I've been meaning to write for a while now about a series of raids and arrests in my home town of Huyton, but the whole depressing story has been difficult for me to comprehend let alone comment upon. Apparently the area quaintly named "Bakers Green" has become a hot bed of drug related gun crime with all its accompanying anti social gang activities. This area is only a few hundred yards away from where my mother still lives and it is a place I know and once loved well. An aunt and uncle of mine lived there for many years as I was growing up and the sweet shop, Arthurs butchers and Mr Macs chippy where constant features in my life (Lord Robys too). Huyton always had a reputation as being a rough place but I found its town centre with its remaining village green and small shops a fantastic place to shop with my big sister (sweets and comics from forbouys and E. Shaws) and the surrounding fields and farms a wonderland for my friend and now Californian resident Tech guy. The town centre still had two dairies and orchards surviving unchanged until the early 1970's that helped keep a village atmosphere long after the town had outgrown its rural background. Now it seems the town,indeed the world of my youth has gone and has been replaced by just one more self made ghetto of self induced mental deprivation, spiritual poverty and half arsed gangsterism....you truly can't go home.
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Tuppence ha'penny gangsters.
I've been meaning to write for a while now about a series of raids and arrests in my home town of Huyton, but the whole depressing story has been difficult for me to comprehend let alone comment upon. Apparently the area quaintly named "Bakers Green" has become a hot bed of drug related gun crime with all its accompanying anti social gang activities. This area is only a few hundred yards away from where my mother still lives and it is a place I know and once loved well. An aunt and uncle of mine lived there for many years as I was growing up and the sweet shop, Arthurs butchers and Mr Macs chippy where constant features in my life (Lord Robys too). Huyton always had a reputation as being a rough place but I found its town centre with its remaining village green and small shops a fantastic place to shop with my big sister (sweets and comics from forbouys and E. Shaws) and the surrounding fields and farms a wonderland for my friend and now Californian resident Tech guy. The town centre still had two dairies and orchards surviving unchanged until the early 1970's that helped keep a village atmosphere long after the town had outgrown its rural background. Now it seems the town,indeed the world of my youth has gone and has been replaced by just one more self made ghetto of self induced mental deprivation, spiritual poverty and half arsed gangsterism....you truly can't go home.
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Strange that 3/4 of that picture is still intact unlike 'Bakers Green' which bears no resemblance to the place I left.Oh and the Rose and Crown pub on the left is now known as The Barkers Brewery coutesy of a very recent Wetherspoons makeover.I'm pretty sure it won't be long before the re-opened boozer becomes a battleground.
I post on that very subject every once in a while. The latest: http://newsbleat.com/2011/01/24/no-plan/
I forgot to mention... I spent the last 2 days with a young fellow who can't be over 60, (I'm 72)rebuilding part of the foundation of a house I bought a while back, and I'm sore all over. We're a long ways from done yet but I only work when it's not raining and at least 45 degrees outside, slacker that I am. What is it about rebuilding old houses?
B.S. I'm not sure what it is but it is addictive even if rather tiring.
I meet the type on the train the whole time. Things are different now.
Sorry to hear it. The same in most parts I'm afraid. We had a murder a couple of streets away last week.
Now, this is a sad story, and one which I feel deeply about.
Nobody deserves to be sidelined by events that make a once-succsseful location unpleasant.
As I'm nearing some sort of retirement in about ten years time, albeit at the risk of being an old fart, I dread seeing places I have known from my youth being neglected by politicians or investment.
I place these concerns directly at the door of 'politicians' and banks, both of wich have now taken control of what we used to know was a community.
There is a real threat from these groups of people, and I'd rather like to see their wings trimmed - seriously.
Wings trimmed and feet cut off.
I'm sorry to hear of what's come of your hometown. There are myriad things we can blame, but for whatever reason, any community should fight tooth and nail to keep their little silk purse-- however humble-- from becoming a sow's ear.
I grew up in Bakers Green.
Left to join the army in 1969.
Many years later I returned to find a very sad place.
Or was it just me looking for something that had gone?
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