Living
in the Past
O.K! So I can hear the sound of Jethro
Tull in the background as I ruminate on how far the club has come since I first
joined in 19........... Where the
members lounge is now used to be the kitchen, bestowed with its one gas and
then two electric upright cookers. People used to fight to get their bacon or
sausage under the grill in the morning so they could have butties and
everyone’s eggs coalesced in the old fat in the frying pan so there’d be a
fight for the best looking remnant. There would be a crowd around the
inefficient fire with most of the heat disappearing up the chimney as a battle,
“2 second rule applies”, for the comfortable chair nearest the flames. The tiny
sink and draining board was where the window is today and was never very sturdy
as it was propped up on a couple of legs at the front with a hot water geyser
to supply the tea or washing-up water.
The new members kitchen was on uneven
(rotting) floored committee room with the amazing oil-fired boiler taking up a
lot of the floor space. The boiler was a contraption to behold as the fan flew
around and spread oil outward in a mist which sometimes lit and set off a roar
like a B52 bomber taking off. Most of the time it didn’t fire up and then the
games began, cleaning out the dust, soot and priming the felt ring and trying
again with the loss of a few eyebrows in the process. This heated up the old
radiators, strewn with drying caving gear so the whole place had that lovely
sweaty sock smell.
The new visitors lounge was usually
too cold for anything but a rave when everyone was a bit liquored-up and
couldn’t feel the cool flags beneath them, whereas the visitors kitchen was a
Spartan affair with only gas rings on the metal surface and little in the way
of storage space, the mice loved it. Our
bunk beds had one level in each bedroom allowing lots of snuggling up basically
for warmth and little else, except in the height of summer. The two toilets
encouraged everyone, ladies included, to use the outside for most ablutions
though there was a bath, often full of shrinking rope or woodlice. (It is now
stored under the bunk in the members bedroom)
The salubrious changing facilities
make our new ones seem positively palatial. Some rickety benches, concrete
floor, a sluice and two of the most pathetic communal showers ever produced.
When someone ran water anywhere in the building the shower changed from tepid
to freezing in seconds with the requisite screams emanating from those within. The
draught that blew through the garage door was something to behold as it often
swept in small snowdrifts in winter and midges in the summer so the whole area
had a rugged feel to it, however, there was a nice little niche for a candle at
one end for that rustic feel.
Ladders were stored on the steps up to
what is now the reading room/library as this truncated about four steps from
the bend in the stairs and your head banged on the ceiling. The rope store was
in the old barn the remaining wall of which stands next to the oil tank in the new
car park. The door was forever sticking as the building slowly listed and
collapsed and entering the dark room was always done with some trepidation as
only a few acrows and bits of rope held the whole thing together.
The rest of the barn beyond the tackle
store was strewn with bits of tin roof, beams and fallen down wall, whereas the
huge barn opposite slowly degenerated until it reach ground level and only a
tiny bit remains where the ash is now dumped.
Our rudimentary toilets fed into a
pipe that ran under the entrance hall and quite often blocked up with the
ensuing effluent emerging as a bubbling mass in the entrance to be prodded out
by some kind person without a nose. This fed into the crude septic tank or hole
in the ground that needed emptying with buckets dipped into the foul mess and
carried well away to be lost forever, not a pleasant job and strangely few
takers were up for this work.
How far have we come from those
halcyon days? Central heating that works, under floor heating in the changing
room, toilets a plenty (though peeing outside is still the norm), cookers, hobs
microwaves. We’ve got comfortable seating and sleeping accommodation, tables
for eating on and cupboard space everywhere for food and fridges for storing
it. We’ve got fires that actually produce heat and showers that clean rather
than dirty (use sparingly).
We’ve a reading room and a library so
all-in-all we are well provided for and all done by very few people considering
the 160 members who could have helped, so please try to look after it and not
purposefully destroy what we’ve worked so hard to build, rant over! Sorry
couldn’t help myself.
Ray Duffy
