R
Robert Harrison
Guest
“Can I mind your bike sir?”
“No thanks son, I shall be padlocking it up, but thanks anyway”.
Dejectedly I went back, sat down on the lower step to the entrance of the Sherwood pub, and waited for the next drinker to come with his bike.
If I was not at the Sherwood I would be at The Valley pub at the bottom of our road, but some times someone else had got there before me. So I would run all of the way back up Chinnbrook Road, across Trittiford Road, over the bridge that crossed the river Cole that meandered through the Dingles, and on up to the Sherwood, hoping that none of my mates had got there before me.
It was the same routine on most Saturday mornings. Mom and dad would be short of money, and so if I wanted to go to the Tudor picture house I had to earn my sixpence. It used to be tupence but now it was sixpence.
Sitting on the step I would think of things that I would like to do when I was older, but at the age of seven or eight my mind did not stretch much further than that my hero Desperate Dan the strong cow boy. His favorite meal was cow pie, and he smoked pipe made out of a dustbin with a length of iron pipe stuck in it. Anything that was in the bin Desperate Dan would smoke it.
The summer days where a treat, just to sit on the pub steps and look at all of the men that came and went from the pub. They were happy workingmen, entitled to get away from home for an hour or so on a Saturday morning and enjoy a drink or two with their mates. Perhaps play a game of darts or draughts or if the pub had one, a game of skittles.
Often I would open the door a bit and poke my head through the opening. The Bar would be full of noise and smoke, and the smell of lovely beer mixed all of these things together and I would sniff it all in. I still do now even though I have not smoked or drank for over forty years. There is something about the smell of a pup that brings back so many memories.
I would get to the pub by nine thirty or thereabouts and not leave until it was time for dinner, or if I was fortunate to earn my sixpence for bike minding I would be off to Trittiford Park and have a walk around the pool. I would look at the swans and the ducks and think how wonderful it would be to be able to sit on water like they did.
I loved the park. Going in by the entrance nearest to the pub you had to pass the Darby and Joan Club. It was ages before I knew what that meant. I suppose it was because whenever I passed it there was no one there. Trees grew and shaded a narrow path that led to the boathouse. The boathouse master was there dressed in his official boat mans clothes. White shirt with black stripes, dark trousers, a waistcoat with the chain of his pocket watches across his large stomach, and on his head his peaked hat. Oh, and not forgetting his whistle dangling from a piece of string from his waistcoat.
Just past the boathouse was a grassy bank, which sloped towards the pool. I would sit there and watch the people rowing their boats. You could always tell the learners, they would raise their oars and plop them into the water, usually wetting anyone who sat in the stern of the boat, while others would skim their oars across the surface of the water making a swishing noise.
It would not be long before the voice of the boathouse master boomed across the pool. “Come in number eight, your times up”. He charged sixpence for half an hour and a shilling for an hour. If, in the summer months there were a queue for boat rides he would try and call you in before your time was up.
Behind me there was the parks rose garden, not as I recall kept in good order. The poor roses where rarely pruned and so grew spindly with a poor showing of roses, but their scent was overpowering, and so made up for their poor condition. Bees and butterflies found them to their liking as they came and went from flower to flower, perhaps wondering why there was insufficient nectar to go round.
Next to the rose garden was the parks canteen, a wooden structure, that, from the look of it must have been built at the end of the First World War. It was a long building with a wooden floor. Tables and wooden chairs were set out along side each wall. The counter, from behind which worked misses Green, a dark haired plump lady. She was well liked by all of the youths who in later years made the canteen their meeting place every Sunday morning. A cup of tea would last us and hour or more, as we never seemed to have enough money for any more. One would perhaps have a sixpence that we would put into the Electric volt machine that was on the wall by the counter. About six of us would all hold hands, some of the girls screaming as we had forced them to the machine. On the front of the machine were two knobs; someone would take hold of the left side knob and someone the right hand knob. The knob on the right could be turned increasing the voltage that passed from the machine through the boys and girls. The highest that the machine would go to was only seventy volts, but when reached it had us all twisted up and the girls screaming loader, but they really loved it. We never found out why it was taken down.
Passing the canteen you would walk beneath tall elm and horse chestnut trees. Nature’s cathedral. In early summer, the cathedral was carpeted with bluebell, colt foot, and vetch.
I would lie on my stomach and look at a world unseen by most, but it was there, teaming with the miniature, sometimes as busy as The Bull Ring on a Saturday. Tiny flowers smaller than a shirt button, but to a nipper with an enquiring mind, beautiful to behold.
I would lie there with my chin resting upon my interlocked fingers, just looking, and trying to shrink myself into the world of the minuscule.
Cramped but satisfied, I would continue on my way past the upper part of the pool. This upper part of the pool had been fenced off from the boats, so that the bird life could find sanctuary to mate and to nest. It became a passion for me go as often as I could to be the first to see the new ducklings take to the water for the first time. What a delight they were to see as they investigated this world of water. Their world, a world that I could not float upon, but so dearly wanted to.
At the far end of the pool the river Cole flowed over a small weir, this kept the pool at a constant level and renewed with clean water. The overflow swept over another weir at the far end of the pool and joined up again with the parent river. This ran onwards through the Dingles, and along side it ran the river Chinn.
A wooden bridge crossed by this top weir, and I could not just walk over it but had to look at the water as it bubbled over the wall. A continuous waterfall of crystal clear liquid sparkled as the sunlight fell upon it through the canopy of leaves. The water cascaded over a slope green with algae, then into a trough and on into the pool. Tiddlers swam in the trough content to stay there and feed on what the river brought to them.
The bridge and weir were not a place where one could just walk on by, for its fairy like qualities compelled all to stop, and in their stopping; a magical time was entered into.
Adults were once again children, and children vowed never to grow up.
Catkins of the Hornbeam and Birch hung in profusion, and Marsh Violet grew in the shade of the ever-damp ground. Painted Lady Butterflies added color to the green of this
Grotto of wonder, while Willow Wrens sang to the new season.
Time was ever my enemy as a child, and I had to leave this wonder world and make my way home, but not before I walked down a bank that brought me to the river. White Dead Nettle seemed to want to bar my way, and trying not to step on the Blue Periwinkle it took a few minutes to reach the river. The odd Daffodil was in flower. I seemed to remember these delightful flowers every year I came to the park, they grew under a Crack Willow and I could only imagine that they had been planted by someone, or had been carried to their some past flood. The temptation to pick them for my mother was always strong, but like the Blue Bell in a child’s hot hand they would droop and be cast away.
As I type this, I am a kid again, I can think like a kid and if my wife were not in the room, I would most certainly act like one. That isn’t anything new though is it? For any of us.
“No thanks son, I shall be padlocking it up, but thanks anyway”.
Dejectedly I went back, sat down on the lower step to the entrance of the Sherwood pub, and waited for the next drinker to come with his bike.
If I was not at the Sherwood I would be at The Valley pub at the bottom of our road, but some times someone else had got there before me. So I would run all of the way back up Chinnbrook Road, across Trittiford Road, over the bridge that crossed the river Cole that meandered through the Dingles, and on up to the Sherwood, hoping that none of my mates had got there before me.
It was the same routine on most Saturday mornings. Mom and dad would be short of money, and so if I wanted to go to the Tudor picture house I had to earn my sixpence. It used to be tupence but now it was sixpence.
Sitting on the step I would think of things that I would like to do when I was older, but at the age of seven or eight my mind did not stretch much further than that my hero Desperate Dan the strong cow boy. His favorite meal was cow pie, and he smoked pipe made out of a dustbin with a length of iron pipe stuck in it. Anything that was in the bin Desperate Dan would smoke it.
The summer days where a treat, just to sit on the pub steps and look at all of the men that came and went from the pub. They were happy workingmen, entitled to get away from home for an hour or so on a Saturday morning and enjoy a drink or two with their mates. Perhaps play a game of darts or draughts or if the pub had one, a game of skittles.
Often I would open the door a bit and poke my head through the opening. The Bar would be full of noise and smoke, and the smell of lovely beer mixed all of these things together and I would sniff it all in. I still do now even though I have not smoked or drank for over forty years. There is something about the smell of a pup that brings back so many memories.
I would get to the pub by nine thirty or thereabouts and not leave until it was time for dinner, or if I was fortunate to earn my sixpence for bike minding I would be off to Trittiford Park and have a walk around the pool. I would look at the swans and the ducks and think how wonderful it would be to be able to sit on water like they did.
I loved the park. Going in by the entrance nearest to the pub you had to pass the Darby and Joan Club. It was ages before I knew what that meant. I suppose it was because whenever I passed it there was no one there. Trees grew and shaded a narrow path that led to the boathouse. The boathouse master was there dressed in his official boat mans clothes. White shirt with black stripes, dark trousers, a waistcoat with the chain of his pocket watches across his large stomach, and on his head his peaked hat. Oh, and not forgetting his whistle dangling from a piece of string from his waistcoat.
Just past the boathouse was a grassy bank, which sloped towards the pool. I would sit there and watch the people rowing their boats. You could always tell the learners, they would raise their oars and plop them into the water, usually wetting anyone who sat in the stern of the boat, while others would skim their oars across the surface of the water making a swishing noise.
It would not be long before the voice of the boathouse master boomed across the pool. “Come in number eight, your times up”. He charged sixpence for half an hour and a shilling for an hour. If, in the summer months there were a queue for boat rides he would try and call you in before your time was up.
Behind me there was the parks rose garden, not as I recall kept in good order. The poor roses where rarely pruned and so grew spindly with a poor showing of roses, but their scent was overpowering, and so made up for their poor condition. Bees and butterflies found them to their liking as they came and went from flower to flower, perhaps wondering why there was insufficient nectar to go round.
Next to the rose garden was the parks canteen, a wooden structure, that, from the look of it must have been built at the end of the First World War. It was a long building with a wooden floor. Tables and wooden chairs were set out along side each wall. The counter, from behind which worked misses Green, a dark haired plump lady. She was well liked by all of the youths who in later years made the canteen their meeting place every Sunday morning. A cup of tea would last us and hour or more, as we never seemed to have enough money for any more. One would perhaps have a sixpence that we would put into the Electric volt machine that was on the wall by the counter. About six of us would all hold hands, some of the girls screaming as we had forced them to the machine. On the front of the machine were two knobs; someone would take hold of the left side knob and someone the right hand knob. The knob on the right could be turned increasing the voltage that passed from the machine through the boys and girls. The highest that the machine would go to was only seventy volts, but when reached it had us all twisted up and the girls screaming loader, but they really loved it. We never found out why it was taken down.
Passing the canteen you would walk beneath tall elm and horse chestnut trees. Nature’s cathedral. In early summer, the cathedral was carpeted with bluebell, colt foot, and vetch.
I would lie on my stomach and look at a world unseen by most, but it was there, teaming with the miniature, sometimes as busy as The Bull Ring on a Saturday. Tiny flowers smaller than a shirt button, but to a nipper with an enquiring mind, beautiful to behold.
I would lie there with my chin resting upon my interlocked fingers, just looking, and trying to shrink myself into the world of the minuscule.
Cramped but satisfied, I would continue on my way past the upper part of the pool. This upper part of the pool had been fenced off from the boats, so that the bird life could find sanctuary to mate and to nest. It became a passion for me go as often as I could to be the first to see the new ducklings take to the water for the first time. What a delight they were to see as they investigated this world of water. Their world, a world that I could not float upon, but so dearly wanted to.
At the far end of the pool the river Cole flowed over a small weir, this kept the pool at a constant level and renewed with clean water. The overflow swept over another weir at the far end of the pool and joined up again with the parent river. This ran onwards through the Dingles, and along side it ran the river Chinn.
A wooden bridge crossed by this top weir, and I could not just walk over it but had to look at the water as it bubbled over the wall. A continuous waterfall of crystal clear liquid sparkled as the sunlight fell upon it through the canopy of leaves. The water cascaded over a slope green with algae, then into a trough and on into the pool. Tiddlers swam in the trough content to stay there and feed on what the river brought to them.
The bridge and weir were not a place where one could just walk on by, for its fairy like qualities compelled all to stop, and in their stopping; a magical time was entered into.
Adults were once again children, and children vowed never to grow up.
Catkins of the Hornbeam and Birch hung in profusion, and Marsh Violet grew in the shade of the ever-damp ground. Painted Lady Butterflies added color to the green of this
Grotto of wonder, while Willow Wrens sang to the new season.
Time was ever my enemy as a child, and I had to leave this wonder world and make my way home, but not before I walked down a bank that brought me to the river. White Dead Nettle seemed to want to bar my way, and trying not to step on the Blue Periwinkle it took a few minutes to reach the river. The odd Daffodil was in flower. I seemed to remember these delightful flowers every year I came to the park, they grew under a Crack Willow and I could only imagine that they had been planted by someone, or had been carried to their some past flood. The temptation to pick them for my mother was always strong, but like the Blue Bell in a child’s hot hand they would droop and be cast away.
As I type this, I am a kid again, I can think like a kid and if my wife were not in the room, I would most certainly act like one. That isn’t anything new though is it? For any of us.
