A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
The Fletcher Brothers
There were a couple of brothers called `the Fletcher Brothers` who owned an arcade towards the far end of the promenade. They would enter a posh restaurant in their work clothes and get turned away by the headwaiter. Then, in front of the other customers, would peel off their work clothes revealing stunning evening dress. The headwaiter had no option but to admit them.
The Brothers had a particular name for me. My father constructed a little four-wheeled cart for me to wheel about and on the side of this cart the Fletchers painted the name Bosco. From that day on they called me Bosco. The nickname stuck. For instance, always when I went into the tool shop 'Perfects' in William Street I would be greeted with: ‘What can we do for you this time, Bosco?’
I was 35 years old when Mr Clark, who ran the shop, retired. By then Peter McKay and I had opened our own Health Food Store. Mr Clark would come into the shop and still call me Bosco. Indeed, a lot of the `old boys` also did. Old habits die hard, but this was one habit I thought would live forever. A pity the `old boys` couldn’t do the same. I always spelt the name BosCO. I thought they said BosGO. I’ve spelt it that way ever since.
The St Georges bath in the 1920s, now filled in with rubble underneath what was the
Fletcher Brothers arcade. I was taken down there when I was five. The sea
still comes in and out and with the tide and eels swarm.
The Fletcher brothers took my dad and me down below their arcade into the cellar. There once existed an open air, Victorian, swimming bath, fed by the sea called the St. George's Bath. It was constructed over the wooden 'centres' originally used in making a tunnel on the Great Western Railway about 1840. It was still there! Filled in by rubble now, though the sea still came in and out bringing with it eels that squirmed and wriggled when exposed to light. It was a sad sight, a sad and lonely sight.
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