Dialectics is fine, but it doesn’t answer the real life question of, who’s going to clean the bloody toilets. Jon Gregson So our nomadic existence ended up at Metropole again. During that time period we’d applied for a grant to buy a building under this scheme, the redevelopment government scheme, and we put in a bid and got accepted. And so we bought this building on Albion Street and it took us two years of redeveloping and renovating it and putting new floors in with RSG girders and then re-laying floors, getting a bar built … And unlike some of the other groups who got money when we did, we didn’t want continually funding because we knew that would bring strings and, you know, things that would slow us down. Gary Cavanagh We chose to get the money and be self-financing, we had the option to get some money and then be financed by the Council, which, of course, would have gone within two years, would have been shut down. So that was the big, big decision. Building it was, it was great fun. It took a long time. There was a real spirit, real camaraderie, people from all over coming, and it was great. You know, we used to get a pound a day … and then we’d go and buy a sandwich and a pint at lunchtime with it you know, it was life affirming. Dave Gropper So either that time or the next time I went to visit I went and helped kind of hammer bits of plasterboard into the walls and into the ceilings and stuff. And that’s how I first got to witness what the 1 in 12 club was really. Bri Doom There were other days during that renovation project where we were, you know, sanding the floors, stripping the beams and ceiling and all that kind of stuff that were just, you know, kind of really, really excellent work days. Ellie Clements And the building got finished, and that seemed to be, I remember that being a bit of an anti-climax, I don’t know, because it was so long, it took us so long to get there, and it was a right drag. Russ Snell It was pretty grotty, but it was our grotty, and we loved it for it. Jane Graham
PART ONE: A PLACE OF RESISTANCE
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