Transcript

Lunchtime was at the canteen. There’d be so many people. I mean there was literally thousands worked in these yards at that time. There was different lunch times for different sections. An I used to come up – you used to run and they’d open the gates and you would run so you could get in the queue. If you didn’t get in the queue you probably didn’t have time to eat your lunch -  this was the thing and go back and have a game of football – that was more important – playing football! So you’d go in there and the dinners were very good y’know, lunch and pudding and a big pot of tea! Absolutely brilliant  I cannot recall – it was just coppers, it wasn’t a lot you paid for it, but it was good food and then as I say back down and we’d play football down on the jetty mainly and if the ball went into the water  - that was it the game was stopped! Except poor Hoppy – this is Hoppy again. The ball went down and they had a couple of very big rafts – they were like holding the ship out from the jetty’s side and he would go down and get the ball ‘cause it had landed – it was floating in the jetty’s inside one of these rafts. He would go and get it. He went down one of these vertical steel ladders down the side of the jetty and onto the raft and the ball was floating and there was this piece of wood across and you stood on it and it turned out it was a plank floating underneath and of course as soon as he stood on it he went down (laughs) out of sight! He did re-appear and he was absolutely soaking wet of course and of course it was the river and I mean in those day the river was urghh to say the least! Because we had – just between the west yard and the docs was a sewage outlet and that used to pour forth day and night! That was brilliant, so you can imagine what it was like where poor Hoppy went. So he went to the ambulance room and they laid him on the floor – laid him down on the floor and threw buckets of water all over him with disinfectant in ‘em! He had to have his mouth wash and his stomach, and the whole issue – he came back and they dried his clothes in between time by the way. They dried them with a (laughs) blow lamp and he cam back very sorry for himself and he said ‘That’s the last time I’m getting the ball for anybody!’ (laughs!)