OH5 Interview with Fred Wedlock (entertainer)
Q: Right. This is an Edison Bell phonograph. Sorry about that, I’m getting used to the tape. Although there is an interest, there’s some outfit in Tiverton who may be interested in publishing some kind of transcript, I don't know what. So, what is it you want? I mean cos they want the text of the performed play, no problem, but I think if they want the original transcript, I don't know. I mean we’re gonna talk to people and then I don't even know the copyright situation on that.
FW: I thought that Redcliffe Press would have given advice for this […]
Q: It is them, except they’ve, Redcliffe Press have been, they’ve more or less collapsed and they’ve been taken over by this outfit in Tiverton.
FW: Oh have they? Didn’t know that.
Q: Yeah. Who were called West Country Books. They’ve now changed their name to something else but they are essentially, they’re a west-country book outfit. And it’s a…
FW: There’s a vast number of…a real kind of growing thing isn’t it?
Q: Yeah.
FW: Cor I’ve got shelves and shelves of stuff, of local interest.
Q: Redcliffe Press is a sort of subsidiary of them. So I’m trying to find out what they want and whether we’re able to give it to them. Right, anyway, so, well there’s two things. One I don’t wanna record so let’s leave it till later, we’ve now got the tape going. I mean if I can cue you for a few stories you’ve told me.
FW: The basic summing up of Bristol humour…
Q: Yeah, tell me some of that, yeah.
FW: …which I must have told you, is the bloke who walks into a social club in Bristol. He’s a bit late and his mate’s there in the bar at the interval and he says, “All right Bill”, “All right, yeah”, “How bist?” “Oh all right”. “Show all right?” “Aye”, he says. “Comic been on?” “Yeah, yeah”. “Any good?” “Yeah, if you’s feel like laughing”. You tell any Bristol comic that, you know, they will say, “Yes, played that audience, yes”.
Q: I tell you, you must know it but my, when I am talking to people about what Bristol humour is like and I say it’s very dry, I give that line that Norman Walters, the old, he used to be on the Evening Post and at the County Cricket Club, he told me the story about two blokes on a bus, and one’s just saying, “I’m gonna watch the Rovers during Lent”. [laughter]
FW: An interview, […] getting used to. There’s versions of that, yeah. Usually the England cricket team given up batting for Lent, […] numerous occasions, yeah.
Q: Maybe I’ve got about…
FW: I mean there’s another story with a docker who’s an avid Bristol City fan, total nutter, goes to all the reserve games and every bloody thing, all the pre-season stuff. And he’s every end of the season going down the path with his red and white bobble hat and his scarf and all the business. And his missus shouts out, “There you’re bloody going down to see your stupid city. Sometimes I think you like Bristol City more than you like me.” Turns round and he says, “I like Bristol Rovers more than I bloody like you”. [laughter]
Q: When we were talking the first time, that, when we were doing that little Evening Post photo thing, this isn’t actually a story, it’s just something you referred to, but…
FW: Hang on, carry on talking, I’ve just remembered another one, hang on.
Q: In Hotwells you were talking about the very big catholic community there.
FW: Yeah, still is.
Q: And I’ve since come across other people who’ve mentioned that to me. I mean do you, do you know is there a why for that, or, you know what were they, why, why were they there?
FW: I don't know. My, my wife would probably be more the one to answer that cos she’s a Hotwellian you see. And maybe it just happened that there were a few catholic families pitched in there and grew and grew and grew, as catholic families do. And they all stayed in the same area, people tended to do in those days. And so as each of the sons and daughters had their requisite eight or nine kids, you know, then it became a takeover.
Q: Yeah, cos you must think…
FW: I don’t think that there was any particular large Irish immigration into Bristol. I know Bristol, at one time I think Bristol owned Dublin, I mean didn’t it? And the fact that there were Irish slaves were used. Irish people were actually brought over to Cardiff I believe as ballast. Yeah, no, no I, I treated this with some scepticism, but apparently so, boats returning from Waterford to Penarth, wherever it was.
Q: Put another 20 of them.
FW: Yeah, 200 Irish people in there.
Q: Couple more on the port side.
FW: Cos you’ll find quite a lot of Irish names up around the valleys. I went to Swansea University and a lot of my mates, you know, were from round that area and there were quite a few McCarthys and that, and Italians as well.
Q: Your, your missus was a Hotwells girl, wasn’t she? I mean the other scene, I got one of me dockers, I think it’s Dolly who grew up in Hotwells as well. Saying, you know, all, all the families round here on the dock are at least a minimum, when you say seven, it’s…
FW: Well there was the Peglers, the Rafters, of course you know, Mike Rafter, the England player. I think there were about seven or eight children there. And oh, my mother in law was an O’Brien, so she was all part of the mafia there
Q: Your missus was […] was she?
FW: Well she went to La Retraite, her mother was kind of nominally a catholic and my wife was never a practising catholic. I mean she went to La Retraite and did all the usual bells and smells and spells, but no she’s not now. I mean she’d count herself as Church of England now, if anything.
Q: Yeah, it’s true when I lived in Hotwells, it’s the first place I lived when I came to Bristol, my landlady was a catholic woman.
FW: Darcys, there was another big family as well. And…
Q: That’s an Irish name, isn’t it?
FW: Yeah. Well it’s a Norman name actually.
Q: Yeah but I think the…
FW: It’s a story I tell actually about…I do this song about, a sort of blues for rich people and I say I wrote it for a friend of mine called Piers Darcy, who as the name would suggest, is rather an established family, you know. And filthy rich. And I said to him about this, “Piers”, I said, “So where do you live then?” He said, “Wiltshire”. I said, “Oh yeah, where?” He said, “Most of it”. Bloody great estate. So I said, “Darcy, oh a Norman name isn’t it?” And he said, “Yes, yes”. And I said, “Did your family come over with William the Conqueror then, Piers?” He said, “Oh good heavens no, Fred, they had their own boat you see”.
Q: This is very lively. Sorry, the other…
FW: See now if I was doing this, I’d work all them in, you know. “What’s thy name?” “Darcy”. “Did thee come over with William the Con…?” “No, had our own boat”.
Q: Fred, if you did this, it’d be a laugh a minute, I know, but I think I owe it to the blokes at [inaudible]
FW: Oh we’ve have some pathos in.
Q: We’ve gotta get that sweat and labour and, you know, all that. What, what, your earlier question, I’ve no idea. I mean I shouldn’t think Andy’s started to think actually about what part he has in mind for you. If you see one there that you would fancy, then […]
FW: Oh I was looking at, I mean like Dolly, he’s in just about everything. I thought, “Well bugger that”.
Q: [inaudible]
FW: There’s a lot of work there, mate, yes. At my age learning’s not a good idea.
Q: There’s quite a lot of dockers though, I mean you can see, see if, it’s not final now anyway. I mean some of those, the, some of those are real names, Dolly Gray’s a real bloke who grew up in Hotwells, worked in the docks. But he, I had so much of his stuff that I thought was worth using, I’ve had to invent another character called Joe, and almost everything Joe says, is actually Dolly as well. I’ve got an over-run of Dolly stuff, you know, so I’ve given Joe to that. So all that’s negotiable anyway and when it comes to rehearsing, if suddenly somebody’s got too much, or something’s not working, you know, we want somebody off at some point, just change the name. But some of the characterisation is strong, I mean Ray, Ray Buck, the imperial, the very special sort of character, and you know, the one who goes like that, “Barrier Hold in those days, wonderful place it were”, you know and all that. I mean that sounds, he’s got […] voice, natural Bristol. Not that we have to imitate them exactly, the originals, but the, what they said will probably work best if the accent’s something like the, the way they talk.
FW: Which actually raises the question, does, you know, reading through this, and I was reading it as if I was reading it, you know what I mean. How far do you want it into the dialect? Because in fact this strikes me very much as people you’ve interviewed talking proper, you know.
Q: If it, if that’s the case, then anything we can do to get it back into the dialect would suit me.
FW: Depends how thick you want the dialect cos old Bristolians talking would be fairly bloody incomprehensible, you know.
Q: Yeah, well I guess we got a compromise of some kind, or we [won’t get] audience.
FW: Yeah. I mean you’ve got, right, “If a man”, this is Dolly, “If a man is killed, everybody goes home for the day. There’s no Social Security so the main thing we do every Thursday, when you get your pay, you have a barrel and table outside”. Now I mean, “There’s no Social Security, so the only thing we do’s, every Thursday when thees getting pay, used to have a barrel or a table outside and a blokes throws ten bob or five bob or whatever they can afford, on it”.
Q: If, if whoever does…
FW: And if you can broaden it to that.
Q: I would have no trouble, but then I can’t say, you know, I’m not a Bristolian, but I’ve lived here nearly 40 years so I’ve got fairly used to the way, to listen to people speaking Bristolian. I think it’s up to Andy to decide that really. He might think, you know, we’re just going to miss too many people in the audience. We’re doing a play called […].
[00:10:15]
FW: Yeah, right, I know actually. Carbon black, that’s […] potash and ammonia. Ammonial. Yeah, “Thees gotta shovel all that see down the hold, or, “You have to shovel all that see down the hold”.
Q: Yeah. It’s, it’s true, it, I think it’s a decision we gotta make and it’s, I mean Dolly certainly, if you met Dolly, you, he talks like you’ve just done. I mean that, he’s a real Bristolian, lived in Hotwells, you know. And [inaudible]
FW: What, with, with the bissn’t, cassn’t, assn’t?
Q: Yeah, I mean what you’ve got there on the page. I got, I didn’t do it myself, I got somebody to transcribe the tapes. In doing that, she probably started correcting it just instinctively, you know, cos you’ll find it […] to type, the way it’s actually said.
FW: Well you, you could, I mean how, how would you actually spell thee coussnt?
Q: Well she’s, she’s probably already laundered out bits of Bristolian. I think…
FW: I think like you say, it’s a question of getting up on stage reading it in dialect and if it makes sense, if there’s enough nouns in there and enough adjectives to carry the sense of it, then you’re not gonna be too worried about the verbs, you know.
Q: No, no, I, we’ll see.
FW: Like the way I speak German.
Q: Another thing you told, when you, you were talking to Andy and me that first time, over by the Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotial, you came out with, I don't know if it’s a standard line of yours, but you came out with a very funny line about when you were a kid in the docks, what, what sticks were useful for. You were saying bows and arrows and smoking and, and…
FW: Oh smoking cane, ah, yeah.
Q: Smoking cane?
FW: Smoking cane, yeah, yeah that was, I don't know what plant it was, but I suspect it was, it, it was something which was kind of hollow with, with pith. So it would be something like young buddleia perhaps now.
Q: Like...right.
FW: And that you could sort of, you know, when it, when it had dried a bit, you could light one, and you’d chop off a bit and light one.
Q: You could chop off a bit?
FW: Yeah, if you just, just about draw through it, it was appalling, I mean it was awful. Vile it was. I mean that, that was, out of desperation and kids’ stuff. You know, when you got to about nine, it was a, it was a young man. And then somebody would nick Woodbines from somewhere, you know, and Star and Turf.
Q: I remember them.
FW: Yeah. But they, they were…
Q: […] number one.
FW: They were sort of separate, oh hello we’ve got a woodpecker out there, see, on there.
Q: Where?
FW: On that apple tree, immediately there, see, see his red bum behind it.
Q: Oh yeah, oh beautiful, you lucky bugger you.
FW: Lesser spotted I think.
Q: In the garden, […] covered aren’t they, sensational.
FW: He’s nice.
Q: They’re lovely, too, aren’t they?
FW: Yeah. Jays are pretty too, they’re bastards though, they sort of wreck anything you plant, they will. And a few other birds as well. Anyway sorry I digress, yes. So…yes I mean talking about the, it was the bombsites you see, I mean there were certain plants that colonised bombsites. Which is why I can never take buddleia seriously. A lot of people have it in their gardens cos it does attract butterflies, no doubt about it, and smells very pleasant. But the trouble is with buddleia, it goes over fast and you just get some horrible brown knackered flowers. But as it grew on bombsites, I can’t see it as a kind of plant that you would nurture in your garden. And not very useful stuff anyway. I mean apart from smoking cane, there were willows which colonised as well, now they were very good for bows, nice springy willow. And arrows, usually used to sort of nick bits of bamboo from odd places, bamboo didn’t grow on the bombsites, but to get the right weight in, and, and some of which have remained rigid, you know. You, you pinched bits of deal from various, and that, but there were one or two things that you could use again, sort of willow wands could be used for arrows. And then you used to sort of flight ‘em with, there was plenty of feathers hanging around from pigeons and things, tie a few of ‘em on the back. Notch your bow and…
173 - Q: And it worked?
FW: Away it went. Oh aye, yeah, it worked, yeah it worked all right. If you were really sort of a bit vicious, you might burn the end of it, you know, charcoal at the point, which made it sort of hit a bit harder. Or sometimes you could sort of slip little bits of stone in there for the hell of it. Or a nail down the end there.
Q: You weren’t shooting at other kids, were you?
FW: Hey?
Q: Were you shooting at other kids?
FW: Oh yeah, yeah. And chucking half bricks, I mean we used to have kind of minor gang wars, yeah. But there were kind of rules that you observed, you had, you had punch-ups, fair but you never hit anybody in the face, very rare, you know, there were, it was a kind of dogs sparring kind of thing, you know. Nobody’s going for the kill. You’d sort of lob a half brick but not too close, kind of thing. And, and you’d punch each other’s bodies, but not the face.
Q: How did it work, was it sort of turf gangs, your own neighbourhood?
FW: Oh yes, yeah. I mean we had, our little gang occupied most of upper Thomas Street and we had quite a lot of huge bombed-out factories, you didn’t need to travel far because you had your total playground all around you, and the docks of course. And we used to get on the barges, occasionally set them adrift. Contrary to rumours, I did not actually push cannon into the water and set the slaves free, not quite that old. And you’d get painter’s rafts and float around a bit on them, occasionally drift out into the middle and have to be rescued by the river police.
Q: Were some, I mean you’ve seen those stories in there about people being rescued from drowning, people who’ve fallen in the docks or on one or two occasions, people who’ve thrown themselves in the docks and still I suppose you’ve got to rescue. I mean that was a fact of daily life I think.
FW: No it wasn’t, it was very rare in fact. Yeah. I mean I cannot remember more than one kiddie drowning in the docks, and that was somebody that we didn’t know anyway, from a sort of neighbouring gang. Just, no it was a very rare sort of thing. I mean as kids you, you learnt to swim pretty early because we used to go over to Mayor’s Paddock Baths down by the Cut. It was a real learner’s bath, and it was just one of the things that the gang did, you know. And in fact quite a few of the kids who came from very poor homes around Somerset Street, Cathays, and that area, didn’t actually have baths and they used to go down there, you know, equipped with a towel and a couple of pennies and it was a public bath as well. And a cake of soap and in you get. Some kids would even come in swimming with a cake of soap in, in the Mayor’s Paddock Bath and there was this bloke. And then this bloke taught all our gang to swim. And he used to, used to hold you up underneath and, you know, and we didn’t realise what he was bloody up to, but the thing was he taught us to swim.
Q: And he enjoyed it more than you did?
FW: Yeah I mean, some of the sort of, he disappeared rapidly, I think somebody mentioned it to his dad, you know, and that was it, yes, exit stage left pursued by, yeah.
Q: What, I mean talking about being on the water, just the other day you told us a story which I’d like to get down if you can tell it, about the bales of paper? Floating around and there was a reward
FW: Yes it was a, well it was one of these stories that there was a reward, you see, so it, it was a barge had sunk. They used to go up, oh there’d be about four or five of these barges behind the tug.
Q: Going up to St Anne’s?
FW: Going up to St Anne’s, yeah. Sometimes there’d be a motorised barge, you know, with several more barges behind it and one of them sunk. I think it probably hit the bridge, can’t remember the exact details but, all around St Augustine’s Reach and the, and the swing bridge there, there were these floating bales of paper pulp. And the story was that if you could fish them out, I can’t, it was, I think it was half a crown or five shillings or something, but definitely big money, I know that. Course we’re all in there with hooks that we’d nicked and bits of rope and there was plenty of that around the docks, chucking them out, trying to fork ‘em and then some of them, some of the lads got a rowing boat from somewhere and went out and, and painter’s rafts. And all that stuff. All trying to pull this bloody, course they were sodden, they were below the surface there. And then by the second day, most of them had dropped below the surface. I mean totally useless. And then it sort of, I think the, the river police probably then appeared because it was obviously dangerous, you can’t have kids doing all that, and we all got warned off.
Q: So nobody ever actually got one out and claimed their reward?
FW: Well, no, no, oh well we all heard that somebody did, yes. “Oh, old Backo, he got a hundred pound.” He got all this, “What?” Yes.
Q: Yes. And there’s another story you, you said, oh general stories about pilfering. The one that I remember is sugared raisins?
[00:20:03]
FW: Oh yes, yes, quite why it was sugared raisins, I don't know? I mean there barrels of the bloody things. Don’t know precisely where they were, it was over by Welsh Back, a shed there which is now, don’t know what it is, probably the leisure club or something like that. And they, they were all suddenly got broken through probably handling errors, but then of course it wasn’t difficult to encourage them to break a bit more. Cos once we found this, bloody great, and all them there. Stuffing ourselves eating, being heartily sick, filling our pockets with them. Wonderful. And there were other things, I mean fruit as well. You used to, cos you were sort of being legitimate about it, you used to go and scrounge some pinky fruit from up by Bristol Bridge.
Q: What sort of fruit?
FW: Pinky fruit was anything going off, you know. Well, very ripe, yeah. I mean not rotten but stuff that they couldn’t possibly sell, and that. And used to come where you sort of, all right you, you’d get it all for free, sometimes you know, ‘aporth of pinky fruit. Give a man a ha’penny and carry away a barrow load of it. There was always lots of that, they were things that spoiled very quickly. Cos like the bananas, of course, you know, your story.
Q: That’s right, yeah, that’s right.
FW: I mean give it two minutes and a banana’s gone over.
Q: And there’s that story you sing in your Ernie Thatcher tales about, peanuts, same story really, bags, splitting them. He’s got this great phrase, I imagine it, it’s a standard Bristolian phrase, is it? “We’re filling our pockets and grandmother’s socks.”
FW: Mmm, yeah.
Q: You know that one, right? I’ve never come across it before. Well that’s it really. What was that specific thing you told me the other day, I mean the, the punchline is “Go home you Welsh buggers”?
FW: Oh yeah, the pilot, the Avon pilot. I’d tell it as though I was talking to a Pill pilot about the problems of getting a boat down the river. And I said, “Well, all right, fair enough, it’s difficult enough in the best of weather, but how the hell do you manage when you’ve got fog, cos you can’t actually see the shore even?” He said, “Oh no,” he said. “Well all the way down the river, see, there’s navigation lights like every couple of hundred yards, there’s a light on each side of the river.” He said, “And you can see it glimmering through the fog. So you keep the boat more or less in between the navigation lights and, and you’re all right.” I thought, “Oh fair enough”, I said, “But how do you know if you can’t actually see the shore when you’ve got to Hotwells? To turn into the docks?” And he said, “Ah, well now what you do, as you come to each pair of lights, you’re up on the bridge, first one, you sing, [in welsh tone] “my bish de marry anne bri, widdy bree hoe” and onto the next, I don't know, up river. “ Fa la la la horm de vella” and then the next one, “Men of Harlech, in the hollow…” and he said, “And eventually over on the left hand side, you’ll hear a voice shout out “piss off home to Wales, bastard” and you know you’ve reached Hotwells”. [laughter]
Q: Can I use that?
FW: Yeah.
Q: That will be in the next…
FW: It’s all true see.
Q: You’ll be the next draft of the script. We’re in the most weird situation here with you both being source and performer. I mean when you get the draft, the next draft of the script, that story will be in there. Now whether you then want to do it, you know, that bit, or whether you’re happy to let someone else do it?
FW: Oh I don't mind. Yeah, I mean, they’ll all, what you wanna do is, when somebody establishes what part they want me to play, you know, you can put in a blank bit, saying “Fred adlibs story about…”, yeah.
Q: Well to be honest I’ve, again it’s up to Andy and it’s something we’re all gonna have to talk about, but you know like in a, orchestra, orchestral concerto, you have a cadenza where the soloist can improvise?
FW: Yeah, yeah.
Q: I said, you know, “If we’ve got Fred in the show and he’s a, that’s what he does for a living, he’s a stand-up performer. I mean you could say, ‘Five minutes of Fred doing, doing his number at this point’, you know”.
FW: Yeah. ‘Flash git.’ In brackets.
Q: I mean it’s one option that’s open. Anyway I’m seeing him Friday and we’re gonna talk through the latest draft but already it’s been superseded.
FW: How about the idle docker, the rape story?
Q: Tell me.
FW: This woman comes into the Nick in Avonmouth.
Q: Oh yeah, I know, yeah, yeah.
FW: “I’ve been raped”. “Right madam, description?” “He was a docker”. “How d’you know?” “I had to do all the work.”
Q: Yeah, yeah. I put what, you know, I’ve seen, there’s one I’ve put in already.
FW: Oh yeah I noticed that. Yeah. “I don’t like Daimlers.” “Well when the revolution comes, you’ll drive what you’re bloody well told to drive.”
Q: That dropped in very easily without any trouble so I, I just slapped it in. I’m having, I’m having a little bit of trouble with women. But apart from that, it’s okay.
FW: Did you wanna talk, do you wanna talk this out? Shall I, shall I get someone to sit with you, shall I?
Q: I’ve got…
FW: Yeah but there’s, it’s not, it’s not a women’s play is it?
Q: I know it’s, and yet we’ve got to do something. I’ve got this character you’ll have seen, called Mrs Quickly who keeps the bar and I suppose…
FW: Mistress Quickly is it?
Q: That’s right, yeah, that’s right.
FW: You’ve nicked that from Henry…do the death of Falstaff. Oh, in’t that lovely?
Q: I thought why not call her that? Because the only thing is, if she gets called anything, I’ll say it’ll be Mrs Q so nobody will know who it is, it could be Quigley or Quinn or something. And I’m trying to build up a character for her and really I’ve got so little to go, though I don't mind, you know. I mean I also earn my living by making up things but in a play which is so solidly based on fact, I’m trying, I mean what’s her name, the one you introduced me to, who used to keep the pub in Redland?
FW: Oh, and, and they, yes.
Q: A middle aged woman. She’s nice, nice enough but you know she didn’t seem to, either she couldn’t or she didn’t care to.
FW: Oh…Alice…
Q: That’s right, Alice Fry.
FW: Alice Fry
Q: Yeah, she didn’t remember a lot.
FW: Well she wasn’t hot on dock stuff. That was the thing.
Q: I mean the main thing she said to me, which I’ve used and maybe can build up a bit more, is how she wouldn’t stand for bad language in her pub.
FW: No that is actually a characteristic, my grandmother was the same, cos she ran a pub you see.
Q: Yeah?
FW: And, and my dad, I’ve never known my dad swear. Never knew him to swear, apart from ‘bloody’, you know. I never knew dad to swear, he was always very strict on language. And that was the thing in a, in a pub, politics, religion, and swearing, absolutely out.
Q: I’ve, I’ve done a little bit more work on her and I’m, I’ve built up a kind of little story that isn’t in the draft you’ve seen but it’ll be in the next draft, which is, I mean it’s very, it’s a kind of Madam Butterfly, but the other way round. You know, she, there’s this Greek sailor 30 years ago that she was in love with, and he was gonna come back and he never did and there’s kind of a little play-off at the end about what happens. Cos Andy wants her to, at the moment she’s a bit functional, you know, she’s just sort of there doing the odd thing, and he wants her to have her own little story that gets twisted at the end so the audience feel that they’ve met a, a character. I, I think I’m gonna give up on it, frankly, because I mean I think it’s, I know what…
FW: Which character is this?
Q: Mrs Quickly. Yeah, yeah.
FW: Oh Mrs Quickly, well, cos there’s the other woman in there who’s a stewardess
Q: Yeah, one or two, Ruth who lived in Hotwells, who’s, she’s, I mean she’s a slightly dry stick. She lived in the Campbell’s offices, her dad was secretary to the Campbell’s company. But I tried to get some good stories about Campbell’s steamers but all I got is the one that I used about how she herself was always sick every time she went on the boat. And then there’s a woman called Joanna who’s an Avonmouth girl, and she’s got one or two stories about being a purser at sea, the trouble is I’m cheating there because she worked for Cunard out of Liverpool, so I’ve cut back on her because I feel, it’s sort of legitimate, she is an Avonmouth girl, she lives there again now and that’s her home, always has been. But she wasn’t actually sailing out of Bristol so…
FW: Ah, I don’t know, that…
Q: But you know, I just wanna give, and there’s one or two more…
FW: Were there cruise boats sailing out of Avonmouth then?
Q: Oh the banana boats, yeah. But I haven’t met any women who worked on those. Ray Buck used to work on those and so did Ernie Thatcher, two of my seamen used to work on, on the banana boats.
FW: Cos it has, talking about seamen you see, this is an awful lot on, on seamen.
Q: Yeah there’s maybe too much. I don’t mind telling you I have in mind already, it’s still a bit too long especially given I’m going to be putting in stuff from you and one or two other things, I think I’m gonna cut all the Ernie stories about the war, you remember the ones about being in Norway, Argentina…
FW: Norway, yeah, and the Dunkirk stuff?
Q: I think they ought to mention Dunkirk, cos the Campbell’s was part of that, I mean it is a real Bristol story. But the other stories, although he’s, if you met Ernie, I mean he’s a, he’s a right Bristol character, I mean he’s very Bristolian, very strong accent. And I warmed to the guy very much, I liked the guy. Nevertheless stories about what he was up to in, working in Jack Dempsey’s bar in New York and getting mixed up with the Mafia, you know, and all that. I mean they’re colourful stories.
[00:30:12]
FW: Now you see that, that is nice in a way because it’s, again it’s a docker’s story.
Q: Yes. That’s right, cos he did work as a docker though.
FW: With a, with a different angle, you know, that he gets paid this much and comes in and puts ten dollars in the hat, you know, to get a job next day.
Q: Yeah, well I also…
FW: To, to, I mean to demonstrate that the connivance went on in docks all round the bloody world.
Q: Yeah, same old story isn’t it? Yeah, you’re right, that one should be kept but the story about the say the Graf Spee and how Captain [Langsell] [inaudible]
FW: Langsell, yeah, I mean the trouble is that’s such a well known story.
Q: Yeah. I think chunks of, I mean if I take out all except the Mafia story, that would get rid of getting on for two pages and that will, I’m, you know, I’m working on roughly two minutes a page so that gets us back a bit. And the, it’s a bit of a, even more stuff. I’m fighting length the whole time. But there’s [the whole thing].
FW: Yeah. He, see he comes, one thing that struck me slightly about, when I was reading through that section, is you’re getting these, you, you, you got the Scharnost appears and shells the convoy and you’ve got Graf Spee and you, oh several other, oh and the, not the Normandy, the Dunkirk and that. And, and you’re thinking, bloody hell you know there’s a, now there’s a fantastic bit of luck getting a bloke who’s actually been at all these actions, you know. Or is this stretching credibility just a little far?
Q: No, it’s true.
FW: You would, he was actually…
Q: He was sunk six times. That’s how I got onto him. David Harrison, you know David?
FW: Yeah, from the Post, yes.
Q: He’s sort of interested in docks and ships and things. When he heard this show was happening, he said, “Any time you’re around come in, I’ve got some stuff you can look at”, so I did. And David had run a feature in the Evening Post, oh a couple of years ago now I think, inviting people to write in with your, your marine stories. And he said, “Look, here’s the best of them. I’ve used some of them in the paper, but if you wanna follow them up and go and talk to the people.” And Ernie Thatcher was one of those people. He’d written into the paper, and he said, “I was sunk six times”. If you met him, you’d believe him absolutely, he is no bullshitter, Ernie.
FW: I mean six times is bloody remarkable.
Q: It must be, may be some kind of, some kind of all comer’s record, I don't know. And so, yeah, and the way he talks, it, he doesn’t, he’s the opposite of arrogant. I mean he’s quite a modest man actually. I’m sure he’s not shooting a line. And you could do a whole story about him, amazing, extremely.
FW: You see it’s a pity that you’ve, that you’ve spoken to so many, you’ve got so much stuff, because my brother in law, who still works down there, is in this kind of limbo between management and workers. I mean he started off as a docker, he’s been there for 40 years is it, no? Thirty odd years. And he’s now a kind of senior supervisor, I mean like a sort of RSM, you know, where you’re neither one thing nor t’other. So he’s got pretty strong views on dockers cos he’s always been slightly apart from them, being in charge. And he’s also got views on management as he was never quite one of them, you know. So it’s…
Q: Just like RSMs.
FW: An interesting ‘in the middle’ view, you know.
Q: Yeah. Well let me, I mean it’s on tape now, I’ll make a note of it. I just, I just don’t think I can take anymore on board, you know, I, I knew it was a big subject. But I now realise that, you know, icebergs ain’t in it, I mean.
FW: See I, I love that little story that, that Doug told me, my brother in law, which is absolutely true, the bloke nicking wood.
Q: Tell me, tell me again.
FW: Cos, cos I mean everybody, everybody was always nicking something from the docks, I mean sometimes it was quite big valuable stuff but most of the time it was little tiny odds and sods, you know, a few planks here and there. And I can always remember when factories turned out all around us, there was blokes riding round on bicycles, and they all had a few lengths of wood tied to the pannier at, or the frame, for, for firewood or for making rabbit hutches or pigeon lofts or whatever. And this character was trying to get some sort of very good quality long planks out, and so he ties them under the car and ties them to the exhaust, it’s a nice convenient place to tie ‘em to, but he uses plastic string to tie ‘em. Pulls up at the police point, you know, and while the policeman’s talking to him, there’s a bang and all this, course this plastic string’s burnt through with the heat from the exhaust. There, lying under the car, is half a dozen planks of mahogany. And I think the bloke got the elbow for it but it’s an absolutely true story. The silly bugger had used blooming plastic string.
Q: Harry Brown, if I, if I can borrow the tape but you said that, when I was talking to you in the pub that time, you said that beyond what the tape does, I mean the story goes on. And I made some notes when I got home that it went over to the breaker’s, breaker’s yard and they got no marine lights.
FW: They did, did a moonlight.
Q: So then they moonlighted it to Waterford. And then something about the Bay of Biscay and the engineer went overboard? And then something about a collision and then luckily [inaudible] found them…
FW: Collided somewhere off Malta.
Q: Working as a sander off Bahrain of all places.
FW: Yeah, ridic…, yeah, I thought it was ludicrous.
Q: I thought, do I, do I pick up where the tape ends? I mean I…
FW: I mean I’m pretty sure now and I’ve heard from several sources, in fact there’s a bloke works round here who worked on the Harry Brown and I met him couple of weeks ago up the village. But my information came from somebody whose son was on the passage crew. But I mean this is really not officially confirmed. I’m sure we could easily find out but it, well I don't know whether you could easily find out because obviously they, they worked a bit of a flanker on it and probably think they’re disguising their tracks a bit. But certainly the story was that it, it, it finally sunk somewhere off Bahrain.
Q: Right.
FW: And the reason why was because desert sand is pretty coarse and horrible stuff whereas the sand bars under the sea is much better for building, you see, certain grades of concrete. So it does actually make considerable sense.
Q: Actually it’s a sideline from what you’ve just said, but explain if you know the story, that reference that Dolly makes right at the end of the play, about there’s a beach over in New York which is supposed to be sand as to rubble.
FW: Yes, well I don't know about that. Certainly rubble, absolutely certainly, a lot of the bomb damage rubble went over as ballast and there is a plaque on one of the New York piers or wharves stating this. Bob Wall is your man for this as well, I mean there’s some photographs of it. It is a well authenticated story that this rubble was taken over there, poured out and then became a quay.
Q: Right.
FW: So there’s probably chunks of valuable old Bristol somewhere under that quay now, is there?
Q: The video…
FW: Architectural salvage.
Q: Or stone, yeah. If, if you’d be kind enough to, to lend me the video?
FW: Sure, yes.
Q: Where does the story end on the video?
FW: It ends with the Harry Brown, so say making its last voyage and disappearing down the river.
Q: And, but then I mean if you, can you pick it up from there for me? I mean it actually goes to…?
FW: From there it went to, I think Penarth or Barry.
Q: To be broken up?
FW: To be broken up. And, cos it was in a fairly crap state, I mean when I went out on it, on it’s, to say last voyage, although in fact it was a couple of weeks before the actual last voyage. I was a bit reluctant to lean on the rails because basically there was more rust than there was rail, cos of course they hadn’t bothered to maintain it particularly. And there was some lovely antique old things in there, there was an immense kind of Aga cooking range, gas range, you see, and it was vast, I mean it was about the width of this room, this thing. And I had a couple of pasties, they had a pile of pasties, that was it, you know, and somebody said, “Want some of these?” “Oh I’d love a pasty”. “All right”. So he sticks this thing in this range and there’s this sort of huge great oven with a tiddly little pasty stuck in the middle of it, he turns on the full gas, I mean, you know, it must have taken like enough gas to keep a house heated for a week, to warm up my pasty. I said, “Well look I’ll leave it”. “Don’t worry about her”. Boom, here we go.
Q: Wonderful.
FW: And the, the rest room, the furniture in there was like any old stuff that anybody had discarded. And there were probably ten chairs there, all totally different knackered old armchairs, and uprights and there was probably a bit of Shaker and some Hepplewhite and stuff, you know, but you didn’t realise it. It was just, it was a tip, I mean a slum in there really.
Q: So they, they’d take it to…
FW: Anyway, sorry, they went to Penarth, and it was then sold to a, I think a Middle East, or a firm with Middle East interests who then took it late one night over to, I believe, Waterford. It was either Waterford or the one next to it, you know.
Q: Yeah. Illegally?
[00:40:00]
FW: Yeah, because it didn’t have a licence to travel more than three miles away from the coast. I think it was three miles. And it was then refitted, tarted up and sent down to the Middle East.
Q: And then what’s this about the engineer going overboard?
FW: Well apparently in the Bay of Biscay, an engineer was lost overboard, in a bit of a strong, cos of course it was so low, if it was loaded, I remember these things coming up the river with the deck actually awash, you know six inches of water over it. That was regular cos they, they really load them, you know. I would have thought below the Plimsoll but in they come, cos they’d be pumping out the water as they went, from the sand.
Q: And you, you reckon it was in something like that, that the [inaudible] ?
FW: Well I don't know because it wouldn’t have been loaded with sand, it would probably have had a bit of ballast in there certainly. But I would have doubted it was that low, but even, even when it was riding high, the decks weren’t all that far above the surface.
Q: Oh right. Yeah. So I mean he didn’t jump overboard, he was washed overboard?
FW: Apparently so, yeah. And, and then it collided with something off Malta and then eventually sort of staggered to the Middle East, worked for a bit and then sunk.
Q: And I mean can you answer the question, why would they want a sander working off the desert in Bahrain?
FW: Well yeah it is actually quite logical, because the sand under the sea is better grade, you get all kinds of different grades of sand which is another, you’ll find that out in the programme actually. The, the real skill of the captain, I mean you’ve got these sand bars underneath the Severn, cos the strength of the tide, you get pretty well defined bars. And the gravel settles on one side, and of course the sand is being swept along by the current, and then the lighter sand will go over the top and the gravel will drop this side, like gold-panning in a way. So if they’re going out after gravel, then they locate the bar that they’re after, put it down one side, you know, and if they want fine sand, they put it down a few feet away over there, so they’ve quite, got to be pretty accurate, and tolerances of sort of like six, ten feet. In the middle of this bloody great big body of water. So it was very skilful and at the beginning the, the sucker goes down and then starts throwing up and you can tell by the colour of the stuff that’s coming out, whether you’re pulling out gravel or sand.
Q: And it’s sucked up?
FW: Yeah.
Q: Right. What, by some kind of suction pump?
FW: Yeah, bloody great pump sucks it up and throws it through these meshes and the mesh will, you put on a mesh for whichever particular commodity you’re after so if you wanted fine sand, cos obviously you’re bound to get a bit of gravel and stone and all sorts of odds and sods down there, and bits of metalwork, tin cans, anything comes up. And so you put on this mesh and then say only fine sand will go through it into the hold, and the rest of it will come sluicing off. It’s very spectacular when you see it.
Q: Hmm
FW: At night with all, ooh yeah, at night with all the lights on, it really is quite dramatic, and if you want gravel then you have a wider mesh and get gravel into it. And you move to a slightly different part. And in fact there are about sort of five or six boats out there working when we were out there.
Q: And this was the firm, there’s the reference in there isn’t there, that Mr Brown was an old boy of the school where two of the people I talked to, went. And some…
FW: Yeah I didn’t know that bit actually but…
Q: barge trips up to Beese’s tea gardens.
FW: That sounds very likely, yeah, yeah.
Q: And how long…?
FW: They used to do family runs in the boat as well.
Q: That’s right. The last family that [inaudible] our football team.
FW: Well they, well they clear it out, that’s it, yeah. Played against the Morgans and my granddad refereeing. Yeah it’s an old film of my granddad, didn’t know it existed, amazing. From the Browns’ archive.
Q: Your granddad who played for City?
FW: Yeah, I was amazed at that.
Q: Do you know, I said to somebody the other day, “Fred’s granddad was Billy Wedlock, wasn’t it?”
FW: Yeah.
Q: And they didn’t know that. I mean I thought, I thought it was an unusual enough surname for anyone who thought, probably, you know, who made the connection. But they were amazed, I mean they knew about Billy Wedlock and you know, seen him.
FW: Well yes there are a few Wedlocks around, in fact there’s about oh ten of us got telephones now, according to the book. Some, some of whom I don't know.
Q: Several cousins are they?
FW: Cousins and…well there are two main branches of the family, it’s for my granddad and his brother. And his brother’s lot all went over towards Novers and had family over there and our lot stayed around Southville, Bedminster.
Q: Right. Another thing I don't know much about is the dredgers. I’ve just got…
FW: What, the mud dredgers?
Q: Yeah, I mean they were working night and day presumably simply to keep the channel open for that sort of thing.
FW: Yeah.
Q: What did they do with it when they dredged it, did they take it down to the channel?
FW: Yeah, so it can all come back again.
Q: I mean did it…?
FW: Yeah they used to put it in barges and take it down there and drop it somewhere out in the channel.
Q: The, the, the silt, I mean let’s call it silt, you know. It was coming up river, it wasn’t coming down?
FW: Well you see that was the reason why, have you, do you know about the underfall yard?
Q: I know what it is, yeah.
FW: And the principle of that, the idea of that was to take out the, quite, quite…
Q: The [inaudible]
FW: Quite a lot of the silt would go out through that.
Q: That was coming down river?
FW: No it was coming, it was coming upriver wasn’t it? They’d come up into the docks and then you’d have to let some of the stuff out, so the underfall. But it never cleared it completely so they used to dredge sort of fairly regularly.
Q: Right. And…
FW: But then again there must have been a fair bit, well a bit coming downriver but not half so much as seemed to come upriver.
Q: Right. And it was…
FW: Oh I don't know though. I mean I’m not an authority on this but I’d always assumed that the majority of it came in with the tide.
Q: You see I got interested in it, because to do with the closure in the early ‘70s, one thing was in it for, you know, you could have said, if you were City Council, “Well it, it’s not a commercial operating port anymore, but we’ll leave it and if people wanna bring loads in then that’s up to them”. But it was the City Council’s job to dredge, to keep the channel open, and that was costing a lot of money so by officially closing the docks, they would save themselves all the cost of the dredging. And I just didn’t, I mean I lived in Hotwells as I said, for some years, and I used to see the dredgers but it never dawned on me that this was actually a lot of money going out of the City Council’s pocket. And presumably you see, it was more than one, wasn’t it, working?
FW: Oh yeah.
Q: And they were working, I imagine, 24 hours a day.
FW: There’s actual film somewhere of an original Brunel dredger as well.
FW: Yeah, now wait a minute, or is that Sharpness Docks? Ah, think it might be Sharpness, that Brunel actually designed a dredger. Anyway that’s by the by. Cos I must admit that I was never conscious of who was paying for what. I mean there was a dock, there was boats, there was dredgers. Who actually owned them and were responsible for them, I don't know.
Q: Yeah, it’s [inaudible] ask questions.
FW: I don't know, there was the Bristol sort of Harbour Board or whatever they called themselves and I, I didn’t know who, that was way above and beyond me, you know.
Q: Yeah, no I, I may, I’m gonna go and on my way back I’m gonna stop off at the Central Library, cos one or two things in these notes that Tony Benn sent me, I need to follow through to understand a bit more clearly. There’s a story outline there but I…
[Break in recording]
FS: …went into the dockers and that, he’s got five kids, all sons. Social worker goes round to see her, he says, “What are their names?” She said, “Kevin, they’re all called Kevin”. He said, “Well, isn’t that a bit confusing”. She says, “Oh no, they’ve got different surnames”. [laughter]
Q: I mean an alternative I suggested to Andy ages ago when it wasn’t clear whether you were going to be in the show or wanted to be in the show or not, I said, “If Fred were interested, it’d be up to you, couldn’t we use him as a sort of separate stand-up? You know, I mean do a sort of ten minute warm-up or an interval or something, you know, I mean The Fred Wedlock Mini Show in, in the show”. But I think that’s superseded now, isn’t it?
FW: Yeah I think, mmm, really yeah.
Q: But that’s why I’ve got this [inaudible] idea…
FW: But I don't know see any problem with working gags into the show cos I mean you’ve always in any organisation, firm or club, there’s always ‘the joker’, you know, the one that’s always coming out with the bloody gag. “You…” [inaudible] She don’t…
Q: Let’s, let’s leave all those lines until, until we get to it. I’m, I’m happy with what I’ve got. You’ve filled in a few details for me, if I can borrow the Harry Brown tapes.
FW: Mmm. I’ll get these out.
(End of interview)
[00:49:44 Recording Ends]
FW: I thought that Redcliffe Press would have given advice for this […]
Q: It is them, except they’ve, Redcliffe Press have been, they’ve more or less collapsed and they’ve been taken over by this outfit in Tiverton.
FW: Oh have they? Didn’t know that.
Q: Yeah. Who were called West Country Books. They’ve now changed their name to something else but they are essentially, they’re a west-country book outfit. And it’s a…
FW: There’s a vast number of…a real kind of growing thing isn’t it?
Q: Yeah.
FW: Cor I’ve got shelves and shelves of stuff, of local interest.
Q: Redcliffe Press is a sort of subsidiary of them. So I’m trying to find out what they want and whether we’re able to give it to them. Right, anyway, so, well there’s two things. One I don’t wanna record so let’s leave it till later, we’ve now got the tape going. I mean if I can cue you for a few stories you’ve told me.
FW: The basic summing up of Bristol humour…
Q: Yeah, tell me some of that, yeah.
FW: …which I must have told you, is the bloke who walks into a social club in Bristol. He’s a bit late and his mate’s there in the bar at the interval and he says, “All right Bill”, “All right, yeah”, “How bist?” “Oh all right”. “Show all right?” “Aye”, he says. “Comic been on?” “Yeah, yeah”. “Any good?” “Yeah, if you’s feel like laughing”. You tell any Bristol comic that, you know, they will say, “Yes, played that audience, yes”.
Q: I tell you, you must know it but my, when I am talking to people about what Bristol humour is like and I say it’s very dry, I give that line that Norman Walters, the old, he used to be on the Evening Post and at the County Cricket Club, he told me the story about two blokes on a bus, and one’s just saying, “I’m gonna watch the Rovers during Lent”. [laughter]
FW: An interview, […] getting used to. There’s versions of that, yeah. Usually the England cricket team given up batting for Lent, […] numerous occasions, yeah.
Q: Maybe I’ve got about…
FW: I mean there’s another story with a docker who’s an avid Bristol City fan, total nutter, goes to all the reserve games and every bloody thing, all the pre-season stuff. And he’s every end of the season going down the path with his red and white bobble hat and his scarf and all the business. And his missus shouts out, “There you’re bloody going down to see your stupid city. Sometimes I think you like Bristol City more than you like me.” Turns round and he says, “I like Bristol Rovers more than I bloody like you”. [laughter]
Q: When we were talking the first time, that, when we were doing that little Evening Post photo thing, this isn’t actually a story, it’s just something you referred to, but…
FW: Hang on, carry on talking, I’ve just remembered another one, hang on.
Q: In Hotwells you were talking about the very big catholic community there.
FW: Yeah, still is.
Q: And I’ve since come across other people who’ve mentioned that to me. I mean do you, do you know is there a why for that, or, you know what were they, why, why were they there?
FW: I don't know. My, my wife would probably be more the one to answer that cos she’s a Hotwellian you see. And maybe it just happened that there were a few catholic families pitched in there and grew and grew and grew, as catholic families do. And they all stayed in the same area, people tended to do in those days. And so as each of the sons and daughters had their requisite eight or nine kids, you know, then it became a takeover.
Q: Yeah, cos you must think…
FW: I don’t think that there was any particular large Irish immigration into Bristol. I know Bristol, at one time I think Bristol owned Dublin, I mean didn’t it? And the fact that there were Irish slaves were used. Irish people were actually brought over to Cardiff I believe as ballast. Yeah, no, no I, I treated this with some scepticism, but apparently so, boats returning from Waterford to Penarth, wherever it was.
Q: Put another 20 of them.
FW: Yeah, 200 Irish people in there.
Q: Couple more on the port side.
FW: Cos you’ll find quite a lot of Irish names up around the valleys. I went to Swansea University and a lot of my mates, you know, were from round that area and there were quite a few McCarthys and that, and Italians as well.
Q: Your, your missus was a Hotwells girl, wasn’t she? I mean the other scene, I got one of me dockers, I think it’s Dolly who grew up in Hotwells as well. Saying, you know, all, all the families round here on the dock are at least a minimum, when you say seven, it’s…
FW: Well there was the Peglers, the Rafters, of course you know, Mike Rafter, the England player. I think there were about seven or eight children there. And oh, my mother in law was an O’Brien, so she was all part of the mafia there
Q: Your missus was […] was she?
FW: Well she went to La Retraite, her mother was kind of nominally a catholic and my wife was never a practising catholic. I mean she went to La Retraite and did all the usual bells and smells and spells, but no she’s not now. I mean she’d count herself as Church of England now, if anything.
Q: Yeah, it’s true when I lived in Hotwells, it’s the first place I lived when I came to Bristol, my landlady was a catholic woman.
FW: Darcys, there was another big family as well. And…
Q: That’s an Irish name, isn’t it?
FW: Yeah. Well it’s a Norman name actually.
Q: Yeah but I think the…
FW: It’s a story I tell actually about…I do this song about, a sort of blues for rich people and I say I wrote it for a friend of mine called Piers Darcy, who as the name would suggest, is rather an established family, you know. And filthy rich. And I said to him about this, “Piers”, I said, “So where do you live then?” He said, “Wiltshire”. I said, “Oh yeah, where?” He said, “Most of it”. Bloody great estate. So I said, “Darcy, oh a Norman name isn’t it?” And he said, “Yes, yes”. And I said, “Did your family come over with William the Conqueror then, Piers?” He said, “Oh good heavens no, Fred, they had their own boat you see”.
Q: This is very lively. Sorry, the other…
FW: See now if I was doing this, I’d work all them in, you know. “What’s thy name?” “Darcy”. “Did thee come over with William the Con…?” “No, had our own boat”.
Q: Fred, if you did this, it’d be a laugh a minute, I know, but I think I owe it to the blokes at [inaudible]
FW: Oh we’ve have some pathos in.
Q: We’ve gotta get that sweat and labour and, you know, all that. What, what, your earlier question, I’ve no idea. I mean I shouldn’t think Andy’s started to think actually about what part he has in mind for you. If you see one there that you would fancy, then […]
FW: Oh I was looking at, I mean like Dolly, he’s in just about everything. I thought, “Well bugger that”.
Q: [inaudible]
FW: There’s a lot of work there, mate, yes. At my age learning’s not a good idea.
Q: There’s quite a lot of dockers though, I mean you can see, see if, it’s not final now anyway. I mean some of those, the, some of those are real names, Dolly Gray’s a real bloke who grew up in Hotwells, worked in the docks. But he, I had so much of his stuff that I thought was worth using, I’ve had to invent another character called Joe, and almost everything Joe says, is actually Dolly as well. I’ve got an over-run of Dolly stuff, you know, so I’ve given Joe to that. So all that’s negotiable anyway and when it comes to rehearsing, if suddenly somebody’s got too much, or something’s not working, you know, we want somebody off at some point, just change the name. But some of the characterisation is strong, I mean Ray, Ray Buck, the imperial, the very special sort of character, and you know, the one who goes like that, “Barrier Hold in those days, wonderful place it were”, you know and all that. I mean that sounds, he’s got […] voice, natural Bristol. Not that we have to imitate them exactly, the originals, but the, what they said will probably work best if the accent’s something like the, the way they talk.
FW: Which actually raises the question, does, you know, reading through this, and I was reading it as if I was reading it, you know what I mean. How far do you want it into the dialect? Because in fact this strikes me very much as people you’ve interviewed talking proper, you know.
Q: If it, if that’s the case, then anything we can do to get it back into the dialect would suit me.
FW: Depends how thick you want the dialect cos old Bristolians talking would be fairly bloody incomprehensible, you know.
Q: Yeah, well I guess we got a compromise of some kind, or we [won’t get] audience.
FW: Yeah. I mean you’ve got, right, “If a man”, this is Dolly, “If a man is killed, everybody goes home for the day. There’s no Social Security so the main thing we do every Thursday, when you get your pay, you have a barrel and table outside”. Now I mean, “There’s no Social Security, so the only thing we do’s, every Thursday when thees getting pay, used to have a barrel or a table outside and a blokes throws ten bob or five bob or whatever they can afford, on it”.
Q: If, if whoever does…
FW: And if you can broaden it to that.
Q: I would have no trouble, but then I can’t say, you know, I’m not a Bristolian, but I’ve lived here nearly 40 years so I’ve got fairly used to the way, to listen to people speaking Bristolian. I think it’s up to Andy to decide that really. He might think, you know, we’re just going to miss too many people in the audience. We’re doing a play called […].
[00:10:15]
FW: Yeah, right, I know actually. Carbon black, that’s […] potash and ammonia. Ammonial. Yeah, “Thees gotta shovel all that see down the hold, or, “You have to shovel all that see down the hold”.
Q: Yeah. It’s, it’s true, it, I think it’s a decision we gotta make and it’s, I mean Dolly certainly, if you met Dolly, you, he talks like you’ve just done. I mean that, he’s a real Bristolian, lived in Hotwells, you know. And [inaudible]
FW: What, with, with the bissn’t, cassn’t, assn’t?
Q: Yeah, I mean what you’ve got there on the page. I got, I didn’t do it myself, I got somebody to transcribe the tapes. In doing that, she probably started correcting it just instinctively, you know, cos you’ll find it […] to type, the way it’s actually said.
FW: Well you, you could, I mean how, how would you actually spell thee coussnt?
Q: Well she’s, she’s probably already laundered out bits of Bristolian. I think…
FW: I think like you say, it’s a question of getting up on stage reading it in dialect and if it makes sense, if there’s enough nouns in there and enough adjectives to carry the sense of it, then you’re not gonna be too worried about the verbs, you know.
Q: No, no, I, we’ll see.
FW: Like the way I speak German.
Q: Another thing you told, when you, you were talking to Andy and me that first time, over by the Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotial, you came out with, I don't know if it’s a standard line of yours, but you came out with a very funny line about when you were a kid in the docks, what, what sticks were useful for. You were saying bows and arrows and smoking and, and…
FW: Oh smoking cane, ah, yeah.
Q: Smoking cane?
FW: Smoking cane, yeah, yeah that was, I don't know what plant it was, but I suspect it was, it, it was something which was kind of hollow with, with pith. So it would be something like young buddleia perhaps now.
Q: Like...right.
FW: And that you could sort of, you know, when it, when it had dried a bit, you could light one, and you’d chop off a bit and light one.
Q: You could chop off a bit?
FW: Yeah, if you just, just about draw through it, it was appalling, I mean it was awful. Vile it was. I mean that, that was, out of desperation and kids’ stuff. You know, when you got to about nine, it was a, it was a young man. And then somebody would nick Woodbines from somewhere, you know, and Star and Turf.
Q: I remember them.
FW: Yeah. But they, they were…
Q: […] number one.
FW: They were sort of separate, oh hello we’ve got a woodpecker out there, see, on there.
Q: Where?
FW: On that apple tree, immediately there, see, see his red bum behind it.
Q: Oh yeah, oh beautiful, you lucky bugger you.
FW: Lesser spotted I think.
Q: In the garden, […] covered aren’t they, sensational.
FW: He’s nice.
Q: They’re lovely, too, aren’t they?
FW: Yeah. Jays are pretty too, they’re bastards though, they sort of wreck anything you plant, they will. And a few other birds as well. Anyway sorry I digress, yes. So…yes I mean talking about the, it was the bombsites you see, I mean there were certain plants that colonised bombsites. Which is why I can never take buddleia seriously. A lot of people have it in their gardens cos it does attract butterflies, no doubt about it, and smells very pleasant. But the trouble is with buddleia, it goes over fast and you just get some horrible brown knackered flowers. But as it grew on bombsites, I can’t see it as a kind of plant that you would nurture in your garden. And not very useful stuff anyway. I mean apart from smoking cane, there were willows which colonised as well, now they were very good for bows, nice springy willow. And arrows, usually used to sort of nick bits of bamboo from odd places, bamboo didn’t grow on the bombsites, but to get the right weight in, and, and some of which have remained rigid, you know. You, you pinched bits of deal from various, and that, but there were one or two things that you could use again, sort of willow wands could be used for arrows. And then you used to sort of flight ‘em with, there was plenty of feathers hanging around from pigeons and things, tie a few of ‘em on the back. Notch your bow and…
173 - Q: And it worked?
FW: Away it went. Oh aye, yeah, it worked, yeah it worked all right. If you were really sort of a bit vicious, you might burn the end of it, you know, charcoal at the point, which made it sort of hit a bit harder. Or sometimes you could sort of slip little bits of stone in there for the hell of it. Or a nail down the end there.
Q: You weren’t shooting at other kids, were you?
FW: Hey?
Q: Were you shooting at other kids?
FW: Oh yeah, yeah. And chucking half bricks, I mean we used to have kind of minor gang wars, yeah. But there were kind of rules that you observed, you had, you had punch-ups, fair but you never hit anybody in the face, very rare, you know, there were, it was a kind of dogs sparring kind of thing, you know. Nobody’s going for the kill. You’d sort of lob a half brick but not too close, kind of thing. And, and you’d punch each other’s bodies, but not the face.
Q: How did it work, was it sort of turf gangs, your own neighbourhood?
FW: Oh yes, yeah. I mean we had, our little gang occupied most of upper Thomas Street and we had quite a lot of huge bombed-out factories, you didn’t need to travel far because you had your total playground all around you, and the docks of course. And we used to get on the barges, occasionally set them adrift. Contrary to rumours, I did not actually push cannon into the water and set the slaves free, not quite that old. And you’d get painter’s rafts and float around a bit on them, occasionally drift out into the middle and have to be rescued by the river police.
Q: Were some, I mean you’ve seen those stories in there about people being rescued from drowning, people who’ve fallen in the docks or on one or two occasions, people who’ve thrown themselves in the docks and still I suppose you’ve got to rescue. I mean that was a fact of daily life I think.
FW: No it wasn’t, it was very rare in fact. Yeah. I mean I cannot remember more than one kiddie drowning in the docks, and that was somebody that we didn’t know anyway, from a sort of neighbouring gang. Just, no it was a very rare sort of thing. I mean as kids you, you learnt to swim pretty early because we used to go over to Mayor’s Paddock Baths down by the Cut. It was a real learner’s bath, and it was just one of the things that the gang did, you know. And in fact quite a few of the kids who came from very poor homes around Somerset Street, Cathays, and that area, didn’t actually have baths and they used to go down there, you know, equipped with a towel and a couple of pennies and it was a public bath as well. And a cake of soap and in you get. Some kids would even come in swimming with a cake of soap in, in the Mayor’s Paddock Bath and there was this bloke. And then this bloke taught all our gang to swim. And he used to, used to hold you up underneath and, you know, and we didn’t realise what he was bloody up to, but the thing was he taught us to swim.
Q: And he enjoyed it more than you did?
FW: Yeah I mean, some of the sort of, he disappeared rapidly, I think somebody mentioned it to his dad, you know, and that was it, yes, exit stage left pursued by, yeah.
Q: What, I mean talking about being on the water, just the other day you told us a story which I’d like to get down if you can tell it, about the bales of paper? Floating around and there was a reward
FW: Yes it was a, well it was one of these stories that there was a reward, you see, so it, it was a barge had sunk. They used to go up, oh there’d be about four or five of these barges behind the tug.
Q: Going up to St Anne’s?
FW: Going up to St Anne’s, yeah. Sometimes there’d be a motorised barge, you know, with several more barges behind it and one of them sunk. I think it probably hit the bridge, can’t remember the exact details but, all around St Augustine’s Reach and the, and the swing bridge there, there were these floating bales of paper pulp. And the story was that if you could fish them out, I can’t, it was, I think it was half a crown or five shillings or something, but definitely big money, I know that. Course we’re all in there with hooks that we’d nicked and bits of rope and there was plenty of that around the docks, chucking them out, trying to fork ‘em and then some of them, some of the lads got a rowing boat from somewhere and went out and, and painter’s rafts. And all that stuff. All trying to pull this bloody, course they were sodden, they were below the surface there. And then by the second day, most of them had dropped below the surface. I mean totally useless. And then it sort of, I think the, the river police probably then appeared because it was obviously dangerous, you can’t have kids doing all that, and we all got warned off.
Q: So nobody ever actually got one out and claimed their reward?
FW: Well, no, no, oh well we all heard that somebody did, yes. “Oh, old Backo, he got a hundred pound.” He got all this, “What?” Yes.
Q: Yes. And there’s another story you, you said, oh general stories about pilfering. The one that I remember is sugared raisins?
[00:20:03]
FW: Oh yes, yes, quite why it was sugared raisins, I don't know? I mean there barrels of the bloody things. Don’t know precisely where they were, it was over by Welsh Back, a shed there which is now, don’t know what it is, probably the leisure club or something like that. And they, they were all suddenly got broken through probably handling errors, but then of course it wasn’t difficult to encourage them to break a bit more. Cos once we found this, bloody great, and all them there. Stuffing ourselves eating, being heartily sick, filling our pockets with them. Wonderful. And there were other things, I mean fruit as well. You used to, cos you were sort of being legitimate about it, you used to go and scrounge some pinky fruit from up by Bristol Bridge.
Q: What sort of fruit?
FW: Pinky fruit was anything going off, you know. Well, very ripe, yeah. I mean not rotten but stuff that they couldn’t possibly sell, and that. And used to come where you sort of, all right you, you’d get it all for free, sometimes you know, ‘aporth of pinky fruit. Give a man a ha’penny and carry away a barrow load of it. There was always lots of that, they were things that spoiled very quickly. Cos like the bananas, of course, you know, your story.
Q: That’s right, yeah, that’s right.
FW: I mean give it two minutes and a banana’s gone over.
Q: And there’s that story you sing in your Ernie Thatcher tales about, peanuts, same story really, bags, splitting them. He’s got this great phrase, I imagine it, it’s a standard Bristolian phrase, is it? “We’re filling our pockets and grandmother’s socks.”
FW: Mmm, yeah.
Q: You know that one, right? I’ve never come across it before. Well that’s it really. What was that specific thing you told me the other day, I mean the, the punchline is “Go home you Welsh buggers”?
FW: Oh yeah, the pilot, the Avon pilot. I’d tell it as though I was talking to a Pill pilot about the problems of getting a boat down the river. And I said, “Well, all right, fair enough, it’s difficult enough in the best of weather, but how the hell do you manage when you’ve got fog, cos you can’t actually see the shore even?” He said, “Oh no,” he said. “Well all the way down the river, see, there’s navigation lights like every couple of hundred yards, there’s a light on each side of the river.” He said, “And you can see it glimmering through the fog. So you keep the boat more or less in between the navigation lights and, and you’re all right.” I thought, “Oh fair enough”, I said, “But how do you know if you can’t actually see the shore when you’ve got to Hotwells? To turn into the docks?” And he said, “Ah, well now what you do, as you come to each pair of lights, you’re up on the bridge, first one, you sing, [in welsh tone] “my bish de marry anne bri, widdy bree hoe” and onto the next, I don't know, up river. “ Fa la la la horm de vella” and then the next one, “Men of Harlech, in the hollow…” and he said, “And eventually over on the left hand side, you’ll hear a voice shout out “piss off home to Wales, bastard” and you know you’ve reached Hotwells”. [laughter]
Q: Can I use that?
FW: Yeah.
Q: That will be in the next…
FW: It’s all true see.
Q: You’ll be the next draft of the script. We’re in the most weird situation here with you both being source and performer. I mean when you get the draft, the next draft of the script, that story will be in there. Now whether you then want to do it, you know, that bit, or whether you’re happy to let someone else do it?
FW: Oh I don't mind. Yeah, I mean, they’ll all, what you wanna do is, when somebody establishes what part they want me to play, you know, you can put in a blank bit, saying “Fred adlibs story about…”, yeah.
Q: Well to be honest I’ve, again it’s up to Andy and it’s something we’re all gonna have to talk about, but you know like in a, orchestra, orchestral concerto, you have a cadenza where the soloist can improvise?
FW: Yeah, yeah.
Q: I said, you know, “If we’ve got Fred in the show and he’s a, that’s what he does for a living, he’s a stand-up performer. I mean you could say, ‘Five minutes of Fred doing, doing his number at this point’, you know”.
FW: Yeah. ‘Flash git.’ In brackets.
Q: I mean it’s one option that’s open. Anyway I’m seeing him Friday and we’re gonna talk through the latest draft but already it’s been superseded.
FW: How about the idle docker, the rape story?
Q: Tell me.
FW: This woman comes into the Nick in Avonmouth.
Q: Oh yeah, I know, yeah, yeah.
FW: “I’ve been raped”. “Right madam, description?” “He was a docker”. “How d’you know?” “I had to do all the work.”
Q: Yeah, yeah. I put what, you know, I’ve seen, there’s one I’ve put in already.
FW: Oh yeah I noticed that. Yeah. “I don’t like Daimlers.” “Well when the revolution comes, you’ll drive what you’re bloody well told to drive.”
Q: That dropped in very easily without any trouble so I, I just slapped it in. I’m having, I’m having a little bit of trouble with women. But apart from that, it’s okay.
FW: Did you wanna talk, do you wanna talk this out? Shall I, shall I get someone to sit with you, shall I?
Q: I’ve got…
FW: Yeah but there’s, it’s not, it’s not a women’s play is it?
Q: I know it’s, and yet we’ve got to do something. I’ve got this character you’ll have seen, called Mrs Quickly who keeps the bar and I suppose…
FW: Mistress Quickly is it?
Q: That’s right, yeah, that’s right.
FW: You’ve nicked that from Henry…do the death of Falstaff. Oh, in’t that lovely?
Q: I thought why not call her that? Because the only thing is, if she gets called anything, I’ll say it’ll be Mrs Q so nobody will know who it is, it could be Quigley or Quinn or something. And I’m trying to build up a character for her and really I’ve got so little to go, though I don't mind, you know. I mean I also earn my living by making up things but in a play which is so solidly based on fact, I’m trying, I mean what’s her name, the one you introduced me to, who used to keep the pub in Redland?
FW: Oh, and, and they, yes.
Q: A middle aged woman. She’s nice, nice enough but you know she didn’t seem to, either she couldn’t or she didn’t care to.
FW: Oh…Alice…
Q: That’s right, Alice Fry.
FW: Alice Fry
Q: Yeah, she didn’t remember a lot.
FW: Well she wasn’t hot on dock stuff. That was the thing.
Q: I mean the main thing she said to me, which I’ve used and maybe can build up a bit more, is how she wouldn’t stand for bad language in her pub.
FW: No that is actually a characteristic, my grandmother was the same, cos she ran a pub you see.
Q: Yeah?
FW: And, and my dad, I’ve never known my dad swear. Never knew him to swear, apart from ‘bloody’, you know. I never knew dad to swear, he was always very strict on language. And that was the thing in a, in a pub, politics, religion, and swearing, absolutely out.
Q: I’ve, I’ve done a little bit more work on her and I’m, I’ve built up a kind of little story that isn’t in the draft you’ve seen but it’ll be in the next draft, which is, I mean it’s very, it’s a kind of Madam Butterfly, but the other way round. You know, she, there’s this Greek sailor 30 years ago that she was in love with, and he was gonna come back and he never did and there’s kind of a little play-off at the end about what happens. Cos Andy wants her to, at the moment she’s a bit functional, you know, she’s just sort of there doing the odd thing, and he wants her to have her own little story that gets twisted at the end so the audience feel that they’ve met a, a character. I, I think I’m gonna give up on it, frankly, because I mean I think it’s, I know what…
FW: Which character is this?
Q: Mrs Quickly. Yeah, yeah.
FW: Oh Mrs Quickly, well, cos there’s the other woman in there who’s a stewardess
Q: Yeah, one or two, Ruth who lived in Hotwells, who’s, she’s, I mean she’s a slightly dry stick. She lived in the Campbell’s offices, her dad was secretary to the Campbell’s company. But I tried to get some good stories about Campbell’s steamers but all I got is the one that I used about how she herself was always sick every time she went on the boat. And then there’s a woman called Joanna who’s an Avonmouth girl, and she’s got one or two stories about being a purser at sea, the trouble is I’m cheating there because she worked for Cunard out of Liverpool, so I’ve cut back on her because I feel, it’s sort of legitimate, she is an Avonmouth girl, she lives there again now and that’s her home, always has been. But she wasn’t actually sailing out of Bristol so…
FW: Ah, I don’t know, that…
Q: But you know, I just wanna give, and there’s one or two more…
FW: Were there cruise boats sailing out of Avonmouth then?
Q: Oh the banana boats, yeah. But I haven’t met any women who worked on those. Ray Buck used to work on those and so did Ernie Thatcher, two of my seamen used to work on, on the banana boats.
FW: Cos it has, talking about seamen you see, this is an awful lot on, on seamen.
Q: Yeah there’s maybe too much. I don’t mind telling you I have in mind already, it’s still a bit too long especially given I’m going to be putting in stuff from you and one or two other things, I think I’m gonna cut all the Ernie stories about the war, you remember the ones about being in Norway, Argentina…
FW: Norway, yeah, and the Dunkirk stuff?
Q: I think they ought to mention Dunkirk, cos the Campbell’s was part of that, I mean it is a real Bristol story. But the other stories, although he’s, if you met Ernie, I mean he’s a, he’s a right Bristol character, I mean he’s very Bristolian, very strong accent. And I warmed to the guy very much, I liked the guy. Nevertheless stories about what he was up to in, working in Jack Dempsey’s bar in New York and getting mixed up with the Mafia, you know, and all that. I mean they’re colourful stories.
[00:30:12]
FW: Now you see that, that is nice in a way because it’s, again it’s a docker’s story.
Q: Yes. That’s right, cos he did work as a docker though.
FW: With a, with a different angle, you know, that he gets paid this much and comes in and puts ten dollars in the hat, you know, to get a job next day.
Q: Yeah, well I also…
FW: To, to, I mean to demonstrate that the connivance went on in docks all round the bloody world.
Q: Yeah, same old story isn’t it? Yeah, you’re right, that one should be kept but the story about the say the Graf Spee and how Captain [Langsell] [inaudible]
FW: Langsell, yeah, I mean the trouble is that’s such a well known story.
Q: Yeah. I think chunks of, I mean if I take out all except the Mafia story, that would get rid of getting on for two pages and that will, I’m, you know, I’m working on roughly two minutes a page so that gets us back a bit. And the, it’s a bit of a, even more stuff. I’m fighting length the whole time. But there’s [the whole thing].
FW: Yeah. He, see he comes, one thing that struck me slightly about, when I was reading through that section, is you’re getting these, you, you, you got the Scharnost appears and shells the convoy and you’ve got Graf Spee and you, oh several other, oh and the, not the Normandy, the Dunkirk and that. And, and you’re thinking, bloody hell you know there’s a, now there’s a fantastic bit of luck getting a bloke who’s actually been at all these actions, you know. Or is this stretching credibility just a little far?
Q: No, it’s true.
FW: You would, he was actually…
Q: He was sunk six times. That’s how I got onto him. David Harrison, you know David?
FW: Yeah, from the Post, yes.
Q: He’s sort of interested in docks and ships and things. When he heard this show was happening, he said, “Any time you’re around come in, I’ve got some stuff you can look at”, so I did. And David had run a feature in the Evening Post, oh a couple of years ago now I think, inviting people to write in with your, your marine stories. And he said, “Look, here’s the best of them. I’ve used some of them in the paper, but if you wanna follow them up and go and talk to the people.” And Ernie Thatcher was one of those people. He’d written into the paper, and he said, “I was sunk six times”. If you met him, you’d believe him absolutely, he is no bullshitter, Ernie.
FW: I mean six times is bloody remarkable.
Q: It must be, may be some kind of, some kind of all comer’s record, I don't know. And so, yeah, and the way he talks, it, he doesn’t, he’s the opposite of arrogant. I mean he’s quite a modest man actually. I’m sure he’s not shooting a line. And you could do a whole story about him, amazing, extremely.
FW: You see it’s a pity that you’ve, that you’ve spoken to so many, you’ve got so much stuff, because my brother in law, who still works down there, is in this kind of limbo between management and workers. I mean he started off as a docker, he’s been there for 40 years is it, no? Thirty odd years. And he’s now a kind of senior supervisor, I mean like a sort of RSM, you know, where you’re neither one thing nor t’other. So he’s got pretty strong views on dockers cos he’s always been slightly apart from them, being in charge. And he’s also got views on management as he was never quite one of them, you know. So it’s…
Q: Just like RSMs.
FW: An interesting ‘in the middle’ view, you know.
Q: Yeah. Well let me, I mean it’s on tape now, I’ll make a note of it. I just, I just don’t think I can take anymore on board, you know, I, I knew it was a big subject. But I now realise that, you know, icebergs ain’t in it, I mean.
FW: See I, I love that little story that, that Doug told me, my brother in law, which is absolutely true, the bloke nicking wood.
Q: Tell me, tell me again.
FW: Cos, cos I mean everybody, everybody was always nicking something from the docks, I mean sometimes it was quite big valuable stuff but most of the time it was little tiny odds and sods, you know, a few planks here and there. And I can always remember when factories turned out all around us, there was blokes riding round on bicycles, and they all had a few lengths of wood tied to the pannier at, or the frame, for, for firewood or for making rabbit hutches or pigeon lofts or whatever. And this character was trying to get some sort of very good quality long planks out, and so he ties them under the car and ties them to the exhaust, it’s a nice convenient place to tie ‘em to, but he uses plastic string to tie ‘em. Pulls up at the police point, you know, and while the policeman’s talking to him, there’s a bang and all this, course this plastic string’s burnt through with the heat from the exhaust. There, lying under the car, is half a dozen planks of mahogany. And I think the bloke got the elbow for it but it’s an absolutely true story. The silly bugger had used blooming plastic string.
Q: Harry Brown, if I, if I can borrow the tape but you said that, when I was talking to you in the pub that time, you said that beyond what the tape does, I mean the story goes on. And I made some notes when I got home that it went over to the breaker’s, breaker’s yard and they got no marine lights.
FW: They did, did a moonlight.
Q: So then they moonlighted it to Waterford. And then something about the Bay of Biscay and the engineer went overboard? And then something about a collision and then luckily [inaudible] found them…
FW: Collided somewhere off Malta.
Q: Working as a sander off Bahrain of all places.
FW: Yeah, ridic…, yeah, I thought it was ludicrous.
Q: I thought, do I, do I pick up where the tape ends? I mean I…
FW: I mean I’m pretty sure now and I’ve heard from several sources, in fact there’s a bloke works round here who worked on the Harry Brown and I met him couple of weeks ago up the village. But my information came from somebody whose son was on the passage crew. But I mean this is really not officially confirmed. I’m sure we could easily find out but it, well I don't know whether you could easily find out because obviously they, they worked a bit of a flanker on it and probably think they’re disguising their tracks a bit. But certainly the story was that it, it, it finally sunk somewhere off Bahrain.
Q: Right.
FW: And the reason why was because desert sand is pretty coarse and horrible stuff whereas the sand bars under the sea is much better for building, you see, certain grades of concrete. So it does actually make considerable sense.
Q: Actually it’s a sideline from what you’ve just said, but explain if you know the story, that reference that Dolly makes right at the end of the play, about there’s a beach over in New York which is supposed to be sand as to rubble.
FW: Yes, well I don't know about that. Certainly rubble, absolutely certainly, a lot of the bomb damage rubble went over as ballast and there is a plaque on one of the New York piers or wharves stating this. Bob Wall is your man for this as well, I mean there’s some photographs of it. It is a well authenticated story that this rubble was taken over there, poured out and then became a quay.
Q: Right.
FW: So there’s probably chunks of valuable old Bristol somewhere under that quay now, is there?
Q: The video…
FW: Architectural salvage.
Q: Or stone, yeah. If, if you’d be kind enough to, to lend me the video?
FW: Sure, yes.
Q: Where does the story end on the video?
FW: It ends with the Harry Brown, so say making its last voyage and disappearing down the river.
Q: And, but then I mean if you, can you pick it up from there for me? I mean it actually goes to…?
FW: From there it went to, I think Penarth or Barry.
Q: To be broken up?
FW: To be broken up. And, cos it was in a fairly crap state, I mean when I went out on it, on it’s, to say last voyage, although in fact it was a couple of weeks before the actual last voyage. I was a bit reluctant to lean on the rails because basically there was more rust than there was rail, cos of course they hadn’t bothered to maintain it particularly. And there was some lovely antique old things in there, there was an immense kind of Aga cooking range, gas range, you see, and it was vast, I mean it was about the width of this room, this thing. And I had a couple of pasties, they had a pile of pasties, that was it, you know, and somebody said, “Want some of these?” “Oh I’d love a pasty”. “All right”. So he sticks this thing in this range and there’s this sort of huge great oven with a tiddly little pasty stuck in the middle of it, he turns on the full gas, I mean, you know, it must have taken like enough gas to keep a house heated for a week, to warm up my pasty. I said, “Well look I’ll leave it”. “Don’t worry about her”. Boom, here we go.
Q: Wonderful.
FW: And the, the rest room, the furniture in there was like any old stuff that anybody had discarded. And there were probably ten chairs there, all totally different knackered old armchairs, and uprights and there was probably a bit of Shaker and some Hepplewhite and stuff, you know, but you didn’t realise it. It was just, it was a tip, I mean a slum in there really.
Q: So they, they’d take it to…
FW: Anyway, sorry, they went to Penarth, and it was then sold to a, I think a Middle East, or a firm with Middle East interests who then took it late one night over to, I believe, Waterford. It was either Waterford or the one next to it, you know.
Q: Yeah. Illegally?
[00:40:00]
FW: Yeah, because it didn’t have a licence to travel more than three miles away from the coast. I think it was three miles. And it was then refitted, tarted up and sent down to the Middle East.
Q: And then what’s this about the engineer going overboard?
FW: Well apparently in the Bay of Biscay, an engineer was lost overboard, in a bit of a strong, cos of course it was so low, if it was loaded, I remember these things coming up the river with the deck actually awash, you know six inches of water over it. That was regular cos they, they really load them, you know. I would have thought below the Plimsoll but in they come, cos they’d be pumping out the water as they went, from the sand.
Q: And you, you reckon it was in something like that, that the [inaudible] ?
FW: Well I don't know because it wouldn’t have been loaded with sand, it would probably have had a bit of ballast in there certainly. But I would have doubted it was that low, but even, even when it was riding high, the decks weren’t all that far above the surface.
Q: Oh right. Yeah. So I mean he didn’t jump overboard, he was washed overboard?
FW: Apparently so, yeah. And, and then it collided with something off Malta and then eventually sort of staggered to the Middle East, worked for a bit and then sunk.
Q: And I mean can you answer the question, why would they want a sander working off the desert in Bahrain?
FW: Well yeah it is actually quite logical, because the sand under the sea is better grade, you get all kinds of different grades of sand which is another, you’ll find that out in the programme actually. The, the real skill of the captain, I mean you’ve got these sand bars underneath the Severn, cos the strength of the tide, you get pretty well defined bars. And the gravel settles on one side, and of course the sand is being swept along by the current, and then the lighter sand will go over the top and the gravel will drop this side, like gold-panning in a way. So if they’re going out after gravel, then they locate the bar that they’re after, put it down one side, you know, and if they want fine sand, they put it down a few feet away over there, so they’ve quite, got to be pretty accurate, and tolerances of sort of like six, ten feet. In the middle of this bloody great big body of water. So it was very skilful and at the beginning the, the sucker goes down and then starts throwing up and you can tell by the colour of the stuff that’s coming out, whether you’re pulling out gravel or sand.
Q: And it’s sucked up?
FW: Yeah.
Q: Right. What, by some kind of suction pump?
FW: Yeah, bloody great pump sucks it up and throws it through these meshes and the mesh will, you put on a mesh for whichever particular commodity you’re after so if you wanted fine sand, cos obviously you’re bound to get a bit of gravel and stone and all sorts of odds and sods down there, and bits of metalwork, tin cans, anything comes up. And so you put on this mesh and then say only fine sand will go through it into the hold, and the rest of it will come sluicing off. It’s very spectacular when you see it.
Q: Hmm
FW: At night with all, ooh yeah, at night with all the lights on, it really is quite dramatic, and if you want gravel then you have a wider mesh and get gravel into it. And you move to a slightly different part. And in fact there are about sort of five or six boats out there working when we were out there.
Q: And this was the firm, there’s the reference in there isn’t there, that Mr Brown was an old boy of the school where two of the people I talked to, went. And some…
FW: Yeah I didn’t know that bit actually but…
Q: barge trips up to Beese’s tea gardens.
FW: That sounds very likely, yeah, yeah.
Q: And how long…?
FW: They used to do family runs in the boat as well.
Q: That’s right. The last family that [inaudible] our football team.
FW: Well they, well they clear it out, that’s it, yeah. Played against the Morgans and my granddad refereeing. Yeah it’s an old film of my granddad, didn’t know it existed, amazing. From the Browns’ archive.
Q: Your granddad who played for City?
FW: Yeah, I was amazed at that.
Q: Do you know, I said to somebody the other day, “Fred’s granddad was Billy Wedlock, wasn’t it?”
FW: Yeah.
Q: And they didn’t know that. I mean I thought, I thought it was an unusual enough surname for anyone who thought, probably, you know, who made the connection. But they were amazed, I mean they knew about Billy Wedlock and you know, seen him.
FW: Well yes there are a few Wedlocks around, in fact there’s about oh ten of us got telephones now, according to the book. Some, some of whom I don't know.
Q: Several cousins are they?
FW: Cousins and…well there are two main branches of the family, it’s for my granddad and his brother. And his brother’s lot all went over towards Novers and had family over there and our lot stayed around Southville, Bedminster.
Q: Right. Another thing I don't know much about is the dredgers. I’ve just got…
FW: What, the mud dredgers?
Q: Yeah, I mean they were working night and day presumably simply to keep the channel open for that sort of thing.
FW: Yeah.
Q: What did they do with it when they dredged it, did they take it down to the channel?
FW: Yeah, so it can all come back again.
Q: I mean did it…?
FW: Yeah they used to put it in barges and take it down there and drop it somewhere out in the channel.
Q: The, the, the silt, I mean let’s call it silt, you know. It was coming up river, it wasn’t coming down?
FW: Well you see that was the reason why, have you, do you know about the underfall yard?
Q: I know what it is, yeah.
FW: And the principle of that, the idea of that was to take out the, quite, quite…
Q: The [inaudible]
FW: Quite a lot of the silt would go out through that.
Q: That was coming down river?
FW: No it was coming, it was coming upriver wasn’t it? They’d come up into the docks and then you’d have to let some of the stuff out, so the underfall. But it never cleared it completely so they used to dredge sort of fairly regularly.
Q: Right. And…
FW: But then again there must have been a fair bit, well a bit coming downriver but not half so much as seemed to come upriver.
Q: Right. And it was…
FW: Oh I don't know though. I mean I’m not an authority on this but I’d always assumed that the majority of it came in with the tide.
Q: You see I got interested in it, because to do with the closure in the early ‘70s, one thing was in it for, you know, you could have said, if you were City Council, “Well it, it’s not a commercial operating port anymore, but we’ll leave it and if people wanna bring loads in then that’s up to them”. But it was the City Council’s job to dredge, to keep the channel open, and that was costing a lot of money so by officially closing the docks, they would save themselves all the cost of the dredging. And I just didn’t, I mean I lived in Hotwells as I said, for some years, and I used to see the dredgers but it never dawned on me that this was actually a lot of money going out of the City Council’s pocket. And presumably you see, it was more than one, wasn’t it, working?
FW: Oh yeah.
Q: And they were working, I imagine, 24 hours a day.
FW: There’s actual film somewhere of an original Brunel dredger as well.
FW: Yeah, now wait a minute, or is that Sharpness Docks? Ah, think it might be Sharpness, that Brunel actually designed a dredger. Anyway that’s by the by. Cos I must admit that I was never conscious of who was paying for what. I mean there was a dock, there was boats, there was dredgers. Who actually owned them and were responsible for them, I don't know.
Q: Yeah, it’s [inaudible] ask questions.
FW: I don't know, there was the Bristol sort of Harbour Board or whatever they called themselves and I, I didn’t know who, that was way above and beyond me, you know.
Q: Yeah, no I, I may, I’m gonna go and on my way back I’m gonna stop off at the Central Library, cos one or two things in these notes that Tony Benn sent me, I need to follow through to understand a bit more clearly. There’s a story outline there but I…
[Break in recording]
FS: …went into the dockers and that, he’s got five kids, all sons. Social worker goes round to see her, he says, “What are their names?” She said, “Kevin, they’re all called Kevin”. He said, “Well, isn’t that a bit confusing”. She says, “Oh no, they’ve got different surnames”. [laughter]
Q: I mean an alternative I suggested to Andy ages ago when it wasn’t clear whether you were going to be in the show or wanted to be in the show or not, I said, “If Fred were interested, it’d be up to you, couldn’t we use him as a sort of separate stand-up? You know, I mean do a sort of ten minute warm-up or an interval or something, you know, I mean The Fred Wedlock Mini Show in, in the show”. But I think that’s superseded now, isn’t it?
FW: Yeah I think, mmm, really yeah.
Q: But that’s why I’ve got this [inaudible] idea…
FW: But I don't know see any problem with working gags into the show cos I mean you’ve always in any organisation, firm or club, there’s always ‘the joker’, you know, the one that’s always coming out with the bloody gag. “You…” [inaudible] She don’t…
Q: Let’s, let’s leave all those lines until, until we get to it. I’m, I’m happy with what I’ve got. You’ve filled in a few details for me, if I can borrow the Harry Brown tapes.
FW: Mmm. I’ll get these out.
(End of interview)
[00:49:44 Recording Ends]
