THIS ISLAND LIFETHE way some people carry on about recycling, you would think they had just discovered its benefits.
But necessity was always the mother of this particular invention and much of it goes back centuries, to the days when country folk could not afford to waste a thing.
This was confirmed in many of the yarns related by Island dialect expert and local historian, the late Jack Lavers.
I mentioned last week he contacted Angela Snow a few years ago, when she was compiling a history of Havenstreet school, and provided her with anecdotes of village life in Victorian times.
Apparently, they had been handed down by his grandfather, William Boyce, a member of a family which has been represented in Havenstreet for generations.
Jack was especially taken by the concept of 'slush-holes’, which were the forerunners of the compost heaps we are now encouraged to establish in our gardens.
Years ago in Island villages, including Havenstreet, virtually every cottage had its heap of refuse not far from the back-door.
On to it was thrown household waste such as ashes, tea leaves, kitchen refuse and washing-up water.
These slush-holes were emptied every so often and used as garden fertiliser.
The size and content of one’s slush-hole dictated one’s position in village society and considerable prestige could be gained from having white-bellied newts crawling about in the liquid at the bottom of the hole.
Jack’s grandfather reckoned Havenstreet used to stage an annual slush-hole of the year competition and it is a word which has travelled down through the generations.
Indeed, during the heat of battle, the village cricket team for which I played was often referred to as a 'bunch of slush-holes’ — or words to that effect.
It appears Havenstreet also had a reputation for producing bare-knuckle fighters and the bouts usually took place on a Sunday morning in the yard behind the White Hart pub.
These occasions were especially popular when the Ryde-Newport railway line was being built.
Some of the labourers working on the construction, many of whom slept rough in barns and woods around the village, often provided the opposition.
A member of the Boyce family was one of the regular sluggers and he used to harden his knuckles with the juice from walnut shucks. So much for the Marquis of Queensbury …
Such deviousness didn’t appear to do him a great deal of good, however. On one particular Sunday, he got up before dawn, walked to Freshwater for a fight, got a hell of a hiding and then walked home again.
The Rylands family were great benefactors to the villagers of Havenstreet in the 19th century, providing many modern amenities — but sometimes they must have wondered why they bothered.
John Rylands (whose grand home eventually became the former Longford Hospital) arranged for gas supplies to be installed at his cottages and he employed a Mr Nash, the village blacksmith, to be in charge of the operation.
However, it did not prove to be one of his more inspired decisions.
One evening, after Mr and Mrs Nash had retired for the night, she complained about the smell of gas and sent her old man downstairs to investigate.
Mr Nash proved to be less than fully conversant with this new-fangled invention and decided to light a candle to assist in his search.
He was recovered semi-conscious a few hours later from beneath a couple of tons of rubble — and it took the best part of six months to repair his shattered home.
Apparently, Mrs Nash’s comments were not recorded for posterity.
Drop the stuffed elephant – straight down the old well
THE news that Jim Caws had reluctantly decided to close the family shoe shop in Seaview next month immediately brought back memories of my days as a cub reporter with the old IW Times during the Sixties.
Jim’s father, Gerald, ran the shop then and it was a regular stopping-off point every Tuesday for a cup of coffee and a chat as I skittered around the greater Ryde area gathering snippets of news.
Gerald knew everything that was going on in the village — and if he didn’t, he knew somebody who did.
I was sitting in the shop one morning when one of his staff came in from the back and enigmatically announced: "I’ve thrown the stuffed elephant down there now and it’s still not full."
Gerald merely shrugged and carried on telling me about a stalwart of the local football club committee who had just died.
But my burgeoning news antennae began to twitch and further investigations revealed Gerald had a far more interesting story (literally) in his own backyard.
Earlier that morning, apparently, an old well nobody knew existed had suddenly opened up at the back of the shop and the ever-resourceful Gerald had decided to use it as a convenient repository for the household rubbish.
We wandered out back and there, barely discernible at the bottom of the vast chasm, was indeed a pink, stuffed elephant.
Gerald was more than happy to see his shop, and its ancient well, featured in a couple of national newspapers a few days later.