Pav’s patch; Looking back to looking your best

LOOKING back on my childhood, I’m often surprised by the number of times we used to get dressed up.

If we went down Manchester, we put on out best clothes. We even wore our best for a Sunday trip to Stamford Park. Somewhere, in the family albums, there’s a picture of us all, with my dad wearing a suit and dickie bow, and just for a stroll around Stanny Park.

Still, I didn’t mind too much. I used to get bought a 99 on those summer afternoons — not just the usual threepenny cornet or teddy-bear lolly.

And then of course, there was the pictures. For some reason you had to doll yourself up to go to the Odeon or Empire in Ashton. For my mother, that usually meant putting in her rollers. After she got back from work on Saturday dinner, she’d sort her hair and walk about with a head like a space satellite.

When I take my son to the multiplex, it’s all so different. After all the food costs a fortune. He once asked for some toffees and I gave him a fiver. He returned with a monster bag of M&Ms and about 5p change. Why is a bag of popcorn that costs 70p in Morrisons around £3 at the flicks?

It was so different when I was a lad. As the intermission began, ladies would appear in the aisles, walking backwards, carrying huge trays. These contained tubs of ice cream, bags of sweets, and strange plastic cartons of orange juice.

When my big sister was little (if that makes sense) there was once a scene in the old Princess Cinema in Dukinfield. Mam, dad and sis were in the posh seats in the balcony when sis decided to drop her two ounces of pear drops over the side.

The man whose head they fell on was not happy, but it was his own fault for watching “Peter Pan” at his age.

My most embarrassing moment — well one of them — also took place in the pictures.

It was the first time I had taken a girl out, but the back row was full and we had to sit about three rows from the back. And by the way, do 15-year-olds still snog on the back row or do they just go straight for a sleazy hotel room?

Anyway, I decided the time had come to be bold.

I quietly tried to ease my arm around the buxom fourth-former from Leigh Street Girls’ Secondary Modern and grabbed the knee of the man behind.

I was a smooth operator even in 1972.