1966-1971 stockport clubs, manour lounge- sinking ship-tabernacle ,so diverse in music never got the acknowledgement over the manchester clubs,i lived in manchester during the late sixties,but could not get enough of stockport it was fantastic the TAB was buzzin every night it was open,and a little pub round the corner down the hill i forget its name,does any body remember? (norma on the platform)

   One of my early memories of Stockport in the 1930s was of the Fair Ground near to the Gas Works on Great Portwood Street. From time to time there were challenge boxing matches in a marquee when one could challenge the 'resident' bruiser. Oh dear, that put me off boxing for life!

Adjacent to the footpath that ran alongside the Fair Ground were advertisement hoardings. One of these advertisements has always remained in my memory. It was a self-promoting ad for a doctor who I believe was an Asian and his specialty was 'Eye and Pile Specialist'. I never quite understood how the two were connected.

Also on Great Portwood Street was the Co-op stores. The service area did not have cash tills in the 1930's and the money used to be put into a cylindrical box that was loaded into a pulley system. The shop assistant then pulled a handle, rather like a lavatory chain, and the box of money shot off up into the upper part of the building. The box returned very quickly with any change due together with a dividend check that were collected by the customer and redeemed for cash quartely.

My first school was Vernon Park and it was upwind from the brewery, the smells of which used to waft across the school yard.

My parents had an allotment adjacent to Brinnington Road and these ran down to the railway line that, I think, ran from Manchester through Teviot Dale and on to Sheffield. I used to watch the engines (steam of course) pulling very long trains of goods wagons (possibly coal). The gradient towards Sheffield was uphill and as a small child I can remember feeling so sorry for the engines that had to pull such heavy loads. They crawled past the allotments with long gaps between the chuffs. This of course was long before the Thomas the Tank Engine collection of stories. Did Thomas ever have such an experience?