WORMS

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 12 YEARS OLD

When I was a student aged 16 to 19 at Scarborough Technical College, we used to scare the girls waiting for the College bus outside the Scarboroughy Railway Station, by digging massive lugworms out of the planters outside the railway station. We used to sneak up behind them and hang the worms, up to 2 feet long, around their necks. But that's not what this particular story is all about.

No, this story is about a BIGGER worm locals called the "Thirsk" which is actually a large ragworm residing in huge quantities in the thick deep mud of the Scarborough harbour.

When I was about 12, I used to go down at low tide with wader boots up to my waist and stagger through the mud in the inner harbour with a bucket and garden fork. The mud always went up to my ankles at least, but sometimes I would sink even deeper to my knees and more, and on a few ocassion, I got stuck and had to be dragged out by accompanying schoolmates. The mud was always dark grey and very slimy, but the perfect home to ragworms.

One could easily imagine getting stuck on a dark evening when no-one notices, and the tide comes in and the worms have an unexpected feast.

Digging them out was actually relatively easy compared to the energy expended struggling through the mud. In fact, every fork-full of mud would render forward at least three or four big worms. They had to be pulled out very carefully by hand from the mud, otherwise they could easily break in half. Frequently, they reached up to three feet in length, but ragworms are the best bait a fisherman could ever have, and well worth the effort.

I've heard that digging for "Thirsks" today in the harbour is banned because of health and safety regulations, (which is not really surprising because it would be easy for an inexperienced person to get stuck or even drown.)

At low tide, the harbour mud looks dead and dirty to most onlookers, but you can be assured that underneath the surface of the peaceful mud lies a massive wriggling population of ragworms enjoying going about their lives.

HOLY KAYAK

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 13 YEARS OLD

Whilst at the Westwood Secondary School in the centre of Scarborough behind the railway Station, a new kid joined our class. His name was Christian and he was American, and his father worked at RAF Fylingdales up on the Yorkshire Moors. Fylingdales was always a mystery to us kids, and smelled to us of James Bond, spies, and the like.

Christian was a huge boy and bigger in both height and width than any others of us. In fact, some kids cruelly made unkind remarks when he stumbled into last position in running races at the sports field on top of Oliver's Mount. I can't recollect me being one of the people who made rude remarks (but I could have been), and Christian actually became quite a close friend for a while until he eventually moved away, because he lived in a house at the top of Castle Gardens (presumably rented) at the foot of the Scarborough Castle, and just up the street from where I lived in Princess Terrace.

Christian always had lots of pocket money, and when I visited his house, he's always have some new fangled gadget, such as an a small engine that ran on metholated spirits. He was fun to be around, probably because of his American accent and the fact that his house was filled with stuff I'd never seen before - including a Kayak!

Along with a few other school mates, we ended up in the inner harbour one afternoon, each taking turns in the kayak. None of us had any experience at all with kayaks. The tide was halfway out, so everyone stood on the muddy shoreline of the harbour where, if you were not careful, you could easily be up to one's knees in mud.

After a while, it was my turn to have a go in the kayak. It was also about the time when the rest of my mates started to get a bit bored, and thought that throwing rocks at the Kayak WHILE I WAS IN IT, IN THE CENTRE OF THE HARBOUR, would be a good idea - so they did. This included Christian who said that it didn't matter if the rocks went through the skin of the kayak because they could easily repair it. It didn't occur to anyone present (except me) that I COULDN'T SWIM if the kayak sank. I was quite scared. Even today, the hairs stand up on my arms when I recollect the experience that day. I did, at some point, think that I could have drowned if any one of the rocks had gone straight through the kayak, and sunk it.

The rocks kept coming for what seems like an hour, but in fact was probably only around ten minutes. Most missed the kayak, and many bounced off the its upper skin, but at least half a dozen rocks went through the upper skin. Luckily, none of the rocks went all the way through.

I got back to shore okay, which seemed to be a disappointment to some of my school mates, who I'm sure would have happily have watched the kayak sink.

We went home after that, having had a most eventful afternoon. Christian later told us that his father was a 'little annoyed' about the kayak having holes in it, and a few days later, he showed my the kayak bright and new with no holes. I declined his invitation to go down to the harbour again.

BOAT PAINTING

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 8 YEARS OLD

When I look back on life, I can understand why young children do things without thinking. I used to be one of them, of course, and clearly remember climbing aboard a motor boat which was on dry land on the Marine Drive, just around the corner about 100 years from the Corrigans Amusement Arcade at the beginning of the far pier. I was with a red-headed Friarage school mate called Christopher (Chris) Fox, and we boarded the boat and pretended to be the crew. We wandered up and down and pretended to be pirates (like you do) until Chris fround that the door into the small cabin in the bows was unlocked.

We clammered into the cabin, but there was nothing in there except paint and paint brushes - and that to us was great joy. We immediately stopped being pirates, and became painters, and so we set about painting the boat. Of course, it was a little slap-hazzard as one would expect from a pair of unsupervised 8 year olds, and the colours didn't match. In fact it ended up being a total disaster - a mess!

At some point, a passerby shouted at us to stop painting and we got scared and ran away. I ran up towards the Castle and Chris ran along the seafront.

About three hours later, the police came knocking on the back door at my home and my mother answered. I tried to creep upstairs, but the policeman knew what had happened and knew it was ME! I later found out that, because Chris had chosen the seafront as a route of escape, he had been followed, reported to the police and apprehended. He had told the police where I lived, etc.

I got a real belting from my mother, who chased me all over the house with one of my dad's big leather belts. After a lecture from my mother, it dawned on me that we really shouldn't have painted the boat - but you don't THINK when you're only 8.

SOFT CRABBING

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 10 YEARS OLD

Soft-crabbing was something my pals and I did quite often.

Soft-crabbing is looking for green-coloured crabs under rocks in rock pools at low tide, shortly after they have shed their shell. We'd wander the rocks at the end of Scalby Mills Road, north of Scalby Beck, with a bucket, turning over rocks as we went, collecting soft crabs by the dozens. Sometimes we'd get lucky and find some big red crabs (good for eating) and on rare ocassions, a lobster or two.

Soft crabs feel as if they are made of rubber, and make an ideal bait for fishing. We'd put them on the hook and then wrap white cotton around and around the crab and the hook to secure it, leaving the legs free to move about and attract a fish.

Sometimes we'd go soft-crabbing for bait for ourselves, and sometimes it was for my father, who fished extensively on the rocks and cliffs between Whitby and Flamorough, and caught quite large cod on soft crabs.

FREE TREASURE FROM THE SEA

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 10 YEARS OLD

In the 1950s and 60s, the north and south bay beaches of Scarborough used to get packed like sardines with thousands of holiday-makers every day throughout Summer. With ice cream stalls, crab stalls and amusement arcades dotted around the beach area, people quite often carried loose coins, and many dropped them. If you've ever dropped money into soft sand, you'll know that in most cases, IT'S GONE!

So by the end of a Summer season, the beaches (particularly the south beach) would be riddled with lost money. Sometimes it was easy to make a few bob by just 'nicking' a wire-mesh collander out of the kitchen at home and go down to the beach, get on your hands and knees, and simply sift the sand. As kids, this was a great game, sometimes with huge rewards, because you'd often find wallets, rings, necklaces and all sorts of stuff lost by the people. I've known friends who have even found Roman coins from centuries ago.

The big treasure came when the big storms hit Scarborough on a Spring tide. The seas would rise quite a few feet above normal, and sometimes even flooded across the seafront roads. At these times, with huge waves hitting the beach and then rolling back into the sea, would cause the top layer of sand to be sucked into the sea, exposing many of the lost coins. Hundreds of locals; especially fishermen with waist high waders; would wander up and down the beach watching with eagle eyes for coins to appear out of the sand as the waves rolled out. Sometimes, the coin might be 20 feet away and to get to it meant risking being hit with the next wave, and I've seen many a strong man diving onto a penny coin and being hit by a 20 foot wave.

No matter whether it was daytime or evening in the dark using torches, everyone always managed to collect at least a few coins, because literally between any one wave, there would be up to a dozen coins exposed in a 20 foot strtetch of beach. It was great fun, and could be quite lucrative. I have walked away with up to ten shillings, which was more than a day's wage in those days.

It was not unusual to see two grown men dive onto a single sixpence, and then have a scrap over who saw it first.

I don't know whether this still happens today because I no longer live in Scarborough, and the council ploughs the beach every day to keep it neat for holidaymakers in the Summer.