THIS the fourth and last of Brian Meredith’s recollections from his childhood in the 1950s, which he describes as ‘a place which simply does not exist any more. Not in any significant aspect or detail’.
In his introduction he wrote: ‘In the 1950s, England was a more gentle place, where people seemed to have more time for each other. Nowhere was this more evident than in the interactions between grown-ups and the children. These days, the mutual aloofness and distance which routinely characterises encounters between strangers across the ‘generation gap’ make it difficult for anyone too young to remember to picture just how safe, friendly and perhaps, equally important for a child eager to explore the world around him, simply how accommodating the England of my childhood really was.’
You can read the previous anecdotes, which illustrate the sort of unconditional kindness that a child might receive from complete strangers at that time, here.
WHEN I was 11, we were on summer holiday in Torquay. Apart from the beaches and seafront amusement arcades, the biggest attractions in a resort like Torquay are the boat trips. We had already been on a coastal cruise down to Dartmouth and back but I had been pestering my parents about a mackerel-fishing trip. They sounded so much more exciting than just passively sitting in a boat, choosing between staring out to sea on one side and admiring the beautiful coastline on the other.
Eventually Dad gave in to my pestering and we set off out into Torbay in a motorboat about 30-40ft long, with an inboard engine and a half-canopy wheelhouse at the front. There were about ten of us in total and we were all issued with fishing rods, but before any fishing could take place, we needed some bait. Once we were well clear of the harbour, the man in charge threw out, over the stern, a long drag-line, armed with very sharp-looking hooks placed every foot or so.
After a few minutes, he hauled in the line and sure enough, several of the hooks had fish caught on them. Without delay, he extricated the fish off the hooks and while they were still wriggling and squirming on the white marble-topped table in the middle of the boat, gripping them firmly by the tail, he chopped their heads off with a single blow. Suddenly a lot of blood flooded across the table and the combination of this, together with the shock and surprise of what looked like a cruel and brutal act, made me feel ill.
I don’t know what I had expected a mackerel-fishing trip to look like, but this was a very rude awakening indeed.
He continued to chop up the dead fish and proceeded to use the pieces to bait the hooks of the passengers. By this time I was feeling really quite ill and noticing my lack of enthusiasm to put my rod forward for baiting, he looked me straight in the face and asked, ‘Son, would you rather drive the boat?’
‘Oh, yes please!’ I replied, eagerly.
He led me for’ard and showed me the controls, which really amounted to little more than just keeping the throttle steady and steering with the wheel.
‘Just keep us heading towards Berry Head, for now,’ he told me, pointing to the headland cliffs which were lying dead ahead. ‘The incoming tide is pushing the boat to starboard, so you’ll need to keep the wheel well over to port.’
Since we were well out from the immediate shoreline, steering a small boat across an expanse of water as big as Torbay, there was precious little chance of a collision.
And so, with that simple instruction, my education in marine navigation was, for now at least, complete and he went back to helping the other passengers to catch their fish, which they would no doubt look forward to cooking for dinner that evening.
And all the while that this increasingly sanguine activity was going on behind me, that kind and thoughtful fisherman had given me a task which demanded that I keep my eyes fixed on the horizon ahead and my mind on my ‘work’.
It was just yet another example of kindness by strangers to children which seemed so much more typical and commonplace in the England of sixty years ago.
Footnote: I took the picture at the top of this article in Torquay harbour on Friday – it is very similar to the one I ‘piloted’.
