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Phil Bell was born in 1949 in the Ancoats district of Manchester.
One daring stunt carried out by my childhood gang, The Black Hand Gang, was known as 'The bottle down the chimney of a steam train exploit'. The idea was hatched from a book I was reading that came from the school library. All I did was to alter the plot slightly.
We, that is myself, David and Alan Jones ('twinners' or twins), waited for the train, the Prince Rupert, to leave the sheds at Northampton Road and move towards the tunnel under Monsal Road in Harpurhey. We climbed over the bridge and lay in wait on the wrong side until the train emerged from the tunnel. The secret was to drop the bottle down the chimney of the steam engine and watch it fly out seconds later.
Of course this never took into account that when the train comes out of the tunnel so does thick acrid sooty smoke resulting in stinging eyes, blind panic and black, sooty faces.
I had to let go without seeing where the bottle dropped, clinging on to the side of the bridge with one hand and rubbing my eyes with the other waiting for the smoke to disperse and then when the train had finally passed we tried to convince each other that the bottle had gone down the chimney perfectly.
Down from the bridge we clambered, off along the railway lines looking for the empty milk bottle that should have rocketed from chimney. Then a rustle was heard in the bushes on the embankment. Two heads popped up from behind some bushes, 'Dicks, Dicks!' we all shouted in unison, the dreaded Plain Clothes Railway Police were trying to ambush us!
Like the wind we flew up the embankment and through a gap in the Nicky boards. A gap only an eight year old could fit through, running all the way home with the enemy in deadly pursuit, me into my house and the twinners legging it into theirs. I ran to the place where I could not be found, the air raid shelter, I sat and waited.
Then there was a knock on the door, it was my granddad, 'Have you seen this what I've got?' he asked and being naturally nosey I poked my head out of the door.
My granddad had snitched on me! There stood the two tall men with trilbies perched on their stern looking heads. I got the full lecture from them, with the parting shot, 'If we ever catch you again we will take you to Borstal'.
The very word sent shivers down my spine. 'It wasn't me' I said to my gran and granddad. 'Why don't you go and have a look at your face' my gran said. I went to the mirror and staring back at me was a golliwog! My face was covered in black soot.
The men went and when I came from the toilet and I heard my grandma say to them 'Thank you masters for not taking our Philip to the home for naughty boys'. I sat with my head hung in shame. They never mentioned it again but my mother did, the threat hung over me like Damocles sword.
Phil Bell, Greater Manchester, 2001
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