I did a year on Butterworth Street by Grey Mare Lane, another few in Ashton Under Lyne and three years as a student in Withington.
And in those first three years of the 70s you couldn’t pass a wall without seeing the names “Dennis and Elaine.”
They were there at bus stops, beside advertising hoardings and of course street walls.
They began in 1970 and ceased as abruptly two years later.
I never got to know who they were and only once saw the names on an office building in town. So when Dennis or Elaine professed their love for each other it was almost entirely around Withington.
Of course the idea of taking a picture of a piece of graffiti back then would never have occurred to most of us. You saw it, chuckled if it was amusing, became enraged if it was politically incorrect and mostly instantly forgot it.
But Dennis and Elaine have stayed with me, and their memory was stirred yesterday when I came across the man, the cat and Karl who were caught in the late 1970s in Salford. I suppose it might be possible to track Karl as he or his friend left his surname, but maybe not. Perhaps Karl like Dennis and Elaine are best left in the past.
But as we are parading past memories I remember a short story I read back when I was in 5.1 at Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School for Boys. Our English teacher was of the firm belief that it didn’t matter what we read as long as we read.
So there on the beaten up bookcases were tons of paperbacks from pulp science fiction to the classics, and it was up to us what we read after the O level lesson. It was pretty much pot luck, and so I devoured some James Bond, a bit of Graham Green, along with the odd horror novel and lots of rockets to the moon.
One of the books featured the engaging story of the man who tracked down a joke. Set in some small mid western town where not much happened, he became obsessed with the source of jokes. It led him to follow the latest he had been told, via the barber’s shop, the local bar and the caretaker at the Double D motel to a shabby shop in a rundown part of the town.
And there inside in the back room were a gang of men working on writing jokes. Each was tested on the assembled jokesters and at the end of the morning each member of the team set off for different parts of the town to pass them on. I seem to recall that their pay was directly linked to the speed that the joke past around the town and its longevity.
Now I fully accept it loses something in the retelling but perhaps it has a bearing on Dennis and Elaine. I cannot think how they could have covered so much of Withington in such a short time or really the reason why they wanted to be so publicly linked together. True love I doubt ever stretched to a two year campaign especially given that this was the age of the paint brush not aerosol.
So maybe out there, there was a dedicated team who set about immortalizing the couple. And in the same way perhaps Karl escaped Salford and left his name elsewhere.
To be continued ..........
Picture; Denis and Elaine, 1970s from Elaine
They were there at bus stops, beside advertising hoardings and of course street walls.
They began in 1970 and ceased as abruptly two years later.
I never got to know who they were and only once saw the names on an office building in town. So when Dennis or Elaine professed their love for each other it was almost entirely around Withington.
Of course the idea of taking a picture of a piece of graffiti back then would never have occurred to most of us. You saw it, chuckled if it was amusing, became enraged if it was politically incorrect and mostly instantly forgot it.
But Dennis and Elaine have stayed with me, and their memory was stirred yesterday when I came across the man, the cat and Karl who were caught in the late 1970s in Salford. I suppose it might be possible to track Karl as he or his friend left his surname, but maybe not. Perhaps Karl like Dennis and Elaine are best left in the past.
But as we are parading past memories I remember a short story I read back when I was in 5.1 at Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School for Boys. Our English teacher was of the firm belief that it didn’t matter what we read as long as we read.
One of the books featured the engaging story of the man who tracked down a joke. Set in some small mid western town where not much happened, he became obsessed with the source of jokes. It led him to follow the latest he had been told, via the barber’s shop, the local bar and the caretaker at the Double D motel to a shabby shop in a rundown part of the town.
And there inside in the back room were a gang of men working on writing jokes. Each was tested on the assembled jokesters and at the end of the morning each member of the team set off for different parts of the town to pass them on. I seem to recall that their pay was directly linked to the speed that the joke past around the town and its longevity.
Now I fully accept it loses something in the retelling but perhaps it has a bearing on Dennis and Elaine. I cannot think how they could have covered so much of Withington in such a short time or really the reason why they wanted to be so publicly linked together. True love I doubt ever stretched to a two year campaign especially given that this was the age of the paint brush not aerosol.
So maybe out there, there was a dedicated team who set about immortalizing the couple. And in the same way perhaps Karl escaped Salford and left his name elsewhere.
To be continued ..........
Picture; Denis and Elaine, 1970s from Elaine
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