大象传媒

Bicycle repairing under difficulties
Edited transcription from a taped interview with John De Jersey

One morning, when I was working down at the Model Yacht Pond, that was when they bombed the harbour, they thought there was a U-boat in there, or something like that, Yes, the British came over and bombed, and the blast came up through Fountain Street and the Bordage, and I happened to be just by the end of the Market and the blast blew us off our bikes two or three of us there, an the thing that I remember is that the windows that had criss-cross brown sticky paper on came out, and went back into the frames, but the ones that didn鈥檛 have the sticky paper came out and just shattered. I just had time to see that happen.
I said 鈥渨ell, I don鈥檛 mind this if I鈥檓 doing it for my own people but I鈥檓 not getting bombed for them, sort of thing,鈥� and I gave up working down the harbour, and I started repairing cycles, at home. There was quite a lot of work going on then, because if you had a bike came in with a puncture you removed three or four previous patches to fit one on, also we made our own solution which we made with the soles of sandals, the old crepe soles, we chopped the crepe up into very tiny pieces, pit it in a jam jar or a pickle jar with a lid, and we would pour in some carbon disulphide, which was used at one time in the greenhouses, and if you stood that in the heat of the sun it would melt the crepe sole into a glue. One thing you had to be careful of was that if you were repairing a puncture you didn鈥檛 have to smoke, because if the ash even dropped on the tube then it all went up in flames. While repairing the bikes I had someone who really needed some tyres, one evening we went to the Regal cinema where the Germans were watching a film, on their bicycles their handlebars they had a lever, if you lifted the lever you took the handlebars off and your bike couldn鈥檛 be stolen. But unfortunately this chap turned up and the wheels were missing.
We made a couple of tyres with one-inch hose and using the wires from the ordinary tyres and we had a bit of canvas we put round the side and we stitched that on. You could pump those up, we could put tubes in them. We only made two or three I think it was of those with the covers sewing machined, you stitched it round, because you had the wires from the old tyre it fitted the rim, you see
Graham was with us, he was in the, we had the end of, like, the stables, the workshop was downstairs, Graham was hidden upstairs, and you used to pass the bicycles up through to the attic room, and every time he did a job he would drop it back down, . Graham worked, we鈥檇 pass him jobs like somebody鈥檚 three-speed wasn鈥檛 working we鈥檇 pass it up in the loft, and he鈥檇 do it there, and then when there was nobody about he鈥檇 drop it back down to you, you see he had a doorway there in the loft, you know, we鈥檇 black the windows out with curtains up in the loft, repairing the bikes like you saw on the cavalcade, with the tyres with rope through them. Bumpety bump bumps. Ruin your marriage

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.