Flashback

Stephen Mcgann recalls his Liverpudlian childhood during the 1960s

The soundtrack To The summers of my childhood was The Beatles blaring through the window, and the music from the ice-cream van that would pull up at the end of our little terraced street in the centre of Liverpool. here I am at two-and-a-half enjoying what was joyously known as a Jubbly – a pocket with a kind of frozen orange squash inside, which you would suck as if your life depended on it. Flanking me are my elder brothers ,[ from left] Paul, Joe a nd Mark. It was 1965 and our mother had had four boys within five years. My sister, clare, would follow soon after, bringing our family to a chaotic seven. It was a catholic household firing out kids like nobody’s business.

We were a unit, my brothers and I; the street was our playground. The world beyond our front step – which my mother, like all the others on the street, prided herself on keeping gleaming white – was ours. In fact, getting us all to sit for a picture must have been no mean feat because we were always running a round. I suspect t he promise of a Jubbly had something to do with it. I love this picture because it’s an indication of the simplicity of the clannishness we had back then. In summer we’d be sent out from under our mum’s feet and spend hours playing racing games, football, hopscotch.

It was such a different time, before the idea of ‘stranger danger’ .People didn’ t fear for children’ s safety the same way we do now. As long as we had our socks pulled up and our hair neatly combed, we were free to roam.

I remember that summer as being the last one before the sickness. Just after my sister was born, I began suffering terribly from asthma, and I was always known as the sickly child after that. In big families, you get assigned nicknames and characteristics, and often they don’t fit you at all, but they become totems that you carry until you are old enough to shift them. Mine was that I was weak. They used to call me ‘Bone’ because you could see my ribs through my skin. When I became a father, I became very conscious of the things I would take forward as a legacy from my own childhood. I promised that I would honour my father–who was quite Victorian in his way–but that I would try to do the things he couldn’ t. I would be affection ate, I’d kiss my son every day without any hesitation. And I do.

I think I inherited my mother’ s innate fascination with her children. she was – and still is – endlessly intrigued by the parent-child relationship. I find myself watching my son, dominic [20], grow with that same delight and interest.

My life now with my wife, heidi, and our son couldn’t be more different to those early years in that Liverpool terrace. But although my siblings and I grew up in a household where we didn’t have much, it was functional and it was happy. There was love in that house, and that’s half the battle. — Interview by Eleanor Steafel Flesh and Blood, by Stephen Mcgann, is published by Simon & Schuster (£20)

It was before the idea of ‘stranger danger’. As long as we had our socks pulled up, we were free to roam