Memories of Littlemoor

 

I’ve been working out of a different office recently, and it’s turned out that I share a surprising connection with a guy there. Oldham is a small town, and everyone seems to be associated with everyone else in one way or another. You know the 6 degrees of separation principle? In Oldham, it’s about 3 degrees. 

Colleague’s gran, it turns out, was my neighbour back when I lived at the flat in Littlemoor, in Oldham. Her flat was directly above mine. 

One morning back in 2011, she had a nasty accident involving a knife. She’d knocked on for me, in severe medical need, and I’d just about woken up by the time she’d gone back to her flat. I rang 999, Emergency Services attended, and within a month, she was back living there. 

Neighour was an alcoholic, Colleague tells me. She’d done it ‘pissed up,’ and dropped a kitchen knife on her foot. She died of old age just a few months after I moved to my house, April ‘19, but before the COVID lockdown. 

Another resident in that block – a guy on the sick called Glen – Colleague had met a few times, passing by. Neither of us knew him that well, but I knew enough. 

I’d explained to Colleague that one night – March 2012, Facebook tells me – I’d heard him making bird noises in his car. Whistling, tweeting noises in the middle of the night. Someone – not me – called the police, who, not for the first time, came out to talk to him. Not much happened, to my recollection. 

There were other instances throughout the decade, most of which I’m forgetting. He kicked a visitor out of his flat for apparently kicking his dog (a pet that housing wouldn’t have allowed anyway, and woke me up barking several mornings after I’d had late nights. He didn't have it for long). I remember one summer coming home from work to find his lounge window smashed, and a flat screen TV on the lawn lying in the glass that had been flung out. 

The following month, I’d come in from a night out at around 3-4am. I was surfing Facebook instead of going to bed, when I heard the clunk of the electromagnet on the block door. Most of the people in my block were old. Who’s going out at this time? I lifted the blinds. 

This Glen guy, he’s darted out the house full pelt, butt naked, and down the road out of sight. 

Well. Never a dull moment. 

15 or so minutes later, blue lights filled my lounge. I turned the blinds and switched the light off to get a better view. Within seconds, Glen burst back onto the scene, legging it seemingly towards the front door again (although he clearly didn’t have a fob to get in). A police car had pulled up and two male officers got out, at first walking, then breaking into a sprint, disappearing out of my view but presumably pinning Glen down outside his own window. I could hear the officers instructing him to stop struggling while they put cuffs on him, while he made some bizarre pig-like squealing noise. Eventually, they walked him back to the car and sat him on the back seat, legs facing out, spuds on display. They left him sat like that for a minute while they radioed in, then put his legs in the car, shut the door and drove off. 

Glen was back the next day. I never discussed it with him.