TALES FROM THE RIVERBANK
My collection of poems and some stories that may bring a smile.
You might be wondering why call it The Tales from the Riverbank? Well the reason is simple; most of the poems concern events or people from either Lowoods Club or the Paper Mill at Wharnecliff Side. The River Don flows right past both of these locations. Five more steps and you’d be getting your feet wet! There are also some from St. Ann’s Club but that’s just a good three wood from the Don so what the heck!
All of the characters and stories are based on real people and events with a liberal sprinkling of poetic license. After all, if you have a license you might as well use it. Just ask James Bond next time you see him!
A bit about me.
I was born and bred in Newcastle and very proud to call myself a Geordie! Though I have lived in exile from Geordieland for about thirty years I still have something of an accent.
When I first left home at the age of eighteen I went to work for the National Westminster Bank in London {It’s the bank clerks that Nat West reject that makes Nat West the best! (Not)}. As you can imagine, my accent was a somewhat stronger in those days and it wasn’t long before being understood in “The Smoke” became a problem!
The bank had installed me in the Astor Lodge Hotel in St. John’s Wood and on my first day I had a taste of what was in store for me. A waitress came to my table and asked me what I would like for breakfast. I was of course feeling very sophisticated and full of my own importance, in the capital city in my new blue suit, and I clearly remember saying in my poshest voice,
“I’ll have bacon, sausage, egg, and tomato. Two slices of toast and black coffee (I thought that a nice cool touch, the black coffee) please”
The waitress just looked at me with a blank expression and said,
“One moment Sir. I’ll get the waitress who speaks German!”
Golders Green branch in North London was my place of work and after spending some time training I gradually began to “fit in”. One of my first responsibilities was balancing the post. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? So many first-class stamps, so many second-class stamps, so much through the franking machine, and so many parcels. For a guy with O levels in economics and accounts, as well as maths you’d think this would be a five minute exercise right? Wrong! I remember that first time so well, trying time and again to get the post to balance, You just can’t imagine how absolutely stupid I felt when the two columns repeatedly showed a difference of twenty-four pence.
After about an hour of this torture, and after checking about ten times that no one was watching I very carefully secreted twenty-four pence of my Own Money into the post cash box. I retreated to the loo to wash the sweat from my brow and on returning to my desk I thought myself quite smart. I confidently started my “final balance”, knowing that the figures would match perfectly. That’s right! They didn’t! Eight more of my Own Pence required.
This balancing of the post became my personal Hell and lasted for three months until I had my first quarterly review.
The Branch Manager was called Mr. Porterway and he was rather similar in manner to Captain Mannering from Dads Army. He dressed like Steed from the Avengers and weighed about twice as much!
I knocked on his office door and nervously entered.
“Mr. Carey. It is Mister Carey, isn’t it? It’s so difficult to tell under all that Hair! He complimented me on my timekeeping and punctuality before asking to see the Post Book. “Very impressive Carey, very impressive!” (Of course by this time the post owed me about three or four quid)
“What, Mr. Carey, are the basic credentials required by the staff of this bank?”
“Honesty and Intelligence?” I hazarded.
“Honesty, and the ability to speak English” He corrected me. “And it seems that you have neither quality”
“In twenty-two years at this branch no one has ever managed to balance the post Mr. Carey, so would you care to explain how you have been doing it?”
Well the game was up so I came clean and told him how, not wanting to appear foolish; I had been making the daily deficit up from my Own Pocket. He didn’t laugh at this explanation or, as I feared he might, dismiss me; he just gave me a five-pound note. He went on to explain that it was common practice for the staff, himself included, to send their personal post and that is why the amount of stamps never tallied.
“So Mr. Carey. You’ve convinced me that you are honest. Now convince me that you can in fact speak the Queen’s English.”
To be honest my patience with people who couldn’t understand my accent was wearing thin after three months of “What?” I told Mr. Porterway that I was the only person at the branch who did speak English. I explained that Southerners had been conquered so many times that their language had been bastardised.
“Mr. Carey, your knowledge of English History is as fanciful as your Post accounting. You will report to this address in Oxford on Monday for an intensive elocution course at the bank’s expense”
I told him that I had no intention of attending elocution lessons and went on to suggest that I be transferred to Newcastle where they could understand Proper English. He thought that was “a capital idea” but as there was no vacancies he transferred me to Swiss Cottage instead.
The appeal of the London’s bright lights quickly wore off and I was soon heading “Toonwards” from King’s Cross.
Life’s A Gas!
On my return to Newcastle I began working for the Northern Gas Board. On my first day there I was assigned to the complaints department. At that time the Gas Board were converting everyone from Town Gas to North Sea Gas and believe me the complaints department was a busy place to be!
The guy in charge was called Roger Wright. Remember this was my first day and I was unaware that he was the union shop steward and that the union was in dispute over wage negotiations. Roger showed me the ropes until lunchtime, fielding the more difficult calls, then said that he would take the first break before letting me go to the canteen. The canteen was a mere twenty or so paces away but before he left he insisted that “under no circumstances” was I to disturb him during his meal.
The plot thickens. Not only was I in the dark about Roger’s union position, but also something else he had neglected to tell me was that the National negotiator for the union was a Scotsman called Eric Easy. Okay, so that’s Roger Wright and Eric Easy. I know it sounds really implausible but that’s the way it was.
Well the phone kept ringing and I was doing my best to assure our irate customers that we did in fact know what we were doing. One particularly sarcastic woman informed me that she had two Gas Board workmen on her doorstep and her house was all electric. I explained that the house still needed the conversion in case she decided to move at some future date. As soon as I put the phone down it rang again and this is how the conversation went.
“Hello complaints. How can I help you?”
“You can’t help me. I need to speak to Mr. Wright.”
“I’m sorry but Mr. Wright is unavailable at the moment”
“Just go and get him!”
“I’m sorry but that’s not possible. Can I help you or take a message?”
“Listen sonny. It is possible. Just go and get him. Its Easy!”
“It isn’t easy. Mr. Wright is not here, he’s at lunch”
“Get off your arse, go to the canteen and get him. Its Easy!”
“It isn’t easy!”
“Are you taking the piss? Its Easy here!”
“It might be easy there but it’s difficult here!”
“For the last time! Its Easy here!”
Well at that point I hung up the phone and ten minutes later Roger returned. He asked me if I’d had any problems and of course I told him that some pillock had wanted him and had kept saying it was easy. Oh well.
The shit hit the fan the next day because Eric Easy arrived looking to get me fired. Of course by this time everyone and his mother knew of the call and it had almost made me something of a hero because no one liked The Big Easy. Anyway I was told had to apologise to him and I did with my fingers firmly crossed behind my back. It was easy after all.
At the start of 1984 I was made redundant from the Sheffield Smelting Company. Of course, with two youngsters, I was desperate to find work and I used to drive all round South Yorkshire and beyond looking for work. One day as I was driving down Brightside Lane in Sheffield I saw some guys putting some fencing up and decided to go and see if there was a job available.
As I walked through the gate I saw about a dozen men, all bent over, and my first impression was that they had lost something. One of these men shouted at me in a really broad Scottish accent,
“Get Down you fucking idiot!” He had one of those voices that call for instant obedience so I assumed the same position as the rest of them. Seconds later there was an explosion and rocks began falling all over the place. The man who had shouted at me came over and asked me what I wanted. I told him that I was looking for work of any sort. He recognized my accent immediately and told me that if there was one thing he didn’t need it was another Geordie working for him.
I said, “Well fuck you then!” and turned to go. He called after me and took my phone number then I left.
When I arrived home my wife told me that a horrible man had phoned saying that I should be there ready for work at seven the following Monday.
The job was to last three years. It was an interception sewer, big enough to carry all the shit in Sheffield (And trust me that’s a lot of shit) to the sewerage plant at Blackburn Meadows. The explosion I had witnessed was the firing to start sinking the first shaft. The shafts were eighty-five foot deep and about twenty-five foot in diameter. The guys were rough. And I mean ROUGH. They called themselves Tunnel Tigers. They traveled the world, from one tunneling job to the next. The previous one being the Metro System on Tyneside. The work was hard. And I mean HARD. The pay was good.
There was several Geordies working on the site, lots of Irish, a few Scots and some “Locals”. When the shaft was sunk a new guy arrived to take charge “downstairs”, his name was Ginger, and he was a legend.
Ginger, who was as Irish as Irish can be, had been in the tunneling game for donkey’s years. His nickname was “Rock-Doc”, because he could do surgical cuts of rock with gellignite. He had absolutely no common sense and every Irish joke you’ve heard of could have been about him. I had written some poems about the guys and Ginger and the rest of them christened me “Longfella”. I got on okay with Ginger but if he was in a bad mood, or had a hangover, you could put money on that someone would get sacked.
I was the banksman (slinger and crane director) one morning when Ginger came out to the bottom of the shaft.
“HELLO LONGFELLA!” He shouted from eighty-five feet below.
“HELLO GINGER! What do you want?”
“SEND DOWN A PICK!”
I hurried over to stores, got a brand new pick, and tied it to a long rope that we used for stuff that was light enough to lower manually. As I started to lower it, the knot came undone and the pick fell all the way to the bottom, just missed Ginger, and embedded itself in a timber right next to his foot.
I thought that he would come up and sack me but he prized the pick out, put it over his shoulder and marched off into the tunnel without saying a word.
About ten minutes later he came back out into the pit bottom.
“HELLO LONGFELLA!”
“HELLO GINGER! What do you want?”
“SEND DOWN FOUR SHOVELS!” He shouted.
“AND DON’T SEND THEM DOWN AS FAST AS THE FUCKING PICK!”
Ginger lived in a caravan on site and occasionally his wife “Mrs. Ginger” would come to stay with him for a few days. She was just like him in every way and I suspect that she was the only person in the world that Ginger feared. They lived in Newcastle and had done since the Metro job. One weekend Ginger and his wife gave me a lift “up home” in his new company Escort.
As we were traveling up the A1 Mrs. Ginger said,
“GINGER, HOW FAST ARE WE GOING?”
“WOMAN, WE ARE GOING AT SEVENTY MILES AN HOUR!”
“GINGER, YOU’RE GOING TOO FAST!”
“WOMAN, WHEN I’M IN THE CAR ON MY OWN I DO 100 MILES AN HOUR!”
“GINGER!” she said, “I WOULDN’T LIKE TO BE WITH YOU WHEN YOU’RE IN THE CAR ON YOUR OWN!”
Believe me, I was biting my wrist trying not to laugh out loud at this domestic. Neither of them saw the funny side but I was creased up in the back!
When the shaft was completed and the mechanical tunneling began, lots of new faces appeared on the site. The tunneling machine was the bee’s knees and a very sophisticated piece of kit. It would cut a metre of rock then build a ring of concrete segments in its wake.
Each segment had a rubber gasket around it to help form a watertight seal.
The guys who stuck these gaskets on were nicknamed “the Glue-Sniffers”. Every Friday night one of the Glue-Sniffers would go out and fetch fish and chips for everyone.
One Friday in particular we had received a delivery of glue. It was extremely strong and very expensive. The glue-sniffers had stacked it all up neatly around the perimeter of their shed. It was winter and very cold. The tunnel was driving through coal at the time and everyone working on the surface had a forty-five gallon drum filled with coal burning away.
I was still the banksman and we had been doing a very complex lift, which had demanded my full concentration. Ginger traveled up the shaft standing on the hook of the crane and when he got to the surface he said,
“FUCK ME LONGFELLA! SURE BUT THE GLUE-SNIFFERS HAVE A GOOD FIRE GOING TONIGHT!”
As I looked round I saw the entire shed up in flames. The glue-sniffers had both gone to the chip shop and their fire had set the new glue ablaze.
We sent for the fire brigade and before long there were at least ten fire engines and lots of firemen running around trying to put it out. The fire chief approached Ginger and asked him what was in the shed.
“I’LL TELL YOU WHAT’S IN THE FUCKING SHED,” he said.
“ABOUT FIFTY GRANDS WORTH OF GLUE! NOW PUT THE FUCKER OUT!”
I said to Ginger, “TELL HIM ABOUT THE OXY-ACETELENE BOTTLES!”
Ginger said, “HELLO! WHITE HELMET! COME HERE! THERE’S ABOUT TEN BOTTLES OF GAS IN THERE AS WELL!”
I said to Ginger, “TELL HIM ABOUT THE GELLY!”
Ginger said, “HELLO! WHITE HELMET! COME HERE! THERE’S ABOUT HALF A TON OF GELIGNITE IN THAT LEAN-TO ON THE SIDE AND YOU DON’T WANT TO BE LETTING THAT FUCKER GO UP!”
Well that was it. Widespread panic. The firemen saved the gelly and the gas, but lost the glue. One other thing was burnt to the ground. Ginger’s caravan! It was completely incinerated and Ginger was heartbroken. He was a rugby fan and used to follow Ireland everywhere they played. Always wearing his lucky Irish Herringbone Tweed jacket. He phoned Mrs. Ginger in Newcastle.
“HELLO! THE CARAVAN HAS GONE UP IN FLAMES AND MY INTERNATIONAL JACKET WAS IN THERE!” She obviously started saying something to try to console him but he interrupted her with,
“ARE THE SPARE CAR KEYS THERE?” She must have said that they were.
“WELL THEY’RE NO FUCKING GOOD THERE ARE THEY!” He yelled, then smashed the phone down, breaking it into a thousand pieces.
From the age of about eight until I was sixteenish I served on the altar at St. Columba’s Catholic Church at Wallsend-on-Tyne. In those days the catholic mass was said in Latin and altar boys had to chant all of the responses loud enough for the standers-at-the-back to hear. I never quite got it but people often stood at the back then. The Parish Priest was called Father Kelly and his sermons did tend to go on a bit. An hour in the pulpit wasn’t unusual. Why stand through one of those every Sunday?
Most of my Altar Boy memories concern disasters. Looking back I guess I was the Frank Spencer of St. Columba’s, shit just seemed to happen. Especially at funerals……. Oh well.
It was Halloween and a typically wet and blustery Autumn Saturday morning. My Saturdays were very predictable in those days. Mass in the morning then up to St. James Park for The Match in the afternoon. First team or reserves, it didn’t matter. My best friend, partner in mischief, fellow chief suspect, Aidan Blackburn (Blacka to his pals) and I had served at a requiem mass for one of the leaders of the Knights of St. Columba.
The Knights of St. Columba is a catholic charitable organization and, disappointingly, they did not possess a round table, though Blacka and I had searched every inch of St. Columba’s for it. We believed, (Hey! We were only about nine at the time), that their sworn enemies were the St. Vincent de Paul society and that they would stop at nothing to out do them.
Anyway, back to the funeral. We had moved on to the cemetery and the mourners were gathered round the grave as the coffin was lowered into the ground. There were five Altar Boys there. One of the older lads carried a crucifix mounted on a pole; two others had large heavy candles, which kept blowing out. I had the Holy Water, and Blacka had the “pure gold device on a chain” in which the incense burned. We had done the Latin Chanting bit, the priest had sprinkled the Holy Water, and as Blacka stepped forward to pass the incense to the priest he slipped and fell into the Grave. What a panic and commotion! The whole thing was a shambles! Us remaining altar boys were trying not to laugh out loud, Blacka was screaming blue murder from the bottom of the grave, The brave Knights had come over all reluctant and the whole issue was going nowhere until the son of the deceased clambered down to rescue Blacka, who had a broken ankle and missed school until after Christmas.
Not long after that Father Kelly passed away and his requiem mass was a really grand affair. The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in England turned out in full. There was Archbishops, Bishops, Monsignors, the whole issue. The church was absolutely full of Holy men of one type and another.
Enter the Altar Boys. Blacka and I had been promoted to Candle-bearer status and we were to take part in the procession. Every Altar boy in the parish took his place outside. We all wore freshly starched white cottas over our long black cassocks and as we entered the church a priest lit our thick heavy candles. We started marching up the centre aisle of the church, perfectly in step, with an exaggerated sway, just as we had in the rehearsal. At just about the halfway point I stood on the bottom of my cassock and struggled not to fall to the floor. I regained my balance but my candle was against the altar boy in front and the inevitable farce started happening, seemingly in slow motion.
With my candle fully upright again Blacka and I stared at the cotta of the boy in front, desperately willing it not to catch. It smouldered. It smoked. Whoosh! It went from the “I think I’ve got away with this” stage to calamity in seconds. The poor guy in front suddenly realised his predicament and yelled at the top of his voice “Fucking Help! I’m on bastard fire!”
A Bishop had to come to the rescue with Holy Water. Oh Well.
Years ago, when the priest gave the Eucharist straight onto the tongue, the altar boy used to walk backwards holding a silver salver beneath the recipients throat. I once slipped and smashed the salver into this old guy’s Adam’s Apple. He couldn’t breathe and he quickly lost consciousness. Someone had to give him mouth to mouth until the ambulance arrived. I guess if that happened now he would have sued the ass off the church!
There were many incidents over the years, most of them happening at “Hatches, Matches, and Despatches” as we used to call them. I considered the priesthood as a career option until I was about thirteen, then, well, I guess I just didn’t get the calling.
I have a good friend now called…Well lets just call him Brother X. He did receive the call and went through all the training to be a priest. Shortly before his ordination he dropped out. I recently asked him why and he candidly admitted that he just couldn’t stop wanking. Oh well!
As the eldest altar boy, aged about sixteen, I used to serve alone at High Mass on Sundays at Eleven O’ Clock. Imagine my excitement when I heard that it was to be televised on BBC’s Songs of Praise! I couldn’t wait! Anyway, the week before the big day, Father Carey, who was the Parish Priest and no relation, told me that I wouldn’t be needed for the televised mass as The Knights of St. Columba were going to be the altar servers that day. I can say with my hand on my heart that I was truly gutted and that the following Sunday was the first time I missed mass.
The week after the big day Father Carey arrived at my house and asked me why I hadn’t been there to serve High Mass at eleven. I just said that surely the Knights had done it? He replied that they had only served for the televised mass. There was a silence, I guess you might call it a pregnant pause, while I waited for the penny to drop. When it finally did I told him that he would need to cover High Mass with someone else in future and that was the end of that. Oh well.