29/08/2026
A taster of what will be my own book about my life growing up in Blackburn through the 1970's and 1980's. This book was started in 1994 and was part of my work that got put up the loft. Think i am ready for people to read it now 30+ have passed.
Ladeside Avenue 1970s
As a fairly big family of six kids, mum and dad moved from Tullibody, near Alloa to Blackburn to work in British Leyland probably around 1971 / 72. My childhood years of the 1970s were spent growing up in Ladeside Avenue. We lived in one of the top flats at the highest side of the block of flats that went down the hill - opposite our flats were a row of houses that also ran down the hill, these houses were known as the police houses.
Yes we lived straight across the road from multiple policemen, I mean who in their right mind would stick all the coppers into a single row of houses?...... then put my family straight across the road from them. Madness I tell you, utter madness, and chaos just waiting to happen.
To be honest our entire childhood was unstructured madness and chaos.
Saying all that, one of the coppers kids used to hang out with us. We would hang out everyday playing all different games, I was welcomed into their house and everything was well.
He had this massive wooden fort with loads of toy soldiers, well cavalry and Indians. We spent hours almost every day playing with his fort and soldiers. We would also spend ages playing with my Tonka truck and digger either at the side of his house or in one of the brick planters that were out the back of our flat. We even pitched his army tent and spent hours playing soldiers. He watched football in my house and I in his house.
Basically what you would call your best mate, and his family thought of me as a good friend to their son. This was until we were out robbing rhubarb from a garden on West Main Street, as kids did back then.
I know it wasn’t my idea to go stealing rhubarb but if you fly with the crows and all that.
Anyway to get to the rhubarb there was an element of danger involved. First after leaving Ladside and heading around the corner onto Riddochhill road, take a right turn that sends you onto the road and then onto Old Blackburn Bridge at Mill Road where the cotton Mill once stood in the 19th century. So the first act of danger was to cross the bridge, not on top but across the pipe that still runs the full length of the bridge ( I still don’t know what this pipe is for? )
It’s still there today. Most days it is ok to cross this way, as long as the pipe is dry. If wet that made the pipe extremely slippy so the danger level would go up. Once you navigate this you then have the task of crossing the Main street along the west end. Now this was a hit and miss as traffic could be horrendous or hardly any.
Timing was crucial at this point. Once safely across you then had the steep climb down the side of the single arch bridge.
Again, how the weather had been could dictate whether you made it safely down the steep embankment. One slip and you could go one of two ways, Into the River Almond or the nettles. The nettles were the last thing you wanted to land in, stingy little sh*ts. So there we are safely through all the danger just to get there. We still had the task of getting into the garden that stocked the rhubarb.
This was done in no more than 10/15 seconds.
1. The guy was quick!
2. He had a big dog!
So there we were, grabbing the treasure and jumping back over his fence and then we made for the steep embankment to take us back up to the main street. Then came the barking followed by a few swear words from the guy in his garden.
As we climbed back up the verge to the main bridge to cross the road, all of a sudden I felt this hand grab me and pulled me back.
It was Robert shouting “ Run he’s coming “ As I went flying backwards, yet there was Robert at the top of the verge already. Next thing I remember was hearing the screeching of a car breaking, then a thud! By the time I got to the top of the verge there was Robert lying on the road with this small yellow van next to him. Some guy was shouting ya f*cking idiot. Me, i just stood staring at Robert who by this point was moving a bit.
Thank god he’s not dead I thought standing there still holding my rhubarb. Before I knew it an ambulance was there along with Roberts parents who took one look at me in disgust, it was obviously my fault in their eyes. Robert, the only one I was worried about, had sat up by this point. I heard the guy who was shouting “ ya f*cking idiot to Robert say to the police, who had shown up in numbers very quickly may i add “ I just caught sight of him (Robert) coming out from the side of the bridge so I was already braking “ said the van guy. “ So what speed were you doing on impact? “ said one of the coppers. “ Be lucky if I was going 10 or 15 miles per hour so it was more of a light bump,
It could have been a lot worse. “ I lifted my head at this point only to see a bunch of coppers, Robert's family, the van man and a bunch of local people staring straight at me. Again I could hear the whispering and everyone came to the same conclusion that the wee wild one standing there with his stolen rhubarb must have been the cause of this. No one even bothered to ask me what happened. Robert was ok other than a bruise or two.
As he was walking away with his parents I shouted “ Glad your ok Robert, I will come see you later “ to my surprise his father turned and came straight over to me and let rip with language I won’t repeat even on paper. He told me in no uncertain terms
what he thought of me and my family and that I wouldn’t be seeing Robert again. This was followed by another outburst of him swearing and cursing at me. Every single copper heard and saw him screaming all of this into my face and stood back and did nothing, not a single one intervened.
They all looked at me as if they had trodden on something. It was my first encounter with the police. I said to myself from that day on-wards I would have nothing to do with them (police) and this will always be the case. I was about 6 years old, a child and not responsible for what happened. I didn’t see Robert again as they moved away soon after.
So to this day I don't know if the truth was ever told and that it wasn’t my fault. I don’t think I have ever told anyone about the way I was treated by the police that day, in fact they tried to make mine and my brother's life hell for a while after. Again I said nowt and neither did my brother. We just carried on regardless, even with their constant intimidation. Threatening us and just being absolute dicks every time they saw us. You never grassed, not even on coppers who were way out of line on many occasions so we just took it and carried on regardless. We wouldn’t let them grind us down.
I have always lived my life staying within the boundaries of the law, and always will. But from that day, they turned a 6 year old boy against them.
Like I have said, I was a bit wild running around but I was never a trouble maker, yet that lot had branded me without asking me anything. Straight away it was them and us. I think this attitude doesn’t help with anyone and I mean this from all over the UK. This thinking of them and us needs to be smashed and instead of looking to go against communities the police should be part of the local community, yet they call themselves the police family / police community.
Cutting themselves away from the communities and people they should be working with and not against. Will this ever change, nope because the police don’t want to be part of any community other than the coppers one, and they wonder why there's riots etc. Knock down the wall and get to know the people in the community, and by this I mean the people who live by the laws and not the ones who break the laws, yet they are on first name terms with every copper and vice versa.
Oh! And I kept the rhubarb, just in case you were wondering, it was delicious. I had earned it, especially after taking all of that crap from that lot. Back up to the flat and get a wee bag of the white stuff - sugar lol, to dip the rhubarb in, it was heaven.
I also wondered whatever happened to Robert’s stash, I bet his father took the stolen stash home.
I changed the name of my friend just in case, you never know?. Hey i still have some other belters throughout my book which i hope to finish in the next few months.
