Trevorthelockeeper’s Weblog

Christmas. Now there’s a funny thing. While I was living in London and before I joined British Waterways, I was a freelance waterman, which basically meant you found work wherever you could. Every winter I had to work in a dry dock of some kind praying for the phone to ring about a bit of sporadic tug work, trip boat steering, salvage etc. One year I had finally had enough. After one particularly cold day, I climbed out of a dry dock and vowed to never get back in one again. I was cold, filthy dirty and thoroughly miffed off. My local pub was in Little Venice in London where I lived. After a bit of a clean up I went for some sympathy and a pint. The Bridgehouse was being run by Dennis and Jenny who were, and still are, dear friends of mine.  Dennis suggested I work behind the bar for a couple of months. I would be warm, well fed, and amongst friends. I accepted.

Within two weeks they said they were moving. Was it something I said? No, and would I like to go with them? Again I accepted. The next thing I knew I was working in a pub near Hampton Court called The Albion. After a few days I found myself at five pm in the evening with the place all to myself. It was the day before Christmas Eve. In walked two suited gents who had obviously just got off the train. They had also just as obviously come from an office party and were feeling no pain. I got the finger clicking ‘I say, my man’ treatment, but managed to serve the gin and tonics without saying words like snobby, git or anal retention. I couldn’t help but overhear the banter. They were lamenting the fact that Aunt Agnus was coming to stay over Christmas, the amount they had spent on the regulation vogue presents, the endless round of drinks parties and the bladder control problem during the sermon at midnight mass. Commercialisation, that was the problem. Nobody understood the essential message behind Christmas anymore. The moaning went on and on as the gents swayed, sipped and tried to out stare the optics.

Then one of them delivered the funniest line I have ever heard. “Whoever invented Christmas should be crucified”.

With that I was on the floor. What a corker!! I  wouldn’t be seeing the chaps for a good few minutes. They would be writhing on their backs in the same way I was. Then there would be a bit of back slapping and wiping away of tears before a congratulatory drink and the occasional mirthful outburst as the line got repeated like a wanted hiccup. I dragged myself up off the floor with a new appreciation of original wit. Perhaps I’d written these two off too quickly. Maybe I’d even buy them a gin and tonic. But when I did finally get up I was faced with two stony expressions which exuded a great distaste for the decline in standards amongst suburban bar staff. Had the landlord panicked and employed an Australian? How could this happen in Hampton Court? Well this was too much for me. Back down on the floor I went. I’m still not sure which was the funnier. The line itself or the fact that after all that lamenting the pillocks hadn’t realised what they’d said. Shortly after they left. I think I said ‘Gidday’.

(I’ve told this story over the last few years to anybody that would listen. One day I was recounting it again, when somebody said they’d heard it before. I’m not surprised it’s out there in Burb Myth land, but, like peeing in a wet suit, I have this warm comfy feeling in the knowledge that this really happened to me)  

Some years later the boot was on the other foot. I was born on Gatwick airport runway. Or to be a bit more precise, I was born in a little bungalow in a village called Lowfield Heath which was subsequently levelled to make way for the Gatwick Airport runway extension. When I was six months old we moved to a place called East Grinstead. My father chose this place for no reason other than it was West of where he worked. This meant he had the sun behind him on the drive to work in the morning, and again, behind him on the way home. He was clever like that, my dad. The only reason I mention this is because East Grinstead was not known for anything outstanding at all. If a house burnt down the local priest would hold a thanksgiving service for the break in the monotony. In East Grinstead people have no accent. Or rather it’s an accent devoid of any regional, cultural or class bias whatsoever. That is, unless you were born in the East end of London, in which case you were a posh git. 

My tug and I, Olton, were assigned to a dredging contract in Limehouse Dock on the River Thames. This entailed several months of towing long trains of mud barges to and from Bow Locks (try not to say this too fast when relating the story to a Presbyterian minister or any commitee member of the Womens Institute) where they would be emptied and could be hauled back to the dredger for the process to be repeated. For this contract I was given four Thames  Lighterman as crew. I was quite nervous of these gentleman at first. They were all four foot eleven inches tall, as skinny as rakes excepting very respectable beer bellies, and all a hundred and fourteen years old. They were also as strong as oxen and had been trained since birth to work dumb barges on the Thames (i.e row, pull, push, strap, etc) These craft would more usually be called ‘lighters’ or ‘hoppers’. When I was first introduced to these bionic gnomes I fully expected them to call the shots. But no. They had been brought up to do everything the tug driver said. How on earth was I going to tow a hundred yards of barges and a thousand years of knowledge with credibility. I could turn a train of lighters on a ninety foot line in their own length on still water, getting it right most of the time as long as nobody was looking, but this was different and our first team brief involved a lot of feet shuffling and few words. 

Eventually and largely silently we got on with what we thought might work. Luckily for me it generally did. In short we all quickly became firm friends and on the return journey’s with the emptied hoppers I let them steer the tug in exchange for stories. One day, fairly early on, I was getting ready to pull six abreast hoppers off a wharf. This involved me holding the tug against the incoming tide while the gnomes ran up and down the gunwhales of the hoppers strapping bows to sterns as I slowly pulled away. I was composing a piece of music (a hobby of mine I haven’t yet mentioned) and was just berating the cello section for coming in half a beat too late, when I realised I was losing the nose of the tug. We had to go, and right then. I gave the signal and nearly got away with it. Three lighters jerked their way reluctantly behind the tug before the tow line parted between lighters three and four. This was unfortunately after the gnomes had let go number six. I  watched the flooding tide spiral them upstream on the remaining three lighters with little to do except unclog blocked nasal orifices. I did a bit of long legged leapery and managed to tie off the lead lighter on a pierhead leaving the three of them to flap about on the tide. I then span Olton round on her stern and chased after the errant lighters and the stranded Lightermen. After I’d caught them up I was profusely apologetic as we reined the hoppers in. They looked at me with curious expressions. A tug driver had never apologised to a Lighterman in several hundred years and besides, as they generously explained later, there was nothing they hadn’t seen, nothing they hadn’t done.

It was a Friday and they took me for a swift beer after work. To a Lighterman, a swift beer means drinking a quantity similar to a small incoming tide. At one point in the evening the gnomes went into a huddle for a couple of minutes. They were debating something important. Many loud whispers and a few punches later they emerged. Tony, the lead hand, drew himself up to his full height and inflated his chest heralding a great burden of responsibility. They had decided to invite me to a real pub. The last Lighterman’s Pub in London. I felt the wash of a great compliment and accepted the offer after a ceremonial pause and a grave smile.

The five of us jumped into a taxi and drove for about fifteen minutes, and after crossing the river, were set down at the entrance to a dimly lit street. From the looks of our surroundings this was either where we’d asked to go, or the driver had refused to go any further. Whichever way, a pair of double yellow lines were the only things Charles Dickens would have found unfamiliar. Fifty yards later and a hundred and thirty eight years previous, there was a pub. It was called the Kings Arms. I was quite glad about this, because the nickname my gnomes friends had given it was surely illegal and physically impossible.

Raucous male laughter mingled with agonised ‘it hurts so good’ female screams to rattle the grubby but ornate etched glass windows. We entered. Well, I was pushed in, like a little steam engine going in full reverse having seen something on the line ahead but with the heavily laden goods wagons behind it fancying a decent rail disaster just for a laugh. The goods wagons split up with waves to various familiar faces leaving me to shoulder tap, side step, cough loudly and ‘so sorry to bother you’ to the bar. A girl with dumplings that oh so wanted to boil over came to serve me. With her opening line she informed me I was her darling followed by a question which suggested she’d never seen me before in her life. I shrugged my shoulders, smiled meekily and quickly recognised my Lighterman friend’s brand of ale. I ordered five pints. Then I went completely deaf. Or so it seemed.

Oddly I could still hear my gnomes across the crowded bar. But one by one, like the last child to realise the teacher has walked back into the classroom, they too fell silent. If it had been a Hollywood film there would have been the sound of a stylus scraped to the end of a playing record. I had committed a cardinal sin. I had said something along the lines of ‘please may I have five pints of your finest ‘Old Kidney Nemesis’, please. What I should have done is taken a particularly coarse metal file and a pepper pot full of very explicit words relating to the various parts and processes required for making baby rabbits, and set about filing the beginnings and ends off the words followed by a comprehensive and liberal sprinkle.

A rather large elderly gentleman in a very clean white singlet was next to me at the bar. He turned his benippled badminton court sized chest towards me, keeping his head pointing slightly downwards and towards the mirrored back wall of the bar. A spider would have had a problem holding on to his forearms as his tendons raised and lowered the ten fingers that now fell in and fell out with military precision. In short, the badminton court with a pink bubble on top suggested  I’d walked into the wrong establishment, and would I require any help choosing which window I would like to use for my imminent and much aided exit.

I turned to my new friends, the dumplings. They wobbled under shrugging shoulders. No help there then, but it was briefly nice looking for an answer. I turned for the door. The last time I’d been in a fight I’d stupidly taken on the inside of a wet paper bag and been left meekly calling for help. One of the gnomes (George) appeared just as I turned. He buried his head in the badminton court’s midriff and had a muffled one way conversation. The pink bubble paled a bit, held up ten fat fingers, and smiled at me in a conciliatory way. Everything was suddenly all right.

Somebody approached me from behind. Things were suddenly not all right. I was asked menacingly by  a somebody that resembled a large barrel and the evil Sheriff of Nottingham why I hadn’t taken the trouble to treat my completely neutral accent to the parts, processes needed to make little bunny rabbits and the filing treatment. Had I no respect for where I was?  I replied that, conversely,  I’d usually found that honesty was the best policy and all my life I’d resolutely refused to change my accent for anybody, anywhere,  as a mark of respect. A silence ensued. The high ranking barrel looked down at his midriff. It had a ‘Danny’ gnome in it. Another one way muffled conversation happened indicating that my answer would have to be accepted or the barrel would be opened and the pristine white badminton court would end up a funny colour. The pub relaxed and to cut a long story short, I wasn’t allowed to buy a drink all night, I was forced to say ‘accountant’ to the point of ill health and was invited to several baptisms, funerals and Christmas dinners which would have given even a halitosis burdened tax inspectors’ diary log jam.  

Leaping ahead to the codicil at the end of a whole bunch of stories with the gnomes, due to mechanical failure, I had to pick up another dredger and invited George and Tony along as crew. I’d offered George the wheel at some point but soon afterwards he suddenly remembered the date. The second ‘Marchioness Disaster’ enquiry was only days away and he became so upset by this I had to take the wheel back from him. For the next couple of hours I got the whole story as to what allegedly had actually happened on that fateful night where so many young party goers lost their lives on a party boat called the Marchioness, it having been rolled by a coaster called the Bow Belle on the River Thames in central London. George was actually steering a party boat behind the Bow Belle and actually saw the whole thing. Tony was actually steering another trip boat coming down stream minutes afterwards and together with their crews, actually rescued thirty or forty people.

 #########  I have deleted the details of  what I was told  #######

This, coupled with witnessing the event itself, got to George. He spent two weeks in Guys hospital after a suicide attempt. At various points of my scribings, I’ve been phoning old friends and checking that my memories are as scribed. I spoke to the Tony gnome and he confirmed things were as I’d said, but also told me that George died (peacefully) in early 2002. Bless ‘im.