Irish Times ✒ ‘Stuck forever in that room in Manchester with my trousers round my ankles.’

Mike Harding
It is a cool morning in spring 1955. An envelope flops though the door of our terraced house in Manchester, landing on the cold linoleum of the lobby. My mother, more anxious than me, beats me to it. The envelope has a crest on the back – it is a cardinal’s tasselled hat. When my mother opens it at the kitchen table, it is obvious that she is delighted.

I have passed my 11-Plus and been accepted as a scholarship boy by St Bede’s College, Manchester, at that time one of the best Catholic grammar schools in the North of England. My mother is both proud and glad: proud that I’ve got the place and glad that, as she sees it, I have moved one step further away from the redbrick streets and a job in the local ICI chemical factory, the CWS biscuit factory, or worse.

All the family on my mother’s side are of Irish descent, from Dublin and Tipperary, and almost all of them work in the tailoring trade in Manchester and Liverpool. 

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

School Of Savagery

Irish Times ✒ ‘Stuck forever in that room in Manchester with my trousers round my ankles.’

Mike Harding
It is a cool morning in spring 1955. An envelope flops though the door of our terraced house in Manchester, landing on the cold linoleum of the lobby. My mother, more anxious than me, beats me to it. The envelope has a crest on the back – it is a cardinal’s tasselled hat. When my mother opens it at the kitchen table, it is obvious that she is delighted.

I have passed my 11-Plus and been accepted as a scholarship boy by St Bede’s College, Manchester, at that time one of the best Catholic grammar schools in the North of England. My mother is both proud and glad: proud that I’ve got the place and glad that, as she sees it, I have moved one step further away from the redbrick streets and a job in the local ICI chemical factory, the CWS biscuit factory, or worse.

All the family on my mother’s side are of Irish descent, from Dublin and Tipperary, and almost all of them work in the tailoring trade in Manchester and Liverpool. 

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

2 comments:

  1. Utter bastards and no justice for their victims.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea."

    ReplyDelete