Road to the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  The conversation between Dad and the attendant at the first aid post was related in graphic detail later when I was home.

  ‘I know what it is,’ the individual who managed the first aid station had announced as Dad watched the ambulance disappear with siren sounding. ‘He’s gone and trodden on a weaver fish.’

  ‘Whatever is one of those?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Horrible creature, the weaver fish,’ he told my father. ‘Ugly as sin, with three sharp spines in their backs. When it’s cold, they bury themselves in the sand and when the sun comes out they come to the surface and put up these great sharp spines to catch their prey. Oh yes, I’ve seen quite a few in my time. I’ve seen six-foot policemen weep with one of these spines in his toe. Very painful.’

  My father wanted reassurance, not a running commentary about the life and times of the weaver fish, and asked if I would be all right. The man sucked in his breath and shook his head. ‘Could be … then again, they’re very nasty poisonous fish.’

  ‘Why doesn’t someone warn people about these fish?’ Dad asked him.

  ‘If they did that,’ replied the man, ‘nobody would go in the sea.’

  At the hospital my foot was plunged into a bowl of hot water and the spine was extracted.

  Some years later I attended a talk at Broom Valley School. It was part of a lecture series intended to improve the minds of youngsters and a varied programme was presented throughout the year. The marine biologist who spoke about the wonderful world of the ocean showed some slides of the most unusual and dangerous creatures of the deep. I was fascinated.

  ‘And this,’ said the speaker, showing a slide of an incredibly ugly-looking fish with great fat lips, large protuberant eyes and three sharp spines on its back, ‘is the Great Weaver. They are extremely shy and it is very unlikely you will ever see one.’

  I raised my hand and announced proudly, ‘I’ve trodden on one of those.’

  The Punch and Judy show fascinated me when I was young. Punch, with his hunched back and gigantic curved nose, was naturally bad-tempered, argumentative, un-cooperative and no respecter of authority. He was the anarchist of the puppet world, laying into the policeman with his truncheon, hitting the baby, clunking his wife and sorting out the crocodile, and when he appeared he would be greeted by wild cheers from the children. I guess today he would be regarded as politically incorrect and far too violent for small children.

  One day when we were spending a weekend in Scarborough, Alec took me, on the pretext that we going to see the Punch and Judy show, to see the beauty contest. We had asked Mum if we could go and she had refused, saying it was not seemly for young women to parade semi-clad in public. When we arrived at the outdoor bathing pool, long-legged girls in one-piece swimsuits and high heels carrying before them heart-shaped cards on which their competition number was displayed, were already promenading around the side, competing for the coveted sash. When Dad found us we were sitting between a group of ogling men, their Brylcreemed hair glistening in the sunshine, following the progress of the bathing beauties as they paraded before us.

  ‘Come along, you two,’ said Dad grinning, ‘and don’t let on to your mother where you’ve been.’

  My mother was a bit strait-laced about these things and would never let us linger outside the shops to read the wonderfully rude postcards – we would have to sneak back when she was out of sight. The brightly coloured cards, many by Donald McGill, always seemed to feature vastly overweight women in tight striped bathing costumes, extremely shapely blondes and small harassed-looking men. One showed such a man poking at a shell and the woman commenting, ‘He always has trouble getting his winkle out.’

  The incident with the rock bun and the seagull still makes me smile. The family was having afternoon tea at the café on the seafront. Tea was served in heavy silver pots, and there was a matching heavy silver jug full of hot water for topping up and a heavy silver jug for the milk. The teapot was really hard to pick up because the handle got very hot. The cups, saucers and plates were equally large and heavy and were made of thick white pottery. Mum was in a bright summer dress, Dad (unlike many men, who were quite happy walking along the promenade or on the pier in vest and braces, some with knotted handkerchiefs over their heads) wore a linen jacket and flannel trousers. I have an old black and white picture of him strolling along the promenade with Mum on his arm and the four children and he looks very dapper. The sandwiches in the café were tasteless, the cakes sickly sweet and the tea weak and watery. Alec had a large rock bun which certainly lived up to its name. It was like a big lump of concrete with a few currants stuck in the top, and he kept picking at it and flicking bits at me.

  ‘Look,’ said Dad, ‘if you’re not going to eat it, throw it to the gulls.’

  So my brother threw the rock bun as hard as he could and, amazingly, it hit a low-flying seagull. The bird plummeted and disappeared under the sea with a great splash.

  ‘Good shot!’ said a man at the next table, and a group of holidaymakers started to clap. ‘They’re a bloody nuisance them seagulls,’ continued the man.

  ‘They are the spirits of dead seamen,’ said a woman at another table. ‘It’s bad luck to kill a seagull.’ I immediately thought of The Ancient Mariner and the fate of the crew when the old seafarer killed the albatross.

  Fortunately the gull reappeared, no worse for its ordeal, and started to attack the bun with a vengeance before flying off.

  Quite a lot of the time my brother Alec and I made our own entertainment at the oily brown square of water fancifully called the boating lake. For a shilling my brother and I would, for half an hour, take it in turns to steer a noisy little boat round and round until the man in charge shouted out, ‘Come in Number 4.’ The boating lake was a really good place to go crabbing. We would beg a few bits of bacon rind from the butcher when Mum bought the pork pies for lunch, and spend hours with a length of string and a couple of buckets seeing which one of us could catch the most crabs. We sat on the edge of the pool dangling our string down into the murky brown water, waiting for the gentle tug that signified we had a catch. The trick in getting the crabs into the bucket was to pull on the string really slowly. The crab would dangle by one pincer and be pulled in slowly and carefully. They were usually only small catches, two or three inches across, but occasionally Alec would manage to land a big one. People would then crowd round. My brother was an expert at prising off the crab, which clung on tenaciously to the bacon rind. He would grasp the crab with thumb and forefinger behind the front pincers and pop it into the bucket.

  When I took my sons crabbing years later, I demonstrated this technique and they became very adept at it. When the eldest, Richard, moved to Bermuda he took his small son crabbing on a little jetty and caught an impressively large crab. People gathered round and Richard decided to give a public demonstration of the way to hold the crustacean. Taking the crab with thumb and forefinger behind the front pincers he explained to little Harry that the crab was unable to pinch him and was quite harmless if held in this manner. Unfortunately for Richard the Bermudian crabs are somewhat different from the ones in the boating lake at Scarborough. They have a set of vicious claws at the side and Richard received a sharp nip before dropping the crab, which plopped back into the water.

  A small observer, aged about six, shook his head and remarked, ‘That was a very silly thing to do.’

  31

  Most summers, when Steel, Peach & Tozer had its ‘shut-down week’ and the furnaces were cleaned, we had a fortnight in Blackpool. This was our family holiday; it was modest but the happiest of times. For my parents it must have been a break from routine and an opportunity to recharge their batteries and enjoy the simple pleasures of getting up later and having someone else do the cooking. Apart from Christmas, the fortnight in Blackpool held the greatest thrill. Most families like mine, on modest incomes and where the breadwinner had limited time off work, had neither the money nor the opportunity to travel and see the world and therefore
spent the holidays at one of Britain’s seaside resorts. Rotherham is about as far as you can get from the sea, so apart from the day trips to Scarborough, Filey and Bridlington and the school trips to the Isle of Man, I saw little of the coast. There was, therefore, an extraordinary feeling of excitement and anticipation when the summer holiday came around.

  There was much to see and do in that bright, garish, noisy town so different from the place in which I lived. I recall the promenade illuminated by a million coloured lights, the huge piers stretching out into the battleship grey ocean, the packed beach with hardly a gap between the deckchairs, the pink and white sticky rock shot through with the name ‘Blackpool’. I can still see the seafront shops selling fish and chips, whelks, candyfloss, breezy postcards, cheesy souvenirs and silly cowboy hats with suggestive slogans on the front. I can still taste the hot dogs with mustard that burnt my tongue and the greasy onions drizzled on the top; the blocks of Wall’s ice cream supplied with the rectangular cone in which to put it. Then there were the donkey rides and the Punch and Judy shows, the trundling open-topped trams decked out with bright lights and, of course, the Tower, rising in a lattice of metal, and Reginald Dixon playing ‘Oh, I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside’ on the great organ. Part of the infinite charm of those exhilarating days in Blackpool was the fact it was so wonderfully different and we were never bored.

  The family stayed at Mrs Cadwalladar’s boarding-house near Gynn Square, which always seemed to be full of Scottish people. It was a substantial three-storey terrace with, I guess, five or six bedrooms. The front room downstairs was set out with four dining tables for the guests. There were strict rules about mealtimes, use of the bathroom, coming in ‘after hours’ and ‘keeping down the noise’. The food was plain and very often inedible. Breakfast was always cornflakes, undercooked fried eggs swimming in fat, greasy rashers of smoked bacon and deep-fried bread, followed by cold toast. Salad was the staple meal for tea: big weeping chunks of boiled ham or thin slices of corned beef (which resembled Mrs Cadwalladar’s legs in colour and texture), hard-boiled eggs with blobs of salad cream on top, over-ripe tomatoes and wilting lettuce. Her offerings on Saturday and Sunday were sometimes more substantial: tepid brown Windsor soup followed by a fleshy boneless piece of steak with the consistency of shoe leather, accompanied by vegetables which had been boiled tasteless, or her famed Lancashire hot-pot: chunks of grey meat, swollen kidneys and chopped carrots swimming in a lake of thin greasy gravy. This would be followed by apple pie: a glutinous concoction of sour-tasting fruit beneath pale flaccid pastry. Should we children betray the slightest dissatisfaction or leave too much on the plate, the landlady’s thin lips would purse in displeasure. We took to emptying our mouths into our handkerchiefs when she was out of sight and disposing of the evidence later down the toilet.

  For Friday’s dinner, being Catholics, we were served fish – chunks of lukewarm cod smothered in a sticky white sauce with sprigs of parsley sprinkled on the top and accompanied by pallid boiled potatoes and bullet-hard peas. The fish served at the fish and chip shops was scrumptious: mouth-watering, sizzling, encased in tasty batter. Once Mrs Cadwalladar got her hands on a piece of fish she managed to kill it again. It was as if she meant it to be a penance. One year, on the second Friday of our stay, Mrs Cadwalladar apologized for not being able to get any fish.

  ‘Oh dear,’ sighed Dad. ‘What a pity.’ He winked in my direction. ‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Cadwalladar, we’ll get some fish and chips from the shop on the front.’

  Being a Roman Catholic had other advantages. I was allowed to go on the beach on Sunday, make sandcastles, play games, run about, eat ice creams and ride on the donkeys like any other day of the week. Some families staying at the boarding-house, however, were of the Nonconformist persuasion and the children were forbidden to set foot on the beach or play games on the Sabbath. Their buckets and spades, balls and bathing costumes were put away as if devices of the devil, and the children walked grave-faced to chapel in their Sunday best. When they returned they had to stay in and read or play instructive games.

  Our first port of call when we arrived in Blackpool was W. H. Hills, the ice cream parlour on the front, and Dad would treat us to a ‘knickerbocker glory’: that tall, cone-shaped glass full of raspberry jelly, strawberries, chunks of tinned peach and different-flavoured ice creams, scattered liberally with crushed nuts and topped with a shiny glazed cherry. We would be given a long shiny metal spoon but, try as we might, we never did get to the last bit of peach at the bottom of the glass.

  Every morning we children, dressed in khaki shorts, white cotton cap and sandals and wearing cheap plastic sunglasses, with our Brownie box cameras around our necks on a string, would walk with Dad along the promenade from the boardinghouse to Gynn Square to get his paper. ‘Smell the ozone,’ Dad would say, breathing in deeply.

  If the tide was out he would sit in a deckchair on the beach to read his Daily Express, keeping a wary eye on his three boys as we ran into the sea. I remember vividly the swimming trunks I wore: dark green, tight-fitting knitted affairs with a canvas belt and metal clasp which took some skill to keep on once sodden with water. There’s a picture of me with my brothers, arms around each other, shivering near the sea’s edge. We have just emerged from the water and are standing there in these heavy, sagging, uncomfortable outfits. After our swim we would build the most amazing sandcastles. We were equipped for the task with brightly coloured metal spades with long wooden handles. Mine was blue, Alec’s red. We also had substantial metal buckets and a set each of little paper flags of all the nations to stick on our creations.

  One morning we were keen to get started on our sand castles but as we followed Dad along the promenade we saw, much to our disappointment, that the tide was in. This put brother Alec in a tetchy mood and he started complaining and dragging his spade behind him along the ground, making the most awful scraping noise. He was told several times by Dad to stop but he continued.

  ‘If you do it again,’ said Dad almost casually, ‘I shall throw the spade in the sea.’

  Alec desisted for a while but then started again to scrape the spade along the ground. True to his word, Dad took the spade from him and hurled it into the water.

  ‘You just threw my spade in the sea,’ gasped Alec.

  ‘And if I hear any more from you,’ said Dad, ‘the bucket goes in as well.’

  He did the same with the false teeth. I had bought a set of false teeth made out of pink and white rock with sugar pink gums and kept on clacking them like castanets as we walked along the prom one morning. I had been asked several times to desist but continued until they went the way of Alec’s spade. I learnt from my father that when an adult warns a child he will do something he should carry it out. It was a good lesson to learn for a prospective teacher.

  The Amusement Arcade drew children towards it like a magnet. We spent our pennies on the old slot machines or to manipulate a large metal claw in a glass case to try and grab a fluffy toy. I, being a Yorkshireman at heart, didn’t waste my money on the ‘Laughing Policeman’ but would wait until somebody else spent a penny. In a glass case was a large puppet of a policeman who came to life when a coin was posted in the slot. He would rock from side to side, accompanied by a recording of someone laughing uproariously. It was infectious and a crowd would gather around and just start laughing. You couldn’t help it.

  Along the Golden Mile gypsy fortune tellers sat in small colourful sheds the size of wardrobes, with fancy red velvet curtains pulled back to reveal them like exhibits. They had exotic names like Gypsy Rose Smith and Romany Petronella and they all looked the same with their wizened brown faces and dark eyes, sitting behind small tables and dressed in typically gypsy fashion – coloured scarves wrapped around their heads, voluminous white blouses and long frilly skirts. They wore great golden rings in their ears and thick silver bangles on their skinny wrists. I longed to go inside and learn about my future but my mother pooh-poohed it.

  ‘Gypsy
Jasmine my foot,’ she said. ‘It’s probably somebody called Enid Clamp from Cleckheaton. And if they are so good at seeing into the future,’ she continued, ‘what are they doing in a shed on the promenade at Blackpool?’

  One of the highlights of our week in Blackpool was the evening out at the variety show in the theatre on the South Pier. These were colourful lively affairs, with dancing girls, magicians, acrobats, jugglers, singing groups – the Beverley Sisters (Joy, Teddie and Babs), the Three Monarchs, Ruby Murray (later immortalized in rhyming slang for curry), the King Brothers, the Rocketeers; pianists – Rawicz and Landauer, Semprini, Winifred Atwell; soloists – Edmund Hockridge (‘Canada’s Favourite Baritone’), Kenneth McKellar (‘The Voice of Bonny Scotland’), Ronnie Carroll (‘The Irish Tenor’), Alma Cogan (‘The Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice’), David Whitfield, Dorothy Squires and Ronnie Ronalde, the last billed as ‘The World’s Greatest Whistler’.

  Speciality acts included Eddie Calvert (‘The Man with the Golden Trumpet’), who would play popular favourites like ‘O Mein Papa’ and ‘Apple Pink and Cherry Blossom White’. There was the man who swallowed live goldfish and then regurgitated them into a glass bowl (Dad later told us when we said it was cruel that they were fish-shaped pieces of carrot), a fire-eater who juggled flaming torches and who nearly set the front row on fire when he breathed out, an escapologist who writhed about the stage trussed up in chains, a small man in a red turban and a Hitler moustache with curly gold slippers who hurled a handful of vicious-looking daggers at a young woman positioned before a large wooden dartboard, and Bing Beales, this strange-looking, bald-headed, jug-eared performer with bad teeth who smacked himself noisily on the head with a tin tray as he sang the theme tune for a popular television series of the time – ‘Head ’em up, move ’em out, move ’em out, head ’em up, Rawhide!’ There were no warnings from the management for children ‘not to try this at home’. A favourite was Syd Baker (‘The Man of Bronze’, brother of Hylda), who, covered from head to foot in yellowish-brown paint, contorted his muscles in time to the music.