Platts Farm

A Memory of Pickmere.

I remember Platts Farm. My gran lived in a bungalow (a wooden hut really) right at the far end of the field. There was a small pond and a little stream running through it. We went there every shcool holidays and I stayed there all through the summer holidays, getting the bus from what is now Chrolton Street Bus station, yes on my own, and then walking down that lane passed the Red Lion pub, the post office and then the general stores. I had a crush on a boy whose family also lived on the field, we had to pass his house to get to the lake and cross over the stream. He worked on the funfair, I've forgotton his name now, it might have been Ricky something! It was a fantastic time in my life and even now I can remember that funfair and messing about around on that lake, I was never bored. My auntie would take us into the Happy Hour Club and the Jubilee Club, and buy us a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop.
My cousins were always out on the lake fishing, the weekly treat was fish and chips which we ate out of the newspaper on the way home. You saw animals being born right next to you, were chased by the cows and horses, fell in the stream and mud every day, just having adventures. My friends and I went to Pickmere until we were about 14, my auntie had got married and moved to Northwich. By this time we had bikes so we rode to Northwich, there were no motorways then. We were fascinated by the life other children had, in what we thought of as the countryside. We lived right in the centre of Manchester, Ancoats, Milesplatting and Beswick, no open fields and country lanes for us and what was scrumping! Well, we soon found out, as the local lads set us up, to be chased off someone's private property.

Anyway, they were indeed happy days.