A dialect story by Trevor Dalley
A bitter February wind whistled cold comfort through the crevices of the windows and doors of the old pub.
“Looks as if we’re in fur this fur a few days” said Albert as he blew clouds of acrid tobacco smoke across the Cutters Inn’s bar. Phil the landlord took the brunt of the poisonous fog, and, through a spluttering cough managed “Yea,” as tears ran copiously from bloodshot eyes.
“No feshing, no munney,” said Joey.
“An’ no munney, no beer!”
All three ruminated on this for several minutes. Phil yellowed and liver spotted, a glass of whisky in his hand was leaning against his optics. The room, suffering from eons of tobacco smoke was once a pristine white but now a dirty yellow.
“No farm work on, thes time o’ year.” Joey sighed.
“Part frum pickin’ flours.”
“They Poles werk fur damn all. I ain’t spending’ all day, me back bent over without nuff fur an evenin’ in ‘ere,” replied Joey.
Albert
Albert shivered, “Comason boy less git ‘ome, I told missus I’d be back b’fur ten.”
They downed their pints and went out into the biting east wind that was blowing straight off the English Channel. They jumped into Joey’s dilapidated pickup and headed back home.
“I tell e wat boy, pickin’ flours ain’t such a bad idea yu naw.”
“Ow yu make thet out Albert.”
“Well, ifn we pick our awn it be all profit wudna?”
“We don’ ‘ave no daffs my ‘ansum.”
“Yea but they finish pickin’ by ‘alf pass four. If’n we time it right we could be in a field an ‘elpin’ ourselves soon after.”
“But thass stealin’,” argued Joey.
“Naw e int not ifn we take the wans they don’ want.”
“Ow do we naw which wans they don’ want?”
“Weel use our nishtive, wen we git there.”
“Where yu thinkin’ of boy?”
“Bottom of Tregidden Hill there’s fields up by they trees. Nice an’ private.”
“If’n the weather don’t ‘prove by tomorrow weel ‘ave a chat about it in the afternoon, all right?”
“If you say so pard.”
Next day the wind still blew hard. They met up in the afternoon, Albert had a couple of buckets carrying “We ‘ave a go shall us?”
“Aw right,” said Joey
They parked at the bottom of Tregidden Hill to wait for the pickers to leave work at four thirty. As two mini buses drove past Albert remarked “Poor sods they must be knackered.”
They pulled into the field via a little lane through the trees and left the pickup’s engine running to power the headlights. They took up their buckets and went to it. After several buckets of flowers had been dumped into the bed of the truck Albert said, “Weel fill up two more buckets and finish Joey.”
“Aw right.”
They covered their plunder with an old tarpaulin and drove back home.
“Fancy a pint Albert?”
“Naw, I’m knackered boy, me back’s killing me, I’m off up timber hill.”
“Yeah, me too, see yu ‘morra.”
Next morning Joey came out to the pickup to find Albert clinging for dear life to the side of the van.
“Wass up pard?”
“Back’s gone.”
“’Ere,” Joey dropped the tail of the truck, “sit up on the back.”
After an hour they’d finished bunching and had a total of two hundred bunches.
“If’n we kin get a quid a bunch weel ‘ave nuff beer money fur next week.” Said Albert, grimacing, holding his back.
A pound a bunch was a fantasy. Someone parked outside Helston Cricket Club advertised ‘DAFFS 3 for £1’.
“Weel ‘ave sell ours the same,” said Joey.
They pulled into the lay-by on Clodgey Lane and Joey wrote a sign DAFFS 3 for £1
Their first potential customer pulled up and approached the van. Both unwashed, unshaven and dressed in their filthy clothes they were not a pretty sight. Worse, Albert gave the lady a big smile revealing his blackened teeth and gummy gaps to the full. But the woman, dressed in a tweed coat and brogue shoes, seemed not to notice being too intent on the daffodils.
“Huh,” she said, “lots of these are too far out you know!”
“Thass what flours do idna?”
“I and I suspect others, would like their flowers to flower at home, not here in your smelly pickup!”
Albert sorted through some bunches and presented the woman with three bunches of budded daffs.
“Thank you,” she said abruptly and strode back to her car.
“Better rebunch these Albert. Weel never sell ‘em else.”
“Aw no! I got a job stand up as e is!”
“Aw right Albert I’ll do it.”
Albert crawled thankfully into the cab.
By three they had sold all the budded flowers but the bed of the truck seemed fuller than when they’d started because of all the blooms had opened wide in the meantime. Joey jumped into the cab and counted their money. “Twenty seven quid!”
“Strewth! All that work. Twenty seven quid! ‘An I can’t bleddy stand up!”
“I think the best you can do Albert is to go ‘an ‘ave yur back done by someone. There’s a guy down Meneage Street, eel do un fur ee. I’ll drop ee down there.”
Albert practically crawled into the osteopaths and the receptionist took one look and said, “Oh you poor man.”
“Can I see somebody?”
“Mr Mather is free at the moment you can see him right away.”
Mr Mather was a thin weedy fellow with a long neck and glasses perched on an elongated nose.
“Poor fellow, let’s see what we can do.”
Albert lay on the couch while Mr Mather pulled, pushed, thumped and generally reduced Albert to a quivering wreck. But when he got him off the couch Albert could stand up straight.
“Thank God,” said Albert.
“My pleasure, you can pay Joan on the way out.”
“Twenty-five pounds please,” said Joan.
“Bloody hell,” said Albert.
Trevor Dalley, taken in the Directors’ Carriage of the electric train that goes from Palma to Soller, Majorca.
I was born at Praze (see Coronation Cottages on YouTube by Sarah Chapman), went to Crowan Primary School, Helston Grammar School, and left at 16 to work with my father in his greengrocery business. I started my own business at 21 and was self-employed until I retired at the age of 69. I founded Camborne Trevithick Day in 1983 and was chairman of the organising committee for twenty years. I was made a Cornish Bard in 1994. I took over the chairmanship of Trevithick Day in 2014 but have now retired and made an Honorary Life President. I was a member of the Camborne Town Council for several years and presently a member of The Camborne Town Deal Board. I began creative writing about fourteen years ago and when the West Briton had a real editor I had a monthly column.
