The Bristol Times is a supplement in the Evening Post which appears on Mondays. Recently, there has been correspondence about Bristol South Baths which was used for other activities rather the obvious. I sent my contribution which appeared on Monday 26th July

“Your letters about Bristol South Baths brought back memories happy and sad. As well as roller skating they used to have pantomimes there with the performers amazingly strutting their stuff across the boards laid out over the water. My mother took me and my little brother, by bus from Kingswood, in the early fifties. The strapping “principal boy” was a traditional thigh slapping female and perhaps the pantomime was “Dick Whittington” for I remember joining in singing the bizarre “Open the Door, Richard”.

As to roller skating, about six years later, when working as a petrol pump attendant at Jack Lamb’s Garage in Downend, I became friends with a boy called Barry Turton who worked in the butcher’s across the road. Once a week we would roar off on his motor bike, me on the back, through the freezing fog of the winter nights. Arriving at Bristol South we would join the queue to hire the unwieldy skates which had to be strapped on over your shoes. The most decrepit and ancient pair, with a broken leather toe piece and/or missing laces always seemed to be reserved for me. Some “posh” people had their own skates. What luxury! The noise was deafening: the shouts and screams as people fell over, the racket the wheels made on the wooden boards magnified by the ever present swimming pool echo. I was a useless skater and stuck close to the side but Barry, who was very handsome, treated his fans to an exhibition of fancy footwork in the middle of the arena.

The next summer I went away for six months travelling round Europe (I was a little ahead of my time) – and when I returned home in the autumn of 1959, I heard the tragic news that Barry had been accidentally killed in a motor-cycle accident. He was nineteen.”

Last night, the 28th July, I was delighted to receive a telephone call from Barry’s younger brother, Roger, who by coincidence is visiting the UK from Australia where he now lives. We were able to share a few more memories of Barry. He told me that his mother died a few years ago but that she would have been very happy to know that he is still remembered with affection.