Jump to content
  • entries
    226
  • comments
    95
  • views
    129,939

Tuesday October 7th


TomGlassey

761 views

A few days ago, I dedicated the blog to a wonderful Castletown character Gordon Cooil who sadly has now past on. It was heartening to receive emails from various parts of the world from Manxies who have fled the nest and still remember Gordon with such fondness. Steve in New Zealand still recalls being wound up by both Gordon and his brother Juan, in the Union pub. I hope you did not waste too much time looking for those pearls in the Silverburn River Steve that obviously made a fortune for Gordon and Juan. Since I began writing this blog I have often been amazed at the response from people from just about every corner of the planet. I have made so many friends, even though many of them I shall never meet. Some folk have not stopped at emails. No, I have arrived home to bottles of whisky left on the front step, even a body warmer sent by Dorothy from Liverpool on my birthday. The most unusual gift of all though came my way via Sean from London a couple of months ago. Whilst Sean was in his flat in London, he painstakingly carved out of balsa wood, a wooden chart of Castletown bay and the surrounding area. The chart has been created in such a way that you can actually feel all the rocks and features of the bay. You can even tell the depth of water, as Sean has layered the thin timber sheets so that they reflect the depth of water in the bay. Even the bell bouy is featured and just for good measure he has even included our house. It must have taken Sean an absolute age to complete this masterpiece, and to say that I am grateful is an understatement.

 

Someone has just called me from Port Erin and told me that it is about time I wrote a blog about lettuce. Yes, lettuce! Well I have sat and pondered this for the last 10 minutes and have concluded that there is absolutely nothing I can add to people’s knowledge about lettuce that they don’t already know.

 

Well people, that is just about it for today. It is now time for me to brave the rain, and head up the Silverburn with Mr Skipper and Barbara. Providing I can think of something worth writing about tomorrow I shall be back at about the same time. Of course whether the subject has been worth me writing about it or not, it has never stopped me up until now.

 

I include this month’s edition of my Manx Tails article for our overseas friend.

 

 

As Manx as the hills

 

As I sit here writing up this article, the rain is teeming from the sky. It rained all day yesterday, and according to the forecast, it will do so again today. The Silverburn that flows at the bottom of our garden has been transformed from a gentle stream to a raging river and is carrying vast amounts of water from the hills. It seems to me that it is only water that comes down from the hills these days. It wasn’t always that way though. 30 years or so ago, all kinds of things came down from those hills, and the hills were indeed alive with the sound of music. However, the music stemmed from a few Foxdale men making their way back to the hills after a good night out.

 

Every Tuesday Robert Kinvig, a sheep farmer, would make his way down from the hills to do his shopping in Castletown. He would always finish up by having a pint in the Union. Robert would never alter his watch. His watch was always on GMT. His point being that they are not to an hour or two up in Ronague. I recall Robert coming in to the Union one October morning. The clocks had all gone back an hour the night before. Someone asked Robert had he remembered to put his watch back an hour. His reply was. “Of course not boy, I knew you would all come round to my way of thinking eventually.” On Friday evenings, Wilson Costain and Bobby Pope would come down from the hills and usually spend the evening in the Castletown pubs. Wilson was full of tricks, and in most folk’s opinion, full of hell. One of his tricks was to take a pint of bitter and push it flat against the ceiling. Then he would take a sweeping brush and hold the brush against the glass. He would then hand the brush handle to someone and bet them they couldn’t hold that pint up against the ceiling. He would then wander off leaving some poor sod stuck in the middle of the bar, supporting a brush under a pint, the person was totally unable to move as as soon as the pressure was slackened on the brush, the pint would have come down on his head. In other pubs they would earn their beer money by raking havoc by bending coins with beer bottles and lifting tables up in the air using an empty glass. At closing time, they would wend their way back in to the hills singing at the top of their voices all the way to Foxdale.

 

On one occasion Bobby and Wilson both arrived home drunk and collapsed in front of the fireplace. They obviously took some kind of an argument before they fell asleep and one of them clobbered the other with the poker. When they awoke at 4 a.m. or so the next morning, they both thought they had been attacked during the night and called the police. Of course that was back in the days when the police knew everyone in their area, and of course it didn’t take the policeman long to work out what had happened. I am sure the policeman laughed the incident off. Today they would have been charged with wasting police time.

 

As I said, it appears that it is only water that flows down from the hills now. The characters seemingly have all gone. The hills have many more stories than I am able to relate. Seemingly we have more rain coming down from the hills now than ever before. Perhaps the hills are also grieving for those Manx characters that appear to have vanished completely, for they were as Manx as the hills, we miss them dearly, and judging by the floods of water flowing down the Silverburn, the hills are crying too.

 

 

This is Tom Glassey on the banks of the Silverburn River.

0 Comments


Recommended Comments

There are no comments to display.

Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...