Memories of Cecil Gill -TAODS

Joyce : My father Cecil Gill , known as “Cec’, did the sound for all TAODS productions for more than 50 years.  He owned an electrical shop in Pydar Street and as well as doing the sound for TAODS, also provided the sound for key events in Truro, such as the Mayor Making and the Fatstock shows via his van with speakers on the top.

Keith 1 : Back then health and safety was not thought off and I remember having to climb up a ladder to the beam at the top of the stage and then having to shuffle on my bottom along the beam dragging electrical cables behind me while Cec was shouting instructions from below. Cec also used to go to the City Hall the night before ticket went on sale to supervise the people who were camping out.

Memories of Past Shows – TAODS

Keith 1 : I remember Joyce and Chris taking part in a performance of Kismet.  Along with another girl they were the “three princesses” and came out of baskets and did a dance on the stage.   Joyce – as we were all dressed in the same way the only way people could tell us apart was because “ I was the only one who had boobs”.   Chris : we did Seven Brides for Seven Brothers – that was a real wow – one of the best shows we ever did.   Joyce : we had professional artists such as make up artist Jules Martin and musicians come to help with the shows.  We had our own stewards and front of house people, people who did the wardrobes and worked back stage and a social committee who used to sell the programmes – the women always wore long dresses and the men wore dress suits.  The shows were opened by the Mayor   Keith 1 : It was always recognised that Truro had high standards – when we did Fiddler on the Roof one of the audience said “ I saw the original in London and this knocks it into a cocked hat”   Keith 2 : a man called Les painted the flat for us – he was amazing. One time he did a back cloth of Truro Cathedral which became fluorescent when it was flooded with UV lighting – that got a round of applause in the middle of the show.   Ros : I loved the carolaires – they were such happy times.  Bill White played while the audience was coming in.   Chris : we had some wonderful MD’s – Harry Jordon, known as the ‘lady chaser’, and Hubert who used to banter with a Truro lawyer. They had great rapport with the audience.

Memories of Last Night Antics – TAODS

Keith 2 : We never did anything to damage the show but we did have some fun on the last night At the end of our production of the Sound of Music Johnny Moon went up the mountain with the children. It was an amazing sight. On the last night we put stage weights into his bag to make it heavier.  On another night we were doing a plan in which people had to bring a trunk onto the stage. It was usually empty but on the last night we filled it with concrete blocks and other items from below the stage.   Keith 1 : during the performance of the Vagabond King the rogue has to run away and jump into a vat of red wine.  On the last night the inside of the barrel was lined with holly – he was wearing tights and a short tunic and the language was interesting.  Chris : on one last night Anne was due to be presented with a plate of food during the play – on the last night someone got two pigs eye from the butchers and put them with the food on the plate. When she lifted the lid off the plate she had to try not to laugh.   Joyce : we were a family – back stage / front of house – we were all a family.

Memories of Moving to Redannick Theatre – TAODS

Keith 2 : we miss the City Hall – we had been told that the Hall For Cornwall would be a hall for the whole of Cornwall – but amateur societies cannot afford to use it. We have lost out . Redannick Theatre is much smaller which means we cannot put on the same kind of shows  it is not the same ….. we had some wonderful years and made lots of money for charity.   Joyce : the shows were the highlight of our year and the highlight of the audience’s years – they were happy days and we miss them. The society has gone down to a small number – we have lost our young people. We did everything to the best of our ability – and it is a great shame.

Memories of Courting at City Hall

I was sixteen in 1958. It was a good time to be sixteen. I was a telephonist for BT and we held our annual dances in City Hall. There were crowds of young people and we danced the night away, the lot of us. They decked the whole place out with balloons and paper decorations and laid chairs down both sides of the hall. The girls would come in and take a seat and if you were lucky, a handsome man would come over and ask you to dance. If it was someone you weren’t keen on, all of a sudden you’d look down at the floor and get very interested in your shoes. It was grand being asked to dance, but the best part of the evening was the ‘ladies’ excuse me’, which gave you the chance of a lifetime. You could tap any man on the shoulder, even if he was dancing with someone else and ask him to dance. There was no point in being a wallflower, you had to grab the opportunity while you had it. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, take your places for a quickstep.’ They had a dance band, The Clavitones, who played all sorts, from waltzes, military two-step to the Gay Gordons and the hokey cokey. Bob Williams, the chemist, used to play saxaphone with them. The slow dances were my favourite, though. You’d eye someone across the room and wink at them and they’d come over and you’d dance with their arm around you and it felt wonderful. Everyone got a bit more forward as the evening went on. At some point you might go outside with them for a kiss and a cuddle. The dances finished about ten thirty. It was nothing like going home at two in the morning like you might do today. It was a lot tamer than that. If you met someone and they wanted to take you home, you’d wonder if they would hold your hands or your arm might brush their arm, which was everything. If it went really well, you might get a kiss at the gate. Of course, I lived with my parents back then and my dad would wait up until I got back. We had a dog and he’d use the dog as an excuse to stay out in the garden when he was expecting me back, which was his way of saying ‘Come on in now, Josie’. I remember at one dance this gorgeous man came in through the door of City Hall and later in the evening, when he asked me if I wanted to dance, I said ‘do I?’ Our first dance was a quickstep. He was tall, and handsome too. We courted for three years before I married him. We went to lots of dances at City Hall in that time, and to the cinema too at The Regent. I remember he took me to see The Summer Place – even now when I hear the songs it takes me right back there. I remember being in there in the dark of the cinema and his knee touched mine – talk about the vapours. We married at Chasewater and had a reception in the village, bought a cottage at Greenbottom and we had our twins there twelve months later. When you’ve had a good marriage and you met your man at a dance, you’ve had what lots of people would love to have. You can’t imagine anything better. But that’s me, I’m an old romantic.

Memories of The City Hall & Hall for Cornwall – The Heart of Things

Before I moved down to Cornwall in 1964, I lived in Honor Oak in London. From the road I lived on, which was on a main bus route, we could see Big Ben – we were right in the heart of things – you could get anything you liked any time you liked. After I left school, I worked at Westminster for a while and then at Worth’s Fashion House. When my husband got a job teaching science at Truro School, we moved to Penelewey, which was – at the time – just a handful of houses, even fewer than there are now. Where we’d have busses running all day in Honor Oak, there was one bus a day now and I thought ‘what one earth have I come to?’ My husband died thirty years ago now and it was after he died that I heard about this place called Hall for Cornwall. It was a new thing for me. It was close and it was affordable. I discovered something there that grabbed me by the heart. One year I went to see something there every week – marine bands, plays, opera, comedy, dancing – anything they had on. The man on the security desk said to me he was thinking about calling Securicor for me, I’d bought that many tickets, and they told me by the end of the year, they thought I’d pretty much bought Row F! I remember seeing one comedy group which was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I laughed so hard it was painful and the man sitting next to me couldn’t stay in his chair he was laughing so much. I remember thinking I need a break from this. It’s strange, I’ve forgotten what they were called now, but I’ll never forget laughing that hard, not ever. It was a change from life, seeing something so different. I was able to feel I was supporting people who were doing creative things while I was doing it. A special place it is, right in the heart of things.

Memories of Billy Onions

Billy Onions had a horse that he used for one purpose and one purpose only and every market day Billy Onions led his horse down Mitchell Hill and tied him to a lamppost smack in the centre of town, right by City Hall. Why’s Billy Onions bring a horse into town when he in’t got nothing to sell? Well, I’ll tell you. That horse’d wait, patient as Job and sometimes a child from the market would take pity on him, bring him out a carrot or two, something to pass the time, until Billy Onions emerged from out back of the Red Lion at the last light of the day. Now the Red Lion to City Hall was just a stagger and a belch and Billy Onions could manage that right enough. He’d pet the horse on the nose, untie him from the lamppost and the horse’d lead him right home.

Memories of The First Dance

My husband used to click his heels together when he asked you to dance. He wore spare collars and his shoes always shone and he was handsome as the day was long. I first met him at the Red Lion Hotel at the bottom of Lemon Street. If you had money you’d drink out front, and if you were one of the common people you’d drink out the back, sitting on the barrels – that’s where we’d go. A lot of people didn’t have money in those days, but we had comradeship and we enjoyed that. Everybody was in the same boat. He didn’t know anyone at that time, being German, and he went to the Red Lion to meet people, and though I’d seen him there a couple of times I didn’t know him at all. He asked me if I’d like to go to the City Hall for a dance. I was about eighteen or nineteen, but I told him I’d have to ask my mum. Anyway, I went to a dance with him and it went on from there. He’d gone into the German army at eighteen and he was two years interred on Guernsey before they moved him over to Cornwall. He came over on the boat and he lived in these Nissen Huts up by the hospital and from there they were put out to work on farms. They were taken out in lorries to the different farms and he was taken out to a farm at Comprignay Hill. After the war, he stayed on and moved into a tied cottage behind the big house. There were lions on the gateposts and it was a grand place but when I saw his rooms I thought it was terrible, up these rickety steps and he was living above where the stables used to be. All up one end was his bed and there wasn’t much else there aside from that. When we decided to marry, we had to write to Germany just so they could be sure he had never been married before. We had four sons. There’s not a thing I regret about it. We didn’t have much but we enjoyed what we had, and whenever he asked me to dance with him, he’d click his heels together and it took me right back to when I met first him and that first dance.

Memories of ‘Bits & Pieces’

I always liked singing when I was young. I used to sing in school at playtime and we had little shows outside the back of our house, by the garage, put a dress on and act and stuff – it was our own entertainment. I used to love tap dancing, but you had to pay for the lessons and we could never have afforded them. We just didn’t have the money for it and those things were out of reach for us. I wanted to be in a dramatic show, but I always felt they were too posh for me, so I never even tried for one. There was one show – Bits and Pieces it was called – there was a comedian and singers, dancing, different things on. There was a woman who was supposed to sing, but she was taken ill and they said, well could you do it, Joan? I said, I don’t know but I’ll give it a go. I remember having a photograph taken of me in a lovely dress – it was green, a satin dress. I was a poor singer though. In the end I sang ‘Blue Moon’ first and then I sang that old Irish song ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’. I’d never been on the stage before and they threw me right in at the deep end. I couldn’t run fast enough. I stuck it out though. Oh, I will take you back, Kathleen To where your heart will feel no pain And when the fields are fresh and green I’ll take you to your home again!

Memories From The Buyer & Seller of Unconsidered Trifles

Entertainment doesn’t just happen on the stage, you know. Far from it. I’d led a sheltered life until I became a buyer and seller of unconsidered trifles. I started life as a reluctant farmer on my father’s farm. Showed my sheep at the Fat Stock show at City Hall, led them up the ramp they put up over the staircases, though I never went to see any of the entertainment there. When he retired, my father passed the farm to me and when I discovered the flea market I passed it on to my son. I never looked back. You could find anything at the flea market. Anything. People used to describe it as like going into a magic cave. They came from all over; a temporary community gathered for just this one thing. The atmosphere in there was something else. At its height there were seventy stalls selling everything from bric-a-brac to fine art, each one falling over the other, floor to ceiling with the world’s unconsidered trifles. For us it started as a way of getting rid of the old rubbish from our house and ended up with us running a regular stall. It was mostly woodworking tools we sold – beautiful things they were too, brass, ebony, rosewood. They were stamped in capitals with the names of the makers and we’d look out for the names that sold well. NORRIS made woodworking planes and they were always in demand. I knew nothing about this when I started, mind. This was long before the time of upcycling, before vintage became a buzz word, and we made it up as we went along. In fact, I used to make antiques in my garage by the box-load. I think my wife’s fingernails are still full of Brasso from polishing up lamps even now, and this was forty years back, mind when Lemon Quay was still a carpark, Marks and Spencer a garage and Wetherspoons the offices for The West Briton. The early days were the best. The buzz of knowing that the things we sold could end up anywhere in the world, the people we met who came from all over just for the flea market. It opened my eyes to life beyond Truro and for entertainment value, there was noting like it.