A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
Uncles
Pop Presley
I had many `uncles`, apart from Uncle Jim. Uncle Johnny Heathcote, whose ‘converted’ German Lifeboat was to lift the soldiers off the beaches at Dunkirk; he would now take 'day trippers' and holidaymakers around the bay. Uncle Johnny’s face always resembled Mr Punch with his large nose and pointed chin, and when the sun had its way with him, would turn his face bright red.
There was Uncle Ken Standen, publican of THE NEW DOLPHIN (now called The Scruffy Duck) and his wife `Auntie` Gladys. He was so smitten with me that I overheard him say that he would buy for me a brand new fishing rod: I followed him to the tackle shop, always keeping a discreet distance. I saw him purchase the rod. I followed him home, hiding behind the pieces of canvas that separated each shop. I wonder whether he `knew` I was there? I guessed that he did, but he pretended otherwise.
There was Uncle Jess who fished for a living, then would scrub his boat clean of accumulated fish goo then he too would take out the day trippers: ''Anymore for the Skylark,'' he would cry, ‘can't wait to fill up!’ There was Uncle Ernie from the Bingo, opposite the Clock Tower, whose slow cry of: ''FFFIIFFTOO YULLOW'', as he handed out the balls for the punters to throw into the hopper of numbered squares, surrounded by flimsy junk and Kupie dolls that the customers would receive on calling out their winning line. This was the early to mid 50`s and although I didn’t remember the war and its restrictions the punters did! The crap that was handed out was all the arcade owners could get. Years later they demanded a higher quality, still crap, but a higher quality of crap.
But there was one uncle that stood apart from the rest: uncle Pop 'Ninety' Pressley. Although only a little over five foot tall, he was a giant in my eyes, with his Wellington boots reaching over his knees, his navy blue pullover and his flat cap, his rosy face and that lazy Kentish accent. This man could eat live lugworm! This man would keep a wriggling mouse in his pocket!
This man would take me out in his fishing boat (Seagull the 2nd) on clear, blue days, the seagulls wheeling over-head for their expectant feed of bits of bait and small fish that were thrown back. The sea, glass-like and clear, shot through with rainbows that came from Seagull the 2nd's engine: a pollutant that, in my boyhood mind was a piece of glory. Seagull the 2nd's smell of petrol and paraffin was, to me, an odour that would stay with me forever, conjuring up the past into the present.
Although he was a rogue, my parents trusted this man to bring me back safely. I was a slave to the sea in those far off days. Uncle Pop Pressley was its slave also; hauling in the sea's potted bounty, the long lines of rope, corked at intervals, that he would gaff (hook). Hand over hand, he hauled and pulled. And, like Andy Capp, I never saw him without his hat. Never! Not until the day the stroke laid him low and his butter-fat wife led me into the bedroom where he lay. He tried to speak but all that came out was a whispered mouthing, like the fish he caught for so many years. To me he was indestructible and in my adult life was to feature in so many poems and articles.
He lay there so old, so thin, and hatless. I didn’t know what to say. His wife interpreted for him: ‘'He wants to know how you’re doing at school?’' ‘'Okay’', I whispered, '‘okay, Pop’'. I rarely called him uncle. To everyone he was known as `Pop`. Only in front of my parents would I call him uncle. He died soon after. Who was going to look after his pots and his nets now? Who would look after the little hut that we, and only we, Pop and I, knew where the key was hidden? The key to the little hut, a hut filled with the treasures of the sea: old lobster-pots; fishing tackle; reels of cat-gut that I would have killed for; old oars; outboard motors; and the smell, oh, the smell: a mixture of tar and the sea, a smell as intoxicating as any drug.
The passing of Pop Pressley, his dying!? I guessed. No one needed to tell me. He just wasn't there any more. I couldn’t really remember how it affected me. But I just kind of accepted it. His boat was sold. That was a kind of death, too. The Viking Chiefs burned their boats. Well, they might just as well have burned Pop`s boat, too. It didn`t interest me any more. It was like Pop, an object that I would write about, perhaps romanticise about. Something I put to the back of my mind, the mind that told of the golden days when Pop and I would phut! phut! phut! out and away to live the life of a fisherman, if only for a while, if only for one fleeting day. Until I grew up and put my mind to other things. Only Pop lived the life of a fisherman because he was one. I was only pretending.
(Pop Pressley turned out to be a REAL hero. During the 2nd World War Pop used to go out during air raids and, single handed, pluck young airmen from the sea, English AND German alike. His knowledge of the currents off Herne Bay was second to none. Once a young German airman was shot down in the sea and threatened Pop with a pistol. Pop knocked him out cold. And still he hauled the airman into his boat and brought him ashore. The reason he was called by the nickname 'Ninety' was because his brother-in-law, Jess Mount, always said that he moaned like an old man of ninety. The name stuck, and he was called Ninety till the day he died in 1957.)
…….
Other snippets come to mind: a boy, outside my house crying. I asked ‘what was the matter?’ He said that he had tried to look up a girl's dress and the other girls beat him up. I said I would get him a glass of milk. When I came out again, the glass of milk firmly in my hand, he was gone. I never saw him again. Weird how things like that stick in your memory, isn’t it?
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