Columnist and author Ted Dakin remembers friends and neighbours from many decades past

Without them I would be in complete isolation.

But this is the price we all have to pay for growing old, because, slowly but surely, we lose our independence.

But my memories still flourish. Many people scoff at the idea of being nostalgic and looking back in time.

But when all is said and done, remembering what you ate for breakfast is looking back, so everyone, in some way or other takes a look back and is nostalgic.

Especially, if you have enjoyed a full breakfast of bacon, sausage, and eggs and fried bread and mushrooms.

Like I’ve said many times in my earlier articles, Miry Lane, where I was born and raised, was a dusty, dead-end part of the town, especially the part where I lived.

In those days Miry Lane was quite a stretch of a long-cobbled road, but the part where we local lads galivanted and played havoc, was at the lower end that ran from an overhead railway bridge, past our house, and onwards towards the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

Way back in those early days, that bridge was also a means of making a bit of pocket money, the reason being, the bridge was just a short distance from the LMS railway station on Wallgate, and many times during a busy day, a passing steam train, towing a line of carriages, came to a complete standstill on that bridge, giving us peasants on the cobbled road below a chance to bring out our "begging bowls” (so to speak) with plaintive cries to the stationary carriages above.

"Chuck a penny out! Chuck a penny out!”

Sometimes, the response paid off, and windows were lowered, and heads would pop out, and the odd coin would be thrown out by smiling passengers.

And that’s when the chaos began, as we scruffy sods below, scrabbled and fought like devils for the bouncing, rolling treasures like the mad buggers we were.

But it wasn’t always money and profit. I remember once someone throwing down a half-eaten tomato and it landed smack in the middle of my school jersey, and stayed there, just like a bloody squashed rosette and took me ages to scrape it off.

When I arrived back home mam went bonkers and cussed me rotten.

As youngsters the thought of money dominated all of our lives so we created many ways and means to make it happen.

And talking about ways and means, my mate, Peter "P” Clark once came up the idea of putting a pin-hole through a Woodbine fag to make it last longer and there he was, puffing and sucking away like crazy in a futile effort to drag smoke into his lungs.

The Clark family lived just around the corner from us, in Prescott Street, and they had this pedal-type organ, that on hot summer days, Mrs Clark, with her sash window down to the bottom, would go all artistic by entertaining an audience of happy neighbours, going about their daily chores.

Well before I was old enough for grown-up friends in life, two of my best mates were Colin Bradshaw and his cousin, Harry Lathom, who both lived in Horsfield Street just round the corner from us.

I can’t remember how it happened, but one day Colin broke his right leg. It must have been a serious break, because he had to have his leg encased in plaster of Paris, right from his thigh down to his ankle, and for a while he became housebound and this made him so depressed his mother pleaded with us lads to find some way to cheer him up.

So as a form of transport, an old pram, one of those ancient tall things was somehow adapted for him to use as a carriage and we all took turns to push him around our back field and we went so fast it was a miracle he didn’t end up back in Wigan Infirmary.

My dad’s parents, Richard and Margaret Dakin, were retired canal folk, who lived in the top house, in Horsfield Street opposite the Lathoms.

The house had quite a bit of land at the rear where Grandad kept chickens and grew rhubarb and lettuce and had two sheds and a stable.

I remember in that stable there was a dusty, horse collar hung precariously on a rusty hook, an apparent relic from their days of working on the Leeds to Liverpool Canal with their faithful horse, Jenny.

My grandad could be a cruel sod at times, and many times he had me holding a squawking chicken as he probed like an amateur surgeon for the carotid artery with his penknife and after a successful incision, would hang the chicken up by its legs to drip-dry.

I’ve always reckoned that those chickens knew instinctively that Grandad was a killer in disguise, because unless he was carrying a bucket of mixed chicken feed, they knew he was after them, and would run like the clappers, squawking and flapping and trying their best to take flight to escape his murderous clutches.

And I’m positive the old man spent more time in his pen just to keep out of grandma’s way, and which suited him just fine, because Grandma was a nowty sod.

Mam once told me that one day she hit grandad over the head so hard with an umbrella he had to have stitches inserted.

What used to baffle me was, every Sunday morning, while sitting at their dining table, they shared pieces of crispy fried bacon (no bread) from the same plate, while listening the arias of Beniamino Gigli and other Italian opera singers.

Not a word did they understand, but they gave the impression they did. I mean, how was it that two canal workers, who couldn’t even read or write, who slaughtered chickens, attacked one another, and ate pieces of fried bacon from the same plate, appreciate operatic singing?

It remains a mystery to me.