Gary Michael Morgan was born on Tuesday 25th August 1964, in a first floor two bedroom council flat on Greenwood Road, Benchill, Wythenshawe in Manchester. Born as the third son of Anthony (Tony) & Jean Morgan, I was made brother to Gregory & Stephen.
Six years or so later, I was joined in the family by my sister Joanne and the already overcrowded flat simply became just too small, so it was clear that a move was needed and a new home became the order of the day. Luckily we were rehoused by the council just around the corner in a three bedroom semi-detached house on Nettlebarn Road and it was here I would spend the rest of my childhood.
I made a number of friends around the flats and I found having two elder brothers was always handy for tagging along with as well, so I don't recall ever being lonely or bored. However when I moved to the new house, although only ten minutes away, it opened up a new set of friends and some of the kids in my class at school were then living either just over the road or just around the corner.
My junior school was called Benchill and unlike the flat I was born in, the school is still standing and still in use, though it must be said, it has certainly lost the traditional charm that schools of that era mostly held.
I enjoyed junior school I guess, I had some good mates, was in the school football team, although not always first choice I should note and I had my fair share of girlfriends even at that tender young age ;-)
Like most young lads around that time and place, almost all of my spare time was spent playing football on the green just next to my house. The games were immense, especially at weekends. They would often start around mid morning and go on right up until the third and final warning from our parents that it was time to come in for bed. There were no rules as to how many would play, it could range from six a side right up to about twenty a side and during the games, kids would come and go, have their dinners, their teas and in some extreme cases, even a haircut before rejoining the game.
The scores were always ridiculous too, it could regularly end up 88 plays 75 and sometimes when you went in for your tea having been on side A which was winning, you would come back out and end up on side B, so you could never be really sure of whether you had actually won or lost, ahh those were the days !
We spent much of the time playing against our arch enemies the Harpury peasants. These were kids who's nucleus came from Harpury Crescent around the corner, deemed by us lot as the rough mob, hence their nickname. These games often used to get rough with many a scrap taking place over anything as trivial as `who's throw in it was` ?
When I wasn't playing football, I was busy making go carts, playing knock a door run, garden trotting and getting involved in what was at that time and in that area, generally deemed as high spirited jinx. I was a pleasant kid with good manners and in general I knew right from wrong and though I could occasionally stray from the right side of the road, for the most part I was a good kid.
I spent many an afternoon drinking tea and eating cakes with the old lady next door, Mrs Mac and I would often help her with her gardening and stuff. As I grew older, I took to working to help finance the things in life that I wanted to get.
My folks could neither afford, nor would they have given me anyway, the things in life that I wanted to get. Their philosophy was one of, if you want it, then you'll work for it and it's an ethic I have taken with me for the rest of my life to date and one I have instilled in my own children since.
Back then I was after the best jeans, Adidas Kick trainers, leather jackets and things like season tickets for my team Manchester City. I financed these things from money made doing paper rounds and lots of them. Many kids did paper rounds, but I did papers in the morning, getting up at 6.00 am to help Mr Flannighan set out all the morning rounds for the other paper lads, in order to get an extra few bob and then after school I did the evening round as well. If anybody didn't turn up to do their round, I would do these also, anything to earn an extra few quid.
On Saturdays, I would do the Saturday Football Pink round and I would always take out more Pinks than my round required because I knew that I could go around the local pubs and sell them to the fella's out in the vaults. This could be quite lucrative as many of the guys would be half cut and not worry too much about giving me too much money or allowing me to keep the change, I really didn't mind doing the Pinks.
Looking back, I think that had I not done so many rounds as a nipper, then I might have been another three inches taller than I am now, I must have covered miles and miles walking round all parts of Wythenshawe. Still as I say, I got many of the things I wanted as a young kid and a great deal of satisfaction knowing that what I got, I got as a result of my own endeavours.
As I got a bit older, I took on various other jobs, anything that would earn me a few quid in most cases, but as I recall, there was working on the bread round (God they were early mornings), there was working on the milk and eventually there was working in the newsagents where I delivered the papers a few years before.
Working on the bread was perhaps the worst job, you could earn good money but it was a bit risky as you were never assured of getting the deal that day. Basically I would get up about 4.30 am, drag my sorry ass over to the bakery which was a good half an hours walk away, to make sure I was there before 5.30 am. I would then take my place in the melee with all the other kids whom had probably made the same sort of effort and journey and then just hope amongst hope that I would be picked by one of the drivers to be their assistant for the day.
If I was picked, I'd make as much in that one day as I would in all of my paper rounds, but if I wasn't, then it was a long and sorry walk back home with no brass in pocket. I did eventually decide that the early mornings, the walk and the risk of getting no work was all a bit much and that the job in the paper shop sometimes before school, sometimes after and most often on weekends was definitely the way forward.
Unbeknown to me at the time, the paper shop was turning out to be a good move for my love life. It was a bit of a good place to meet and greet, not to mention serve pear drops too, the local bits of totty that were in my neighbourhood. I didn't have to tour the streets to see what was out there, when everybody at some stage or other would come through the doors of the paper shop, it was bloody magic.
In fact, truth is stranger than fiction, it was here that I first set eyes on my wife to be and the current Mrs Morgan. I can still remember Oona walking in the shop even now, there were a couple of things that made her stand out and those same two things are still amongst my favourite things in the world today ;-)
I haven't mentioned much about my High School days you may have noted and that's because there wasn't much to note. I attended Burnage High School which was miles away from my home, in fact two bus rides away. My old lady thought that by me going to a school outside of the area, I may make some new friends and that these friends would be less likely to be villains than many of the kids I was exposed to / brought up with around where I lived.
In some respects she was right, but I found it harder to make new friends at school than I did at home, which I assume was because we didn't hang around after school as much or at weekends and as such, I only had a few mates at Burnage.
It did have some advantages though, going to school so far away, because by doing so I gained something called a free bus pass. This free bus pass was soon to become another way in which I would try to make an extra few quid. Basically what I would do, is rent my bus pass out to kids who had to pay and in return they would give me their bus money. The down side of course, was that I would then often have to walk or run for miles to get home. I soon eliminated the downside of this money making plan though, by making copies of my bus pass during my art lessons and selling those instead of giving up my own. I made some other bits of money whilst at high school as well, as I suppose many other kids did. This was done by buying and selling dinner tickets and by buying sweets from the shops on the way to school and then selling them for an extra few pence here and there to the kids at break time as back then, the school had no tuck shop.
It was this little scheme that brought me to the notice of Mr George and between him and I and one or two others, we eventually started a tuck shop in the school, the first and finest I must say.
Academically I was useless, or so I believed after many of my teachers continuously used to tell me and as a result, I left school with very few qualifications, certainly none worth noting here. I look back at this with matter and time with mixed emotions. One is with anger, because much later in life I realised that I wasn't useless academically, I was just failed and failed miserably by aged, cynical, myopic, grumpy and useless teachers, who were still paid and still collected their fantastic pensions, regardless of their considerable failings and lack of care.
But also, perversely, I now look back and think that it was those same apathetic parasites that eventually gave me the inspiration to prove them wrong, as well as prove something to myself of course.
Later in my life, as you will read if you haven't already switched off out of boredom, you will note that what I say about these guys is right. But that is for later, for now this is the end of my chapter as Gary Morgan (Junior), I hoped you enjoyed it :-)