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. 

My mother shows me an advertisement in the Evening Post [around 1954] which reads: “Recruits Wanted for the Girls’ Nautical Training Corps. Apply Thursday evenings, 7 pm, TS “Lotus”, at the Charles Hill Dockyard.” I tingle with anticipation. This is for me; I can already feel the salt spray in my face, and the wind in my hair.

Alas for my romantic notions. TS “Lotus” was “a stone ship” firmly aground and there was no boat in which to put to sea, but the cadets seemed friendly, as were the officers, Mrs. Champion who was tall, dark and elegant, and pretty blonde Mrs. Kingsley.

We lined up in two watches, port and starboard, “tallest on the flanks, shortest amidships”, with the officers in front of the big ship’s brass bell and a flag pole, where the flag, a red ensign, would be “bent on” for colours and taken down at sunset. I was placed in the starboard watch.

I learned a few knots, and was kitted out in a smart uniform: navy blue skirt and jacket, white shirt, black tie, black stockings, a white lanyard and a round sailor hat, with the letters G.N.T.C. picked out on the black band. The officers had to be saluted “shortest up, shortest down” and never without your cap on. It was thrilling to be sometimes mistaken for a Wren, but needless to say silly boys called us “The Girls Naughty Training Corps.” I was so keen to receive my Ordinary Cadet armband that I tramped to the Dock Yard on a dark January evening - through the snow.

On Empire Youth Sunday in May 1955 we marched through Bristol with our sister unit from Avonmouth, behind the band of TS “Adventure”, the Sea Cadets’ unit. Unlike nowadays, the twain never trained together. Off duty, it was OK to fraternise, and Brian, the “Adventure” band’s Drum Major went out with Margaret Crew, one of our girls, which seemed impossibly glamourous.

It was our dream to get a boat. Eventually, Mrs. Champion found a small rowing boat, which we called “Lotus Bud”. She was tiny, taking three people at most, and badly needed repair. We held jumble sales and begged donations to raise funds and by the summer she was seaworthy. Before we could take her out we had to undergo a wet bob test to show we could swim. My swimming was never very good but I managed to pass. We had large “Mae West” type water wings, but I don’t recall any talk of insurance. Can you imagine nowadays a crowd of teenage girls with no previous experience rowing up and down the Dock, all the way to where the “Flying Fox” was once moored? Nowadays “Elf and Safety” would have a seizure. Nobody drowned or even fell in, but once we had a race with some Teddy Boys in another boat, and on another occasion we almost rammed a new vessel of Charles Hill’s. It was called “The Queen Mother” but no harm was done.

This the launch of “Lotus Bud” - I don’t remember who the man is, but I am next to him in the foreground with my head down. Mrs. Champion is standing on the left behind the two Petty Officers. I think the one nearest her is Margaret Crew. Is the officer in the “Bud” Miss Price?

Do you recognise anybody?

Later that summer, with another officer, Miss Price, we joined the Avonmouth girls for a “Crossing the Line” ceremony at Shirehampton fete. As Amphitrite, goddess of the sea, in a green shroud and seaweed in my hair, I instructed my “Doctors” to give a dose of jalap to three cowering Sea Cadets in girls’ clothes. When they were pronounced free of tropical diseases, they were ducked in a canvas tank filled with water. For obvious reasons, the boys gave false names: ‘Arry Ticker, Lofty, Jack Tar. Everybody concerned got very wet.

The next year I went to London to work and joined the Kilburn unit and made more good friends with whom I spent a never to be forgotten week aboard TS “Foudroyant” in Portsmouth Harbour (For more information see  http://www.hms-trincomalee.co.uk/) where we wore bell-bottomed trousers, and slept in hammocks, having to “lash up and stow” in the morning. After a cold water wash in “the heads”, we had seamanship classes or took up oars in the harbour in the whaler. Everyone who wished was allowed to climb so far up the mast into the rigging.

Aboard “Foudroyant” - I am in the middle – The others are Helen Rusk, left and Audrey Felton. The cap ribbon.

We even went dancing on the Royal Navy boys’ training ship.  One day, in Portsmouth town, on “shore leave” I absent mindedly put my cap on back to front. A passing sailor, a real one, yelled out, “You’re going astern!” I was mortified.

“Foudroyant” in Portsmouth Harbour with a passing Royal Navy MTB.

Signals were my thing. In London for an “Anchors Aweigh” display, a bossy officer spotted the crossed flags on my arm, and thanked me for “volunteering” to raise the colours. I had done it loads of times before, but there was a large crowd and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten was the guest of honour. I was all fingers and thumbs. I had begun to raise the flag, when to my horror, I saw I had attached it upside down. Trying not to panic, I pulled it down, detached it, and started again. In his speech, Lord Mountbatten, looking straight at me, with the hint of a chuckle, congratulated the ship’s company on their excellent signalling. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was a sad day when he was murdered by the IRA.

For a short time I became an officer, but wanderlust got me and I went travelling. I returned my uniform and in a thoughtless moment even gave away my silver bosun’s call, with which I would pipe dignitaries “over the side”. Looking back, for sheer fun, my time with the G.N.T.C. was one of the best times of my life. Some names I remember were Foale, Miller, Shappland, Sheppard: we seldom used first names, but there were also Elaine Evans and two girls called Harris, Margaret and Lyn, who had a brother Dick, a sea cadet; Phyllis Gibson, Petty Officer Anne Edwards of Avonmouth. Where are they now? My name was Doreen Pillinger then.

The Hole, outside John Uren’s the Chemist’s shop in Badminton Road, Downend, opposite the Horseshoe pub became locally infamous. This picture was taken by Mr Uren in the late 1950s. Note there is only one car to be seen. My father (Jack Pillinger, 1902-85) is on the right. It is one of my favourite pictures of him as it in his working clothes. Do you know the names of the other two?

A report in the Evening Post of June 10th 1981