I am told that extremely heavy rain is coming our way from Northern Ireland and it should be with us in about an hour or so. Waiting for heavy rain is a bit like waiting for a bus that is going somewhere you don’t want to go to, like hospital or work. Talking of busses, back in the days of the old route master bus, where you got on at the back and paid the conductor, there used to be a conductor from Port Erin called Frankie Clucas. I recall an incident one day whereby about four of us boarded the Douglas bus in Castletown square. To avoid paying we hid under the stairs, my brother odd job, me and I can’t remember who else. Anyway when the bus reached Ballasalla we all ran out from under the stairs and legged it without paying. Frankie gave chase and my brother Odd job decided to take matters in to his own hands. Seeing Frankie fully occupied trying to get his money from the rest of us, Odd Job legged it back to the bus, jumped on, rang the bell, and promptly jumped off again. Frankie was not best pleased as he stood there clutching his ticket machine whilst watching his bus careering down the road to Douglas without him. If you are still alive Frankie, I am sorry, and I am sure I speak on behalf of my late brother and our mates. What a shame I can’t ring a bell when the rain comes and send it on its way to England.

It’s amazing what you can do with sound if you close your eyes. No, this has got nothing whatsoever to do with busses and rain; I’m just off on one. Today would have been my first day back at school in Liverpool when I was young. Sometimes I would go and sit at the far end of the playground on a wooden bench. On a windy day, the wind would be blowing through the trees at the edge of the school playing field. I used to imagine the sound of the wind blowing through the leaves was the sound of the waves braking on Castletown beach. The sound of the water filters in the school swimming baths could easily be turned in to the generators of the IOM boat alongside the landing stage at the Pier head. At night time the highly polished floors of the convents dormitories became the timber deck of the IOM boats and the faint hiss of the washroom water system coming from next door just made it a little more authentic. Try as I might, there was just no way I could imagine the nuns scurrying about the place as being the crew. No wonder I was always homesick, I was forever pretending bits of the convent were home or at least the boat. Mind you, now that I think on it, I was just as bad at home.

I loved the coal boats. The coal boats tied up alongside the quay in Castletown, however unlike the IOM passenger boats; they did not have gangways for boarding. You simply jumped from the quay down into the boat. Dad had an old Ford Thames van withy a soft roof. I had decided that this van would make a wonderful coal boat. So, off came the soft roof and this meant that I could now climb up onto the garage roof and jump down into the van, which was now a coal boat of course. Dad was not best pleased when he came home, but his temper never lasted very long. In fact he fixed a ladder from the garage roof into the van and informed me that the van was now an IOM boat with a gangway.

Until the next time then people, this is Tom Glassey on the banks of the Silverburn, or possibly the Mississippi!