Just a Salford Lad

By David Jim Tommins

Just A Salford Lad

The story of my life; from the very beginning; to the present day.
As a kid I grew up in the streets of Salford; it was very rough and ready.
Running with the gangs; then at the age of fourteen, I became a singer in a group on the other side of Manchester, which changed my life completely and I loved every minute of it.
It was a life changing move and at the same time the club scene was evolving in Manchester; the most incredibly exciting times imaginable! My life changed directions many times, mostly for the good but sometimes tragically, things do go wrong; sometimes it’s your own fault; but sometimes you can be the innocent victim.
Moved to Urmston at age nineteen; a beautiful suburb with great people.
Moved to South Africa at age thirty four; a beautiful country.
I’ve been lucky so far, I’ve had a wonderful life, full of fun and laughter, but also tragedies and injuries that I wouldn’t like to go through again, but hey, that’s life; and on it goes!
Most of my life has been great; which I would gladly relive again with my incredible friends!
The music never ends – it’s a passion!
Life is an incredible adventure, live it to the fullest – some people aren’t that lucky!
Anyway, I hope that you enjoy my story; I’ll hopefully be starting a new chapter in a few months time, when I move to the Philippines!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728384443

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© 2019 David Jim Tommins. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/18/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-8445-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-8444-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

PREFACE

I initially thought that I could put this into some kind of order; I have tried my best, but there are so many inter-relating and overcrossing factors; that strict order is very difficult.

I’m a very ordinary guy from one of the poorest environments; but what I grew up with, was Old School Respect, the most important and most valuable asset on the planet! Without that, the human race will destroy itself; sadly, living proof of that has been rampant over the last thirty years! It makes me so sad; I do hope that I live long enough to see the old life values come back!

Another factor is that I’m almost half South African, as I’ve lived there for the latter half of my life.

My life also changed dramatically when my daughters Roxanne and Victoria came along. When they were young, they fought and disliked each other so much that at times they drove me to despair. I tried to keep the peace but it almost seemed that they would never really be friends; I was devastated! Never having known what it was like to have a brother or a sister; my heart was set on these two being fantastic together; this for me was a disaster! Thank God, that when they grew up, they finally became great friends; I felt that my life was now complete. Kinda crazy hey? I love my daughters so much; my love for them is immeasurable!

For the last few years, Victoria, her husband Marius and my granddaughters Emily and Sienna have been living in Cape Town, which is quite a distance from Johannesburg. Recently they immigrated to Auckland in New Zealand; I’m so pleased for them, but who knows when I will get to see them again; so I guess this story is mainly for them; at least hopefully they’ll get to know me a little better.

By the way, all my friends call me Dave.

CHAPTER 1

I was born in Crumpsall Hospital, Manchester on 14 th January 1949, apparently totally normal. (Remember this comment.)My mum had married my dad, who still shared the same, two up and two down terraced house with his mother, my grandma-T. It was 8 Grove Street, Lower Broughton, which was the last street before Broughton Lane met Bury New Road. My dad was born in that house. Let me tell you the story that I only learnt many years later, as an adult.

My grandma-T actually had the birth situation at home! She was attended by the first female doctor in England, a phenomenal woman called Dr. Walsh, whom I met many decades later. Apparently, my dad was technically still-born! My grandma would not accept this; she climbed off the bed, went to the kitchen and filled two galvanised steel buckets of water, one hot and one cold. She held this still unborn child, with the afterbirth, by its feet and dunked it in the hot and cold water and beat the shit out of it! He survived! He became my dad. He was the most incredible man. He lived to be eighty years old.

My grandma was a very strong woman who had worked all her life in the cotton mills that were literally fifty yards from the end of our street. She loved the theatre and had a front-row seat automatically booked, for the opening and closing nights of every show in Salford and Manchester. My grandma-T, a woman in the cotton mills in the daytime, was a top-class lady at night. She was known in all the theatres; until she had a massive stroke; and ended up in Frail Care for twelve long years. All she ever really missed was the theatre; that was so terribly sad.

They had a dog called Prince, who was a crossed long-haired collie, like Lassie. This dog loved me from day one when I was a baby, I remember looking into his eyes, and it was like we were communicating through our souls. The love was tremendous! Unfortunately, Prince died when I was four years old. I cried my eyes out, and my mum and dad were trying to comfort me. My dad said, Can you remember when you were a baby, when you hung on to Prince’s tail, and he would pull you around the room? I said, Yes, I do remember that. My dad then told me, that I was the only human being Prince had ever allowed to touch his tail! Ever since, when I greet a dog, I look into his eyes and I see the soul and connect.

Now I have to tell you about the Lancashire Cotton Mills; at that time, they were the noisiest factories on the planet. All the women in the neighbourhood became excellent lip readers; because nobody could shout over those machines.

Now, I have to try to explain this properly; when I was a baby, my mum battled to get me to eat anything; believe or not, I was the weirdest non-eater anybody had ever met. I do not joke. (I still am peculiar to this day!)

One evening when I was three and a half years old, my dad came home from work and I had my back to the front door; I was facing my mum and grandma. He came up behind me and shouted, Boo! but didn’t touch me, I didn’t bat an eyelid; that was when my mum, my grandma, and my dad realised that I was stone deaf! I’d been born that way, but because everyone was a lip reader, I’d just kinda fitted in. I had a normal talking voice, but I was deaf!

My mum took me to a specialist in Manchester; he diagnosed me with severe tonsillitis, but also thought that my adenoids were a severe part of the problem. Now, I had to wait until I was four years old before I could have this operation; because they reckoned that your tonsils can grow back, but deformed!

At four, I had the operation; I remember it so clearly, it was like someone had shoved a toilet brush down my throat; I was in agony for a few days; but I could hear! The normal sounds were amazing! It was a new experience and something that I can never forget. All this noise was fantastic!

Tasting food? Wow! I’ve never gotten my head around that! Even to this day, all my friends still see me as the most peculiar and the slowest eater on the planet.

I remember all the local street parties, when the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II took place in 1954. It was awesome and so friendly! Everybody had decorated their houses and streets with flags, etc. I remember getting a toy wrist-watch, with a sky-blue strap, from Butcher Sam on Bury New Road. I find it amazing that when I start thinking back, my brain goes into top gear and races off in so many directions!

My mum and a group of young mothers with their babies; went on a trip to Mellor, a tiny place in a beautiful rural area. Initially, we were up on the back of a builder’s truck that went around the neighbourhoods, collecting everybody who was to be delivered to the double-decker bus; that had been hired. We eventually got to a suburb where my mum’s best friend, Jean Horrocks lived. Her youngest son Ian, was a couple of months younger than me. As Jean and Ian joined us up on the truck, her other sons came to wave goodbye. Eric, the middle son, was holding a frog and he pretended to throw it, all the mothers panicked, it was so funny!

Mellor was really nice, very communal. There was a huge, stuffed big brown bear; I remember my mum holding me up, as I tried to feed him biscuits. I think that we were there for a week. Unfortunately, I was suffering with a serious dose of croup, worse than whooping cough, so I was throwing up most of the time. On the bus trip home, Eric the bus conductor was very entertaining and had everybody laughing.

I still remember this like it was almost yesterday. I used to tell this story to my friends in adult life; they always said, No way! because when this happened, I was only sixteen months old! My mum always confirmed that my story was 100 per cent accurate! Isn’t life beautiful!

My dad had grown up, in what was predominately a Jewish area, just off Bury New Road. On Saturdays, he used to make his pocket money by going around to the Jewish houses, lighting their fires and doing all the other things that they were not allowed doing on their religious day. My dad, having spent his school days at Waterloo Road School, knew all the Hebrew prayers perfectly; even when he did this as an adult, he would automatically put his hands on top of his head, because he never owned a yami, and recited all those Hebrew prayers.

I remember my first day at this school; I was four years old. At mid-day we had school dinners and I had not eaten my peas, the teacher insisted that I must eat them; I told her that I couldn’t, but she kept insisting, so I took one mouthful, chewed, swallowed, and then immediately threw up on her dress; she never tried that again!

My mum and dad took me to the pictures (cinema) for the first time one Saturday afternoon. The movie was Tarzan. The following morning, my mum was downstairs in the kitchen and my dad was standing just outside the kitchen door having a smoke. I was upstairs in the bedroom, thinking about Tarzan swinging through the trees, so I decided to have a go. I climbed up on the cupboard, grabbed hold of the curtain and swung; well my chin hit the window-pane and smashed it! The glass fell down almost onto my dad, he came roaring up into the bedroom, I’d jumped back into bed and there I was saying, It wasn’t me! Ha! Ha! It was not easy being an only child; I was always in the shit.

Shortly after that, I discovered electricity; I’d figured out how to get the bulb out of their bedside light and then, with one thumb in the empty socket, I managed to switch it on with my other hand, I instantly hit the wall. I was buzzing and trembling, but I didn’t make a sound; I was crapping myself, but my mum and dad never got to know about that incident. Obviously, I never did that again!

A few months later, my mum and dad had taken me to the circus on the Saturday afternoon; on the Monday morning, I was telling my friends in infants’ school about what I had seen; I really loved the clowns, so I jumped onto a wooden chair, leapt into the air and tried to do a somersault; I landed badly and broke my right wrist! The dopey teachers didn’t do anything about it; they just made me wait until my mum came to pick me up in the afternoon. She then took me to the hospital, where I had an X-ray; my wrist was broken! I was fitted with plaster of Paris!

CHAPTER 2

I grew up in the poorest but best end of Salford. (Twin city adjoining Manchester, in England)

My parents had moved there just before I was seven years old. Kinda weird and maybe difficult for most people to understand; but the whole neighbourhood was magic, but as rough as shit!

Obviously I tried to fit in as quickly as possible; which was not the easiest thing to do. I was amazed that everybody smoked! Even the three year olds were picking up dimps (left over cigarette ends/butts; - "stompies" in SA) from the gutter; I was amazed!

I was also immediately scared as it was a kinda "fit in - or get fucked up" scenario; so I did, and started smoking before I was eight years old. (My God did I have to hide that from my parents.)

Amazingly; in this incredible environment, my dad had realised that I could sing quite well. He tried to get me into the church choir but they said that you had to be eight years old, I was only seven at the time, but the choir master realised how good my voice was and he said to my dad that he would organise something. By the time I was nine I was a soloist! Can you imagine; just you, no mikes and your voice has to fill a whole church! I was so blessed that we had a great choir master, Mr Walsh, who was extremely strict, but he taught us well.

I tried to figure things out as quickly as possible, but I soon found out that I had the biggest problem imaginable! I was the only only one that anybody had ever met; wow was I in the shit, and so the fighting began, I hated it! I was never the toughest guy around, but you had to try to survive.

The street gang that I was in was called the "St. Stephen’s Street" gang. I lived about three hundred yards from St John’s Roman Catholic Cathedral on Chapel Street. Ninety percent of our gang was Roman Catholic; the rest of us were Protestants from St. Philip’s. We never had a fight about religion!

I started off at St. Stephen’s School; which, fortunately for me; my parents realised wasn’t a very good school; so they sent me to Halton Bank School; which was a bus ride away towards the Swinton and Eccles direction. I was there for two and a half years, we had real pens and ink wells, I was impressed.

My first teacher was Ma Brown who was a really cruel bitch, who for the slightest reason would seriously hit you, on the back of your fingers with a wooden ruler; but not with the flat side, this was with the sharp edge! I can only hope that she had a horrible pain filled old aged!

(She would have been thrown out of the Gestapo for cruelty! Ha! Ha!)

At about this time; there was a street fight, in which I was doing alright until I turned around; someone smashed a galvanised steel dust bin lid into my face, my nose was broken and my two front teeth were smashed! That was agony for a few weeks; the dentist said that the teeth could only be crowned when I reached the