Florence Coke, or Mama Flo as she’s much, much better known, is getting ready for a very busy day, but she’s been tested over the past 24 hours. Her fryer broke at 4.30pm the day before, and she had to shut the shop and race into Manchester to get a new one. She returned to a huge queue of customers all down the street.
And as of today, her big drinks fridge, which has put in a solid 15 years of hard labour, is also on the fritz. “Why me?!!” she laughs. “Why do these things always happen to me?!!”
She soldiers on, fastidiously wiping down the chrome surfaces in her tiny Caribbean takeaway in Hazel Grove ready for service. Earlier, she was wearing flip flops, but now the serious work has begun, she’s changed into a pair of fluorescent green leather Air Max, matching her bright green Mama’s Flo’s t-shirt and a green baseball cap.
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Today she was up at 4am, as she is every day, and after her daily worship, she began prepping for the last day of the school summer holidays. Her own children are all grown up, but now she has others she wants to help look after.
Since July, she’s been providing free lunches to any kids who want them, in the absence of the free lunches they’d be getting at school, and this is the last day she’ll be doing it. For now, at least, though it’s highly likely she’ll be doing it again soon enough.
Their parents don’t have to buy anything, they can just come in, get a free lunch for the kids and go again, no questions asked. Though she says that many confide in her that in the post-pandemic landscape and amid rocketing prices in the supermarket and frightening energy bills, they’re struggling.
What she’s doing has been a lifeline for many. She has no idea how many she’s fed in the last few weeks. She hasn’t been counting, but her loyal regulars have helped too, probably without realising.
There’s a biscuit tin for tips on the counter, and all of it is forwarded to anyone who comes in and can’t afford to eat. And when footballers come in - as they often do, the likes of Kyle Walker and Harry Maguire - those rather more substantial tips all go in the pot too.
“I had to help,” she says. “After covid a lot of people lost their jobs, and I have all this food here. And there are a lot of struggling people. They come in, and they don’t have the money. I’ll still give them the meal. They say they’ll come back and pay, but I tell them ‘you don’t have to, you can’t find [the money], it’s hard, go and eat, put your feet up’. People in-box me, single parents, so I cook food for them, send toiletries, stuff like that.”
But she’s always fed people. She is one of 12, seven girls and five boys. Both her parents were the local deacons in Portland, Jamaica, where she was raised. They were strict and God fearing. “They’d say ‘if any of you kids go out and see anything and steal it, gonna chop your 10 fingers off!’ and we’d believe it!” she says.
They didn’t have a stove, so her parents would cook huge pots of food over an open fire and feed the people of the parish. “When I was a little girl, my dad would make food abundantly,” she says. “We’d feed all the people in the village, lining up the plates on a long table. Sometimes my mother would get no dinner, because she’d given out all the food. I’d see my mother doing that from when I was small. So it’s in me.
“But we were never hungry. We’d go to school bare feet, but we never, ever, ever hungry. Food abundant. I don’t know what hungry feels like.” So when she hears others are going hungry, choosing between heating and eating, she feels that pain keenly.
And those recipes, the curry goat, the brown stew chicken, the oxtail, are the very same her father would make for the people of his parish. Now Flo is using them to feed the people of hers who need it. As well as those who love it, of course.
She came to live in the UK ‘just before Diana died’, she says, living with one of her sisters. She worked variously for Boots and Debenhams, and prior to that selling the Manchester Evening News for a time, outside the Deansgate office and all over the city too.
She later graduated to the fragrance counters at Selfridges. “I loved that job,” she says. “I’d be drinking champagne with the boss, and he’d tell everyone ‘she does 12 people’s jobs!’ He’d never seen anyone sell like me!” It’s not hard to imagine. If Flo wanted me to buy something, I’d feel powerless to resist.
Despite the cost to her personally, she’s ‘loved every minute’ feeding people over the summer. But today, she’s making an extra fuss of them all. The front of the shop is covered almost completely with balloons, and inside too.
There’s a table set up for face painting. On a shelf running the length of the shop, there are stacks upon stacks of goody bags full of sweets for the kids who come in today to take away with them. She’s even got a DJ set up in the corner, who’s come in to entertain for free.
We help fill the goody bags ahead of the deluge - it’s all hands to the pump - and a handful of local people have shown up to help set up. Sam, who’s worked at the cardiology department at Stepping Hill for the past 20 years and is Hazel Grove born and bred, says Flo has done ‘so much’ for her community. As well as the free kids meals, over lockdown she dished out free food for key workers every Monday.
“She’s marvellous,” Sam says. “The community love her. During covid she was giving out free food at the local schools. She’s an extraordinary lady. But she loves doing it. Today’s about saying thank you to her.”
As we’re filling bags with sweets, a whole load more balloons arrive from a local shop. They’ve sent them over for free. There are two huge stacks of them, six-foot high or more, and there’s a giant green star at top of each with Mama Flo’s written on them.
She’s very touched. They're only balloons, and maybe it’s because she was up at 4am, or maybe because she’s been working non-stop for the whole summer, but she's a bit tearful too. However, there’s not time for that. A queue is already working its way out of the door, and she has people to feed. And that’s where she’s happiest.
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