A1 BOUND
It was always planned, and is a pivotal element in this piece, and yet it’s not something I’ve actually ever done before. Interview my father that is.
He is the family link to Hartlepool and in his early youth… 15 – 16… he could be found with a few mates eyeing up prospective dance partners on the Rink dance floor. Various things like pacemakers being fitted (my father) and broken hips (my mother) have meant that filming was delayed until yesterday, when we finally headed down the A1 to Yorkshire for a bit of a chat.
I have met quite a few people now who have coloured in the detail of the Rink for me and, although I wanted him to do that too, I was interested to get a wider perspective, being that he was brought up in Hartlepool, evacuated, and then returned when still a boy. He was one of the bicycle squad that delivered messages around the town when communications were down after the frequent bombing raids.
Being taught to box is one of the things that cropped up. At the beginning of the project I had thought boxing might have been a bit of a theme, but it hasn’t turned out that way even though I think there was a time when bouts were promoted at the Rink. No one I have met can tell me much about that aspect, and to pursue it would be tangential to my piece, so this is one of the few times it gets a mention. In Hartlepool boxing is a topic in its own right.
Interestingly though, there is a generational link to this theme. One that probably just about had its day after my generation. He talks about being taken by his father to a boxing club to learn to defend himself at school. It obviously worked, because he got a reputation as someone you didn’t mess with. School is a tribal place of course, and as a boy I was taught to box too and the same applied. You didn’t need to throw too many punches to send out a signal that there were softer targets in the school yard. It pretty much worked for me, but I’m, not sure if the Queensbury rules are adhered to these days. Thus far I have only passed on this particular skill set to the cat. The cat at least is an interested and committed sparring partner.
After the war there was no shortage of work. He was regularly asked to work 7 days a week, but wasn’t too keen on spending his entire life there.. and the promise of eventual promotion to the heady heights of Lipton’s branch manager wasn’t entirely what he had in mind as a career move.
Saturday nights were Rink nights though; he even took dancing lessons, and tells me he often got compliments on his technique. Well, I’ll have to take his word on that. The floor is the star. He reckons he has never since been on a dance floor that was so impressively sprung. Others have said the same, that as a full floor of feet moved in time to the rhythm, then the floor would pass on a sort of wave which you could feel like a communal feedback of motion, propelling you across the expanse. In my mind I see a mexican wave of floorboards.
I was going to buy a record player off ebay this week, but the good ones go for quite a few hundred pounds so I have been waiting for an affordable bargain. When I eventually get my big band song recorded and on vinyl I want to play it on something appropriate to the period. On Friday I was in the studio working on a commercial shoot and happened to mention it to the studio’s owner. He took me round the corner to one of the room sets he has and showed me this classic – full on piece of furniture – radiogram, in perfect working order. Late fifties I reckon. Probably still gets the Light Programme. Record on, crackle of the stylus and away you go…another time, another place.
