ON THE BALL.
There use to a huge pub in Longsight called the Devonshire just on Stockport Rd, it's now a car park for McDonalds, but back in it's heyday it use to host all the likely lads and villains, so it was a great place to observe all the cool cats of the time. I was fortunate that my best friend lived just across the road and his neighbour was a very well connected person. So my early memories of growing up in Longsight was observing as they were called the top lads, who dressed a certain way having been abroad through football, also spoke in a way in which only similar lads would understand. Equivalent to how Cockneys would use their slang to discuss their affairs in private to each other.
So most nights after school when most of my mates had gone home or did their own thing, me and my best mate would sit on his fence and just absorb all the comings and goings from the pub and also his neighbours house. I use to love being around them and listening too all their exploits about football, going abroad grafting the best clobber, and doing over jewllers for watches, especially Rolex's. We were just impressionable young lads who were being schooled or educated on the world of clothes, football, watches, travel and pure cool attitude you cannot buy in a bottle. So it was a natural trasition to morph into that world as i got older, and it was not necessarily just white lads telling these stories but black and mixed race lads as well.
So this became my way of life and i would gravitate too things where people who looked and dressed like me hanged out. I suppose this kind of thing happens on most council estates around the country, but what made it more unusual was the fact that this was a white working class way of life. So to be black and affiliated to this world would mean you would get singled out and get noticed, consequently you would have to be smarter, more clued up and be able too handle yourself. So if you dared go to football in the early days you would be the minority, as a result you would have to be well backed up and respected , and be able too deal with situations when the going got tough. But without question you would have to have the thickest skin ever, even though most of the lads you were with were white and would back you up if there was any problems at football, pubs, and clubs. At the end of the day you would be singled out for being a COON in a white mans world. Any black male who was privy to that world in the 80s can definately identify with that atmosphere.