Steve Clifford

This Is Me

An autobiography – wow!

This is me . Well I came into this world in August 1946, my mum was Nellie and my dad Tom born in Manchester. My mum was a seamstress at Crumpsall Hospital where she made all the nurses uniforms and my dad having just left the army after the war became a trolley bus driver with Manchester Corporation. We moved to south Manchester and eventually got one of the brand new houses in Woodhouse Park one of the biggest and newest housing projects at the time.

I first went to Haveley Hey infant school and then to Woodhouse Park Junior school and it was here I along with many other kids in my class witnessed one of the most horrific episodes that clouded Woodhouse park. Most of the boys in my class were plane spotters, we knew every plane that landed at Ringway, or Manchester airport as it is now. The flight path was only several hundred yards from the school, and on this day we saw this plane, it was making a strange loud noise, then it suddenly disappeared and within seconds a huge pall of smoke appeared just past the houses. With minutes I have never seen so many ambulances and fire engines screaming past the school.

My mum at this time worked for Ferranti the makers of the Bloodhound Missile system and they had one of these missiles on its gantry outside the factory, and I used to go and meet her when she finished work at 6pm. My dad too had moved from the buses and he too now worked at Ferranti as a driver and his job was to transport these Bloodhound missile all over the country to RAF camps. I remember one day going with him on one of these trips, he drove a huge green artic wagon and remember pulling up at the gate of the RAF camp and the armed guard being astounded at this 9yrd kid sat in the passenger seat of the artic.

I have an older sister Viv, and we both share the same middle name that of Booth. Now this name was my Grandma’s maiden name, and her claim to some sort of notoriety was that the guy who shot President Abraham Lincoln was a man called John Wilkes Booth, and this guy was some sort of relation to granny.

Dad eventually left Ferranti and went as a chauffeur for the Town Hall driving the Lord Mayor. Mum too left Ferranti and went back to what she loved doing, sewing and she became the head seamstress at Withington Hospital again making all the uniforms for nurses and doctors.

All this shaped me. Who I am today.

We went on holidays every year and we had a happy time.
My first proper job was the police cadets where I learnt my trade and my ambition then was to become a dog handler, which after many years I became.
I was injured many times, the last one seeing me hurt so badly that I was retired out of the service with 30 years.

When the doctors diagnosed me with having Alzheimer’s five years ago it was devastating at first but with the help of Margaret we both have come to face this head on and we do everything we can to help others with their early diagnosis.
　
Thanks for listening!