My Ardwick Memories.

A Memory of Ardwick.

I remember, Bertha the old lady that often sat on her doorstep facing the Apollo top of Apsley Grove just quietly having a smoke, never bothering anyone and watching the world pass her by. One Saturday morning on the way to the pictures a local young thug dashed into her home and smashed all the large vases on her sideboard shattering both her and her pottery into pieces. I had never heard women wail and sob the way she did that day and it was a moment that has always stuck with me. Not long after the thug was playing on the bars near Summerset Square when he fell and smashed his nose into the flagging which resulted in him breaking it and rendering his face ten times uglier then he was on the inside.

Does anyone remember the small portly vicar that used to walk the streets in his cassock with a leather bag hung over his shoulder? He was from St Matthews and always seemed to have a dog-end permanently stuck between his lips.

I also remember me and my mam hiding on a Friday evening, and not always succeeding, when the priest from St Aloysius would come knocking on for his Peter’s Pennies, a cup of tea and a slice of cake. We were quite poor and I had never seen a joint of beef in my life. Then one Sunday the priest asked my dad to call round to see him and I saw a rather large one in his kitchen cooked to perfection.

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