The lads who used to work the hatches at OT were a sound lot. They lived all over the area and were mad lushes. Skulking the concrete corridors, planning parties. Clinking pockets loaded with miniatures hoisted from the bars. Get-togethers involving severe inebriation. Woke up one morning after a party in a Hulme crescent. Been there with Geoff from Israel; a dishonourably discharged Falklands War vet. He loved the OT pies as much as I did and once beat me in a pie scranning contest. Geoff’s student sister lived in Old Trafford. We’d played Monopoly there on mushrooms before hitting Hulme. The party was a tense affair. Moody people thronging the halls. Someone knifed to death there that night. No-one was dancing so Geoff stood up, his back to the gas-fire. Started doing that daft pedalling move with his feet on alternate tip-toe. Blade-villains gawping at his gall. Looked stupid as fuck. Pissing myself. Passed out in front of that gas fire on my back. The next morning I took a shower. Found a sticker on my cock saying, “This Belongs to Ian.” Charming. I hoped Geoff’s sister had affixed it; redhead. Nuff said.
By late-’86 even the half-wits had turned to LSD. It was rampant. I wouldn’t know, being otherwise detained on various foreign business. I’d given up on humanity and was suitably cynical. Dragged to clubs to see the truth. The divvies buying bulk gear off opportunists and undesirables. Cut to fuck or plain snide. The lads were seasoned, amused, bang-on. Drifted away from the mid-80s terraces like disinterested sharks from a dying reef; bigger fish to fry. Among them were some classic animals; H. Built like Captain Scarlet. Broke a pool cue over a lad’s head in the Forresters one Saturday afternoon. Mouthpiece on his way to watch his team play City at Maine Road. It was par-for-the-course; The Forresters was smack on a main drag into the city centre. All kinds of minibus chancers came through on Saturdays. Little casual firms annihilated with growing frequency. H broke another bloke’s jaw in the same gaff. Him and the Bingo Player. Going at it with some woe merchants over control of the pool table. Bingo Player unexpectedly floored with his assailant poised over him ready to do serious damage. Suddenly from nowhere H’s brogue takes the guy’s head off. Another one was smashed up that bad he had pieces of metal embedded in his scalp. Fuck knows where they came from. Lad reckoned H used a big bunch of keys. Bollocks; H’s fists were like train buffers. No need for accoutrements.
The Bingo Player looked down on me for attending footy matches. Twenty two blokes chasing a bladder, he called it. He went to all the Salford bingo halls with his missus. Used it as an alibi. Checked in and then out with us. Antique dealing, flagging, bribing menks from Prestwich Hospital to rob bottles of spirits from off-licences. On the lash, banging out the moodies. Battering those who’d took the piss. Blitzed Carr Clough. Took over the herb there, before Kersal moved in and pushed back the border. Playing pool with Moss Side pimps on Broughton midweek afternoons. Taxis and trains through Strangeways Oriental signage. The Golden Mile where Boddies brewed. Up to the Maypole meeting an accountant who’d been bought for a court case. Plied with booze in a smart suit and tie. Ended up puking in the Bingo Player’s bathroom – a flat in Newbank Tower. Rum as. Kids broke in when he was out at Bingo; cracked a gas main with a sledgehammer and filled the flat with vapours. Nearly blew Bingo sky high. Turned Newbank into the Towering Inferno. A local prank. Autumn 1989. Out the window flocks of magic mushroom pickers grazed grass bankings between blocks and carparks. Greengate strangeness. A futuristic panorama while smoking Sputnik and playing Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal at high volume. Urban decay peppered with cosmic swedes.
Lifting filthy stone by moonlight into diesel-stinking vans was hard. So was the furniture game; massive desks and computers trundled through Manchester’s hulking office-blocks for bent dealers. Big wedges pocketed and ale guzzled. A tough life. But drugs was different; easy money from little packages. Fucking cakewalk sometimes. The situation was wonderful. Parties extravagant; cucumber sarnies loaded with acid tabs. Ornamental brass coal buckets and wine chillers literally full of white powder. Three or four K’s of sulphate. Everyone having a dab. Heart attack territory. People freaking out during police raids. Hard at it with weed grinders and pollen presses. Cutting big blocks of Sputty with crap Leb. Increasing the margins. Thirst, hunger and shelter keeping us alive long enough to address that fourth drive: Getting mullered. Distribution was key. Wasters buying decent motors. Music and fashion followed; hundreds of screen-printed t-shirts from the lads down Strangeways. Cul-de-sacs in Boothstown stacked with boxes of snide trainers. Bought and worn by queerbeasts in clubland. Lads had clothes-racks pitched in hospitals, in factories, in post offices, even. The giant octopus of Manchester graft had the city in its technicolour clutches. The fruits of sin. Ploughed back in; Bingo Player got delegated to broker a deal between some snide-grafter types and a well known gang. A chunk of Sputty that would choke a killer whale. Phone calls were made. Meeting on McDonald’s carpark. Halfway home the Bingo rolled a spliff; it was snide. Cue Starskey and Hutch U-turn to their boozer. Kicked off worse than the Forresters; the money-man was stabbed. Shot. A lead pipe broke his head. Spent the next month in Crumpsall with a 24-hour police guard. Heavy mob cruising in a Merc, looking for the Bingo Player. But whatever. It’s old news. And you have the piping on your vintage Fila tracky to mend, I know.
I wasn’t there for the fun of it; unsuccessfully spent months saving for America. Dead-end jobs. Spunked it all on football and beer. Driving out to the Lancashire wilderness with Rob. Total steroid head in a flash motor with false plates. Living in hiding at his bird’s, hence the night-shift. Graphic tales of impaling and carrying her round the house; anabolics hadn’t affected his wedding tackle one bit. Large as life in the works canteen. Wanted everyone to know it. Offending Accrington sensibilities. One eye out for the Bill. He was a monster killing machine. Scared of nowt. The boss’s son-in-law was an archery fanatic. Would talk yer ear off if you were stuck next to him. Making sofa cushions on’t’ night shift. Shooting glue between foam slabs from a Star Trek gun. At his Salford house Rob said to me, “Archery? I’ll fuckin’ show yer some o’ that.” Produced a large crossbow. Shot it right across the street in broad daylight. Arrow embedded in a GPO pillar box. Shocking. Then one night he didn’t pick me up. Disappeared into the penal system, muscles an all. The car lobbed in a container and flirted to New Zealand. The following day I started stacking shelves at Sainsbury’s. Funny, cos I’d been lifted in there just a fortnight earlier. Pissed with a bottle of brandy under my snorkel. Security guard grabbed me inside the shop though, not outside. Case dismissed. I went in the boozer in my Sainsbury’s uniform. Clip-on tie and plastic ID badge. Laugh? Stayed in the pub all day and binned the attire. Back to the OT hatches with a vengeance. Selling pies and ale to foreign humans.
This was the time of the big herb drought in South Manchester. If they were lucky they knew someone from our neck of the cloughs. Bird from Chorlton whose boyfriend was inside for dealing; needed to earn some beadage in his absence. Decided she could impress her posse with our product. Pablo from the Ostrich dropped a slab of Sputty on her. She said she used to go out with Ian Brown. Shat on him by accident during sex. Trapped his dick in his zipper when giving a blow-job. White pants blooming with claret. He wasn’t made of stone. We named Pablo after Escobar. Thought he was big time. Knew people outside Manchester with large chunkage. Bingo Player not pleased about the Chorlton piece. “Pablo’s mine” he explained. He later reneged on a big deal. People fell out. Inevitable. The out-of-town firm daren’t come over the hills to recoup their losses for obvious reasons. Pablo got caught in the crossfire; it came out of his mortgage. Another sort; Jan from Didsbury. Came to the Ostrich a drought victim. Gonna prove she had connections to those in the southern quadrant. Bingo Player kept pulling his cock out of his elasticated waistband every time she looked away. Thrilling stuff. Dave B reckoned it was blatant fraud; Bingo’s constant playing with himself had falsely inflated things. Bingo’s missus had a mate whose married boyfriend worked at Heathrow. Managed baggage-handling for a major carrier. The Bingo got in his head, menaced him into considering very bad deeds. Bloke came around for a while then disappeared. A broken man. Lost everything.
It was a queer do. Boozin’, druggin’, dancin’. Becks ‘n’ hugs ‘n’ Northern Soul. Ricocheting between the hatches in A&B Stands, to Sainsbury’s, to out in the sticks, to the Bingo Player’s flat where we watched the lights of town through the window like starving weasels. Proto-Madchester wasn’t a layer cake, it was a marble cake; chaotic bands of intensity and violence permeating its depths high and low. Like sperm racing to penetrate the egg and exploit. Each one a different animal. Killing machines with false plates going down in the night. Drug connections rupturing and houses repossessed. Middlesex family men playing away in rough neighbourhoods. Clerks, nurses and foremen bribed with fancy t-shirts to monitor racks of tie-dyed textiles. Lads in comas surrounded by coppers. Poring through the Psychedelic section in Piccadilly Records. Fondling second-hand trainers on Salford Market; only worn once by a professional athlete. This culture was outside the norm. Borne on wings of invention. We’d grown out of wondering why the media had passed us by. We just did what we did. And then it caught us up. People jumped on the bandwagon. Now they make films about it. I’m thinking of writing one myself. Me and a million other tadpoles. And their dogs.
