40 Years - Part 2

[Herbert Anchovy]

Late Summer, 1982. My pal Paul and I have gone over to London for 6 months just to make a bit of cash before going back to Donny. We’d got a job, got digs sorted and were ready!

On our first day at work we’d been told to report to a certain address in East London. We had no idea how to get there by bus or tube so opted to get a black cab. This took a huge chunk of our money but was the only way we’d find the place! When we arrived that first morning to find a partially demolished warehouse I was really nervous. When we’d applied for the jobs we’d slightly over egged our building experience…or to be more exact we’d totally made it up. We need not have worried. We reported in to an old Irish bloke called Gerry who simply asked if we could swing a sledgehammer. When we confirmed that this was within our experience, he gave us both a hammer and told us to begin knocking down small walls down to the foundations. And that’s what we spent the Autumn and Winter of 1982 doing for 10 hours every day! By the end of it I’d got muscles on top of muscles! I was in great shape without ever setting foot in a gym!

Some of the blokes who we worked with were real plum characters though. There were 2 fellas who kept challenging each other to a strength challenge. One bloke was a short but very stocky geezer from Manchester whilst the other was a huge, very hairy man mountain from Scotland. During tea breaks they’d strip off their top half and punch each other in the stomach to see who could take it! Absolute nutters. We tended to give them a wide berth.

One time some of the lads were taking down a wall in this old, disused riverside warehouse when they came across a false wall that had been pretty well hidden within the permanent wall. Behind the false wall they found a small metal box that contained a list of names of blokes working in the warehouse in the 1920’s along with a newspaper from the time, bus and theatre tickets etc. A mini time capsule I suppose.

The work could be mind numbing, and very tough  but the pay was brilliant. We were on about £250 a week which was unheard of for lads our age back in Donny.

Football wise, we still caught the Rovers at most home games or when they played down south. I remember seeing Rovers play at Wimbledon and our injury situation was so bad that Billy Bremner had to come out of retirement and play! We lost I think! We also went to see other games in London at the time. West Ham was my favourite because the atmosphere was always fantastic whoever they played. It could be a bit hairy at games then and there seemed to be trouble at most games at that time. We witnessed horrible trouble at Tottenham and Arsenal games and getting on the tube before and after games was really dodgy sometimes. We would also go to Wembley to for international games. These could also be dangerous with fans from rival clubs stood beside each other on the terraces. In fact, I was happier being stood on the semi empty terrace of the old pop side at BV than at some of the ‘bigger’ clubs!

[tommy toes]

Enjoyed reading that H. Good story, well wrirren.

[roversdude]

Great read Herbert