91Èȱ¬

Transcript

J: "Well, I was, I could, I could turn my hand to anything. If you see my - back of my house - I rebuilt all that, brick by brick."

B: "...that kitchenette and the bathroom he did. 'Jack of all trades' - that's the saying..."

J: "...But I was a master of a good few, 'cos 'Jack of all trades is master of none' isn't it? Drove the buses, I worked in Bulmers..."

B: "...cider press..."

J: "...Cider press, ahmm..."

B: "He worked on a Co-operative bakery van..."

J: "...bakery..."

B: "Never out of work, he wasn't."

J: "Harris'..."

B: "Harris' bacon people, yes..."

J: "Bacon - that was a good job, good money. My father taught me to repair shoes ... in the very old days."

B: "He used to have the old last in the house, you know. His father did, and he used to mend these shoes, because that's who he had it from in the beginning like."

J: "I'd be under that table in the back kitchen 'tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.' I used to drive my mother barmy. Not a cobbler, a shoe-repairer. A cobbler would only cobble. Put a little bit by here and a little bit by there, and it's a right mess. If somebody was getting married, I would make their shoes to suit their clothes. Say on a Monday, we'd be doing stripping - taking the old soles off to get down to the nitty-gritty."

B: "And on a Friday night, here he comes with the big bags. Shoes in the one bag, heels in the other. And then, at my kitchen table, full of pairs of shoes with no heels on them..."

J: "And we never used to put nails in them, it were never nails. They were always glued. 'Grippo' - that would stick the soles on them, they wouldn't come off, mind. They never came off once the 'Grippo' was put on there, they're on. If you made a mistake, you'd have to rip it all off and start again."
"Women's shoes, see, were so delicate, you had funny heels on them, didn't you? Used to take us a long time to do some of them. Stilettos, they called them didn't they? They used to break, oh, God."

B: "And down the hospital was the longest, wasn't it?"

J: "Down the hospital 29 years."

B: "He worked in the mortuary."

J: "Oo-ch, I don't talk about that, doing post-mortems."

B: "We got a book in the house that he helped this - I don't know whether you've heard of Professor Bernard Knight? He's the big pathologist here. Well, he helped him to write a book, and he sent us a copy. We got a book in the house."
"Jack of all trades."