How I got into detecting - courtesy of Grampy Bill!

[Neil]

This may seem an odd one to post in this section, but all will become clear.

When I was 7 years old {1978} I had a Viking metal detector off my Grampy Bill about a year before he died and made a few finds along Ely River (I intend to go to the same spot again soon), but could never afford the batteries - we were properly skint in those days. Anyway I had always had an interest in "old stuff" so Grampy shuffled off round the corner in the Docks and bought me the best machine he could afford. As you can imagine I was delighted.

Grampy Bill was the spit of me and 6 foot tall (big for those days) with a mop of curly hair when we buried him a few years later. He lived on the streets of Cardiff during the 1920's until he was about 7 or 8 years old when a kindly woman took him in (Mrs Woollacott)and treated him as his own, so we know very little about his background. He then went to sea at about the age of 12 and  spent the rest of his life below deck as an Engine master on various tug boats in Cardiff Dock and around the World and was sunk three times - once by a U-Boat and once by a Stuka during the Second World War. The final time was due to an engine fire in Cardiff dock and each time he managed to get out of the Hell that is the Engine room despite numerous of his ship mates not surviving.

Anyway when I was about 5 he made me a copy of the U-Boat that sank his ship from wood and lead that I would float in the bath and probably inadvertently poison myself! It now sits on my wash stand. I also still have an oil painting of his last ship on the wall at home.

No reason really to share this, just thought you may be interested.

Neil

 

[handyman [Alan}]

a lovely tale -- thx for sharing it neil.

it does remind me tho of a tale i heard about u boats knowing of the fresh water supply at port eynon  would, , allegedly, often stop and replenish their water supplies from the stream.

cheers

[nfl]

really good story, sentimental and intresting ,,,wish i had a intresting story of how i got into detecting but the reality is ,, ive always been intrested in history and 1 day decided to buy a detector{vk30}and thats about it, hope to encourage my 6 year old son into the hobby{alredy knows what a tombac button is.....

[ROMAN STEVE]

Nice story neil and nice you got something to remember him by

[willow tree]

facinating story neil i like hearing about cardiff,s past by the way i first started detecting on the banks of the ely river .i still detect it now and again as it is close to my house and still find a few coins cheers mate   

[Roman (Ray)]

hi neil.
yes it was an interesting story my friend,
i enjoyed reading that neil.
great story mate.
ray.

[Salty (Karl) Cardiff Scan Club]

Good story Neil,My family are from Tiger bay, i spent a lot of time there as a young boy,and although i'm only 45 now, times were very tight for us back then too, so i can associate with your grampies experiences, it was a rough place but a good place to grow up, you new who your friends were, I used to go sieving for coal off the foreshore with my dad at about 5 years old, chopping up driftwood for firewood, and rabbiting for food, not fun. The area was full of characters just like your grampy, lived and seen some terrible things, often fearsome characters from the outside but most had a solid heart of gold and loved to share their tales if you gave them the chance, Reading your story took me right back to my childhood, including being chased from the  Bailey's dry dock for nicking tins of Red lead

[rjm]

Lovely story Neil.

But if you had a metal detector at that age you weren't that poor!

I'm from Grangetown (next to Tiger bay) where Men were men and even the women looked like men. We had a tin bath infront of the open hearth fire and if you were lucky you got to have the first bath. (Before that I shared it with my brothers and sister until I started big school).

I had a newspaper round after school which I did for years as well as being a Pools collector (the only way of getting rich before the National Lottery).

Life was so hard I used to get up two hours before I went to bed.  

My dad was a Royal Navy man and my mum a W.R.E.N. What was nice was that I was born in wedlock 12 months after they married. My dad then collected rent from council tennants around Cardiff using his motorcycle and side car. He then got a Ford Anglia when things improved which was a bugger to push up Caerphilly mountain when it stopped three quarters of the way up.

I went to The Bishop of Llandaff High School at the time the Bishop got caught performing indecent acts in the public toilets at Llandaff Fields. Llandaff tech then followed where lectures were in a wooden hut at the back.

My dad then bought me a moped for my sixteenth birthday but as we were still poor I ended up with a Puch 49cc whilst all my mates had a Yamaha FS1E. Me and my moped were the butt of jokes. I was forever putting in new piston rings as they wore out trying to keep up with FS1E's.

.........And that was only the first part of my life.  

But things could have been worse. I was never torpedoed  

[rjm]

Ps. Forgot to mention I was no angel back then.

We used to break into the yard of the Social club on Penarth road and nick the crates of empty pop bottles. Then take them around the shops to get the refund money! 

Boots profits went down in Cardiff City Centre due to organised shoplifting sprees. I would expand on this but I was leaned on 40 years ago that if I ever divulged details I would have my fingers broken. So I can't say who was with me.

[Salty (Karl) Cardiff Scan Club]

ah, the old pop bottle scam our corner shop thought they'd be clever and put a "W" on the label of all their Lowes bottles that had 2p deposit on them, we used to get them from the off license yard down the road, we then mad a perfect replica "W" stamp out of a potato and stamp them up to get our 2p deposits
Them were the days, then there was the protection rackets and brothels but that's another story 

[Al.Thepastfinder, ( Alan )]

yeah  they realy had it bad back then Neil, but it makes us  think thank god times have changed,  you got some nice memories there too and some souviner keep peices,