Not the Trafford shopping centre.

One of the interesting things about running a shop in the suburbs was the wide variety of lunatics that frequented the place. The customers were wacky enough and although irritating to deal with were a necessary evil. There was also other shopkeeper's on the same block who felt the need to pop in on a regular basis and pal out with me as it were. There was Doreen who had a Flower shop and punctuated every other word with a sneeze (She was allergic to flowers) and dripped snot into roses and carnations as she lovingly fashioned floral tributes. Many a young girl presented with one of Doreen bouquets must have sniffed enthusiastically at it thinking “How sweet they smell, and so fresh too, they still have dew on them”. She was a homely looking girl but what an artist. .

Next door was the Lucky Hoe Chinese chippy ran by Mr Hee Hoe who unfailingly made gravy with the consistency of wood glue, he eventually hung himself after laying siege with a vicious looking chopper to a battalion of police officers hold up in his stockroom. The rumour was that his Cantonese lover had left him for a Scots gay rights activist with one leg who insisted on wearing spandex tops with a kilt. That episode hit him hard, but I think it was his fear of reprisals from disgruntled customers who had been sold meat and potato pie’s Hee Hoe had chucked in the fryer straight from the freezer.

One guy had threatened to return with his crew and launch him and his half-cooked pies through the window and that’s what tipped him over the edge I think. He phoned the Samaritans and threatened to batter himself, they tried to talk reason with him but when he screamed down the phone that he had his chopper out and was ready to use it, they had no alternative but to bring the law in. When the police arrived Hee Hoe answered the door to them naked except for a chief’s utility belt adorned with chip shop condiments that barely covered his modesty. The siege didn’t last long but before back up could get there Mr Hoe had joined the Chinese lanterns swinging in the window of the Lucky Hoe chippy.

There was fabulous Gloria the blonde secretary come assistant to the funeral director three shops further along the block who liked to spend her dinner hour in my shop several times a week. She complained that it was impossible to eat Mr Hoe’s gravy at the best of times but having to contend with the smell of formaldehyde and embalming fluid whilst eating a tray full of chips laced with wood glue was more than she could handle. I suggested she tell Hoe to hold the gravy but she said he splashed the stuff around with gay abandon and became very annoyed if you refused it. She could have used another chippy, but I think it was just an excuse to get into my shop and press her suit. However Gloria and the tale of "Does my bum look big in this skirt" will be the subject of another post.

Next door to the funeral directors was the bulb shop, a mysterious emporium that as far as I could gather sold every type of electric bulb ever made in the history of electric bulb making? How he survived I will never know he had no window display to speak of, just a sign that said BULBS in large red letters over the door, it didn't even light up. No one was ever seen going in or out of the place apart from the owner whose name nobody knew. He was simply known as the Bulb man and could be seen opening up in the morning and closing up at night. But the door to the shop was always locked and you had to press a buzzer to gain entrance. As far as I could tell nobody ever did he kept his bulbs to himself, until he eventually sold out to an international bulb consortium and relocated to the south of somewhere very expensive, obviously there is money in bulbs.

The most annoying of my fellow shopkeepers was a diminutive chap called Carl or Carlo, as he liked to be addressed. He was a self-taught hairdresser who had learned his trade on the heads of unsuspecting customers over the years, who had gone under the scissors and comb. They would watch in growing horror as he butchered their hair whilst he cheerfully chatted away behind them oblivious to the carnage he was committing. He had had his windows (and his face) smashed in many times by irate husbands who had dragged their crying wives back to his salon to complain and demand their money back. On these occasions Carlo would play his Italian card which was to speak in what he thought was an Italian accent, but really all he did was put an o on the end of every word.

He would rant on like a misunderstood artist whose every snip; every wave and curl had been dragged from his tortured body. It never did him any good the result was that fist would meet face and he would wind up on the floor clutching a busted hooter. His nose must have changed direction more times than a Tory government over the years. He would disappear for days after one of these episodes, licking his wounds in his home, which like his salon had pretensions of grandeur. He tried to keep the appearance of a high class establishment using the rejected and worn out fixtures bought at auction, or sold for pennies from the sales section of local papers.

I attended a dinner party at his house once, there was flock wallpaper everywhere, everything was plastic and mock. His dining room was a theme on ancient Greece with imitation alabaster busts on pedestals with fake ivy curling around them as though in some forgotten garden. There were gold swan necked lights over every picture that stuck out too far in rooms that didn’t have the space to accommodate them. There were so many in the hallway that one had to zig zag in order not to bang your head. In the living room he had a cheap rocking horse that had obviously been distressed to create the illusion that it was antique, and brass everywhere, far too much brass.

He asked me to install a security system at his home, apparently one irate husband whose wife had an amorous liaison with our hero had threatened to burn him out. Had he done so the place would have burned for days there was that much plastic in it. Carlo thought himself a bit of a Don Juan and to some extent used his business to curry favour with his clientele, it usually got him into trouble but on these occasions he would play the effeminate card to husbands convinced he had invaded their marital space. However this time it hadn’t worked, the threat was real, and one weekend along with a friend I found myself installing a burglar alarm and several cameras.

His bathroom although small and as overcrowded as the other rooms sported a double shower and was decked out in black tiles and tinted mirrors, the fixtures were gold plated and retro, but his bedroom was a revelation. It was furnished Hugh Hefnor style with a large bed and ceiling mirrors, there was pseudo antique bedside cupboards each adorned by an old white and gold bell telephone. But the real revelation came when my pal and I moved the bed aside to install the wiring for his panic button (Pretend gold of course).

Underneath his alter of love we found several books, “How to drive your lover wild in bed”, “Women are from Venus men are from mars”, “Sexual techniques that work”, “How to pick up girls” and “lovemaking for dummies”. There was also a large box containing close to twenty or so dildoes of various sizes and colours. Next to which was a smaller box containing fake phalluses of the strap on kind, some were obviously meant to be used in anger, but there were two that had a strange strap arrangement. My pal gingerly held one aloft between forefinger and thumb turning it one way then the other looking perplexed. Then realisation dawned on him; his eyes lit up as he triumphantly shouted “He wears this in his bloody pants when he’s out”. My pal now aware of Carlo’s secret waved the offending article around like D'Artagnan waving a sword declaring the object of his scorn a charlatan.

I told him to put things back how they were and not to breath a word of what we had seen, he said “Sure, my lips are sealed” but the smile on his face and the look in his eyes told me he couldn’t keep them sealed for very long. I made him promise he was reluctant to do so but he gave me his word. How long he kept it I don’t know.

Carlo still has his shop, he now wears a berry to cover his alapicia and occasionally when I pass I see him through the window working away at some poor buggers head intent on mischief. My shop became an Internet café after I closed down, then a law office of some kind.

One interesting note of my time there was that as a child when asked what I wanted for Christmas or birthdays by my parents, I would always ask for a box of electrical junk from Mazels Radio on London road near Piccadilly station. I loved to mess around with bits of wire and electrical equipment. Once when my Father and I made a trip into Middletown to visit relatives we stopped of at a branch of Mazels on Rochdale road. Inside my eyes lit up as I looked around at all the second hand radios and wireless parts for sale. My Dad put two shillings towards my spends and I bought a box of the crap I loved so much. Clutching my purchase I told the man behind the counter that I was going to have a shop like his one day.

The weird thing is that I did have a shop like his, in fact it was that very shop that I had been in all those years ago, 795 Rochdale road.

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