大象传媒

It came one night with a savagery and a suddenness that caught the whole city by complete surprise. This night was in December 1940, and it was the night that Manchester was first attacked by Nazi bombers dropping incendiaries on the great northern metropolis.
The massive warehouses, testimony to King Cotton's empiric dominance, were the prime target, and with uncomprehending fear I snuggled for safety between my Mam and Dad in their warm, comforting double bed. I was a typical three-year-old, "terraced house, cobbled and gaslit" street Beswick kid.
Two miles away, the skyline became a spectacular red and angry glow. City centre Manchester was ablaze. The devastation was overwhelming, and all this could be heard and seen from the sanctuary of the bedroom.
Every Christmas, Silcock's Fair came to our local Croft, dispensing fun, laughter and juvenile thrills and spills to the local community. Christmas 1940 was to be no different. After all, the war with Germany was merely a "phoney war", wasn't it?
The morning after this first Blitz Night, Silcock's were compelled to take down the bright lights, the stalls and the amusement rides. We kids obviously went down to the Croft to watch them.
The industrial River Medlock, fast-flowing that day because of the winter rain, bordered the Croft on one side. It was great fun to slide down its steep, greasy riverbank to the water's edge. Fun that is unless you toppled into the swollen river some three feet below the bank, which I did. That day, the legend of "Jimmy the Jinx" was born!
My pals raced to the fairground workers who quickly placed a ladder into the water and managed to rescue me before I was swept away. An ambulance was called, and I was quickly dispatched to Ancoats Hospital with my body swollen from the water I had swallowed. Ancoats Hospital was that great Victorian institution that had always dealt with the medical needs of the city centre's population.
On that bright winter's morning of December 1940, the casualties of the previous night's catastrophe were being seen to. The great, cavernous A&E hall was thronging with wounded people, doctors and nurses, and all the panoply and detritus of a medical establishment "under siege". Through this seething mass of organised chaos little "Jimmy the Jinx" was trundled to receive emergency resuscitation because he had fallen into a swollen river whilst at play!
My dear mother never ceased to recite the tale, emphatically stating that she had never been more embarrassed by any other single thing in her whole life.
I still blush at the concern and anxiety I caused.

Jim Nutter, June 2005

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