Lost in Moss Side

Thinking of the estates of yore

The night of the first Nigel Benn vs. Chris Eubank boxing match, I arrived at London Heathrow on a business trip to get computer kit and software for NextStep Limited, a desktop publishing outfit in which I had a 30% stake along with a majority stakeholder who was a lawyer and a director of the United Bank of Africa. This was the 18^th of November 1990 and Margaret Thatcher was on her way out. Nowadays, I get mistaken for Chris Eubank.

Totally unaware of where I was going, I had some addresses to doorstep for the week or so that I would be in the UK. Out to West Ham, I went and my former schoolmate no longer lived at that address, so I made it back into London on the tube and then the bus to Hordle Promenade North in Peckham, an estate in my total naivety at almost 10:00 PM with £1,500 in my breast pocket.

I knocked on the nondescript door for more than 10 minutes, the tumult of excited television viewers inside meant I could not be heard and then my friend who no longer lived there but was watching the boxing match with his cousins came to the door as if to leave for his home and was met with my visage. Surprise and shock, he became my host for the fortnight of my stay, his place way out in Surbiton.

Peckham over 30 years ago was a different place from what it is today, one could say the housing estates of that time, a habitue of drugs, crime, and many other vices are centuries behind what it has become. A few days over a decade after my adventurous visit, on the 27^th of November 2000, Damilola Taylor lost his life to a stabbing in a stairwell of the North Peckham Estate. In early 1991, I did live on Sumner Estate for a few months, after my second return to the UK.

A long time from Gunchester

Earlier this evening, I called an Uber cab in the middle of Moss Side in Manchester having decided to go on a wander of discovery from Hulme where I had gone shopping for some African goods. All the while, I was on the phone with Brian, but some 30 years ago, not only would I have never ventured into this locality, but the E-Class Mercedes Benz that picked me up might well have found a forcefully new owner with the driver who dared to arrive to pick his fare fighting for his life.

Such was the issue of gang violence, gun and knife crime, illicit drugs and muggings in inner city estates, the aforementioned being considered one of the most deprived residential areas in Western Europe at that time. Crime in Manchester earned the city the moniker of Gunchester and Madchester.

Even in 1996 when I first visited Manchester, I could not get a black cab to take me from the city centre to a venue in Moss Side. Once again oblivious of the situation and in my naivety, I found a cab ride in a literally battered taxicab that in the old times I would think any self-respecting horse would refuse to draw.

Things have no doubt changed, for I walked down the side of the Heineken Brewery into Moss Side, by some interesting church buildings, the bethel of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star and across the road was the Church of God of Prophecy where some churchly dressed madams of ethnic origin seemed to be gathering that I had assumptions to which Brian made an unprintable quip.

The Brotherhood of the Cross & Star in Moss Side

Church of God of Prophecy in Moss Side

I think I am lost

I went through a park with the mind that I would get to the upper reaches of Oxford Road and walk down between the University of Manchester and the Manchester Metropolitan University to get home. As I exited the park the street name looked familiar, and I imagined I was not far off known terrain.

Soon, I said to Brian, as I was regaling him with the history of Moss Side, “I think I am lost.” I pressed on up another street, thinking I would soon be in a place of safety before it dawned on me that I was indeed lost.

When I switched on my Google Maps, I had been walking further away from home the only familiar location I could see on the map was a restaurant I visited almost 11 years ago. I got there with a taxi; it was not a walk.

Unbeknownst to me, my mobile phone was also running low on battery, and it was just fortunate that I decided to call Uber because just as I sat in the taxi our journey was about to commence. My phone died.

Many notes to self

You can have your phone with you, but you must always ensure you have enough juice to embark on silly adventures for if you lose the ability to communicate or find your way, you could well be quite endangered. A dead phone is just as good as not having taken your phone with you.

While is it unlikely I would have been so totally lost in Manchester, it would have taken a loss of composure and asking the wrong person to be presented with dire circumstances and we should curtail evil imagination.

Brian who was already aware that I was lost in Moss Side did not get to speak to me until I had returned home some 15 minutes later. I could imagine he would have been beside himself with glee knowing that this usually orderly man had now got himself into a pickle, totally of my own making.

Note to self: Many to write.