Editor’s Note - word is beginning to get out that I am keen to share this opportunity which has landed so unexpectedly on my doorstep. Maybe because of a lockdown in which people are bored - perhaps for other reasons - this site’s viewing figures have grown and grown. That is undoubtedly in part due to new faces such as, first a few months ago, the brilliant Bob Bell, then more recently the enormously talented Tim Bannerman. Add James Crowden and my brother John Hesp, and suddenly we have a real ‘centre of excellence’ as I think the term goes…

Basically, what I think is developing is a place where like-minded people can meet and write and get their voices heard - and I love it. It’s kind of happened by accident, perhaps because of the lockdown, but never mind. It is a ‘good thing’. And it is a non-commercial thing. This site costs me money to run - I don’t get a penny out of it. But that’s okay as long as it continues to be popular. Where it will lead, I do not know - but what I do know is that I’d like to invite other good writers to contribute.

One such person is my old friend Colin White. A man I have never met. But I can call him ‘old friend’ because he has been a regular correspondent of mine for many years - often commenting on my newspaper articles and generally being a helpful supporter and a useful and amusing contact. Very clever bloke, old Colin. I always describe him as the “professor” - I believe he is or was some kind of university lecturer - but I am sure he will put me right about that. Anyway, over the years I noticed that Colin writes very well indeed, so when he mentioned something about this website I asked if he’d like to contribute. I am very pleased that he said yes - and here is his first missive from deepest darkest Devon…

Preface

When Martin Hesp approached me to ask if I would like to contribute content to his new website, he said he was broadly looking for three qualities in his authors:

1) They should have knowledge and empathy with our local rural idyll of the South West, 

2) They should be able to string an odd word or two together into something coherent, and 

3) He was particularly interested in engaging old crusties who have rich veins of memories to mine and stories to weave.

Well, if you’re prepared to accept that I’m distinctly under-qualified on his first two requirements, but significantly overqualified on the last, then here’s my first submission from one of his commissioned miserable old gits. 

One advantage of writing as an old’un is that there is usually evident in the compositions an element of the wild and carefree spirit which is oft lacking in your typical younger wordsmith. But, you see, we have less to lose. We aren’t doing this for the money (obv!) and, perhaps, most importantly, we are largely safe from most forms of litigation either due to receivership or death. 

Take my first story, for instance; ‘The Recalcitrant Dirigible’. Focus DIY & Gardening went to the wall some eight-years ago. Blimps-R-Us; well I’m not sure they were ever a genuine tangible company as such, but the salient matter is that everyone I met there were at least my age now, back then. So, I don’t suppose it’s too unfair to assume they are, in all probability, presently languishing in the Torquay's Barton Road Cemetery or some similar institution. 

The Recalcitrant Dirigible

Back in the day, the edifice that was Focus DIY & Gardening, Torquay Branch, embraced a sort of Steampunk, Brutalist architectural style. The roof was one of those saw-tooth profiled jobs that were de rigueur on many industrial buildings of the mid to late twentieth century. It was constructed from corrugated zinc sheet on the riser of the saw-tooth, and a vertical glass skylight on the four-foot drop back to the start, ready for the next corrugated upward ramp and so on, across the rest of the roof span. 

The ladder, which was affixed to the side of the building was a metal industrial affair; the ones they use for fire escapes on some commercial buildings. They have metal hoops which enclose the climber so that, should the poor unfortunate lose grip and fall, they will only land directly at the foot of the ladder; thereby reducing collateral damage to any members of the general public who might be passing in the vicinity of the fast-descending unfortunate. Scant encouragement to me though, as I ascended the sixty foot or so to the roof, carrying a harness strapped to my back containing the, at present, two-dimensional advertising blimp (light as a feather), and the Size 4 helium bottle (light as an unused ten-litre bucket of fence paint).

As my head poked above the guttering, I was struck by how conveniently close the flagpole was. I was also struck by the full force of the onshore wind straight into my fizzog. Not strong, but nevertheless, arriving in short gusty packets. I climbed up onto the roof. I now had the most glorious view of the Bay beyond the Mallock Clock Tower; a view that only a select number of people had had the privilege to espy. The clouds were tearing in from the direction of Thatcher Rock and the fish market (or ‘Living Coasts Aquarium’ as it is today). Five-seconds of strong sun; five-seconds of darkness and horizontal driving raindrops that hurt, followed then by yet more hot sun. Such is the madness of March weather. Seagulls swirled and screeched above, giving me their dead cold stare as I encroached on, what they probably considered to be, their territory.

I attached the deflated blimp to the cleat of the flagpole and connected up the helium cylinder and watched as the two-dimensions slowly filled out into three. And as it grew, the rear three fins flipped out and, for the first time I appreciated it wasn’t just eight-foot long, but closer to twelve. Its repulsive blue and yellow corporate logo was now revealed running along the sides of the blimp in all its fullness and glory. I’m sorry, Focus, but you only had to choose two aesthetically pleasing colours to promote your supposed sophistication, and you seriously chose those two! No wonder you went under. 

And the balloon expanded. I watched it inflate while, at the same time, embracing the remarkable view of Torbay. Of course, back then the harbour was smaller, with maybe only fifty or so boats, but the view to Paignton, and beyond to Berry Head, was stunning. 

“Try and attach the blimp to the flagpole on the leeward-side of the building,” they told me. This was so that the breeze would tend to pull the blimp away from the roof, rather than over the top of it. I wasn’t sure why this was important at the time (I was about to find out) but that’s what I was doing anyway. And the blimp grew and started to rise under its own weightlessness.

The Jersey Ferry was arriving at its mooring near the fish market while the water-taxi headed off in the direction of the Paignton Landing Stage. I didn’t notice the gulls departing, but the hail hitting the back of my neck made me look skywards. Strangely, the sky was very blue, but behind me, up Torwood Street, and now attacking from the landward direction, were some very angry clouds.  The wind had done a sudden one-eighty reversal and was increasing to gale force some-very-big-number.

The blimp, nearly fully inflated now and about the size of The Hindenburg, was fighting its weightlessness against the wind by pulling its tether horizontal to the flagpole. The next gust sent the thing into a massive resonance. Every couple of seconds, the nose of the balloon was bouncing, with not inconsiderable vigour, up and down on the corrugated slope of the roof. And with each bounce, the cord was slipping and loosening from its cleat. So, this explains why I was told to tie the cord off with a proper knot, and not just rely on the cleat’s friction to hold it. Now it was all becoming clear. 

I grabbed the end of the tether just as it came loose from the cleat and a particularly nasty gust sent the both of us on our way across the roof. Up the ramp we went, over the four-foot drop and down again. Up the second ramp, over the next four-foot edge and….. The blimp and I were both nicely building momentum as the wind gripped the balloon, took hold, and dragged it at its will. After the fourth edge I was taking the short cut and landing half-way up the ramp of the next section. Soon, I was clearing the whole rising sections, and simply striding the five-foot or so gap, flying from one edge to the next. 

Now at this point you may well be thinking… “Was he safe? Had he read and digested the Health and Safety manual provided by ‘Blimps-R-Us’ before embarking on this project?.”

The answers to these two admittedly pertinent questions were, and in order: probably yes, I’d read the manual, and definitely no, I’d not digested it. In my defence, I was a young man with a fresh mortgage and a promise of thirty quid in my hand for ‘An hour’s work at most’. 

Secondly, in extremis, I was not actually physically tied to the balloon, so I could simply release it into the infinity of space if, for one minute, I thought I’d finish up doing a Mary Poppins across Torquay Harbour.

Now these ‘Brutalist’ industrial buildings are ugly and functional but, to their credit, they often do possess certain elements of symmetry. So, right there, just ahead of me was a matching second flagpole on the opposite corner of the building. With one hand tightly holding the balloon I collided square, hard and head-on with pole number two, thus ensuring I didn’t inadvertently slip around it and off into oblivion, as per the aforementioned Mary Poppins scenario. Mercifully, the wind had dropped momentarily, and I took my opportunity to tie the cord onto the cleat, and this time I was careful to knot it off correctly. 

And lo, just ahead of me, at the building’s edge, was a second matching fire escape ladder. So, I didn’t even have to cross the roof again in an unpredictable headwind. Down the ladder I went and I was just stepping off the bottom rung, onto terra-firma, when something occurred to me which, because you are smart, dear reader, has undoubtedly already occurred to you. So, I next made my way along the front of the Focus building on the pavement, and then back up my first ladder again to collect the helium bottle in its harness.

Finally, it was back to my car and home in time for Grandstand and Frank Bough, thirty pounds to the good.

Driving down towards the harbour I was admiring the vista across to Hollicombe and Roundham headlands when I thought I may have seen something moving high in the sky in the glare of the sun. I may have been mistaken but It appeared yellow and vibrant blue and it seemed to be heading, on an ever-increasing wind, and at quite a rate of knots in the direction of Berry Head.  

At that point, I hadn’t reached the clock tower. I could so easily have gone around the Mallock Tower roundabout and returned up Torwood Street to confirm the bloomin’ blimp was still shackled to its rightful place. But no. I didn’t turn around or even stop the car. I never checked. I heard nothing on the news about UFOs or fishing boats tangling nets around large pieces of colourful plastic debris. I was still offered other jobs by Blimps-R-Us, significantly none of the jobs included removing that particular dirigible from  the building that was ‘Focus DIY & Gardening – Time well spent, money well saved’.  I got paid and nothing more was said or heard. At least not until now -forty-five years on.

The building today. It’s now a Bowling Alley. Clearly, it’s had a new roof and a new façade. To be honest the whole thing might have been rebuilt for all I remember! [Courtesy of Google StreetView]