Harry's Lad

Sad news about Dave Myers who always seemed a good bloke. RIP.

Danns-ing in the moonlight perhaps.

Brilliant performance from the boys tonight, what an exciting bunch of lads we have coming through. That cunt Southgate's eyes will have lit up thinking about how he's going to break them.

Get in Son!!

That's a lovely goal.

That move deserved better.

Just resting Virg I hope.

Should have been 2.

Get in Koumas!!

Cracking effort that from Elliot.

I like that Southampton kit.

Nothing is worth that, absolutely nothing. You look after yourself CS, the whole forum is here for you.

I was the same when my Dad died. I was trying to be stoic for my Mum and Sisters who were in absolute pieces so bottled it up. The problem with doing that though is it can bite you on the arse further down the line. Which it did. Lesson learned.

I'll study that in more detail when the Grandkids have gone.

I always get a lump in my throat when I see a kid in a wheelchair. I'm disabled now myself but I ran around for over 30 years before my MS showed itself. Them poor little buggers didn't get that.

I drove past the houses on the old Whittakers site last week on my way to my Mrs' Sisters funeral. They must have made an absolute fortune there.

My Mum & Dad were given the option of Canny Farm, Runcorn, Winsford or Skem. They chose Skem because of the open spaces. There was a strip of woodland within 100 yards of our house with a shallow stream with loads of wildlife, rabbits, hedgehogs, squirrels amongst others. All I'd seen prior to that was rats, mice and pigeons. It really was lovely at first, but the design of the estates and some of the houses and the construction of them soon began to show their flaws. Once the rot had set in the powers that be did nothing about it so it continued to rot. A large part of the problem though which is the same everywhere I suppose are the people. Not all, but a significant minority who don't give a fuck about their community and would rather spoil things than make them better.

Pulled beef burritos tonight. Not home made mind, Costco spesh. Still lovely though.

I think the thing with most new towns, Skelmersdale in particular start off with so much promise. I was six when we moved there from a cold, dark, damp, cockroach infested terraced house with an outdoor bog in Kenny in 1969. We moved to a 3 bedroomed detached house in Tanhouse, a white pebble dashed estate that they were still building. Everything was clean and bright. People called it The Little Jerusalem or The White City. Our house was spacious, had not one but two indoor toilets, central heating, a garden, it had everything. It was a palace compared to what we came from. There was play areas for us kids and the place was surrounded by open fields and greenery. For the adults, there was jobs. The Development Corporation had enticed firms to come to the Town with purpose built buildings and start up grants and subsidies so all the ingredients for the place to thrive were there. But it didn't last. Companies had to stay for a certain length of time for this money and once the time was up they were gone. My Dad left Fords for Cortaulds to save commuting but said the writing was on the wall after 12 months and was lucky enough to get his old job back in Fords. Smaller firms were leaving and then in the mid seventies, Thorn Colour Tubes, one of Skem's major employers upped sticks and left. I've heard a lot of people who worked there say that it started the downward spiral Skem got caught up in. Then Dunlop's, BOC and Alcan went a few years later making things worse. The new house we lived in wasn't as idyllic as it first seemed either. That too, a brand new house suffered with damp. I'm not just talking about black mould here, I'm talking actual fungus. We had a brand new wall to wall shagpile ( it was the 70's) fitted, that had to be thrown because we had water coming through the wall and living room floor. It had a flat roof too and that caused problems The Corporation dug a foot wide, two foot deep channel along the length of the walls in the living room that were like that for the best part of a year. The windows were always streaming so the corpy drilled holes in the aluminium window frames for the water to escape and me and my youngest sister were always ill, often hospitalised with asthma because of it. The warm air central heating making matters worse. The estate had gone from a spotlessly clean happy place to be to a darker miserable place in a very short length of time. We were trapped in that house for nine years before we managed to get a move to Ashurst on medical grounds where things improved dramatically. IN 1981, when I was 18 I got a job on a scheme working for the Corporation where we had to go and clear empty, some borderline derelict houses so they could be sold off for as little as £1000. These houses on Tanhouse, Digmoor and New Church Farm were less than 15 years old. Ashurst was the premier council estate in Skem, probably still is, though most are private now, I'm still on the estate myself, but you can see certain parallels with the way other estates have gone over the years. It certainly isn't what it was anyway. The place isn't kept like it used to be, council budgets don't stretch far enough unfortunately. There are new builds sprouting up all over the place, lovely looking houses with the vast majority of them private and exclusive and whereas where I live was on the outskirts, we're almost inner city to what we used to be. Some of the places they're building though is like putting ribbons on a turd. Like I said at the beginning of this post, New Towns start off with so much promise, Skem certainly did, but it over promised and under delivered and continues to do so for most of the people who live here.

Same here in Skem. Like my arl fella used to say, if the world had an arsehole, here it is.

VID-20240227-WA0002.mp4

Same here.

Made me want a scooter the first time I saw that film. I was a punk at the time so got loads of unwanted attention at the pictures.

Yep, they've left the door wide open. Fucking ridiculous.