The day Uncle Michael came for tea ......and stayed for 20 years ..... One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 158 ....

 The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Uncle Michael, circa 1989

I say that he came for tea, but Uncle Mike predated all of us in the house that Joe and Mary Ann called home for 60 years.

He first washed up here in 1974 along with John and Lois, with me as an add on two years later.

And after he left, I stayed on and that is pretty much where I have been ever since.

Nor was Uncle Michael really an uncle but as the kids came along and he had returned he was as much a part of the place as our labrador, the three cats and all the acquired mis matching furniture.

He would arrive in the late afternoon, stay for tea and leave on the dot of nine pm in a taxi to the Bowling Green where he would sit quietly watching the pub customers, before leaving after last orders with a carry out of four cans of larger.

Some days he said very little but on others he could be playful with kids, would house sit while we were away and always washed up after the evening meal.

Everyone just accepted him and if he didn’t talk, then that was just how it was, in the same way that the cats might or might not offer up affection and Bagel the dog might not try to eat everything in his path.

Uncle Michael on holiday with us, circa 1993

All our other friends along with those of the kids also just accepted his presence, never asked why he was there, or his preference for silence, and all of us tolerated his habit of going to the back door for a cigarette and then flicking the butt over the garden wall into Beaumont.

But he was incredibly generous spending heaps on the kids at Christmas and birthdays and always turned up on New Year’s Eve, with a bottle of Moet Chandon, and a collection of VHS tapes from Blockbusters which would include two for the kids and one for us.

And then a little after midnight he would disappear into the night with his four saved cans and return on New Years’ Day.

It was a pattern he repeated every day until his death in 2003.

The house became a little more silent after that, but he is still a presence, and is there in conversations between the kids, and aunty Lois, and in the odd items he bought for the house which have survived the passage of time.

And in those conversations more often than not what comes through is the unstated affection we all had for him as he did for us, and the sheer pleasure in confronting some friends who just couldn’t understand the custom of the man who turned up every afternoon, stayed for his tea, didn’t say much and then absented himself only to repeat it all the following day.

Uncle Michael and John,out side the house,  circa 1974

But that said many families will have the ununcle uncle who becomes adopted by the kids and has semi-permanent residence.

In some cases it was the unmarried sibling who came with the marriage or arrived later and just stayed.

Uncle Michael was ours.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Uncle Michael  in our house, 1988-1993, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Uncle Michael and John, circa 1974, courtesy of Lois Elsden

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-day-uncle-michael-came-for-tea-and.html

 https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2025/12/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in_15.html