NOTES
There are no notes for this chapter yet. Some of the notes on other pages are based on info YOU send me. |
The Book of Taps, you may remember, had its origin in a plan to make a career of dynamic dossing (see Chapter 26). But I had so far somehow held back from the true spirit of this project, in that I had already come perilously close to 'settling down' in Fulham, then Brighton. And, of course, the motivation for my two or three weeks on the road from Brighton to Looe had been the pursuit of Linda, not the furtherance of my earlier aim to become Dosser-in-Chief of the United Kingdom. |
| However, once I had put that runaway child out of my mind, my thoughts returned to the true purpose of The Book of Taps. This time, however, I thought I might as well incorporate the idea of getting the occasional job for two weeks before moving on, as I had done in Brighton. Of course, the idea there had not been to disappear after getting the first pay packet, but from now on it would be planned that way Because of the week-in-hand system it would mean doing two weeks' work for one week's pay, but so what? I decided that the first port of call for a two-week job would be Bristol. I returned to Plymouth, whether on foot or by hitching I can't remember. In Plymouth I started what was to become my standard practice of going into libraries to copy (by hand - no photocopiers then) sections of maps in order more easily to find various places mentioned in The Book of Taps. On this occasion I was mainly interested in locating Winterbourne spike, near Bristol. (For a description of the 'spike' system, see Chapter 27). |
| I began to be more adept at hitching, learning to recognise good places to stand, which offers to turn down as being unhelpful, and so on. Nevertheless, there would be many soakings to come, many occurrences of standing at the same spot for two or three hours and many episodes of deep dejection. However, I think I made this particular journey from Plymouth to Winterbourne quite quickly. |
| As explained in Chapter 27, apart from Gordon Road, which was unique, the spikes (Reception Centres) fell into two main categories. There were the hospital casual wards, which were the remnants of the old workhouses and therefore situated in urban areas, and there were the Rehabilitation Centres, which were mostly in remote rural areas and usually housed in former military camps. Winterbourne was one of the latter type. I already knew fromThe Book of Taps that when you signed yourself into one of these places you were in effect committing yourself to a prison camp. You couldn't leave until the spikemaster (in official speak, the manager) decided you had been rehabilitated or that you weren't a genuine dosser. This was usually after about a month, in practice. You were not allowed to return to that centre ever, and could be arrested just for trying. The spikemaster could also have you arrested, when the police paid one of their weekly visits, for refusing to work for your keep by cleaning, growing the vegetables or cooking. There were high fences all around the perimeter to prevent escape. The truth, which I suppose would have come as a big surprise to the Government, was that most of the inmates were not so much concerned with getting out as with staying in. They would try to convince the spikemaster that they were not yet fully cured of their wonderlust or whatever it was the Government thought was the matter with us. In my case, whenever I used the Rehabilitation Centre type of spike the managers would appear to take a particular dislike to me. As a result, after only about a week or ten days they would say something like "Young man, I have come to the conclusion that you are not a genuine vagrant, and I must therefore ask you to leave immediately". |
| This was supposed to be sadistic and my fellow dossers would tell me where I had gone wrong. Although it hurt my pride to be accused of not being a real dosser when, in fact, I was trying to be the most accomplished one in the land, I was in general happy with this tendency to throw me out sooner than was usual. A week or two of congenial and interesting company (rather different from the Sally Ann residents) and good rest, despite having to do a certain amount of work, was just about right for me. |
| My first experience of this type of spike, at Winterbourne, pretty much set the pattern described above, and I was out after a week. I hitched from there into Bristol where I went through the usual procedure (well-documented in previous chapters and hereafter called the 'Round') in order to get a job and two weeks' National Assistance, including vouchers for the Sally Ann. The job was as a porter in the bonded tobacco warehouses. Tobacco was one of the main wares coming into the Port of Bristol and it was held in the bonded warehouses by the city Corporation pending assessment for tobacco duty. My job was to manhandle huge crates of the stuff onto a pair of wheels, then take them up in the lift to upper floors. The crates, as I remember them, were at least as tall as I was. The job was not only exhausting but dangerous. They had been known to topple and cause serious injury, and I was always nearly tipping them over, especially when running at the lift in order to get the wheels over the hump where the lift didn't quite line up with the floor. Anyway, I somehow managed to get through the two weeks without getting hurt. This time I disappeared as soon as I had picked up my wages, at midday. After all, I was only getting one week's pay because of the usual week-in-hand system. I could, of course, have given the statutary two weeks' notice on my very first day there, thus ensuring that I got paid for the whole two weeks, but that would have been too embarassing, and this two-weeks-for-the-price-of-one policy of mine was destined to persist for a while. |