West Bromwich Albion: cup winners!

I still lived in Handsworth back then, and I've been in Gloucester 53 years!

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I was there that night too and also lived in Handsworth at the time. Clarence Road. Before that Crocketts Road then eventually we moved a bit more up market to Camp Lane off Forge Lane. As a kid I used to go for a walk with my Nan and Grandad in the Summer on a Sunday afternoon down Soho Road. People would say Good Afternoon to you and smile. The shops would all be shut obviously but we would look in windows and maybe get an ice cream from the van. Now what a total bog hole it has become. Filthy streets, hundreds of cars parked illegally, prostitutes working during the day as well as night. You could build a beautiful brand new housing estate with lovely houses and shops but if you let the wrong people in them it will be a ghetto inside a couple of years. There are people who are quite happy to live in squalor and I feel very sorry for the people who have to live in places like Handsworth and try to maintain their bit of it because they are fighting a losing battle.:s

I've not been there for a long time, close on 50 years. It was a good place to grow up with the park only a couple of hundred yards away, school a little further, 3 cinemas all in walking distance, the Albion ground and Brum city centre a fairly short bus ride away. I used to go to all these places and more either on my own or with mates, never a sign of any trouble, and I was only eleven when we left. I played football for the junior school team (Grove Lane). the games were mainly Saturday mornings and we were left to our own devices to get to the grounds. Neither of my parents drove so it was walk or bus. Same for the rest of the team as far as I remember. I remember going to church on my own one Sunday morning, just to see what it was like.I never went again!
now if a child is out of sight of his/her parents for a couple of minutes all hell is let lose. Back then we were rarely in sight!