Growing Up in Sixties Salford
by Brian M Clarke
This final excerpt from Brian Clarke's Haunted Memories is set in 1970. It details his work as casual tiler on Fridays made possible due to new estates being built around Salford. Haunted Memories tells about a childhood and youth spent in Salford. Its streets, businesses, schools, pubs and people are recalled with astounding detail and brought to life vividly. Set within broader historical events - the Beatles or the moon landing - the reader can - irrespective of their age and place of upbringing - associate and understand the humour with which the shenanigans of the child and teenager are recalled; and they can also feel the pang of nostalgia that goes hand in hand with recalling long lost places and events.
Uncle Tommy was a tiler and he was always looking for casual help on the building sites. Did I fancy doing a Friday for ‘cash in hand’? I did and a week later I began my career as a casual tiler. Or to be more exact, a labourer.
On my first morning we arrived by bus at Boothstown. This was a new housing estate about ten miles away. It was the first time I had been on a building site without climbing over a fence to sneak in. My uncle’s job was to shape and nail tiles on to wood slats laid across roof spaces. He also rolled out waterproof covering to double protect the house from rain. My job was to take a stack of slates, climb a ladder and place them near Uncle Tommy, making sure that whenever he reached out for the next tile to be nailed down one was ready for him.
“I’ll be on the roof. Put the tiles just slightly behind me. I always work from the bottom so I can overlap them. That means you will have to climb further up the roof as I work but by then you should be that bit faster and keeping up.”
That was it. I was now a fully trained tiler’s labourer. The work wasn’t hard to begin with but after a dozen trips up and down the ladder my leg muscles were beginning to feel it. Thankfully it was soon time for a tea-break. All the builders shared a large wooden hut with running water, kettle, cups and coffee etc. I noted that several builders preferred tea that looked more like rusty pipe water. As I said, this was my first time on a building site so I had no idea of what was allowed and what was a massive no-no.
I found a cup, made a drink and sat down on a thin-armed armchair that had seen many a better day. As the springs sank under my weight, my heart sank further:
“What fucker’s got my cup!”
A man in his forties with a beer belly that must have made him taller when he laid down looked around the room. Uncle Tommy immediately saw what had happened and stood up.
“It’s me labourer. It’s his first day on the job and –“
“It’ll be his last day on the fucking job if he does that again.”
I dashed over to the sink, poured out the coffee and started to clean the cup.
“Have you ‘ad fucking koff-eee in my bastard cup?”
Uncle Tommy said something to him and I tried a series of sorrys that just seemed to make it worse.
“You’re ‘is gaffer! You’re supposed to make sure they know what’s what!”
Before it came to blows, I handed the cup to the giant. When he looked inside it set him off again. I had cleaned the cup too well as he liked a certain amount of tea stain. He looked me in the eye and needlessly said, “Don’t ever touch my cup again”.
Uncle Tommy and I left the hut to make our way back to the house. “I should have said for you to bring your own cup,” was all that Uncle Tommy ever said about the matter. When dinner time came I went to the chippy and had a bottle of Coke.
We were on the bus on the way home when Uncle Tommy reached into his pocket and started to count out money. I still had no idea how much I would be paid. When Mam had sorted things out the message that came back was “Let’s see how things go”. Well now it was time to see.
“How much do you get paid at the funeral place?” When I told him, Uncle Tommy divided it by five and gave me the equivalent of one day’s pay. I was more than happy with this because:
- He paid my bus fares
- He bought my dinner
- It was cash in hand, so it was more than I got for a day at the Co-op
- He had stopped the giant from killing me
I was doing quite well for money and felt confident about my uncertain future. On the building site the people I admired most were the hod carriers for the builders. These were usually chaps in their 20s or 30s whose job it was to load bricks on to a wooden hod and either climb a tall ladder or rush up a series of gangplanks to feed the bricklayers. These chaps were superhero fit. The bricklayers were paid for the bricks they laid and if they were kept waiting for the next batch to arrive they set up a hell of a racket. No bricks; no earnings. The hod carriers were well paid and I suspect they also had side-deals with certain bricklayers to ensure that they had priority.
As the weeks moved on we shifted to different parts of the estate. Uncle Tommy was often under pressure from the ‘sparkies’ to get a roof on so they could start on the electrics. The company in charge of the development was so keen to move people in and get paid that sometimes I would be working on a house next door to where someone had just moved in. Bit by bit my skills were improving and sometimes Uncle Tommy would give me an easy bit to tile while he worked on a house elsewhere. On one occasion I was sweltering in the heat as I worked by myself tacking down tiles.
“That looks tiring work.” I looked round to see a woman in her forties looking up at me. “Would you like a cold drink? Orange juice?” I said yes and we chatted a little as I drank it. She told me that I must be very fit to do all that work. I was about to tell her that I bury the dead when I thought better of it. When I handed back the glass she said she had enjoyed chatting with me before adding that if I needed to wash up before going home I could use her place. I thanked her and carried on tacking tiles to the roof. It was a couple of years later when I realised what had been going on and repeatedly slapped my head.
I didn’t think about it at the time but my labouring job meant that I was now part of the development of Salford. Satellite developments like the Boothstown site took some of the housing pressure off my bit of Salford as the wave of ‘progress’ washed over hundreds of communities and thousands of lives. After spending years playing on the old bombsites, empty houses and waste grounds I was now helping to build their replacements. It’s a funny old world.
I stuck at the Friday job through the summer but when winter started to show up Uncle Tommy thought it was time to call it a day, especially as his job depended so much on the weather.
Copyright Brian M Clarke. All rights reserved.