Post by theoldfart2 on Dec 5, 2015 19:26:25 GMT
Imagine a world with
No mobile phones.
No internet
No television
No central heating
No supermarkets
No car
No freezers
No washing machines
A fantasy world , no welcome to life in the fifties and sixties.
That is when I grew up with the Old Fart, but back then he was a young puff of wind.
Life was different then, we listened to the radio, programs like the Navy Lark, Round the Horn, and at every Sunday lunchtime, 'Two way family favourites'
Roast on Sunday's, bread and dripping on Mondays for tea.
( Mind you ,you can't get proper dripping now)
Things were kept in the larder, we never had a fridge or freezer, money was tight, so a fish or two supplemented the meal table.
I thought as there isn't much on the site since he died, I would recant a few yarns from the past.
It may drag on a bit , but I hope I do his memory justice, and throw you back to a different lifestyle , not that long ago.
It may well be a long thread, so disinterested people sign out now.
My first fishing memory of TOF , is fishing down at the Causeway by the Red Lion pub.
We never had a car but the old chap had a BSA motorbike and with me on the back we used to go down there.
Then you could dig Ragworm , which I still vividly remember doing and putting them in a baked bean tin.
Every time I managed to go too deep for my wellies and they filled up with mud. Mind you it was short trousers in those days regardless of the weather.
After we dug the Rag, we used to put down a dropnet off the bridge and catch shrimp, (alas so now all gone .)
Then a small float flicked out we used to get the school bass, chuck them back but great fun for a small kid.
I remember so clearly that,after getting some worms ,TOF, took be down to the Bay, (Freshwater) to go fishing by the slipway.
I must have been 3or 4 .
TOF cast out and gave me the rod ( split cane) to hold as he went yarning with the chaps who were putting in new groynes.
Next thing I knew I was being dragged down the beach hold on to the rod for dear life.
Remember that the beach in those days was steep shingle and I was little.
TOF got the rod and we caught a six pound plus Wrass.
Had we weighed it in it would still be the Island Record , but we never thought about that.
There was a photo of me standing next to it, taken in black and white with out 'Box Brownie' camera. Alas over the years it has been lost.
Between this, TOF used to go fishing in a clinker boat with the two Chessils , well known local family.
There was Basil called (baddle) and father called (faddle)
One time TOF went out with them along with big Don Kennet
TOF always used to take his inflatable May West Life jacket, and on this occasion Big Don took his daughters blow up water wings as a sod take.
All was going well until they got past Pot Bank toward the Needles.
( pot bank is now Brighton Beach or some such , dredged out in the Sixties)
It was then that the Seagull , packed in.
' That's strange' said Baddle ' it's the third time it's done it when I got here'
'Why didn't you tell me' asked Faddle
'Well after I rowed back it started Ok , so didn't see the point'
But this time wind and sea were against them and the ebb tide took them toward the Needles Bridge and you can't row against that.
Of course they had no radio ,flares etc, so TOF blows up the life jacket.
He looks behind him and big Don is blowing up the water wings
Luckily the light house keepers saw them (they are also a thing of the past) and put out a Mayday
They were found later and towed into Poole Harbour.
The seagull started the following day!
Back in those days we fished with hand lines and Mackerel spinners , when the Mackerel came in the water was so full of Mackerel shite you could damn near plant seeds in it.
Still I digress.
Fishing for food was what we did, and one day TOF was down the bay at night and shone his torch in the water. To his surprise he saw some Mullet coming over the shallows on the flood tide.
Two days later he has invested in a set of Dunlop thigh boots, a Pifco Torch and got Kev Newnham to make him up a multi pronged spear on a broom handle.
Well after that he was down the bay every fortnight in winter on the spring tides , and he did very well spearing fish .
Although he did have a couple of setbacks .
One time he slipped and speared his own foot. Kept the scar till the day he died.
On another occasion he went down with his friend Dave Byres. One would go to one side of the bay the other one to the other side.
If there was a shoal of Mullet about they would flash the torch , them meet up and get as many as they could.
This time Dave went round Stag Rock side and saw TOF flashing like a mad thing.
He ran round as quick as he could over the shingle, but when he got to the other side of the Bay he found that the flashing was because TOF was desperately holding on to the Pifco and the spear handle with both hands, because he had speared a 56 lb Conger who was well pissed off with the situation.
Between them they got it in and we had Conger Steaks for the next few days , and the rest was salted down.
The spear fishing led to another food source , Racing Pigeons.
Back then , as now , racing Pigeons, get lost and decide to set up home with the Pigeons that live in the caves around Freshwater Bay.
You could get round to these caves at low spring tides
First TOF borrowed a shotgun , to get them but there was more shot than bird left. So plan two.
Remember this had to be done at night, after they had roosted .
Back then the cliff caves were quite deep , but also quite high up.
Answer,, a extending ladder , with a net over the cave mouth and a small monkey ( yours truly ) to get inside and bang a few on the head. Never too many ,always leave a few.
One time we were walking along the beach at night with our ladder, towards Stag Rock and someone was fishing.
We mumbled the usual greetings and carried on, returning half an hour later with the ladder, and wished the fisherman well.
He didn't see the bag of Pigeons .
Unbeknown to us he was a reporter from the Telegraph on holiday , and upon his return ran an article about strange goings on , on the IOW where locals take extending ladders along the beach at night. And if anyone could think of a reason for this could they please tell him.
We didn't!
Back in those days there used to be lots of heavy oil dumped by tankers flushing their tanks and the seabirds suffered badly.
Often TOF would bring one or two back on a night and spend time trying to clean the poor bloody things up in the sink with Fairy Liquid before taking them to the chap at the end of the road who looked after them if the survived.
Some did, most didn't because they had swallowed the crude.
It was painfull to see but hopefully that is a thing of the past.
Unfortunately the thing of the present is container ships. What killjoys. Take all the fun out of beach combing .
But back then it was far more interesting!
One dark and miserable night we were round by Stag Rock with the spears, when TOF started shouting for me to 'get over here Nipper'.
All along the shoreline were silver cans , washing about in the tide. They were like the commercial coffee size ones . Bingo!!
I remember it like yesterday. 'Bloody hell nipper, look at this lot, we've hit it here'
Now the first rule of beach combing is regardless of what it is, you have found it and therefore you have to get it home before any other bugger can cash in on your find.
So we start getting the cans off the tide and walking them over the rocks to the beach.
Then all along the shingle( about two hundred yards) and back for more.
As the cans were sealed we had nothing to open them with, but like a Xmas present the expectation was all that mattered.
' I recon its coffee nipper' TOF said after the fifth trip, 'But it could be Backy, got to be something good as it floated'
Many trips later all the cans were assembled at the end of the promenade and TOF went home to get the car.
Earlier that year he had managed to afford our first car. A Rolls Royce Silver Shadow.
Or was it a Ford Anglia ?
No thinking about it it was defiantly the Anglia, reg OFX 824
So we load the car right up to the gun wails with all these tins and pop up the road home.
The expectation in the kitchen was electric as the can opener was inserted and the first tin was opened.
Dried sliced carrots!
Every fuxxxng tin was Dried sliced Carrots.
Mother cooked some the next day, they tasted like cardboard would after the cat has pissed on it. Even the chickens wouldn't eat them. Some bastard cook on a boat had thrown the lot overboard, to this day I wish I could meet that man. Preferably down a dark alley with a pick shaft in my hands.
1962-3 was the hardest winter ever. Snowed on Boxing Day and snowed every day until March. TOF told me that he went fishing with Dooper Groves one night and it was so cold the water in his bladder froze. They tried to light a fire to thaw out but as soon as they got it going the flames froze .
We had proper winters back then and I was still walking to school in short trousers with Welly rash down my legs ( older readers will know what this was!)
By now we had perfected the by -weekly winter hunter bit.
TOF had bought a BSA air shortfo £2 so every spring tide we went down the bay, bagged a few Pigeons, ( TOF used to hold the torch shining on them as they were roosting on the cliff, and I would put the gun on his shoulder and pop them off) ,then as the tide came in we would go spearing, then a hour with the rods. May seem strange now but that usually put six or seven meals on the table with what TOF grew in the garden veg wise.
The problem was that in the summer time you couldn't do it. Too light ,too many people about.
TOF worked out that with a small spear, a bit of Mackerel and a low tide with a suitable rock , you could entice any Lobster that lived under it to go for the bait, then spear it.
To this day I still get a few like this in the summer!
But he strove for greater things, so decided to get a boat.
We got the basic hull for a fourteen footer from Island Plastics and TOF , fitted it out.
Add one Seagull, and we were off.
Happy days back then. You couldn't touch bottom with a set of feathers because there were so many Mackerel, and after we had a basket fu. , it was baited feathers after the Pollock.
I was duly dispatched down the road when we got home selling them door to door at sixpence a time.
However.....one time we went out and there was as usual a big shoal breaking surface just off the Bay. As soon as we got there TOF had his gear over the side, pumping the rod like hell as he was getting nothing. I was getting full strings every time.
'Where are they Nipper' he asked 'Down deep or up top?'
'Everywhere ,Dad'
Eventually, he reeled up only to find that in his rush to start fishing he had forgotten to take the corks off the hooks!
( Mother had insisted on this safety measure after the cat had got caught on a hook the year before)
Often after we got the Mackerel we would find the Warnight a wreck off the bay and catch big Pout that made excellent fish cakes, then we would go to the Skate Mark where we would occasionally get one or two, while TOF recounted the tale of how Baddle Chessil 'once caught a skate here as big as an army blanket and the sides hung over the boat'
We had some great times back then. Up at 4.30 to get down to Brook for the Bass as the sunrise. What a site that was , hundreds of them going under the boat as we caught them on Red gills. Some of the lads even took time off work and camped down there with their boats on the beach , to make the best of it. But we all fished with rod and line and could have done it for evermore.
Then along came the commercial Gill netters.
No more Bass.
Back at the Bay we had a good community spirit between all the boat owners.
Naturally when they were out catching our fish we hated their guts, and were totally jealous of what they caught , but we got on OK.
There were 19 boats in the boat park, and five on moorings.
Then the council took it over, promised the earth, in return for a 'peppercorn' rent.
Now with the mandatory insurance it is over £200 a year to keep a boat there.
How many boats there now? None!
And two years ago they spent £56,000 repairing the slipway to the boat park.
You couldn't make it up.
TOF had a few harsh words with the council over this ,but as it is run by a woman who is an Ovaner and never seen a boat, his words as they say 'fell on stoney ground'
Time moved on , my balls finally dropped and the lust bug took over as I left home to chase anything remotely female.
My god poor old Dave Lee Travis got taken to court because he rubbed some birds leg in 1978.
All us lot should be doing life plus 20 for what we did back then.
Mind you a good smack across the face usually told you when you had crossed the mark, and as my wife says now, ' that is what Steletto Heals were invented for'
TOF carried on fishing, and later got friendly with the guy who bought Totland Pier.
This gave him a total new vocation as it was a 'Old boys club' with just the two of them.
By then there were grandchildren etc all of which adored TOF as he always had time for them, recounting yarns and showing them how to do things, fishing, and how to behave.
Something other people could possibly teach their children today .
Eventually the pier thing finished , and TOF needed a new outlet.
I introduced him to (a) a laptop (b) the Internet ( c) beachandboat
I know he loved the site and taking the sod and winding people up , but he did it for a reason . To try to make people think about what is going on in the world.
As I said at the start of this thread, things have changed so much in TOF lifetime, from Sputnik to the space station, from a telephone to the Internet, radio to three dimension TV
From a fairly balanced eco system , to a world doomed to the inevitable by greed.
At the end TOF had had enough and knew it was time to go.
Hopefully he made a few of you laugh and gave you something to think about.
The last words he said to me , and I pass them on to all of you were.
'Take Care'
TOF
No mobile phones.
No internet
No television
No central heating
No supermarkets
No car
No freezers
No washing machines
A fantasy world , no welcome to life in the fifties and sixties.
That is when I grew up with the Old Fart, but back then he was a young puff of wind.
Life was different then, we listened to the radio, programs like the Navy Lark, Round the Horn, and at every Sunday lunchtime, 'Two way family favourites'
Roast on Sunday's, bread and dripping on Mondays for tea.
( Mind you ,you can't get proper dripping now)
Things were kept in the larder, we never had a fridge or freezer, money was tight, so a fish or two supplemented the meal table.
I thought as there isn't much on the site since he died, I would recant a few yarns from the past.
It may drag on a bit , but I hope I do his memory justice, and throw you back to a different lifestyle , not that long ago.
It may well be a long thread, so disinterested people sign out now.
My first fishing memory of TOF , is fishing down at the Causeway by the Red Lion pub.
We never had a car but the old chap had a BSA motorbike and with me on the back we used to go down there.
Then you could dig Ragworm , which I still vividly remember doing and putting them in a baked bean tin.
Every time I managed to go too deep for my wellies and they filled up with mud. Mind you it was short trousers in those days regardless of the weather.
After we dug the Rag, we used to put down a dropnet off the bridge and catch shrimp, (alas so now all gone .)
Then a small float flicked out we used to get the school bass, chuck them back but great fun for a small kid.
I remember so clearly that,after getting some worms ,TOF, took be down to the Bay, (Freshwater) to go fishing by the slipway.
I must have been 3or 4 .
TOF cast out and gave me the rod ( split cane) to hold as he went yarning with the chaps who were putting in new groynes.
Next thing I knew I was being dragged down the beach hold on to the rod for dear life.
Remember that the beach in those days was steep shingle and I was little.
TOF got the rod and we caught a six pound plus Wrass.
Had we weighed it in it would still be the Island Record , but we never thought about that.
There was a photo of me standing next to it, taken in black and white with out 'Box Brownie' camera. Alas over the years it has been lost.
Between this, TOF used to go fishing in a clinker boat with the two Chessils , well known local family.
There was Basil called (baddle) and father called (faddle)
One time TOF went out with them along with big Don Kennet
TOF always used to take his inflatable May West Life jacket, and on this occasion Big Don took his daughters blow up water wings as a sod take.
All was going well until they got past Pot Bank toward the Needles.
( pot bank is now Brighton Beach or some such , dredged out in the Sixties)
It was then that the Seagull , packed in.
' That's strange' said Baddle ' it's the third time it's done it when I got here'
'Why didn't you tell me' asked Faddle
'Well after I rowed back it started Ok , so didn't see the point'
But this time wind and sea were against them and the ebb tide took them toward the Needles Bridge and you can't row against that.
Of course they had no radio ,flares etc, so TOF blows up the life jacket.
He looks behind him and big Don is blowing up the water wings
Luckily the light house keepers saw them (they are also a thing of the past) and put out a Mayday
They were found later and towed into Poole Harbour.
The seagull started the following day!
Back in those days we fished with hand lines and Mackerel spinners , when the Mackerel came in the water was so full of Mackerel shite you could damn near plant seeds in it.
Still I digress.
Fishing for food was what we did, and one day TOF was down the bay at night and shone his torch in the water. To his surprise he saw some Mullet coming over the shallows on the flood tide.
Two days later he has invested in a set of Dunlop thigh boots, a Pifco Torch and got Kev Newnham to make him up a multi pronged spear on a broom handle.
Well after that he was down the bay every fortnight in winter on the spring tides , and he did very well spearing fish .
Although he did have a couple of setbacks .
One time he slipped and speared his own foot. Kept the scar till the day he died.
On another occasion he went down with his friend Dave Byres. One would go to one side of the bay the other one to the other side.
If there was a shoal of Mullet about they would flash the torch , them meet up and get as many as they could.
This time Dave went round Stag Rock side and saw TOF flashing like a mad thing.
He ran round as quick as he could over the shingle, but when he got to the other side of the Bay he found that the flashing was because TOF was desperately holding on to the Pifco and the spear handle with both hands, because he had speared a 56 lb Conger who was well pissed off with the situation.
Between them they got it in and we had Conger Steaks for the next few days , and the rest was salted down.
The spear fishing led to another food source , Racing Pigeons.
Back then , as now , racing Pigeons, get lost and decide to set up home with the Pigeons that live in the caves around Freshwater Bay.
You could get round to these caves at low spring tides
First TOF borrowed a shotgun , to get them but there was more shot than bird left. So plan two.
Remember this had to be done at night, after they had roosted .
Back then the cliff caves were quite deep , but also quite high up.
Answer,, a extending ladder , with a net over the cave mouth and a small monkey ( yours truly ) to get inside and bang a few on the head. Never too many ,always leave a few.
One time we were walking along the beach at night with our ladder, towards Stag Rock and someone was fishing.
We mumbled the usual greetings and carried on, returning half an hour later with the ladder, and wished the fisherman well.
He didn't see the bag of Pigeons .
Unbeknown to us he was a reporter from the Telegraph on holiday , and upon his return ran an article about strange goings on , on the IOW where locals take extending ladders along the beach at night. And if anyone could think of a reason for this could they please tell him.
We didn't!
Back in those days there used to be lots of heavy oil dumped by tankers flushing their tanks and the seabirds suffered badly.
Often TOF would bring one or two back on a night and spend time trying to clean the poor bloody things up in the sink with Fairy Liquid before taking them to the chap at the end of the road who looked after them if the survived.
Some did, most didn't because they had swallowed the crude.
It was painfull to see but hopefully that is a thing of the past.
Unfortunately the thing of the present is container ships. What killjoys. Take all the fun out of beach combing .
But back then it was far more interesting!
One dark and miserable night we were round by Stag Rock with the spears, when TOF started shouting for me to 'get over here Nipper'.
All along the shoreline were silver cans , washing about in the tide. They were like the commercial coffee size ones . Bingo!!
I remember it like yesterday. 'Bloody hell nipper, look at this lot, we've hit it here'
Now the first rule of beach combing is regardless of what it is, you have found it and therefore you have to get it home before any other bugger can cash in on your find.
So we start getting the cans off the tide and walking them over the rocks to the beach.
Then all along the shingle( about two hundred yards) and back for more.
As the cans were sealed we had nothing to open them with, but like a Xmas present the expectation was all that mattered.
' I recon its coffee nipper' TOF said after the fifth trip, 'But it could be Backy, got to be something good as it floated'
Many trips later all the cans were assembled at the end of the promenade and TOF went home to get the car.
Earlier that year he had managed to afford our first car. A Rolls Royce Silver Shadow.
Or was it a Ford Anglia ?
No thinking about it it was defiantly the Anglia, reg OFX 824
So we load the car right up to the gun wails with all these tins and pop up the road home.
The expectation in the kitchen was electric as the can opener was inserted and the first tin was opened.
Dried sliced carrots!
Every fuxxxng tin was Dried sliced Carrots.
Mother cooked some the next day, they tasted like cardboard would after the cat has pissed on it. Even the chickens wouldn't eat them. Some bastard cook on a boat had thrown the lot overboard, to this day I wish I could meet that man. Preferably down a dark alley with a pick shaft in my hands.
1962-3 was the hardest winter ever. Snowed on Boxing Day and snowed every day until March. TOF told me that he went fishing with Dooper Groves one night and it was so cold the water in his bladder froze. They tried to light a fire to thaw out but as soon as they got it going the flames froze .
We had proper winters back then and I was still walking to school in short trousers with Welly rash down my legs ( older readers will know what this was!)
By now we had perfected the by -weekly winter hunter bit.
TOF had bought a BSA air shortfo £2 so every spring tide we went down the bay, bagged a few Pigeons, ( TOF used to hold the torch shining on them as they were roosting on the cliff, and I would put the gun on his shoulder and pop them off) ,then as the tide came in we would go spearing, then a hour with the rods. May seem strange now but that usually put six or seven meals on the table with what TOF grew in the garden veg wise.
The problem was that in the summer time you couldn't do it. Too light ,too many people about.
TOF worked out that with a small spear, a bit of Mackerel and a low tide with a suitable rock , you could entice any Lobster that lived under it to go for the bait, then spear it.
To this day I still get a few like this in the summer!
But he strove for greater things, so decided to get a boat.
We got the basic hull for a fourteen footer from Island Plastics and TOF , fitted it out.
Add one Seagull, and we were off.
Happy days back then. You couldn't touch bottom with a set of feathers because there were so many Mackerel, and after we had a basket fu. , it was baited feathers after the Pollock.
I was duly dispatched down the road when we got home selling them door to door at sixpence a time.
However.....one time we went out and there was as usual a big shoal breaking surface just off the Bay. As soon as we got there TOF had his gear over the side, pumping the rod like hell as he was getting nothing. I was getting full strings every time.
'Where are they Nipper' he asked 'Down deep or up top?'
'Everywhere ,Dad'
Eventually, he reeled up only to find that in his rush to start fishing he had forgotten to take the corks off the hooks!
( Mother had insisted on this safety measure after the cat had got caught on a hook the year before)
Often after we got the Mackerel we would find the Warnight a wreck off the bay and catch big Pout that made excellent fish cakes, then we would go to the Skate Mark where we would occasionally get one or two, while TOF recounted the tale of how Baddle Chessil 'once caught a skate here as big as an army blanket and the sides hung over the boat'
We had some great times back then. Up at 4.30 to get down to Brook for the Bass as the sunrise. What a site that was , hundreds of them going under the boat as we caught them on Red gills. Some of the lads even took time off work and camped down there with their boats on the beach , to make the best of it. But we all fished with rod and line and could have done it for evermore.
Then along came the commercial Gill netters.
No more Bass.
Back at the Bay we had a good community spirit between all the boat owners.
Naturally when they were out catching our fish we hated their guts, and were totally jealous of what they caught , but we got on OK.
There were 19 boats in the boat park, and five on moorings.
Then the council took it over, promised the earth, in return for a 'peppercorn' rent.
Now with the mandatory insurance it is over £200 a year to keep a boat there.
How many boats there now? None!
And two years ago they spent £56,000 repairing the slipway to the boat park.
You couldn't make it up.
TOF had a few harsh words with the council over this ,but as it is run by a woman who is an Ovaner and never seen a boat, his words as they say 'fell on stoney ground'
Time moved on , my balls finally dropped and the lust bug took over as I left home to chase anything remotely female.
My god poor old Dave Lee Travis got taken to court because he rubbed some birds leg in 1978.
All us lot should be doing life plus 20 for what we did back then.
Mind you a good smack across the face usually told you when you had crossed the mark, and as my wife says now, ' that is what Steletto Heals were invented for'
TOF carried on fishing, and later got friendly with the guy who bought Totland Pier.
This gave him a total new vocation as it was a 'Old boys club' with just the two of them.
By then there were grandchildren etc all of which adored TOF as he always had time for them, recounting yarns and showing them how to do things, fishing, and how to behave.
Something other people could possibly teach their children today .
Eventually the pier thing finished , and TOF needed a new outlet.
I introduced him to (a) a laptop (b) the Internet ( c) beachandboat
I know he loved the site and taking the sod and winding people up , but he did it for a reason . To try to make people think about what is going on in the world.
As I said at the start of this thread, things have changed so much in TOF lifetime, from Sputnik to the space station, from a telephone to the Internet, radio to three dimension TV
From a fairly balanced eco system , to a world doomed to the inevitable by greed.
At the end TOF had had enough and knew it was time to go.
Hopefully he made a few of you laugh and gave you something to think about.
The last words he said to me , and I pass them on to all of you were.
'Take Care'
TOF
