My dad worked in Burton on trent for a while when he was 15. He returned home to Tipperary after a while, joined the Irish Army at 19, did 3 years, gave 6 months in the Congo with the UN. Came home, finished up in the army, off to England, Cricklewood and Kilburn for most of the 60s, came home again and met my mother. Was a truck driver delivering headstones all around Ireland, work in the silvermines for Mogul for the rest of the 70s, drilling and blasting, no work in the 80s, was a handyman. He worked hard all his life. He's 82 in September. Father of 6 and grandad of 7. My mum passed away in 2000 aged 55.
Lived just off Gravelly Hill for the first 12 years of my life. Used to love going by train to the city centre and looking down upon the motorway, canal, and other railway lines below. Played football and fished for minnows beneath the junction too.
I worked on Spaghetti in the early stages 69/70 time frame and recognise some Joe Mannion back row second from right from Galway, Other faces look familiar,
Anyone remember the Camp Hill flyover, built by navies for a few thousand pound over a weekend many years later demolished over a number of months at a cost of millions
@@johnsmith-bx4rnI got married in 1970, I was twenty one and my wife was nineteen. We bought a newbuild house not far from Erdington high street. To get to the high street we had to walk through what became bedsit land for a large number of Irish workers. They used to sit on the walls outside their digs insulting passers by. Because I was young I was often challenged to fight these morons as they insulted my wife and shouted what they would like to do to her. I can remember being in a bar and seeing one of them push a table forward, throw up on the floor, then pull the table back over the vomit and carry on drinking. Not the sort of people I would go for a pint with. My family are Irish, from Dublin and this isn't how they behave.
