Treading the Boards

In 1967 just as I was about to enter my teenage years, I discovered my theatrical leanings. Truth be told, I think they had been there all along — even at the age of five — I just hadn’t realised it yet.

 One day at school, we were told that there was to be a new theatre club, a pantomime would be staged that winter in the Town Hall and they were looking for youngsters to join in. The show was called All of a Twist — a parody of Oliver Twist. It had been written locally, filled with island in-jokes, plenty of singing, and more than a little mischief. I couldn’t wait to scrawl my name onto the “I’m Interested” form pinned up on the wall.

 Little did I know that scribbled name would set me on a path that lasted more than fifty years in amateur dramatics.

Several of us from school joined the St Mary’s Theatre Club (SMTC). We went to the auditions, received our scripts, were assigned our parts — and then came the hard bit: learning lines and rehearsing. I never found learning lines very easy, as many will attest to over the years!

At our very first rehearsal I met the rest of the cast, including someone called Elizabeth Taylor. Of course, I’d heard of ‘the’ Elizabeth Taylor, and to meet this elegant, beautiful woman in the flesh felt extraordinary. I was awe-struck. Funny though — she looked totally different to how she did on TV. In fact, she was definitely more beautiful in real life! I assumed she must wear a mask when she was on the screen.

From that first rehearsal I was hooked. Our opening song was Food, Glorious Food and from then on, the theatre became my second home.

Over the years I went from pantomimes to summer productions for the visitors. My first serious play was Bonaventure, in 1971, where I played the simple-minded Willy Pentridge. (Typecast? Perhaps!).  After that came more plays and pantos. I then had a four-year break, when I did an apprenticeship at Holman’s dry dock in Penzance.

When I returned to Scilly in 1975, one of the first things I did was re-join SMTC. Before long I even tried my hand at directing, starting with a pantomime. Maggie Perkovic wrote the first pantomime I directed. A big learning curve as it was a first for both of us. I loved it. From then on, whenever I wasn’t acting, I was directing.

The beauty of St Mary’s Theatre Club was its spirit: inclusivity, welcoming, full of fun and laughter, and never cliquey. I didn’t appreciate that fully until I moved to the mainland in 1997 and joined other drama clubs. Their cliquey ways put me off so much that I decided to form my own club in Bristol, using SMTC’s constitution as a model. Called the Stagelights with over 50 members at one point, It thrived, producing three full length productions every year.

Of all the plays I directed, the most enjoyable was Play On! by Rick Abbot — a play about a play going wrong. It was so much fun to produce, and the Cornwall Drama Association even awarded us a special prize. The following year I directed Abbot’s Sing On! which, if possible, was even more hysterical.

Perhaps the greatest laugh of all came years later, in a production of the farce Boeing Boeing. It was a frantic show, with five doors and characters constantly dashing on and off stage. One evening, I delivered a line slightly wrong, which caused another actor to change their reply on the spot. Somehow it hit me squarely on the funny bone.

Corpsing? Oh, this was beyond corpsing. I was helpless — doubled over, gasping for air, sinking to my knees in hysterics. Somehow I managed to crawl onto a chair and pretend to cry, hoping the audience would accept it as part of the plot. They laughed along with me, bless them — though my fellow cast members were rather less impressed! It took a very long time to live that one down.

But if I trace it back, I think my love of laughter really began at the age of five.

It was my first Christmas concert at school, held in the Town Hall in 1960. I had been given the part of Father Christmas. My grand responsibility was to crouch behind a cardboard cut-out sleigh, holding on to the struts to keep it upright, while a row of little children dressed as reindeer pulled me across the stage. Easy enough, I thought.

What no one told me was that I would see my mum in the audience. Suddenly I spotted her, I stood up in excitement and waved — and down went the sleigh, flat on the stage, with me tumbling on top of it. The hall erupted in laughter. And that, I think, was the exact moment I fell in love with the sound of laughter.

Help or Hinder

 I always enjoyed helping out (although some would say ‘Hindering’)—or at least taking part—at any event. The Church Fête, the Carnival, church bazaars, Jumble sales or anything else that needed a young oik to lend a hand and I was there, getting in the way.

I decided to join the church choir as I enjoyed singing (Or so I told myself) and because Auntie Ena (along with a few others) badgered me to join. Having survived Sunday School with Deidre Blythe and the Reverend Gillett, when I was knee high to a gnat, I reckoned singing in the choir wouldn’t be too bad. At the time, the church was struggling to get choir members—especially younger ones—so to encourage us, the then Reverend, Mr Rowett, decided we would be paid 10/- (50p) for every ten services attended, including choir practices. In other words, one shilling (10p) per service! The mercenary gene in me quickly decided I definitely needed to be in the choir, and before long a few of us were fitted out with cassock and surplice, warbling and trilling along with the best of them.

Being in the choir had its perks beyond the 10/-. We were closer to the altar, so when the candles were snuffed out (a duty we took turns performing with the candle snuffer), we got more of the smoke drifting past us. There’d be loud, leisurely sniffs from those of us who loved the smell of candle smoke, trying to catch as much as we could. Another pastime was placing crayons on the top of the huge radiators in front of the choir stalls, watching them melt into weird and wonderful shapes.

When we were feeling a little less pious, we would watch one particular lady who always sat at the back of the church in the higher pews. Her very loose dentures fascinated us, swirling and whirling around her mouth. We were certain that any moment they would pop out and clatter to the wooden floor and echo around the church—perhaps right in the middle of her husband’s sermon! But week after week, to our disappointment, they never did.

One Sunday, during the service, Auntie Laurel had need to blow her nose and did so as surreptitiously as possible and it wasn’t until we processed down the aisle at the end of the service, I noticed that she had something on her Jabot (choir bib). We quickly realised what it was! When she had blown her nose she’d quietly slipped her hanky up her chest to her nose, trying not to make a scene. Unfortunately, as she did so she gathered the jabot up in the hanky and blew her nose in that instead! Ooops!

Another memory takes me back to being just five or six, sitting in the pew with Mum, waiting for Mr. Gillett’s sermon. To a little boy, those sermons seemed to last for hours (in truth, probably only ten minutes). But sometimes, when a certain lady was in church, I would hope for an extra long boring one. That was when this elderly lady would suddenly leap up, shouting at the vicar that he was talking a load of rubbish. She’d rant and rave—“Nonsense! Utter rubbish! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”—before storming down the aisle and crashing through the doors, chuntering loudly as she went. The vicar would stand silently until she left, then calmly pick up where he had stopped and carry on. I loved that bit of the service! Oooh, the fun we had.

There was an old prayer often said in Scilly in the days of yore, borne of the relative poverty of the islanders at the tjme. It wasn’t a wish for disasters just a plea that if there had to be any shipwrecks anywhere that the good Lord would see fit to bring them to Scilly for the sake of the poor and unfortunate.

“We pray thee, Oh Lord, not that wrecks should happen, but if any wrecks do happen, Thou wilt guide them to the Islands for the benefit of the poor inhabitants”

One of my favourite pastimes down at the Rechabite slip  — when I wasn’t sailing dinghies, swimming, or generally messing about—was listening to the “old boys” who sat on the strand chatting about the days of their youth. They spoke of shipwrecks they had seen—the Minnehaha, the Isabo, the Mando, and many more. I was fascinated by their tales of what had been salvaged, the heroics of the lifeboat men who braved horrendous seas to save lives, and the recovery of  whatever could be saved from the wrecks themselves.  I was in awe, and I longed for such an adventure myself. Surely a decent shipwreck wasn’t too much to hope for? I couldn’t quite bring myself to pray for one so hope was the next best thing!

In the year I was born—1955—there had been the wreck of the Mando on Golden Ball Brow, beside Menavaur. Dad and his brother went aboard, clambering over the creaking and moving wreck, grinding away on the rocks, to salvage what they could. Dad managed to remove the galley clock from its bulkhead, the door from the captain’s cabin, and a few other bits and pieces. They couldn’t stay long; fearful the vessel might break up and sink into deep water with them on board. The next day, however, the police came calling. Word had spread that Dad and several other local lads had been aboard the Mando, helping themselves. At first Dad denied everything—he had buried the clock in the garden—but his conscience eventually got the better of him. He confessed and handed the clock in. The Captains door had already been dismantled and re-configured in to a very useful step ladder that we used constantly for the next 42 years until I left the Islands.

Later, when the salvaged items were auctioned, Dad bought the galley clock back for just 2/6d. I still have it. It worked perfectly, nonstop, from 1955 until recently. It’s now being serviced, and I hope it will keep ticking until my own time runs out.

The Cita

Nothing in all my years in Scilly prepared me for the 26th of March 1997.

The day started off like any other. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze ruffled the surface of the sea, and gulls mewed around the harbour. I was down on the quay, in Rat Bags shop on Rat Island, picking up a few things for the boat. Luckily, I didn’t have a trip planned that day. I was just about to ask for a blue canvas bag when I heard someone say, “Isn’t that awful, that ship going ashore on Newfoundland Point…”

What? Was it April 1st? No — that was still four days away! I questioned the bearer of such interesting news and was assured that a container vessel, carrying about 140 containers, had indeed gone ashore during the night. I needed no more convincing. To hell with the bag — I knew where I had to be.

Before I knew it, I was in the car heading for Porth Hellick, heart pumping and mind racing. I was down there in no time, walking out to where I could see the Cita lying on her side in the water. Scores of people were all over the headland, many carrying large sheets of plywood and cardboard boxes up onto dry land. Many containers were floating around the vessel, with more wedged up on the rocks.

I hurried around the headland to Per Wreck, the next bay along, and the view that greeted me was astonishing. Containers were scattered, perched on the rocks, they obviously came in on the high tide and as the tide had gone out they were left high and dry. Scores of people were hauling all sorts of things to safety before the tide returned. Fortuitously the containers were water tight so the goods inside them were bone dry.

Being the helpful soul that I am, I hurried down to lend a hand. A policewoman stood nearby, watching. As I approached, she pointed out the contents of different containers: “That one’s full of computer mice, that one has shirts, shorts in that one — and those over there are full of glazed hardwood doors.”

I honestly didn’t know what to save first! In the end, I decided ‘Best so save a little of each. I salvaged five boxes of computer mice (fifty in a box), ten boxes of polo shirts (twelve to a box, in sizes ranging from small to 3XL), and five beautiful glazed wooden doors. By the time I finished, I was exhausted but overjoyed. At last, I was experiencing something I had always longed for — a real shipwreck — something I never thought possible in this day and age of radar, modern technology and safety rules and regulations.

The next day, I went to Watermill, where a container full of trainers had come ashore. I managed to rescue twenty pairs from a watery grave. Like all responsible salvors of cargo that might otherwise have polluted the ocean, I stored everything safely until Customs and Excise confirmed whether  it needed to be returned or not. It didn’t!  At that point, it became ours to dispose of as we saw fit.

Sadly, the wreck also caused significant pollution. Millions of plastic carrier bags and vast quantities of nurdles (small plastic beads used in manufacturing) were released, along with all sorts of household items, clothes, crates, bottles, buckets, toys, and more, which floated around the islands and washed up on beaches.

Other cargo eventually raised from the sunken Cita and its containers included gravestones, car tyres, golf bags, forklift trucks… the list was enormous.