ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
You are just lucky to live in a good area!
I am a 6' 1" man and a medium build so I am definitely less of a target for bad guys than a small woman. I don't have any worries wandering around Todmorden at any time of day or night. Elsewhere, on the other hand...
I lived at the edge of Salford in the mid 1980s, in Chapel Street, above one of the shops.
When I first moved there, I decided to go for a jog round the city to see what it was like. (I was nearly lynched when I made the mistake of referring to it as a district of Manchester!) What can I say ... the areas I ran round all looked a bit rough! I ended up on an estate with some hard-looking teenagers sitting on a wall, and they appeared to be considering whether or not it was worth their while getting down and trying to catch me to give me a good kicking. I burst into a sprint to get away from the immediate danger zone. Cries of "We'll 'ave ya next time, mate!" ringing in my ears ...
Salfordians on that estate seemed to have developed their own electronic goods recycling system - if their TV broke, they simply opened their window and lobbed the set out, even if they were on the 9th floor of a tower block! At any rate, there were a lot of smashed tellies lying about which had clearly fallen from a great height. I assume that the local council sent out trucks every few days to collect the remains of them.
I once caught a bus past what looked like a WWII bomb site, deep in Salford. There was an open fire on that patch of derelict land with a DIY spit above it, on which was cooking what might have been a skinned rabbit, but with dread I realised that it looked awfully like a skinned cat!
I arrived in Salford about a week before my university course started so I decided to embark on a nightly tour of the nearby pubs to see if one could become my local, for the 3 years I would be there. What were they like? Put it this way - after 3 nights in Salford's pubs, I gave up drinking! Every time I walked into a busy pub, it was like a scene from some old wild west movie - a hush fell on the locals, and they all turned and glared at me, Then the muttering would start ... I took 5 minutes to drink my first pint, 3 minutes to drink my second in another pub, 1 minute in a 3rd. By the time I got to the 4th pub, I had to switch to halves so I could get out of the pubs quicker! I drank the last half while the barman was sorting out my change. I gave up.
Nothing to do but listen to John Peel in the evenings, and study! I was doing that one Friday night when what felt like an earthquake struck my part of Salford. My first floor flat began to shake violently. Then the screams started ... I turned off the radio and discovered that the noise was coming from the pavement below my flat. I turned off the light and peeked through the curtains and spotted 4 drunken thugs trying to throw a young man through the plate glass window of the shop! I didn't have a phone, and couldn't get to a call box to summon the police because I would have had to exit my flat right next to the assailants and I feared for my life if I did. While I was trying to summon up the courage to act, the foursome got bored of trying to kill the 5th guy, and staggered off, leaving him sprawled on the pavement. Phew - he was safe! But then he came round, got to his feet and ran after the other 4, and leapt upon them, triggering off a 5-way brawl which would probably have got really nasty if the participants had been sober enough to kick straight. Then a couple of police cars pulled up and all 5 were arrested.
So, in my experience, Salfordians were not so much tough, as, er, 'strict'!
