by Bernard Ross
One of his regular employers had asked Arthur if he fancied a small contract and, in need of a second pair of hands he proposed that the two of us take a couple of weeks away from the gaff to undertake it.
“Come on Bernie, it should be a piece of piss, all we have to do is dig a trench in a field”
“How big a trench?” I asked
“Three hundred feet long by six feet deep, it’s farmland so it should be quite soft soil, it doesn’t have to be revetted or shored up and the dimensions aren’t that important either.”
“Why the hell does someone want a trench that size in the middle of a bloody field?”
“Apparently it’ll be filled with some sort of salts and have copper piping dropped into it, that’ll then be connected to a big steel gas main they are laying nearby and it’ll act as a big battery and pass a current through the gas main which is supposed to stop it from rusting.”
“Sounds like a fucking stupid idea to me! How much are they paying?”
“We’ll split the fee fifty/fifty, they’ve offered me a fifty sovs; so twenty five each”
Twenty five quid for two or three weeks’ work wasn’t a bad lob, so I asked Hammerton if he could spare me for the time. We agreed that I’d come back to him in time for the build-up in Cambridge for the mid-summer fair in the second week of July; three weeks time. Arthur and I set off the next morning for St Albans where this giant battery in the earth was to be built.
The client had marked the ends of the trench with two posts with small flags made of scraps of old shirts, the northern end was about 20 feet higher than the southern end, up a gentle slope. The field was grassed and the grass was green and lush; it looked as if the soil beneath was rich and fertile, in other words soft and easy digging.
Arthur negotiated a deal with the farmer for a very low rent on an old musty caravan that was standing on blocks in his farm yard and I buttered up the landlady in the local pub to get us cheap grub on tick until we got paid. In all it looked as if it was going to be a nice easy job. Yes, we’d be working seven days a week from dawn til dusk, but it would be nice not to have a boss on your back all the time or to have to be up til three in the morning building-up, pulling-down or taking money. Quiet and peace. Lovely.
We stripped the turf off the full length of the trench and laid it on the left side. We would then put all the spoil out of the trench on top if it so that once the chemicals were in and the battery was running, the contractor could just shovel it straight back into the trench. The soil was soft and relatively easy to dig, albeit a bit sticky as London clay tends to be.
We started digging in earnest and soon started to find bigger lumps of chalk in the soil. None was bigger than a fist so they presented no real problem but they should have given us a hint of what was to come. Only 18 inches down; only about a quarter of the depth needed we started to hit much bigger lumps of chalk. These were the size of your head and consequently each had to be either dug around or smashed up. They really slowed down the progress and the work became much, much harder. As we progressed up the hill we found why it was a hill and not a valley. Within two feet of the surface we were in virgin bedrock of chalk. Every shovelful had to be hacked out with a pick a before it could be hauled out and thrown to the side. Working at the full depth meant heaving a shovelful of rock over your head and off to the side. When the weather was ‘bad’ our feet were in water all day and the topsoil became even heavier and stickier. When the weather was ‘good’ there was no breeze in the trench and it was stifling and incredibly sweaty.
We had already planned to work seven days a week for our easy money but now we were really up against it. We each pushed ourselves to the absolute limits; blisters burst and bled, muscles ached all day and all night. We slept like logs, exhausted to our cores. For the first time in my life I really understood what ‘trench-foot’ was; the soles of your feet, permanently soaked in either rain water or sweat, start to swell. The pain of just standing can become excruciating; it feels as if you are walking on glass. We couldn’t afford talcum powder to dry out our feet in the evenings and we couldn’t take time off so we just soldiered on.
Next time you look at a canal, remember the men who dug it. They, like us, worked solely with hand tools; picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. They could shift a half ton of earth per man per day. Mind you, they got a ration of three pounds of prime beef and three pints of best strong ale per man per day. We were building up a tick of fry ups, stew and tea!
I was too knackered every night to even bother how we were getting on. ‘Progress’ was not something I really gave any thought to. I just knew that it would be a fucking miracle if we actually got the job done in time!
On the 6th of July we finally threw down our shovels and picks having completed the herculean task. The client paid Arthur and Arthur paid the farmer his rent. We wiped the slate with the pub landlady who actually gave us a pint on the house out of pure sympathy. We had both lost several pounds in weight and though neither of us had been fat before, our clothes hung off us like scarecrows, we were now so lean. We divvied up the remainder of the fee between us and I reckon that, financially, I’d have been better off staying on the gaff.
Chapter 18
The Cambridge First Degree
I rejoined the gaff at Cambridge for the mid-summer fair, and was straight into taking money on the Waltzer for Hammerton. It was good weather and the fair was very crowded. We took money literally hand over fist and on a couple of nights we had to bring a second dustbin to the pay-box since the first was already overflowing.
People in general ascribe some strange attributes to members of the gypsy community, especially the Romany gypsies. I can’t say that I really believe that they do have any particular sixth sense or weird powers but I can’t explain how, one morning after a night with no apparent disturbances a poster came to be stuck the tree beside one of the living wagons. Neither Princess, nor any of the other showmen’s dogs, had barked at an intruder but there it was, someone had nailed it to the tree in the night but had managed to do so completely unseen.
The poster announced:
£1000 purse
I, King of the Gypsies, Burt Lee, will pay a purse of £1000 in cash to any man who is able to beat my champion
In a no-holds-barred, Bare-knuckle fight
If you are man enough to accept this challenge before the 31st of July
you know where to find me
The poster was about two feet long and 18 inches wide and the lettering was hand painted in bright red. Clearly it was meant to be noticed and noticed it was. It was a primary topic of conversation amongst the gaff lads and the punters who obviously had heard about the challenge from someone or somewhere else. A thousand pounds in those days had the same buying power as about fifty grand nowadays so the purse was a lot of money. Inevitably much of the gossip was about ‘what I would do if I had that kind of money’ but no one seemed keen to risk a vicious, and possibly fatal, thrashing to earn it.
After my escapade in Basingstoke one or two of the gaff lads suggested jokingly that I should take up the challenge but otherwise no one on the show seemed to have any interest in taking part. However, a couple of days later the word came out that someone had accepted the challenge and the fight was set. It was to take place in a field just outside Cambridge on a Wednesday night at 7pm. Entry was to be charged at a shilling a head. No poster came out to confirm this as it was illegal and under the radar of the long arm of the law.
At six on the appointed day a gaggle of us walked to the venue. The gypsies had formed a cordon around the field with only one entrance so they could collect the shilling entry fee from everyone who came to see the fight. We found an already substantial crowd, there were show people, gypsies and flatties there, men women and children from the first two groups and almost exclusively men from the flattie world. There was an excitement in the
air and several enterprising people were running books on the outcome; people were betting on “champion” or “challenger” and they were also betting on the duration of the fight in minutes and seconds. There were to be no “rounds” in this fight; it would have a starting bell and a finish when one man was either senseless or submitting. No one seemed to know who the challenger was and this therefore was a major topic of speculation.
Four pickets had been driven into the ground, and rope stretched between them to form a ring. This ring was nearly forty feet along each side, not to allow a greater area for the fight, although that may be needed, but to allow the maximum number of punters to get in and get a better view. As the nearby church bell began to chime seven pm the crowd fell silent. A man climbed into the ring and shouted out that he was Bert Lee and here was the purse of money to be paid to the winner. He held up a small cloth mailbag that was obviously full of paper money and, to prove his bona fides, he pulled out and fanned a wad of white five pound notes that must have been a couple of hundred quid.
He called on the challenger, no names, just ‘the challenger’, and a man stepped into the ring removing his light overcoat. He was massive, at least six foot eight and very muscular. His very ‘short back and sides’ haircut suggested that he was military, an impression heightened by his ramrod straight back, and as he stripped off his shirt, the tattoos on his forearms. There was a frenzy of added betting with the unofficial bookies.
Then Bert Lee called in his champion. Again no names, but another man climbed into the ring. He was a mean looking bastard with a broken nose that clearly suggested that he didn’t always win. Though he was about six feet tall, he was scrawny; the sinews on his arms and shoulders stood out as he stripped off his shirt and there was another flurry of activity at the bookies.
Bert Lee reiterated the rules; there were none. Except that no one from outside the ring was allowed to be involved, this was a real no holds barred event.
Bert stepped from the ring and, as he cleared the ropes, a hand bell rang. The skinny gypsy walked towards the giant as if it were a Sunday afternoon stroll, he had no guard up and even had a smile of welcome on his face. He began to extend his right hand and the challenger held out his hand for a gentlemanly shake as you would expect in a Marquis of Queensberry rules boxing match. Just before their hands touched the gypsy shot out his left hand with the speed of a striking cobra and grabbed the right side of the challenger’s head, pulling the bigger man towards him, the gypsy darted his head forward and appeared to kiss the challenger on the left cheek. The giant let out a piercing scream as the gypsy threw him backwards, there was blood everywhere, it was squirting from the challenger’s ear, half of which was hanging out of the gypsy’s mouth. With a feral grin the gypsy took the ear from his mouth and held it aloft for the stunned and silent crowd to see. The challenger grabbed his shirt from the floor to try to stem the bleeding and staggered from the ring. He didn’t stop or look back, but just marched unsteadily away. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds. The crowd began to murmur and spread out, there was no cordon of gypsies now, you could leave by any route you wanted, you had paid your shilling for about 15 seconds of ‘entertainment’ and now, shocked and sickened, you were free to leave.
Bert Lee’s money was safe, the bookies had made a killing, many people had lost a few bob, and somewhere some poor squaddie or matelot was trying to get stitched up in a different way to the way he had been stitched up by a man who believed that ‘no holds barred’ was a rule to be taken literally. To use the modern parlance, many a lesson was learned that day.
Chapter 19
This Time, I’m On The Inside
A couple of hundred years ago the monarch gave the town of Boston in Lincolnshire a charter to hold a street fair once a year. A street fair does exactly what it says on the tin; the fair is not run on a fairground but on the street, in particular the old high street. The charter by which this fair is authorised allows for the fair to be there for only 24 hours in total, midnight to midnight.
This means a heck of lot of careful organization on the part of the riding master, and bloody hard work for the gaff lads and the showmen. The police would clear the road of cars and on the stroke of midnight we would all have to pile in and get the whole show set up in a matter of six or seven hours. The fair opened at 9 am and ran until 6 pm when we then had to pull down, load and get off the street by midnight. The town burgers were very keen to keep the charter alive, for written into its conditions was one that stated that if the fair didn’t run one year then charter was revoked in perpetuity. Even during the war years, when people’s minds were on other things and most fair rides were mothballed as their owners were serving in the Forces, the charter had been kept alive by simply have one stall or ride active on the appointed day.
For us this meant that every vehicle had to arrive at its appointed place in the exact order required; if one vehicle was out of place it would bugger up the entire fair since it would mean that the convoy couldn’t maneouvre in the narrow confines of the town centre.
With us at the previous fair ground was “Madame Renee”, a widow who ran a fortune telling stall as part of the fair’s ‘side-stuff’. Her son Martin was her regular driver but he had recently had an accident whilst taking money on the Skid and had his leg in plaster. Ironically, his mother hadn’t foreseen that event. I was asked to drive her truck in his place. Hammerton agreed and so at the appointed time I went and fired it up.
It was a converted, single-decker bus of a type no longer seen much. It was a “half cab”. This type of vehicle had a cab with a seat that was only half the width of the chassis, so the single driver’s seat was in solitary splendour at the front. Next to the seat, and outside the glazed cab itself was the side of the bonnet, in which the engine obviously sat and on the outside was a big curved wheel arch over the front wheel.
Behind the cab was the curtained living accommodation for the widow and her son, and behind that, accessed from the open passenger entrance platform, was her fortune telling booth. The booth had had its windows painted over and the whole bus was decorated with images of tarot cards, palmistry diagrams, phrenology heads, crystal balls and teapots (for reading tea leaves). In fact “Madame Renee”, or Mrs Davies to use her real name, normally only did palm reading but the bus got its message across quite effectively to the average punter.
With the widow and her son in the back I started up the engine, engaged first and let the clutch out to maneouvre into the convoy line. The engine continued to idle for a second and then stalled. I restarted and tried again. Same result. Beginning to blush and feeling frustrated I was keenly aware of the stare from behind of Mrs Davies and Martin, propped as he was on some cushions on his bunk. I started again, and this time I gunned the engine hard to make sure I didn’t stall. That diagnosed the problem; no matter what I did with the throttle pedal there was no response from the engine other than remaining on tick over. I turned the engine off and with a word over my shoulder to the expectant passengers I hopped down and went round to the engine side and got up on the wheel arch. Opening the cowling I could see immediately that the throttle linkage was sheared and there was no connection at all between the pedal and the control. Fuck! It looked as if we would have to miss our place in the line as a throttle linkage for a former London Transport Bristol bus wasn’t something that we were likely to have to hand.
Just as I was about to get down, Joe, one of the lad’s who had left me to take a kicking in Basingstoke, called over to me, from his place in the passenger seat of Mal Bede’s boxing and wrestling show truck. Mal’s truck was going to be behind mine in the convoy. I had a brilliant Idea. I hopped down and ran over the truck, jumping up onto the running board I asked Mal if he could spare Joe for the journey, as I had a problem and Joe was the perfect person to help me out.
Mal growled that if it would bloody get us all moving I could marry the bastard for all
he cared but could we just get on. I opened the door and jumped down calling Joe to follow me as quickly as possible.
Back on the side of the Bristol I showed him the broken throttle linkage and the connector. We had a brief explanation of my plan and then, leaving Joe trying to get secure and comfortable on the wheel arch, I climbed into the cab and fired up the technicolour bus/fortune telling booth once more. By calling to Joe for more or less throttle we were able to lurch into line and then, when the order came, to move out onto the open road.
Within a mile or so we had the actions down like a smooth and efficient team. There were only two problems; due to the return spring on the throttle control, Joe had to keep constant tension on the end he was holding which was knackering and left him only one hand available to hold on to the vehicle with. Secondly, in order for Joe to hear my instructions, I had to keep the side window of the cab open at all times and this meant that I did get slightly wet in the torrential rain as we laboured for an hour and a half in the dwindling light to reach Boston in time and order. Joe didn’t have to worry about the window; he was on the windward side of the cab already, poor Joe!
The build-up was frenzied, and the day itself was a disappointing washout that turned out to have been barely worth the effort. As dawn lightened the skies the rain, which had been heavy throughout the previous night, turned into a deluge of biblical proportions and so the crowds were thin and desultory. Everything was soaking wet. Light bulbs burst as cold water hit hot glass, candy floss wilted as it came out of the machine, toffee apples dribbled sticky treacle down hands and by two in the afternoon the showmen and their gaff lads almost outnumbered the punters.
The pull down was even more depressing. Knowing that the day’s takings had been so low, and everyone being so wet and miserable, made spirits as low as Scarpering Bert’s morals.
