WHO`S THAT MAN?

By Keith Newbery - Friday, May 16, 2008

Morris Barton is third from left, back row, in this old football picture.

THIS ISLAND LIFE
LOOK closely at this photograph. Hidden in its depths are the saturnine features of a young man rumoured by my fellow columnist, Percy Sutson, to be on the verge of completing his journey across the political spectrum.
It certainly gives a whole new meaning to that familiar phrase in picture captions — ‘from left to right.’
Yes, it’s none other than Morris Barton with the other young bucks from the County Press football team. He appears to be the only one wearing a vest.
I’m grateful to Brian Greening for providing the photo. It’s one of many appearing in his latest book, A Diary Of Island Football 1885-1970, which will be on sale at the County Press shop any day now.

WINTER OF DISCONTENT
MY latest experience of travelling by Wightlink is not unique but at least it shows I share the pain of fellow Islanders.
Almost 100 of us from Brading Town FC had to travel to the mainland recently for a cup final in which our reserve team was playing. We were leaving from the end of the pier and, ominously, there was a bit of a breeze blowing.
First we had the privilege of paying £4.50 to park up there and this was followed by the grim realisation we would be lurching across The Solent in the catamaran Our Lady Pamela.
If I remember correctly, this tatty contraption is named after Lord Mountbat-ten’s daughter, Lady Pamela Hicks. If that is the case, she should sue.
It cannot do much for any lady’s image to be named after something grubby, tatty, smelly and smoky.
Perhaps Wightlink should rename the thing Our Edna The Inebriate Woman.
Halfway to Portsmouth the inevitable pitching and rolling began. Knuckles began to whiten and grown men slumped in their seats with eyes closed as if to sleep.
Most, in fact, were praying as water began to drip from the ceiling.
One ten-year-old lad in our party completed the entire journey with all eight fingers crossed and nobody would have been surprised to hear a few choruses of Celine Dion singing My Heart Will Go On coming over the Tannoy.
I thought of this journey when I looked at Wightlink’s website and read that ‘travelling to the Island has never been more convenient or enjoyable.’ They omitted to add ‘or expensive’.
What a pity the alacrity with which the company decided to impose a fuel surcharge last week is not matched by its acuity and foresight in replacing vessels which have never been fit for purpose.
Yes, I know they have promised to build what they describe as a ‘robust new generation of catamarans, purpose-built to better cope with the punishing weather conditions experienced on the route.’
This is, in fact, a tacit admission the existing ones were never up to it — and anyway the replacements won’t be here until next summer.
In the meantime, we have to slum it for another winter aboard Our Lady Pamela.
Lest Wightlink suspect an ulterior motive for my criticism of their service, I am happy (and relieved) to make it clear Brading Town receive some sponsorship from Hovertravel.
It means for afternoon matches at least we are able to nip across The Solent in relative comfort.

A CHERRYADE AND CHEESE ROLL AT TERRY'S
RECENT photographs and correspondence in this newspaper about Ma Freeman’s much-lamented cafe in Newport got me thinking about the other pit-stops frequented by working men on the Island in years past.
Whenever I ventured forth with my father in his scrap-metal lorry in the 50s, I used to hope he had some business to conduct in the Newport area, for there, lurking in St Thomas’s Square, was Terry’s Cafe.
It was always pronounced ‘caffy,’ of course, because whoever Terry may have been, he ran a business as far removed from a ‘caffay’ as you can possibly imagine.
I think it occupied the premises where the pharmacy is now, and it’s difficult to conceive of two more disparate businesses. One is dedicated to hygiene and the prevention of nasty illnesses — the other conspicuously wasn’t.
My abiding memory of Terry’s is though it wasn’t particularly large, you could barely see from one side to the other through the haze of cigarette smoke. It wasn’t so much passive smoking as passive fumigation.
I must have been one of the few nine-year-olds on the IW with a smoker’s cough. I used to emerge from there having consumed a cheese roll and a glass of cherryade smelling as though I was on two ounces of Golden Virginia a day.
Tea was served in mugs of chamber-pot dimensions, saucers were regarded as mere affectations and my old chap seemed to know everyone in the place.
There was an air of mateyness and camaraderie that invariably develops when men of similar age, class and interests get together.
Starbucks it wasn’t — thank God.

WHO`S THAT MAN?

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