Children playing in Manchester 1971 — Flashbak

It was the hot summer of 1959. I was eight years old with a brutalist hair cut and wearing dirty grey shorts. It was 7.30 pm and still bright. I was sitting on the kerb of my road (there were not many cars then, everyone had a bike). Three of us,  playing with sticks and talking, always talking. To my immediate right, was Neil, always scruffy, and up for anything: he was a champion swearer and was soon to be whisked off to Australia, one of those poor emigrants, the ten pound Poms, who, ,unknowingly, helped the Aussies with their white Australia policy. To my left was Mike O’Leary from a Catholic family of boys, neat and tidy with Brylcreemed hair and glasses. Mike was eventually to slink off to the priesthood never to be seen again. As we talked about football and families and even what we wanted for Christmas, we sat amidst the smell of freshly laid tar, Tar in the air and on our clothes, as we chanted in unison: “Last out again!” It was our daily ritual and, as I write, I can, again, smell the hot tar, and see the young faces, I was surrounded by on those long lost hot summer evenings.