in a vain attempt at preventing the onset of cabin fever, claustrophobia, and, a bunker mentality. They seem to like their silos where I work. It rained all day. Not your soft, drizzly, damp southern-Jessie rain but your true north western, flat capped, clog-footed, wet, monsoon kind of rain.This was bloody hard rain. It is not a coincidence that the Lake District is where it is.
And so, come 5.30pm, when it was time to leave the bunker, I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself that I was parked in the multi-storey which was attached to the office and, therefore, did not need to venture outside to retrieve my car. About half of the office have to use the rented space in the multi-storey car park across the street, in the Civic Centre, in downtown Shameless (see earlier posting: "Not a Nice Place to Live"). Not only does this mean them risking life and limb from muggers, from the stray bullets of drive-by shootings between rival drug dealers, from the cross-fire from armed hold-ups of Securicor vans or the local bingo haunts, or, risk rabies from many of the stray dogs that patrol the streets, or disease ridden pigeons, or just bodily contact with some of the locals, but, it also means that when it rains you get wet. But not me. Not today.
It was dark outside. Real dark. Kind of “end-of-the-world”, “Jesus on the cross” biblical, epic kind of dark. But I did not care, me and the silver dream machine set off for home with the xenon headlights bright, the aircon set to 20 degrees C, Norah Jones on the CD player and in my head, and, the windscreen wipers on maximum. The silver dream machine was my company car - my Audi TT 156 bhp; manhood on wheels. This was my present to self upon being promoted to an "executive" managerial level which qualified for such a perk. Some would say that, apart from my George Clooney-esque salt 'n pepper hair and beard, the TT was the first visible, outward evidence of the onset of middle age. And, the TT was also my present to the Tax Man - you get taxed through the nose!
The environs of Shameless were strangely, eerily quiet. Just the odd denim miniskirt huddling in a bus stop, legs long, scrawny, pale and blue-veined. The occasional shell suit and baseball cap were sheltering under a soggy horse chestnut to keep his cigarettes dry and lit, his pit-bull straining at a studded leash, as he watched the girl at the bus stop. The weather was so bad it was even keeping the drug dealers, muggers and vandals off the streets. And so, Norah and I quietly joined the car train that wound its weary way through Styal, past the women's prison, and into the suburban Cheshire sprawl which is Wilmslow.
The puddles were joining up. The roads were quite waterlogged in places, no doubt due to the fact that we were clearly experiencing the wrong kind of water for our gutters and road drainage. But, what the hell, I amused myself a little by "accidentally" driving a little too fast through some of the puddles and splashing the occasional Yuppie on his way to or from one of the many wine bars: 5 points for Armani, 8 points for a Manchester United player (they all live here or hereabouts).......you know the kind of thing.
I stopped off at Sainsburys (this was before the arrival of Waitrose!) for essential provisions - two bottles of Argentinean Merlot - and was very glad to find that Sainsburys had staff armed with golf umbrellas to shelter weary and wary shoppers between their cars and the store. They were like a couple of punka wallahs attending to dignitaries of the Raj in the middle of a monsoon. So Cheshire!
And so, Norah and I set off from Wilmslow down the country roads on the way home. These roads are windy and uneven and there was a lot of water in a lot of places. There was lots of spray and lots of cars. Clearly most of these cars were driven by city folk that had never been to the countryside before, or they had just left a very expensive carwash, because they were driving very slowly, very carefully, and manoeuvring to avoid the biggest of the puddles. Myself, I ploughed a direct furrow. Straight on through. Had these people not heard of Quattro power distribution, four wheel drive, ABS 5.3 and electronic brake distribution?!?
It was about this time that my mobile phone rang. Of course, I was handsfree! It was my wife, sounding slightly alarmed, "DJ (a little nickname) where are you? The house is about to flood! Get home quick!" And so I did.
The closer I got to home, the heavier the rain came down , the darker the skies became, and the deeper the surface water on the roads had settled. Once home I turned into the communal car park. It was flooded. The one central drain - a mere soak-away into a neighbouring farm's field - had given up its Canute-like battle and the car park was under a good inch or so of water and rising right up to the garage doors. The neighbours had all beaten me home and had parked raggedly around the edges in an attempt to avoid the water, leaving me no choice but to park in it. And so, I clutched my computer bag, my Sainsburys carrier bag and ventured out. I paddled through the car park. It was just at this point that I discovered I had a hole in the sole of my left shoe and that the trouser bottoms on a Rochas of Paris suit act as an excellent sponge. Bugger!
I waded through the car park to find a small river where once the front drive used to be. Apparently the small drain in front of the house that also led to a soak-away in the farmer's field had also given up the ghost and the water was lapping at the small step by the front door. Which is where I found my wife, in a state of panic, declaring that she had phoned the emergency flood numbers and the local council but that they had been inundated (ha!) with calls in the last half hour and could not guarantee that they could get sandbags to us this evening and we had a good two hours of solid rain ahead and that the water had risen at least two inches in just the last half hour and what was I going to do about it.....before pausing for breath!! Welcome home.
And so I changed out of the Company uniform and into gortex and jeans. I waded back through the car park to the garage to retrieve our wellies (his and hers Hunters don't you know) and to put anything vulnerable to water above the likely plimsoll line and began to improvise.......And so, 4 bumper bags of Focus Do-It-All's best bark chippings became our sandbag defence outside the front step. The hallway was stripped bare as we rescued all furniture to higher ground. Towels, dust sheets, and, would you believe it, a futon mattress (only in Cheshire....) formed a rudimentary flood defence barrier behind the front door and at the foot of the stairs.
And so, behind our barricade we stood and watched the rain. We watched the water, rising, slowly, ever closer towards our defence of bark chippings and a pair of old curtains. We worried, and our thoughts turned to the neighbours. We phoned around to find them all safe behind their higher-than-ours front steps. Our predicament caused some amusement and so "J" (a former ex of Chris Evans), her hubby "D" (the Olympic athlete), and so-cute baby "N" came round to gloat. They were protected from the elements by head-to-foot Dry as A Bone, Burberry and a fluffy pink outfit complete with rabbit ears (that would be "N") and helped us to down the best part of the two bottles of Argentinean red I had had the foresight to purchase on the way home.
As promised, it did rain solidly for the next couple of hours. It rained long after the neighbours had retired to their own, safe, dry abode to put the baby to bed. It rained while we partook of a very nice pasta dish that my wife had rustled up. It rained all through East Enders and the new BBC drama about a serial killer. And all through this time the water rose and began to lap at the Focus bags..............and then the rain stopped.
And then, as quickly as it had come, the water level began to descend. And soon we could see the stone flags beneath the step. And soon we could see the drive where once a river had been. And soon we could see the edge of the lawn. OK, the car park still resembled a small boating pond but we were safe. We had, unlike Canute, resisted the tide. The water had gone.
And just then, the council man with the sandbags turned up............slightly miffed that he had been driving around in darkest hill-billy Cheshire in search of our house only to find a rather sheepish couple of city dwellers, the worse for a couple of bottles of red, watching TV and snug with their central heating. And so to bed.
Showing posts with label wythenshawe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wythenshawe. Show all posts
Friday, 26 January 2007
Thursday, 25 January 2007
Shameless Part 2
Refugees and Undesirables
I remember one strange weekend. We cleared out the garage on Saturday, which involved going backwards and forwards to the local dump several times. What we did not throw away was set a-side for a car boot sale (typically English phenomenon methinks). So we were up at the crack of dawn (6am) on Sunday to make our way to the car boot sale with all kinds of stuff that was just taking up space in the garage - old books, old PC games, old ornaments, old mirrors, 3 old lawn mowers (yes 3), etc, etc. You get the drift.
The sale was in a massive field in a place called Alderley Edge, which is very, very affluent. It was very popular and there were long queues on the very rich, expensive, extremely suburban street leading to the farm where the sale was being held. The local inhabitants must really have loved having those who clear their own garages (as opposed to paying someone to do it for them), and, the great unwashed, needy and desperate "parked" outside their mansions while queuing to get on the field so early on Sunday. Many a curtain was twitching, and, all security gates remained firmly shut.
We got there about 7.15 am and it was like being dropped into a refugee camp in some Asian former Soviet Republic. It looked a little like the illegal arms sale that James Bond ruffed up in Die Another Day. There were THOUSANDS of cars on this muddy field and all kinds of wares on display. As well as people having a good clear out like ourselves, there were others selling knocked-off goods or counterfeits, semi-legal and illegal traders of all kinds. But, the buyers were mostly dirt poor. They mostly consisted of the inhabitants of Shameless (see earlier posting "Not Nice Place To Live") who had bussed in (or stolen cars) looking for cheap stuff of quality. These were the unfortunate ones mixing with the dregs of society - skeletal blokes clearly stoned and hung over and the ugliest, most frightening women in the world. They had bad skin, bad hair, bad makeup and bad attitudes and had squeezed rolls of fat into all different kinds of bad clothes. They stood there with cigarettes dangling from puffy lips and bad language spilling from their mouths as they pushed their ugly, obese and badly behaved kids around in buggies. Apart from these, there were two distinct groups of asylum seekers - those from Eastern Europe (Kosovo and the like) with shaven heads (and that was the women) and earrings (the men) wearing shell-suits and other ripped off designer labels looking for cheap counterfeits. And, there were the dirt-poor Asian asylum seekers in their full regalia looking as if they had just escaped a Taleban death squad. The difference was that these people seemed to be desperate for things that they could use to work with (old tools, etc), or to better their life (an English dictionary, a toy for a child). They were polite, despite having little English, respectful, and grateful for anything you could give them. But they were SO poor - they often could not even afford to buy things for 50p that were probably worth £20 to £30. You just felt like giving the stuff away to them. And so we did.
We left at 13.15, with just a few items left, feeling very grateful for our own very different lives. The things we brought back with us probably showed the difference in our existences - who needs PC games if you don't own a PC; who needs a wine rack if you don't drink or only drink cheap cider, sherry or vodka......
I remember one strange weekend. We cleared out the garage on Saturday, which involved going backwards and forwards to the local dump several times. What we did not throw away was set a-side for a car boot sale (typically English phenomenon methinks). So we were up at the crack of dawn (6am) on Sunday to make our way to the car boot sale with all kinds of stuff that was just taking up space in the garage - old books, old PC games, old ornaments, old mirrors, 3 old lawn mowers (yes 3), etc, etc. You get the drift.
The sale was in a massive field in a place called Alderley Edge, which is very, very affluent. It was very popular and there were long queues on the very rich, expensive, extremely suburban street leading to the farm where the sale was being held. The local inhabitants must really have loved having those who clear their own garages (as opposed to paying someone to do it for them), and, the great unwashed, needy and desperate "parked" outside their mansions while queuing to get on the field so early on Sunday. Many a curtain was twitching, and, all security gates remained firmly shut.
We got there about 7.15 am and it was like being dropped into a refugee camp in some Asian former Soviet Republic. It looked a little like the illegal arms sale that James Bond ruffed up in Die Another Day. There were THOUSANDS of cars on this muddy field and all kinds of wares on display. As well as people having a good clear out like ourselves, there were others selling knocked-off goods or counterfeits, semi-legal and illegal traders of all kinds. But, the buyers were mostly dirt poor. They mostly consisted of the inhabitants of Shameless (see earlier posting "Not Nice Place To Live") who had bussed in (or stolen cars) looking for cheap stuff of quality. These were the unfortunate ones mixing with the dregs of society - skeletal blokes clearly stoned and hung over and the ugliest, most frightening women in the world. They had bad skin, bad hair, bad makeup and bad attitudes and had squeezed rolls of fat into all different kinds of bad clothes. They stood there with cigarettes dangling from puffy lips and bad language spilling from their mouths as they pushed their ugly, obese and badly behaved kids around in buggies. Apart from these, there were two distinct groups of asylum seekers - those from Eastern Europe (Kosovo and the like) with shaven heads (and that was the women) and earrings (the men) wearing shell-suits and other ripped off designer labels looking for cheap counterfeits. And, there were the dirt-poor Asian asylum seekers in their full regalia looking as if they had just escaped a Taleban death squad. The difference was that these people seemed to be desperate for things that they could use to work with (old tools, etc), or to better their life (an English dictionary, a toy for a child). They were polite, despite having little English, respectful, and grateful for anything you could give them. But they were SO poor - they often could not even afford to buy things for 50p that were probably worth £20 to £30. You just felt like giving the stuff away to them. And so we did.
We left at 13.15, with just a few items left, feeling very grateful for our own very different lives. The things we brought back with us probably showed the difference in our existences - who needs PC games if you don't own a PC; who needs a wine rack if you don't drink or only drink cheap cider, sherry or vodka......
Wednesday, 24 January 2007
Shameless Part 1
Not A Nice Place To Live
To protect my anonymity and the feelings of those poor souls who live and work in the place, I have changed the name of a particular vicinity of South Manchester (near to the Airport), replacing it with the fictitious name of "Shameless". Shamelessly, I have used the title of that great Channel 4 comedy/drama because, well, I think it is fitting...........
It was quite a shock to the system moving from working in the Strand in London to Shameless in South Manchester.
My apologies to all residents of the somewhat maligned corner of South Manchester, which is Shameless. It is nothing personal. I have nothing personal against underage single-moms, asylum seekers, immigrants (illegal or otherwise), drug addicts (recovering or otherwise), the mentally ill, the infirm, or the great unwashed. In many ways I fear Shameless is a vision of the future…….some kind of post-holocaust Bladerunner-like future. My point is only that, Covent Garden it is not.
That said, I do have something against drug dealers, thieves, muggers, and anti-social neighbours. And, Shameless has more than its fair share of those.
Shameless was a bit of a culture shock after the West End of London. Gone were the Savoy and Strand theatres. Shameless “entertainment”, other than that induced by narcotics and alcohol, comes in the form of Line Dancing classes held at the local Conservative Club (working class conservatism is apparently alive, well and the preserve of the over 60s and unemployed, social scroungers), local bingo halls, and, one-armed bandit arcades. Gone were the Savoy Hotel, Smolensky’s Balloon and the Coal Hole. In Shameless, you can breakfast at the drive through MacDonalds or local “greasy spoon”, while the very brave and foolish could always risk a drink in the local public house, renowned for having the hardest girl gang in the country (as shown on TV).
Shameless is a mess. Shameless is the worst example of social engineering. The best example of town planning gone wrong. Shameless was purpose-built in the 1960s as Europe’s largest council estate. Companies like the Co-op, Ferranti, Barclays and Shell were offered incentives to build offices in the area to provide work for the inhabitants. These companies did build their offices but failed, it would seem, in providing work for the locals. Instead, they provided employment and careers for people from the more affluent surrounding areas such as Wilmslow, Hale, Alderley Edge, Didsbury and Cheadle. Over the decades, Shameless became the white ghetto of South Manchester. The great unwashed and unemployed were dumped there with little prospect, less respect, few amenities and no hope. Over the decades, certain inhabitants of Shameless became jealous of the material wealth of their neighbours and crime in those areas rocketed.
Indeed, we were visited by the Shameless criminal fraternity when we lived in Alderley Edge. You have to know that Alderley Edge is affluent. It is a nice place to live. It is very Cheshire. It is the home of many a Manchester United and Liverpool footballer and their Wags. Posh and Becks lived here before he signed for Real Madrid. It’s many charity shops are renowned for their array of designer cast-offs. It is known “affectionately” as Bolliwood (Bollinger) because it has the highest per capita sales of champagne in the country. Alderley Edge is just 15 minutes drive and a million light years from Shameless.
At a time when my sister-in-law was living with my wife and I in Alderley Edge and I had been working away Monday to Thursday in that wonderful concrete cow of a place, Milton Keynes, I came back one Thursday night and sent the girls to bed as I “relaxed” with a large scotch and Thursday night football on the telly. Of course, I fell asleep on the sofa, only to be woken in the early hours by the sound of broken glass. I looked out of the window and saw a car parked outside the Pine Shop that was opposite. I also saw two blokes, one of whom was, rather bizarrely, sporting a jester’s three-cornered hat, complete with bells. I assumed that it was their car and that it had been broken into. I was rather tipsy. I decided to help. So, I went outside and began to cross the road towards them, in my socks.
I was greeted with a tirade of abuse, which was most unexpected, “Just f*ck off back inside!”. In my drunken haze I became quite affronted and continued to walk towards the two guys, “What’s your problem!”. The next thing I knew, my wife was at the front door in all her naked glory shouting, “Come back, I’ve called the police”. The guys got in their car and drove off, leaving me standing in the middle of the road attempting and failing to make sense of what was going on. At this point one of the neighbours came out in her nightie and rushed up to me, “You’re so brave! My husband has locked himself in the bathroom, he was so scared…..” Not so brave as stupid.
The police did arrive. Apparently these two Shameless boys were known to them. They were high on coke and had stolen the car and come to Alderley Edge looking for easy pickings. Easy pickings this night meant breaking into the Pine Shop in search of cash. Apparently my “intervention” must have scared them off. What a hero.
Anyhow, venturing into the Civic Centre at lunchtime is akin to visiting another planet. Shameless Civic Centre is a mess of cheap shops, pawn and porn brokers, and bookmakers. The local supermarket sells out-of-date cans of cheap lager even more cheaply. This is very popular with the winos that sit on the benches all day long, among the squalid pigeons and other local vermin, drinking from their rusting cans, hurling foul-mouthed abuse at passers-by and laughing hysterically at some unshared amusement or the voices in their heads.
Shameless is the only place that I know which has two "pound shops": Pound Stretcher, and, Pound City, where everything is a pound. Except when there is a sale on, of course. They stand in perfect competition directly opposite each other in the Civic Centre. Pound Stretcher has been there for a while. Pound City is a relative newcomer, possibly encouraged by the Government’s recent injection of £2.5 million to regenerate the area. £2.5 million doesn’t get you a lot these days, but it does buy you a pound shop and a few blue street signs that point you in the direction of the police station and the NHS drop-in centre…….The competitive triangle at the heart of the Civic Centre is completed by “Cash Generator”, where you can sell as well as buy. Yes, Shameless' second Pawn Brokers. Shameless is the only place I know where the shops still advertise “the tick”, HP (hire purchase), something for nothing. Shameless is not so much Neverland as the Never, Never Land…..
The Pound Shops and the Pawn Brokers are amongst the most popular shops in the area, together with the “butchers” claiming proudly to sell “Manchester’s cheapest meat”. I wouldn’t eat anything that came off that shop’s shelves. It is not meat of any kind I have seen before. Meat does not come in those colours! Animals don’t come in those shapes. There is another, better butcher further round the precinct. You can tell that this one is better because they have better security. There is a steel shutter across the entrance to this shop which is permanently pulled halfway down so as to stop thieves running in, snatching a joint (of meat) and running out. You actually see old aged pensioners (or should I more politically correctly say, senior citizens) getting down on their hands and knees to enter and leave the shop. How degrading! Every Tuesday there is a second-hand “flea” market, including the second hand underwear and swimwear stall called “Sniff and Go”. I do not joke.
Otherwise, the market is a haven for rash-inducing cosmetics, pirate DVDs and CDs (which don’t work in card stereos as I have learnt to my cost), knocked off or imitation “designer” labels (which here mean Nike, Burberry – how the mighty are fallen - or Adidas rather than Gucci or Louis Vuitton), replica football shirts, and, cheap pet food stalls. At least the local rottweilers, bulldogs and pit bulls are well cared for here. Either that, or the pensioners are eating it for themselves.
And then there are the people. You will never see any people poorer than Shameless-people on the streets of the UK. You will never see so many missing eyes, missing teeth, missing limbs, walking sticks, prosthetics, invalid carts, and Zimmer frames as on the streets of Shameless. In fact, if you care to look closely you will find that most of the local pigeon population is also disabled in some way, with broken wings, missing claws or legs and a lack of ambition prevalent even amongst this local population. Every young man seems to sport an underage girlfriend on his arm, love bites on his neck, a tattoo, a shaved head, an earring, a bulldog or similar mean-mannered critter on a lead, an attitude, and, a chip on his shoulder the size of a railway sleeper. They are often bare-chested, irrespective of the weather, and, invariably, looking for a fight. Most are stoned or drunk or both. They have come to the Civic Centre to get their dole, sign on, score drugs, or sell drugs. You give these blokes a wide berth. And the there are the girls - 14-year-old girls with too much make-up, little taste, pierced bellybuttons and thongs on display irrespective of time or season. They drag multiple small multi-coloured children behind them and push smaller multi-coloured children in buggies in front of them. It would seem that every Shameless-girl of a certain age is a mother, several times over, by the time they leave school. And, they leave school early here, if they attend at all. The lunchtime bustle of the Civic is often drowned out by the maternal cry of “Kylie, f**king leave Jason alone and get the f*ck back here you little ba*tard. Not much hope for the next generation of Shameless inmates……….
I think that you get a flavour of Shameless from one particular episode that sticks in my memory. It was Easter weekend. My wife and I were going to Habitat, which meant driving through the heart of Shameless. The council had attempted to brighten the place up by planting lots of daffodils. Shameless was teaming. Shameless was teaming with hoards of women and children armed with carving knives and decorating scissors stealing armfuls and armfuls of these daffodils. I can only assume that vases were the favourite items shop-lifted from Habitat that day…..
To protect my anonymity and the feelings of those poor souls who live and work in the place, I have changed the name of a particular vicinity of South Manchester (near to the Airport), replacing it with the fictitious name of "Shameless". Shamelessly, I have used the title of that great Channel 4 comedy/drama because, well, I think it is fitting...........
It was quite a shock to the system moving from working in the Strand in London to Shameless in South Manchester.
My apologies to all residents of the somewhat maligned corner of South Manchester, which is Shameless. It is nothing personal. I have nothing personal against underage single-moms, asylum seekers, immigrants (illegal or otherwise), drug addicts (recovering or otherwise), the mentally ill, the infirm, or the great unwashed. In many ways I fear Shameless is a vision of the future…….some kind of post-holocaust Bladerunner-like future. My point is only that, Covent Garden it is not.
That said, I do have something against drug dealers, thieves, muggers, and anti-social neighbours. And, Shameless has more than its fair share of those.
Shameless was a bit of a culture shock after the West End of London. Gone were the Savoy and Strand theatres. Shameless “entertainment”, other than that induced by narcotics and alcohol, comes in the form of Line Dancing classes held at the local Conservative Club (working class conservatism is apparently alive, well and the preserve of the over 60s and unemployed, social scroungers), local bingo halls, and, one-armed bandit arcades. Gone were the Savoy Hotel, Smolensky’s Balloon and the Coal Hole. In Shameless, you can breakfast at the drive through MacDonalds or local “greasy spoon”, while the very brave and foolish could always risk a drink in the local public house, renowned for having the hardest girl gang in the country (as shown on TV).
Shameless is a mess. Shameless is the worst example of social engineering. The best example of town planning gone wrong. Shameless was purpose-built in the 1960s as Europe’s largest council estate. Companies like the Co-op, Ferranti, Barclays and Shell were offered incentives to build offices in the area to provide work for the inhabitants. These companies did build their offices but failed, it would seem, in providing work for the locals. Instead, they provided employment and careers for people from the more affluent surrounding areas such as Wilmslow, Hale, Alderley Edge, Didsbury and Cheadle. Over the decades, Shameless became the white ghetto of South Manchester. The great unwashed and unemployed were dumped there with little prospect, less respect, few amenities and no hope. Over the decades, certain inhabitants of Shameless became jealous of the material wealth of their neighbours and crime in those areas rocketed.
Indeed, we were visited by the Shameless criminal fraternity when we lived in Alderley Edge. You have to know that Alderley Edge is affluent. It is a nice place to live. It is very Cheshire. It is the home of many a Manchester United and Liverpool footballer and their Wags. Posh and Becks lived here before he signed for Real Madrid. It’s many charity shops are renowned for their array of designer cast-offs. It is known “affectionately” as Bolliwood (Bollinger) because it has the highest per capita sales of champagne in the country. Alderley Edge is just 15 minutes drive and a million light years from Shameless.
At a time when my sister-in-law was living with my wife and I in Alderley Edge and I had been working away Monday to Thursday in that wonderful concrete cow of a place, Milton Keynes, I came back one Thursday night and sent the girls to bed as I “relaxed” with a large scotch and Thursday night football on the telly. Of course, I fell asleep on the sofa, only to be woken in the early hours by the sound of broken glass. I looked out of the window and saw a car parked outside the Pine Shop that was opposite. I also saw two blokes, one of whom was, rather bizarrely, sporting a jester’s three-cornered hat, complete with bells. I assumed that it was their car and that it had been broken into. I was rather tipsy. I decided to help. So, I went outside and began to cross the road towards them, in my socks.
I was greeted with a tirade of abuse, which was most unexpected, “Just f*ck off back inside!”. In my drunken haze I became quite affronted and continued to walk towards the two guys, “What’s your problem!”. The next thing I knew, my wife was at the front door in all her naked glory shouting, “Come back, I’ve called the police”. The guys got in their car and drove off, leaving me standing in the middle of the road attempting and failing to make sense of what was going on. At this point one of the neighbours came out in her nightie and rushed up to me, “You’re so brave! My husband has locked himself in the bathroom, he was so scared…..” Not so brave as stupid.
The police did arrive. Apparently these two Shameless boys were known to them. They were high on coke and had stolen the car and come to Alderley Edge looking for easy pickings. Easy pickings this night meant breaking into the Pine Shop in search of cash. Apparently my “intervention” must have scared them off. What a hero.
Anyhow, venturing into the Civic Centre at lunchtime is akin to visiting another planet. Shameless Civic Centre is a mess of cheap shops, pawn and porn brokers, and bookmakers. The local supermarket sells out-of-date cans of cheap lager even more cheaply. This is very popular with the winos that sit on the benches all day long, among the squalid pigeons and other local vermin, drinking from their rusting cans, hurling foul-mouthed abuse at passers-by and laughing hysterically at some unshared amusement or the voices in their heads.
Shameless is the only place that I know which has two "pound shops": Pound Stretcher, and, Pound City, where everything is a pound. Except when there is a sale on, of course. They stand in perfect competition directly opposite each other in the Civic Centre. Pound Stretcher has been there for a while. Pound City is a relative newcomer, possibly encouraged by the Government’s recent injection of £2.5 million to regenerate the area. £2.5 million doesn’t get you a lot these days, but it does buy you a pound shop and a few blue street signs that point you in the direction of the police station and the NHS drop-in centre…….The competitive triangle at the heart of the Civic Centre is completed by “Cash Generator”, where you can sell as well as buy. Yes, Shameless' second Pawn Brokers. Shameless is the only place I know where the shops still advertise “the tick”, HP (hire purchase), something for nothing. Shameless is not so much Neverland as the Never, Never Land…..
The Pound Shops and the Pawn Brokers are amongst the most popular shops in the area, together with the “butchers” claiming proudly to sell “Manchester’s cheapest meat”. I wouldn’t eat anything that came off that shop’s shelves. It is not meat of any kind I have seen before. Meat does not come in those colours! Animals don’t come in those shapes. There is another, better butcher further round the precinct. You can tell that this one is better because they have better security. There is a steel shutter across the entrance to this shop which is permanently pulled halfway down so as to stop thieves running in, snatching a joint (of meat) and running out. You actually see old aged pensioners (or should I more politically correctly say, senior citizens) getting down on their hands and knees to enter and leave the shop. How degrading! Every Tuesday there is a second-hand “flea” market, including the second hand underwear and swimwear stall called “Sniff and Go”. I do not joke.
Otherwise, the market is a haven for rash-inducing cosmetics, pirate DVDs and CDs (which don’t work in card stereos as I have learnt to my cost), knocked off or imitation “designer” labels (which here mean Nike, Burberry – how the mighty are fallen - or Adidas rather than Gucci or Louis Vuitton), replica football shirts, and, cheap pet food stalls. At least the local rottweilers, bulldogs and pit bulls are well cared for here. Either that, or the pensioners are eating it for themselves.
And then there are the people. You will never see any people poorer than Shameless-people on the streets of the UK. You will never see so many missing eyes, missing teeth, missing limbs, walking sticks, prosthetics, invalid carts, and Zimmer frames as on the streets of Shameless. In fact, if you care to look closely you will find that most of the local pigeon population is also disabled in some way, with broken wings, missing claws or legs and a lack of ambition prevalent even amongst this local population. Every young man seems to sport an underage girlfriend on his arm, love bites on his neck, a tattoo, a shaved head, an earring, a bulldog or similar mean-mannered critter on a lead, an attitude, and, a chip on his shoulder the size of a railway sleeper. They are often bare-chested, irrespective of the weather, and, invariably, looking for a fight. Most are stoned or drunk or both. They have come to the Civic Centre to get their dole, sign on, score drugs, or sell drugs. You give these blokes a wide berth. And the there are the girls - 14-year-old girls with too much make-up, little taste, pierced bellybuttons and thongs on display irrespective of time or season. They drag multiple small multi-coloured children behind them and push smaller multi-coloured children in buggies in front of them. It would seem that every Shameless-girl of a certain age is a mother, several times over, by the time they leave school. And, they leave school early here, if they attend at all. The lunchtime bustle of the Civic is often drowned out by the maternal cry of “Kylie, f**king leave Jason alone and get the f*ck back here you little ba*tard. Not much hope for the next generation of Shameless inmates……….
I think that you get a flavour of Shameless from one particular episode that sticks in my memory. It was Easter weekend. My wife and I were going to Habitat, which meant driving through the heart of Shameless. The council had attempted to brighten the place up by planting lots of daffodils. Shameless was teaming. Shameless was teaming with hoards of women and children armed with carving knives and decorating scissors stealing armfuls and armfuls of these daffodils. I can only assume that vases were the favourite items shop-lifted from Habitat that day…..
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