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.