Snake woman.

Snake woman or Barbara was one of those bohemian types who suddenly appear in your life and behave as though they have always been there. These people always seem to know you by first name despite the fact that you might never have met them before. I remember the day she first entered my shop (Visual Electronics), it was early morning, I had been to party the night before and was feeling a little delicate, which was why I was leaning on the counter and looking at my shoes for inspiration.

She opened the door with a flourish, stepped into the shop and stood there like a sulking film starlet. She had raven black hair that framed a pale face and her eyes were hidden by huge sunglasses, which she slowly removed. She shook her head like a girl in a shampoo advert to allow her hair to fall into its natural style, then placed one arm of her sunglasses into her mouth and narrowed her eyes, one of which was false.

She was wearing tight black pants that left little to the imagination, and a leopard skin patterned top. She advance toward the counter wobbling slightly on high heels, “You must be David” she spoke with a pseudo Russian accent peppered with broad Yorkshire that confused me for a while. After I came to know her the Russian drifted into the Yorkshire more often and eventually disappeared. She presented herself as though she had nobility behind her, when in reality all she had behind her was a long career as an exotic dancer in some of the seedier clubs of the Costa’s in Spain.

Her glamorous but slightly tatty clothes were remnants from a more glorious time in her life, a time when she would thrill crowds, and command men with her erotic gyrations on stages lit by purple and red spotlights, accompanied by frantic drums beating to Eastern music. A time when she was known as “Dalores" the snake woman. You could tell that she had once been a babe, but the years of late nights in smoke filled clubs had taken its toll. Where once she had been a ten, time and the hazards of life had demoted her to an attractive seven and a half.

From about fifteen feet away she could still pass for thirty odd, but the nearer she got, the older she looked. This of course wasn’t good for her act, she became less popular and the bookings became fewer, until one night on stage her partner (Tommy the snake) put paid to her act altogether by taking out her left eye with his tail.

Her return to a dull, grey England after year’s abroad in the sun was a culture shock for this lovely lady. And the indifferent treatment she received from the social security after being the centre of attention for so many dribbling male tourists was a depressing reminder that her life of glamour was over. She still kept a regal bearing though, and it added to her charm.

She requested that I visit her home to repair her television. I told her I would call after the shop closed because I was on my own that day and couldn’t leave until then. When I arrived she opened the door to me dressed in what can only be described as a gypsy outfit, complete with bandanna topped with a chain of coins. She skipped on bare feet into the living room and pointed dramatically to the errant TV in the corner, saying “There it is, do make it work David, shall you have tea or coffee”. I heard myself saying “I shall have coffee, two sugars” and for the first time in a long time I went red with embarrassment. “I shall have coffee”; it sounded like the goof people make when they put H, s where they don’t belong.

I set about the TV and quickly discovered that the plug fuse had given up the ghost, it was replaced and before she came back with my coffee the strains of the intro music to Coronation Street was filling the room. “You marvellous, marvellous man” she beamed “How much will that be” I explained that I couldn’t really charge her for a five pence fuse, but the coffee would be payment enough. She made me sit next to her on the couch to drink my coffee and we chatted away as though we were old friends.

She told me about her act and the life she had led as a dancer, first in the chorus line for some quite famous companies then as an exotic dancer in London before flying to Spain for a season of work that stretched to twenty five years. We chatted for over an hour and before I left she promised to pop in to the shop to say hello. She popped several times a week and we became good friends. On one visit she invited me round for a drink and a chat, this she said was a chance to show me some of her wardrobe and props from the act that had only just arrived in England.

I arrived to find the table prepared with food and a selection of drinks, the sofa had been pushed against the wall, and the lights were low. I had a sneaky suspicion that amore was the point of the evening and lets face it I’m a man of the world, I was ready for this and whilst she was no longer a young girl she was still attractive. What I wasn’t prepared for was what came half way through the evening. She had been showing me her things, photographs, knick-knacks, props she used in her act. Then she disappeared upstairs for a few minutes and when she came down she was dressed in a white Egyptian outfit, decked out in red and gold with a splendid gold head-dress.

She flicked a switch on the hi-fi and the room was filled with music. She began dancing right there in the middle of the room, and I watched open-mouthed as she gyrated and ground her hips to “Midnight at the oasis” by Maria Muldaur. Despite what I said before about her no longer being a young girl, she had a superb body and under the dim lights she looked every bit as delicious as Santanico Pandemonium in “Dawn till dusk ”. It was an exhilarating night and I even learned a few dance steps. We had a great friendship that lasted until she decided to go back to Spain and live with a French piano-playing friend of hers.

England was a great disappointment to her and I could see she was unhappy. I drove her to the airport and we had a last drink and meal in departures before I waved goodbye to her as she wobbled on her high heels back to the sun.

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Billy Fish.

I read with sadness the other day that a member of one of the oldest families in Manchester Billy Fish, was sent down for yet another gaol term, this time he received four years for burglary. Apparently he broke in to a coppers house in the early hours, filled his burglary bag with everything valuable he could find, then discovered a Sony X-box near the TV. He had always wanted a Sony X-box. The smooth, sleek feel of the handset felt good, the graphics were superb, and the loud zapping sounds as he bumped of aliens gave him a feeling of power. He should have waited until his nights work was done and the safety of his home before playing on it though. The pops, bangs, and whooshes coming from the telly plus his excited cries of “Have it you bastard” woke the copper up and he duly read him his rights.

You might have no sympathy for such a villain, but a life of crime was always on the cards for Billy, who incidentally came from a long line of Billy’s stretching back to well before the first war. His dad was called Billy, and his Dad before him, in fact the first Billy of any note was his great grand dad who is reputed to have introduced spring clothes pegs to Lancashire in the early nineteenth century. He was very well thought of in washing circles until it was discovered that he had stolen the idea from a Gypsy woman who he married in order to keep her mouth shut. But she was a strong willed girl and set up on her own selling pegs house to house. She undercut her husband, but then don’t all wives. The result of this unhappy affair was that he had her incarcerated in a lunatic asylum just outside of Salford.

He came to a sad end himself after a very nasty accident demonstrating a turnip peeler he had invented to a group of interested housewives at the Great Exhibition of 1851. There was to be an inquiry but the place burnt to the ground before they could inspect the peeler, rumour was he had nicked that idea too.

His oldest son Billy started work as a delivery boy for the co-op and had great expectations of rising through the ranks. After showing great promise he was promoted to biscuit sorter, then became a butter cutter and was well on his way to becoming manager of his own branch until it was discovered that he had been forging dividend tickets to line his own pocket. After a spell breaking rocks he settled in Glossop and eventually found work at a dye works as a vat stirrer. Though he died fairly young he was described as a colourful character by his workmates and the best dad in the world by his oldest son Billy.

Billy Fish the third was in and out of trouble all his life, but his father wanted him to learn a trade and as soon as he left school Billy was indentured as a trainee rivet thrower at the great Beyer Peacocks engineering factory in Gorton Manchester. He made good progress, learned quickly, by the time he was twenty one had risen to the dizzy ranks of riveter. He made good wages for the day and spent a great deal of his money on sharp suits and shoes, which endeared him to the ladies. Sadly for Billy his dandy days were over when some bright spark invented the electric welding set. Riveting was a thing of the past and nothing turns a girls head like bright lights and welding goggles.

With the outbreak of the Great War Billy saw a chance to redeem the family name; he tried to join one of the pal’s regiments but was turned down because of rickets. He argued with the recruiting sergeant that his bow legs weren’t that bowed, but the sergeant wouldn’t have any of it and told him that he could never make a good soldier with his pins, or a goalie for that matter. Billy turned once more to crime; bitter at his failure to enlist he took to raiding the offal works in Longsight late at night with a local hardnut Jimmy the wig. By day they would hock pigs belly and tripe in the taverns or at the local steelworks where black pudding was a great favourite and always in demand. By night he stalked abattoirs and slaughterhouses stealing the innards of cows and sheep.

Soon these establishments of death got wise to Billy’s late night prowlings. On the day that the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1918, Billy was hung at Strangeways prison for the vicious beating to death (with a sack of pig’s trotters), of a savoury duck roller who had started his shift early.

Billy had never married but had fathered a son to a local harlot called Vinegar Kate. Although Billy would never officially recognise the little boy as his, the family traits were all there, bright red hair, one ear higher than the other and a singular disregard for the results of his actions. When young Billy, (for that surprisingly is what he was called) was warned not to talk to strangers, he immediately went looking for a stranger to talk to. After an all night search he was found shivering and cold tied to a railway line in Trafford Park, by a Badger hunter. Who came across him as he wound his way home after a night of Badger hunting in a neck of the woods that hasn’t seen Badgers since Roman times I believe.

This unfortunate episode scarred Billy for life and was according to psychiatrists the trigger for the anti social, sometimes psychotic behaviour that he displayed throughout his life. He was in and out of institutions after the Badger incident and never spent more than a few months out of gaol. He did at one point look like becoming a model citizen after meeting and falling in love with the delightful Tracy Cumthorp a tyre fitter from Leeds who had settled in Manchester just as the Beatles were wowing the world. They met when Billy took a getaway car that was to be used on a job at the weekend for a tyre to be fitted. He had been given the money for a brand new tyre, but Tracy who was emediately attracted to Billy let him have a part worn for half the price.

He took Tracy to the pictures on the money he had saved and thus began the only good thing in his life. They married and he stayed out of trouble for a while, but the repercussions of buying the part worn tyre came fifteen years after their only child William was born. After returning the getaway car to the gang who were pulling the job, Billy told them he was going straight and wanted nothing more to do with crime. Unfortunately as the gang left the bank they had just robbed and dived into the car the tyre deflated and hampered their getaway. They were all caught, and sent to the big house for twenty years, on the very day that they were released from gaol a special party was held for Billy at the old iron foundry in Beswick. His body was never recovered but it is believed that he suffered unimaginably at the hands of Black Bob a seven foot two iron smelter from Failsworth. Who after shredding Billy's poor body with the tools of his trade, stuck it in a sack and weighted it down with oven dross, before tossing it into the river Medlock.

No one is talking so we will never know, but legend has it that every year at midnight on the anniversary of Billy’s death, his ghost can be seen searching scrap yards for part worn tyres. True or not one thing is sure, the event had a traumatic effect on William the fifth who at the tender age of fifteen on hearing of his fathers disappearance vowed to make society pay for this cruel turn of events.
To this end he committed every crime imaginable at some point or other and although not a very bright lad the fact that he was caught every time made no difference to him at all.

Which is why according to the Manchester evening news he was discovered in the early hours of Saturday morning drinking a can of lager, eating a huge pork pie and playing Alien commander on an X-Box whilst sat in the owner of the house’s favourite chair.

The copper was reported to have said “We don’t go looking for crime, but if it comes our way then God help the bastards”.