WAVE-ING GOODBYE – WITH A SPLASH AND A LAUGH
A simple ashes-scattering ceremony at his beloved Gyllyngvase Beach in Falmouth last month marked the final farewell for Brian Thomas, retired journalist and multi-talented cartoonist, author, musician and song-writer.
Although latterly living and working in Devon, he began his journalistic career on the Falmouth Packet in the early 1970s and left many good friends and fond memories here.
In his adult life, he regularly provided humorous drawings for his newspapers.
It was while at Falmouth’s Trescobeas County Secondary School that his talent as a cartoonist came to the fore, with the creations of many comic book adventures about his classmates.
I clearly remembered all this when, in 2014, I published a collection of my own Packet columns at the start of my retirement “career” of creating local nostalgia books in aid of Cancer Research UK.
I challenged Brian to come up with original cartoons to illustrate some, and preferably all, of the 45 columns reproduced.
I’d had my reservations about making this request – he was already long into his own retirement, after all – but boy, did Brian come up trumps.
He did his peerless stuff for not just some of the columns (which would have been marvellous) but the whole bloomin’ lot, which was absolutely brilliant.
Every one of them was a winner, and none more so than one that sprang to mind during that ashes ceremony last month.
Several of the attendees, you see, myself included, got a drenching when a rogue bigger wave shot ashore and soaked our feet and legs.
We quickly saw the funny side of it because we concluded - of course - that this was Our Brian’s way of wave-ing his final goodbye, and having a cracking good laugh in the process.
For me, it also took me back nearly 50 years to the time when I was the Packet’s chief reporter and for my lunch breaks I would routinely head down to Gylly for my daily all-year-round swim.
That’s right – all year round. On one of those days, in deep midwinter, some Packet colleagues came down to see for themselves what this chump was getting up to away from his desk.
Trouble was, I really shouldn’t have gone in because it was dangerously rough, and I had the devil’s own job getting out again. I waved and shouted in panic, but my colleagues merely smiled and waved back, mistakenly believing I was just being friendly.
Naturally, I wrote about this in one of those Packet columns, and here’s how Brian illustrated it in my book:
1 Gestures for help considered playful “waving”
2 Going down for the fourth time interpreted as
“waving with his toes now”
3 Cast ashore by a “real” wave
4 Safely on land and applauded for a
brilliant “reverse dive”
I still have two spare copies of this book, in perfect condition. Let me know if you’d like one.
ULTIMATE ACCOLADE FOR RELUCTANT RAW REPORTER
Congratulations to Cornwall on winning the County Rugby Championship last Saturday, beating Lancashire 39-24 at Twickenham.
Final appearances have become almost a habit for the Duchy in recent times. It was all very different back in 1969, when the two teams met in the final played at Redruth before a crowd of 20,000-plus.
Lancashire won that one 11-9, storming back after Cornwall had led 9-0 at half-time, and it was the latter’s first final appearance since 1928.
I was dispatched by editor Ken Thompson to cover the 1969 clash for the Packet.
I was more than a little nervous about it all as a) I was still a raw trainee, and b) I was a round-ball man (having to miss my beloved Falmouth Town football that afternoon), with strictly limited knowledge of the finer points of rugby.
I did the best I could – certainly managed to inject a fair amount of passion into my report – but could I write with anything resembling meaningful comment and analysis?
Could I heck! And I’ve no doubt that any reader more familiar with rugby would have instantly recognised this fact.
One such reader was popular local dentist and cricketer Gordon Mann. The next day – after Packet publication – I found myself covering Falmouth Cricket Club’s annual dinner-dance at the Hotel St Michaels.
As I rolled up, anxious to impress a young Jackie Dominic at my side, I was met by a beaming Gordon who, bless him, immediately declared: “Congratulations, Mike. Of all the reports I’ve read on that match – national and local – I have to say yours was the very best of them.”
Ahem . . . Gordon was nothing if not kind and I knew full well that he was flattering me to help a budding young journalist along his way.
I didn’t admit that to Jackie then, of course; and it was a good wee while before I modestly shared the truth – that I almost literally had no idea what I was writing about - with anyone else.
Gradually, though, I spread the word.
And nowadays I’m still dining out on the tale!
SHIFTING SANDS . . . AND SHIFTING STORY!
This item began life as an invitation to say a prayer, if you had some to spare, for Emily and her team at Falmouth’s Castle Beach Café.
Last summer I highlighted the lack of sand at the beach after a late spring south easterly gale had re-deposited it all on the west side, leaving the main area directly beneath the café a rocky barren.
Nature had never re-dressed the balance for that holiday season and I remarked that it was pretty much the first time in living memory that this had happened.
Alas, towards the end of last month, there was an almost despairing tone about this Facebook post from the café:
“Yes, the sand has left us again this year. HOWEVER, it’s just to the right of the café, if you walk along the rocks.
“ . . . It makes me really sad that people are put off by the lack of sand right in front of the café. I promise it’s still here; it’s just hiding out of sight of the road!”
I had originally ended this piece with a line about lightning striking twice.
BUT, but, but . . . when I checked earlier this week, the sand had evidently been re-dumped in its rightful place. Only snag was, it was now buried, and all but in-visible, beneath tons of seaweed!
And then, for my second and final Stop Press, take a look at these pics from last night. If you zoom in a bit, you can see that even the seaweed is clearing and, crucially, much of that sand is now back directly beneath the café.
All those rocks are still very much in evidence, but slowly – and I hope surely – that sand IS returning!
COP THIS – THE HEADLINE THAT BROUGHT IT ALL BACK FOR ME
My attention was caught early one day last week by a headline highlighting a warning that “UK policing could be driven back to the ‘60s.”
In an instant, of course, I realised its deadly context.
But even more swiftly – let’s call it a micro-instant – I couldn’t help thinking: “Bring it on.”
As in, memories of a now dim, distant and seemingly other-worldly age.
(It’s surprising just how much can fly through your mind in, as I say, a nanosecond.)
I recalled a time when our police were altogether more visible and accessible.
You just don’t see them now, do you, except for the occasional blues and twos speeding past. The copper on the beat, sadly, seems to have been consigned to history.
As has the good old friendly and essentially open local police HQ.
The term “something like Fort Knox” rarely fails to spring to mind, for instance, when I pass today’s Falmouth police station at the bottom of Dracaena Avenue.
Its typically modern, stupefyingly dull design with fortress appearance and slat-like windows looks anything but welcoming.
Ditto, as I understand it, today’s police-press relations. Back in the day, the then local HQ’s doors were always wide open in every sense.
We local reporters would pop in several days a week for friendly chats and collection of info from first the guys on the front desk, then the duty sergeant and then, upstairs, the CID team – among others, Brian Harry, Arthur Govier, Mike Mundy, Chris Woodhead, Reg Davison,
Now the general rule for first-stop enquiries is the force’s (sorry, service’s) press office at regional HQ in Exeter.
I count myself blessed that I reported at the time I did – not only being able to do the job properly by working with the police but also making a number of long-lasting very good friends in the process.
PANDEMONIUM AT THE POLICE STATION
My little trip down Memory Lane (see above) also brought to mind the day Cornwall was “gripped by alarm, fear and near-panic” (as I reported at the time), prompting a mini-invasion of the local cop shop – in a manner which, again, is scarcely imaginable now.
On February 25, 1981, in what was officially described as the county’s worst seismic event for at least 150 years, there were tremors every 20 minutes or so for five hours through to nearly midnight.
The aftermath from a quake in the Bristol Channel also included two major rumbles each followed by a Concorde-type boom.
With “many people gathering in the streets,” the Mayor of Penryn, Councillor John Ashwin, said there were so many people crowding into the police station (then in Commercial Road) that “I virtually had to fight my way in.”
He added: “Even people with babies in their arms were arriving at the station to ask what on earth had happened.”
At the height of the pandemonium, and with no recourse to today’s instant news sources via the internet, Falmouth-Penryn police chief Inspector Alan Sanders was forced to concede: “No-one has the faintest idea what’s happened. All the services and authorities normally involved in bangs of any kind are asking each other if they know what has happened, and nobody does.”
Pity they couldn’t have googled it, eh!
ONE BOOK DUN, ANOTHER BEGUN!
My main book project of the past year – SIXTY YEARS A SOCCER BOSS by Melville Benney – finally got over the line and off to the printers last week.
I’m quietly confident that this will be the most successful of all my fund-raisers for Cancer Research to date, given Mel’s vast network of former players (way over a thousand) and friends and associates.
In the meantime, I’m now forging ahead with THE TREVOR MEWTON STORY – By Those Who Played For Him.
Trevor, who died in 2017, collected more than 20 trophies as a manager with eight Cornish clubs - principally St Blazey, Newquay and Falmouth – spread over 35 years.
TAUTOLOGICAL TREATS
In my Easter Break blog, I poked a bit of fun at the Packet by highlighting a common failing in the media and other forms of communication.
My old newspaper had reported that “residents . . . have successfully safeguarded much-loved community land” and I posed the question: “how would they have UNsuccessfully safeguarded it?!!”
As I indicated then, this sort of thing can happen at any level, anywhere.
More recently, for instance, the Daily Telegraph managed to print this howler: “A woman in the Philippines got an UNEXPECTED SURPRISE as a whale shark approached unnoticed and nudged her arm . . . .”
Elsewhere, people and things routinely “rise up” (as opposed to “rise down?”) and there is of course the ubiquitous “added bonus.” My bank even tells me I have “successfully logged out” of online banking.
But my prize for the best/worst example – as in, from someone who really should have known better – came in an edition of The Spectator magazine.
Step forward the retired editor of that magazine and of the Telegraph, plus authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher, one Charles Moore, Lord Moore of Etchingham.
In the April 11 issue of The Spectator, he wrote: “. . . the American navigator and weapons systems operator whose plane was shot down over Iran was SUCCESSFULLY RESCUED by US special forces . . . ”
Awfully poor show there, Your Lordship!
YOU TRULY COULDN’T MAKE THESE UP
There used to be a regular feature entitled “Names That Make You Chuckle” in some long-forgotten newspaper (I think it was possibly the Sunday Express, i.e. in the days when it wasa real newspaper).
Now I see my fellow blogger John Marquis has had a bit of fun coming up with a few of his own - principally an old schoolteacher of his by the name of Miss Daft, but also Nita Nutt, a classmate, and a fellow from Nottingham called Thomas Crapper.
For good measure, John also threw in Alexander Fanni, Humphrey Biggass and Conway Twitty.
All entirely genuine!
Allow me to add in two more from my own memory.
In the days when I used to join a gang of boys playing football morning, afternoon and night in Falmouth’s Kimberley Park, there was a park-keeper there by the name of Mr Plant.
And then – and this takes some believing now, but I have checked it out and I’ve not been dreaming – there was the head of Devon and Cornwall CID back in the ‘60s and ‘70s who went by the name of Detective Chief Superintendent Proven Sharpe!
Came the day when there was a big murder case and he and his team were evidently getting nowhere with their early enquiries. Inevitably, one of us in the Packet news room couldn’t resist remarking: “Well, he’s not proven very sharp so far, has he?” (I know – ger-roan.)
A GHOSTLY VOICE CONCERN
I’ve touched once or twice before on the importance of “capturing” the subject’s voice and verbal mannerisms when ghost-writing an autobiography.
The big challenge is to strike some sort of balance – making that “voice” as authentic as possible but not at the expense of comprehension and readability.
I hope Melville Benney, whose book, Sixty Years A Soccer Boss, is now with the printers, won’t mind my saying that this balance thing was harder than usual with him on account of his stronger-than-average Cornish accent. I might even add that ee de talk proper Cornish, my andsums!
But there have been no complaints, and certainly nothing to compare with the friendly ticking-off I once received from an earlier book subject, goal-scoring machine extraordinaire Mark “Rappo” Rapsey.
He instructed me to change one sentence because: “I wouldn’t say something like that, Mike; that’s above my intelligence grade!!”
THE WORDY WARMONGER . . . AND THE FEASTY PEACEMAKER
Talking of accents (see above), 40 years ago I wrote a piece for my Falmouth Packet “Weekend Break” column that landed me in hot water with a prominent local businessman - only for another one to restore peace with a most gratifying gesture.
In my column, I waxed lyrical about the Cornish accent and how it compared most favourably with various others.
I included this incendiary line: “As for Midlanders, or Cockneys . . . well, perhaps an orderly clearance of the throat is called for at this stage.”
In the next issue of the Packet, Midlander Falmouth chemist John Rose, RIP, tore into me on the readers’ letters page.
“It was saddening once more,” he said, “to read the sarcastic trivia of Mr Truscott in his column.
“Over the last few weeks, he has contrived to ridicule every large area of the British Isles and the population thereof by objecting to their pollution of Cornwall (by their mere presence) and their inability to speak the Queen’s English in such a manner as to suit his ears.”
Further, he criticised my “rather inane attempts at humour” with regard to the local tourist industry, lecturing me thus: “As a ‘fifth generation Falmothian,’ you should surely be prepared to aid the town you purport to love!”
I duly fired back the following week with an extensive list of examples illustrating how “for many years now I have been involved in a large number of activities which come under the heading of promoting Falmouth.”
Clearly, this was a war of words that could not possibly continue. So enter John Pearce, then or thereabouts chairman of Falmouth Chamber of Commerce.
With the help of his wife and business partner Janet, he arranged a lavish dinner party at his home for guests including myself and, wait for it, one John Rose.
Would you believe, JR and I got on together very well. We chatted away to our hearts’ content and only in the friendliest fashion – not once referring to, or even hinting at, the bit of bovver that had brought us together!
EAT LESS TO EAT MORE . . . BUT DON’T SKIMP ON THE WINE!
Still with eating, I read recently that “journalist-turned-bibliotherapist” Toni Jones has read more than a thousand self-help books over the past decade.
I can’t quite match that – I’ve just got 900-odd more titles still to go – but I can pass on at least two gold-plated self-help tips that have made a lasting impression on me.
One was to be found in the very first book of the genre that I read – Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins.
If you want to eat more, eat less, he advised.
By so doing, he explained, you would live longer, and thus end up eating more!
Has that worked for me?
I like to think it has . . . or at very least I could come up with the answer I received at the end of an interview I conducted in 1985 with Lishman Wright.
I dubbed him “Falmouth’s sprightliest pensioner” on account of his daily sea-swimming all year round at 90.
I asked him if his icy dips had been the key factor in reaching such a grand old age.
Quick as a flash, he replied: “Well, they certainly haven’t stopped me, have they?!”
Then there was the very unscientific tip passed on to me by my principal PR photographer, Phil Monckton, of Penzance.
His doctor once told him: “Unofficially, the best way to stay well is to drink two glasses of red wine every day for six days a week, with a break on the seventh!”
Sounded like a hic of a good idea then and it still does!
LIGHT SLEEPER AVOIDS LIGHTHOUSE INTRUSION
A thoroughly refreshing two days of clifftop-walking down Lizard way (and fine dining) last month did the trick, at least temporarily, for this tired old hack.
Slept like a log, too, at the Mullion Cove Hotel . . . which might not have been so easy if I’d stayed at one of the other hotels I had looked at.
I loved this early warning on the Housel Bay’s website: “Please note, we are in very close proximity to the wonderful landmark of the Lizard Lighthouse, which is operational.
“However, we cannot control the intensity of its light and under certain weather conditions the fog horn may additionally sound. We want to inform you in advance so that it does not come as a surprise during your stay.”
I’m a light sleeper, so their additional service could have come in handy. As their website advised: “We do have earplugs available at Reception if you feel you may need them.”
Bet you’ve not seen anything like that before in a hotel!
LUCKY ESCAPE FOR TOWN BAND – AND THEIR CORNET – IN BOMBING RAID
My Mullion Cove reading included a rare copy of “When Bombs Fell – The Air Raids On Cornwall,” by Phyllis M Rowe and Ivan Rabey, purchased the previous day at Bookmark, Natasha Berks’ second hand bookshop in Falmouth.
As comprehensive records of its title matter go, I guess it could well be the definitive works.
As well as the blow-by-blow record of all those raids, it also contains many eye witness accounts and anecdotes.
The latter included a lucky escape for members of Redruth Town Band and the unlikely survival of one of their instruments.
It began during the evening of December 15, 1941, when four bombs fell around Gregg’s Yard and Sea View Road, damaging some 300 houses and injuring ten people.
The Redruth Town Band Room was completely demolished, but as luck would have it the building was unoccupied as band practice had been cancelled for that night.
Their instruments were not so lucky, although at least one of them – a “rather battered” cornet – lived on, in a manner of speaking.
It had been one of a job lot of second hand instruments purchased for the band’s learner section. After the bombing raid, it was later discovered jammed in the masonry at the top of Redruth’s clock tower.
Apparently, it went on to be “displayed in a glass cabinet in the lounge of the Seven Stars at Stithians, the proud possession of the landlord, the late Mr Leslie Williams.”
Question: is it still there, I wonder? (“The pub has been approached for comment.”)
WHEN CHAR-A-BANCS RULED THE ROAD!
While in Tasha’s shop, I also helped myself to a very old Falmouth holiday guide.
It was undated and contained no adverts (with prices), so clues to its age were strictly limited.
However, one such was this bit of info about local public transport services: “During the seasons, char-a-bancs run to Perranporth, Newquay, Tintagel, Penzance, Land’s End, The Lizard and Mullion.”
So my question here is: how many of you, if any, can remember the sight of those char-a-bancs?!
(Not that I was around at the time, but I am reliably informed that they were largely replaced by “motor buses” in the 1920s.)
DID YOU KNOW THAT . . .
. . . talking of rugby (as we were), apparently a try is so-called because, in the sport's early days, simply getting the ball over the goal line and touching it down did not actually award any points on its own.
Instead, it merely gave the attacking team the opportunity - or "try" - to attempt a kick at goal to score points.
And the ‘last man swimming’ . . .
In October 1984, Falmouth’s Green Lawns Hotel (now Merchants Manor) opened its leisure complex and I was one of its founder members.
I’ve been a member ever since – almost, but not quite, going there every day for a swim.
And I know for a fact that I’m the only remaining person with that unbroken record of membership since it opened.
Phwargh. Makes yer fink, dunnit!
And that, indeed, is all for now, folks.
I’ll be back with my Autumn Break around
End-September/early October (give or take).
