grimaces gripes and plaudits

She’s done it now !

Sarah Ferguson, that red headed royal liability who burst upon the public stage in the nineteen eighties has put her name to a character assassination of my home town.

Well, it’s not actually a town. I was born in a small corner of a huge council estate in South Manchester. Wythenshawe – the vision of planners and architects who didn’t do a bad job. Not much high rise and decent homes for folk from inner city Manchester and Salford where the early days of industrial revolution had been consolidated into a powerhouse propelling the British economy forward on cotton and coal. By the nineteen thirties the housing stock was not doing justice to the people domiciled therein.

The suburb of Wythenshawe lies about six miles south of the city centre. It’s made up of about twelve local areas, Northern Moor to Baguley, Newall Green to Woodhouse Park and Crossacres. All encapsulated under the name ‘Wythenshawe’ which means a wood of willow.

A tree lined boulevard called Princess Parkway brought the early commuters back home after

days in city centre offices and the factories (later to become warehouses) of Trafford Park. Most of the inhabitants worked and contributed to a growing economy, for aside from the crammed red double deckers that rolled to and from ‘town’ there were few passengers. Perhaps my Uncle was one, but struck down at the age of eleven with Muscular Dystrophy he was not destined to live very long and his passing, in 1962 was the most poignant moment of my life until then, I was eleven. The hard right wingers and those who see all benefit claimants as ‘spongers’ will no doubt be relieved to know he died aged just thirty two.

My ‘Nana’ was lucky enough to have allocated a three bedroomed house at the very edge of Wythenshawe – the first to be built in the nineteen thirties (thousands more would follow over the next three decades as the estate mushroomed in size). It was a substantial brick-built dwelling with good sized gardens and of course the plumbing demanded in the twentieth century but by no means taken for granted by the working classes.

As war clouds gathered my Father – a Shropshire Lad – was billeted nearby with his motorbike and his acquaintance with the woman I’d know as Mum grew into love. They married in ’42 and were again lucky to get the house next door to ‘Nana’. Following two daughters, their luck ran out when I turned up in the front bedroom in 1951.

So, on the edge of Wythenshawe, in a cul-de-sac (The Drive) on the edge of Northern Moor and slap bang in the middle of a comfort zone of childhood, secure play, loving hard working parents and the bourgeoning welfare state we kids proceded to grow up at a fairly gentle pace. I could not have asked for much more, perhaps because I didn’t know of much more. We’d visit relations in Shropshire towns and villages but I never yearned for a rural upbringing …besides, City played just up the road and I was loving my early sporting success at school. Perhaps the only blot on the landscape were the ‘Teds’ who might sometimes gather outside the ‘chippy’ after dark….and the weekly fights at the pub at the top of Yew Tree Lane which attracted coachloads of young drinkers from outlying towns like Warrington and Widnes – it had a renowned cabaret lounge – named ‘Yewtopia’ and did good business in the late fifties and early sixties. Nana and her pensioner friends were regulars in the Yew Tree and would walk home close to midnight not a fear for their safety in any shape or form aside from the odd Mackeson induced trip !

I left in 1970 – married a Cheshire lass – true, it was the more industrial bit of Cheshire, no leafy lanes for us, no Prestbury pile…..Hyde, a now notorious mill town (home of Shipman , Brady & Hindley)…we bought a house for fewer than one thousand pounds and settle into married life. As Mum and Dad died prematurely – in their mid-fifties, and Sisters had also flown the nest (for Liverpool and another edge of Wythenshawe) by now I sort of lost touch with the area.

I’d pass through ocassionally, drive down Sale Road past the ‘Circle’ where my Mum worked in a Greengrocer’s shop part-time. I can still see her handy-work on the windows, lovely white writing on the windows advertising the various wares within. They were early pioneers of frozen food retailing in the area – fish fingers were a staple – My Mum’s left hand was famous for it’s flowing legibility and fancy flourishes. Well, it was in our house anyway!

I worked nearby for a time in the eighties. Nothing much had changed by then. No sign of urban decay, no hoodies not even too many steel shutters on the windows like the one my Mum had adorned on a daily basis. No pit-bulls straining on body harnessess again the tattooed arms of muscular morons, intent on basking in the reflected power of their dog’s brutal strength.

‘Nana’ passed away in ‘ 84 so visits down the old cul-de-sac were no more. I assumed life went on in much the same way it always had. By now we had moved into a lovely new house – at first council owned , and later we bought it in what seemed like a good deal (probably because it was)

The nineties came and went – alarmingly quickly looking back at them. I took little notice of Wythenshawe. I’d heard news reports of a decline, but reckoned this would be in the core areas of ‘Woodhouse Park’, and in particular ‘Benchill’ which by all accounts had become a terible hell-hole of drop-outs and drugs. Surprising really because I had many friends in that area in the sixties and played football against a few local sides and they all seemed normal, decent and happy enough.

I pondered the cause of this decline and never really answered my wonderings. It just seemed that for sections of society ‘decline’ was inevitable, as other sections prospered. An innate fecklessness in some would go a way to explain at least part of the malaise but there must be some wider failure on the part of a Government, or Community which allows low aspiration and failure in even the basics to be tolerated. Drugs ! Of course, they had to be a major explanation in what was happening. Apart from some minor mention of marijuana in the mid-sixites at my school no sign of drugs had ever permeated by teenage years. They were American things, or so I thought. They crept up insidiously on places like Wythenshawe….but on the edges? No…surely not. Call me naive.

Now it’s the new Millennium – already ten years old (which seems extraordinary in itself)…what happened all that fuss and all that optimism?

It fizzled out almost as fast as the fireworks. I sensed things were not as well as they were when a trip to ‘Sale Circle’ saw half the shops were now ‘advice centres’ and Solicitiors offices…horrible grey metal shutters , dawbed in graffiti hung down presenting a blank, intimidating and soul-less steely face on what was once an attractive explanade of independent little shops. ‘Carews’ the tobacconists, ‘Land & Sea’ Mum’s big competitor across the road and ‘Elites’ pronounced ‘eeh-lights’ where I’d part with my spending money for Dinky and Corgi models and the latest Superman comics from DC. The small Co-op (Mum’s divi number 126504 yes! I still remember) and the ‘Record Bar’ where I could get three hit singles for a pound vand often did. A young man in sharp suit and a zig-zag hankey in his top pocket. Now though it was a second hand Washing machine shop offering reasonable weekly terms for renting an old Hotpoint. Decay had arrived. Despair seemed not far away. I again pondered, briefly…thought of old times and then left without a look back.

I did return though, three of four more times for a look down the old cul-de-sac. Voices resonated inside my head. The friends, the games, the lads, the girls, the neighbours.

It looked okay still. In fact with new roofs and windows the houses (now seventy years old) looked surprisingly good. Many had been bought by their owners, some no doubt sold on to incomers. All seemed lived in and looked after, and the ‘Drive’ was civilised and quiet. As were the surrounding streets – although the lay out of the locale was always more ‘Road’ than ‘Street’…more ‘Avenue’ and ‘Close’…it always seemed so nice and er…’normal’ really.

So it’s with some trepidation I shall be tuning into ‘Sarah & the Estate’ on Channel 4 (I think) this week. Already there has been uproar about her documentary. Local people have been quick to attack her , and the production companies choice of area to traduce, besmirch and drag through the mire. I’ve seen one or two clips that were hard to recognise as being true, or fair . Editing plays a big part in these programmes. In the quest for sensationalism programme makers will distort the truth for their own ends. With this in mind I shall watch with my hands partially covering my eyes. I do not want to believe this part of my England has gone down the pan to such an extent that an opportunist like the Duchess of York can stick her oar in to further her broadcasting career, crinkle up her face in mock despair , do little to improve matters (if they need it) yet make things worse by her very presence.

We shall see.