Memories of Bolton

DanaC · 11-16-2006, 07:47 AM

I recently got into a conversation with someone about living in Bolton in the early nineties and it's left me with memories floating unbidden to the surface of my thoughts, usually at the witching hour. memories of places and people I have left far behind, but which seemed so all encompassing at the time. Funny, how these things recede into unimportance as the years slide past. So, I wanted to share a few of those memories.

Before I do, a little background: I grew up in Bolton, in the seventies and early eighties. I lived in a nice house, in a pleasant part of town. Mum was a nurse, Dad a maintenance electrician, in charge of a crew in a bakery. My older brother was my friend and hero. We weren't wealthy, but we were comfortable, had all we needed, most of what we wanted and the house was a happy one and full of books. If it hadn't been for a prolonged illness, I'd have said I had a happy childhood. Mum Dad split when i was 12, but amicably so, we moved out to a house in Little Hulton, a horribly rough place for the most part, ninety percent of which is sprawling estates of social housing...again though, our house was in the nice part and we were comfortable.

I say this because I need to emphasise, that drugs, violence, poverty and the underclass were never my natural environment. Nor was it the natural environment of my boyfriend, whom I met at 18, just before we slipped down the rabbithole and entered a strange twilight world.

Both of us were a little screwed up, me through illness and bullying, him through stuff I won't go into here. Both of us bright and well spoken, both nihilistic, self-destructive and romantically attached to the idea of 'love on the dole'.

We were tourists in someone else's world. But there comes a time, when you realise that the place you came to to visit, has entered your bloodstream, you've set down roots and getting out isn't as easy as falling in. Your raw intelligence and ability to turn on a middle-class accent, that has kept you out of trouble with the police, and the novelty value of the world you are from that has brought you the protection of those whose world you are in, won't last forever. The ennui and hopelessness that belongs to that world is becoming a part of you and visits to the home you left feels like venturing into foreign a land. You realise, it's now or never. Stay another year, and you'll never leave.

That's why we left Bolton. We left the town and the people, our friends, behind. They carried their world with them, a world we needed to forget. Sometimes, I miss them. I liked some of them, others I didn't like, they just came with the package, a few of them I cared deeply for and always will. I haven't seen any of them in over a decade.

They say you can tell a lot about someone by the friends that they keep, so here it is: my tribute to a group of people, who weren't bad people, just lost souls. They adopted us, protected us, corrupted us and gave what they could of themselves. (Note: the names I have used are the ones they were known by at the time.)

Harry: our landlord for a year, he offered us a room when we had to leave our bedsit in a hurry...an inveterate alcoholic, we paid our rent in vodka and brandy. Tall, with stooped shoulders, somewhere between 35 and 45 yrs old, lank greasy hair to just below the jawline, thick milk-bottle glasses, always wore a combat jacket, spoke in a kind of whining drawl and dragged his feet as he walked: a wicked martial artist, I saw him take down two guys and he barely seemed to move. Offered to set me up as a 'High class prostitute'...I declined, but took it as the compliment it was intended as:P

Lee: Harry's adopted cousin and sometime resident in the House of Fun, a dangerous psycopath with rape fantasies and a serious kind of racism. Found out he had a jewish grandmother and opened a vein to drain out the impure blood. My abiding memory of Lee, is him slamming his head repeatedly against a brick wall screaming " I can't feel pain!"

We left there after a year and spent a bit of time sharing with a slightly loopy cross dresser who stole my best pair of heeled shoes and money from my purse. Never saw Lee again, occassionally bumped into Harry.

Nutty Paul: Probably the best friend we made in Bolton during those years. A drug dealer and addict, he had his first electro shock treatment at the age of 15 and spent regular intervals under section. Dangerous and violent at times, a reformed nazi, functionally illiterate and very sexist. He was also deeply intelligent, occassionally profound and was able to use language with the skill of a poet. Underneath the harsh exterior was a drowning man who knew he'd never see the shore again. For some reason, he let us get closer to him than most. He was also very very funny.

Willy Longchamps: Paul's friend, a heroin addict and habitual thief. Whip thin and nervous, he regularly stole stuff from Paul's house. Every so often, maybe once or twice a year, Paul would beat him up for his theiving and sometimes hospitalise him. They remained friends.

Kenny the Burglar: Paul's occassional driver....other than that the clue's in the name. Didn't get to know him well.

Parky: a really nice stable guy, a year younger than us and conspicuously normal. Good friend of Fingers.

Fingers: (variously known as geoff, fingers-geoff and fingers) a strange and tragic character, who at the age of 47 lived upstairs in his parents home and somehow managed to supply most of Bolton with their wares without his Mum and dad knowing. A habitual liar, manipulator and trouble maker, best friend of Paul based on habit and mutual hatred.

Mad Sharon: somehow latched onto me as someone she 'could talk to'. Dangerously unhinged, kept an axe in her living room, had done time for GBH and once confided in me that she watched the bit of the 'executions' video, where someone is shot in the face, ten or fifteen times a day, because it made her feel better.

Angi: Paul's 17 yr old girlfriend. Lovely girl, deeply in love, followed him into addiction to try and understand him. Got pregnant and tried to make it work. Had a year of something approaching family life with Paul and the bairn, but things went sour pretty fast. Paul's no family-guy. Got on really well with Angi til she vanished off the scene. Rumour says they fought and she got hurt, but I never did find out the truth. Rumour also says her addiction took her to another dealer and maybe that's so.

Neil and Lisa: 28 and 19, they kept a photograph, in a frame, of their still-born baby on the table. Had the flat under us for a while. Got on well and went on holiday together. Neil was a manic depressive who occassionally broke everything in their flat, also a brilliant artist whose talent was never discovered. Lisa was always slightly bemused by my fascination for books...she didn't see the point.

Nutty Paul and Angi, Fingers, Parky, Willy, Neil and Lisa, me and my guy, all used to hang out at each other's places. Usually at Paul's basement bedsit, with the music shaking the walls. Night and day would drift by as we did.

Into this little circle drifted a Canadian girl called Lesley, who washed up in Bolton and discovered recreational drugs. And then there was The Mighty Quin....a larger than life American from the Bronx, who looked a little like jeff Goldblum and claimed he was on the run for murder. Seemed to have a lifetime's supply of Coke and within three weeks of arriving in Bolton managed to start a drugs war between two rival gangs.

Finally there was Maximillian Devereux, commonly known as Spangles. Fun, but paranoid and delusional. Lived in a big stone cottage devoted mostly to rave music. Died about three years before we left town. Nice guy, much missed.

There were others, of course, but these were the main group, who hung out and shared what they had.....and it didn't feel so bleak whilst we were in it. It was raw and exciting and we learned a lot about life....well a kind of life.

That's that. I miss some of them a lot, some of them not at all. I don't miss the life I led, except from time to time in the middle of the night, when I remember what it was like to be 22 and living on the edge.

Ibby · 11-16-2006, 07:58 AM

Sounds kinda like a teen movie, or maybe a velvet underground song, to me...

Trilby · 11-16-2006, 08:23 AM

Very nice, Dana. You always paint such wonderful word-pictures. I feel a bit wistful for people in my past, too. Actually, for some reason, I feel very wistful today--always a dangerous feeling for me.

I do like how the ex-Yank, the Mighty Quin, dug right into Capitalist Pig Syndrome a mere three weeks after arrival. Apparently, you can take the Yank out of America, but you can't take the America out of the Yank.

DanaC · 11-16-2006, 08:39 AM

Quote:

I do like how the ex-Yank, the Mighty Quin, dug right into Capitalist Pig Syndrome a mere three weeks after arrival. Apparently, you can take the Yank out of America, but you can't take the America out of the Yank.

Har. yes indeed. He was a fascinating guy. Seemed very exotic in Bolton. I don't know what happened to him, he was last seen heading towards Essex in a 'borrowed' vauxhall van:P

xoxoxoBruce · 11-17-2006, 07:25 AM

'It's extremely kind of you to tell me all this'.

11-16-2006, 07:47 AM	#1
DanaC We have to go back, Kate! Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Yorkshire Posts: 25,964	Memories of Bolton I recently got into a conversation with someone about living in Bolton in the early nineties and it's left me with memories floating unbidden to the surface of my thoughts, usually at the witching hour. memories of places and people I have left far behind, but which seemed so all encompassing at the time. Funny, how these things recede into unimportance as the years slide past. So, I wanted to share a few of those memories. Before I do, a little background: I grew up in Bolton, in the seventies and early eighties. I lived in a nice house, in a pleasant part of town. Mum was a nurse, Dad a maintenance electrician, in charge of a crew in a bakery. My older brother was my friend and hero. We weren't wealthy, but we were comfortable, had all we needed, most of what we wanted and the house was a happy one and full of books. If it hadn't been for a prolonged illness, I'd have said I had a happy childhood. Mum Dad split when i was 12, but amicably so, we moved out to a house in Little Hulton, a horribly rough place for the most part, ninety percent of which is sprawling estates of social housing...again though, our house was in the nice part and we were comfortable. I say this because I need to emphasise, that drugs, violence, poverty and the underclass were never my natural environment. Nor was it the natural environment of my boyfriend, whom I met at 18, just before we slipped down the rabbithole and entered a strange twilight world. Both of us were a little screwed up, me through illness and bullying, him through stuff I won't go into here. Both of us bright and well spoken, both nihilistic, self-destructive and romantically attached to the idea of 'love on the dole'. We were tourists in someone else's world. But there comes a time, when you realise that the place you came to to visit, has entered your bloodstream, you've set down roots and getting out isn't as easy as falling in. Your raw intelligence and ability to turn on a middle-class accent, that has kept you out of trouble with the police, and the novelty value of the world you are from that has brought you the protection of those whose world you are in, won't last forever. The ennui and hopelessness that belongs to that world is becoming a part of you and visits to the home you left feels like venturing into foreign a land. You realise, it's now or never. Stay another year, and you'll never leave. That's why we left Bolton. We left the town and the people, our friends, behind. They carried their world with them, a world we needed to forget. Sometimes, I miss them. I liked some of them, others I didn't like, they just came with the package, a few of them I cared deeply for and always will. I haven't seen any of them in over a decade. They say you can tell a lot about someone by the friends that they keep, so here it is: my tribute to a group of people, who weren't bad people, just lost souls. They adopted us, protected us, corrupted us and gave what they could of themselves. (Note: the names I have used are the ones they were known by at the time.) Harry: our landlord for a year, he offered us a room when we had to leave our bedsit in a hurry...an inveterate alcoholic, we paid our rent in vodka and brandy. Tall, with stooped shoulders, somewhere between 35 and 45 yrs old, lank greasy hair to just below the jawline, thick milk-bottle glasses, always wore a combat jacket, spoke in a kind of whining drawl and dragged his feet as he walked: a wicked martial artist, I saw him take down two guys and he barely seemed to move. Offered to set me up as a 'High class prostitute'...I declined, but took it as the compliment it was intended as:P Lee: Harry's adopted cousin and sometime resident in the House of Fun, a dangerous psycopath with rape fantasies and a serious kind of racism. Found out he had a jewish grandmother and opened a vein to drain out the impure blood. My abiding memory of Lee, is him slamming his head repeatedly against a brick wall screaming " I can't feel pain!" We left there after a year and spent a bit of time sharing with a slightly loopy cross dresser who stole my best pair of heeled shoes and money from my purse. Never saw Lee again, occassionally bumped into Harry. Nutty Paul: Probably the best friend we made in Bolton during those years. A drug dealer and addict, he had his first electro shock treatment at the age of 15 and spent regular intervals under section. Dangerous and violent at times, a reformed nazi, functionally illiterate and very sexist. He was also deeply intelligent, occassionally profound and was able to use language with the skill of a poet. Underneath the harsh exterior was a drowning man who knew he'd never see the shore again. For some reason, he let us get closer to him than most. He was also very very funny. Willy Longchamps: Paul's friend, a heroin addict and habitual thief. Whip thin and nervous, he regularly stole stuff from Paul's house. Every so often, maybe once or twice a year, Paul would beat him up for his theiving and sometimes hospitalise him. They remained friends. Kenny the Burglar: Paul's occassional driver....other than that the clue's in the name. Didn't get to know him well. Parky: a really nice stable guy, a year younger than us and conspicuously normal. Good friend of Fingers. Fingers: (variously known as geoff, fingers-geoff and fingers) a strange and tragic character, who at the age of 47 lived upstairs in his parents home and somehow managed to supply most of Bolton with their wares without his Mum and dad knowing. A habitual liar, manipulator and trouble maker, best friend of Paul based on habit and mutual hatred. Mad Sharon: somehow latched onto me as someone she 'could talk to'. Dangerously unhinged, kept an axe in her living room, had done time for GBH and once confided in me that she watched the bit of the 'executions' video, where someone is shot in the face, ten or fifteen times a day, because it made her feel better. Angi: Paul's 17 yr old girlfriend. Lovely girl, deeply in love, followed him into addiction to try and understand him. Got pregnant and tried to make it work. Had a year of something approaching family life with Paul and the bairn, but things went sour pretty fast. Paul's no family-guy. Got on really well with Angi til she vanished off the scene. Rumour says they fought and she got hurt, but I never did find out the truth. Rumour also says her addiction took her to another dealer and maybe that's so. Neil and Lisa: 28 and 19, they kept a photograph, in a frame, of their still-born baby on the table. Had the flat under us for a while. Got on well and went on holiday together. Neil was a manic depressive who occassionally broke everything in their flat, also a brilliant artist whose talent was never discovered. Lisa was always slightly bemused by my fascination for books...she didn't see the point. Nutty Paul and Angi, Fingers, Parky, Willy, Neil and Lisa, me and my guy, all used to hang out at each other's places. Usually at Paul's basement bedsit, with the music shaking the walls. Night and day would drift by as we did. Into this little circle drifted a Canadian girl called Lesley, who washed up in Bolton and discovered recreational drugs. And then there was The Mighty Quin....a larger than life American from the Bronx, who looked a little like jeff Goldblum and claimed he was on the run for murder. Seemed to have a lifetime's supply of Coke and within three weeks of arriving in Bolton managed to start a drugs war between two rival gangs. Finally there was Maximillian Devereux, commonly known as Spangles. Fun, but paranoid and delusional. Lived in a big stone cottage devoted mostly to rave music. Died about three years before we left town. Nice guy, much missed. There were others, of course, but these were the main group, who hung out and shared what they had.....and it didn't feel so bleak whilst we were in it. It was raw and exciting and we learned a lot about life....well a kind of life. That's that. I miss some of them a lot, some of them not at all. I don't miss the life I led, except from time to time in the middle of the night, when I remember what it was like to be 22 and living on the edge. Last edited by DanaC; 11-16-2006 at 07:51 AM.

11-16-2006, 07:58 AM	#2
Ibby erika Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: "the high up north" Posts: 6,127	Sounds kinda like a teen movie, or maybe a velvet underground song, to me... __________________ not really back, you didn't see me, i was never here shhhhhh

11-16-2006, 08:23 AM	#3
Trilby Slattern of the Swail Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 15,654	Very nice, Dana. You always paint such wonderful word-pictures. I feel a bit wistful for people in my past, too. Actually, for some reason, I feel very wistful today--always a dangerous feeling for me. I do like how the ex-Yank, the Mighty Quin, dug right into Capitalist Pig Syndrome a mere three weeks after arrival. Apparently, you can take the Yank out of America, but you can't take the America out of the Yank. __________________ In Barrie's play and novel, the roles of fairies are brief: they are allies to the Lost Boys, the source of fairy dust and ...They are portrayed as dangerous, whimsical and extremely clever but quite hedonistic. "Shall I give you a kiss?" Peter asked and, jerking an acorn button off his coat, solemnly presented it to her. —James Barrie Wimminfolk they be tricksy. - ZenGum

11-17-2006, 07:25 AM	#5
xoxoxoBruce The future is unwritten Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 71,105	'It's extremely kind of you to tell me all this'. __________________ The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump.

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