NOTES ON A SMALL CITY

Richard Wyatt: Notes on a small city

Columnist Richard Wyatt, who is celebrating a milestone birthday this month, has not lived his life in the slow lane –here he recounts some of his daring exploits over the years

Trust me to celebrate my birthday during a month named in honour of Julius Caesar but at least I have outlived him in years. He was just 55 at the time of his violent exit from this world. I am a teensy-weensy bit older! However, I have to admit that there is now little room on my anniversary cake for the candles necessary to spell out in flames the number of Julys I have lived through.

Apparently I objected to even the first candle to grace my celebratory sponge as a grainy photograph showing this goldencurled one year old trying to punch a hole in it attests!

My three score and ten achievement is no doubt a mixture of family genes and luck, although I have tested the good nature of Dame Fortune many times.

Most famously, it’s now 45 years since I challenged the thickness of my skull against the leading edge of a Piper Cub spotter plane’s wing. It got a bigger dent than me, but that was only because l made contact with a wooden bit rather than a metal rib.

I am still here to recount the tale (many times) but will spare you a detailed explanation. It’s all on YouTube where l think l remain the only pedestrian in the world to be knocked out by a low-flying aircraft. One intending to use me as target practice for flour bombs –although it didn’t work out quite like that.

I should have known I would grow up to be accident prone. Apparently as an infant not yet standing on two feet I managed to rock my cot near enough to an open window to climb out onto the sill, balancing between inside and out. At the time we were living with my grandparents, who kept the Lamb Inn pub at Worle on the outskirts of Weston super Mare. My father was away at sea in the Merchant Navy and my mother up in the village shopping.

A gallant neighbour apparently kept me talking –and not walking –while my grandmother crept up behind me and grabbed me. I don’t know how big an audience I had attracted, or whether there was a round of applause, but I don’t think the window was ever left so open again.

Of course professionally there were many opportunities to try something daring while out and about with a film crew back in my days with the HTV West evening news. If I had been christened Joseph, my nickname would have been Have A Go Joe, but I wasn’t, and anyway anchor man (Uncle) Bruce Hockin came up with ‘Young Richard’ instead –oh the current irony!

But back to the plot. I have ridden everything from a penny farthing bike to a Charolais bull. I joined a lion tamer in his working environment on the more dangerous side of the cage, and even stood between two jugglers exchanging their clubs either side of my ears.

I have pot-holed in dark and wet caves, walked out on the top of the old Severn Bridge tower and have been swept up into the air by a man on a hang glider.

I even remember when a hovercraft was brought to Weston super Mare –ahead of a scheme to establish a Bristol Channel crossing link with Penarth –and I laid down on the sand and let it pass over me, just to prove to the viewer that there was nothing but air beneath this noisy and impressive machine. I did it really without thinking, just to get some good pictures. I can imagine all those working in health and safety now throwing up their (protected) hands in horror.

I can only think of one other stunt that went wrong. Enter ‘Noddy and Big Ears’ with a broken down NOD 1 car. Would I look under the bonnet to see what was wrong? Whereupon a puff of talcum powder would shoot up to cover my face. I had been warned to shut my eyes in advance of this happening, but when nothing did happen, I opened them. Just in time to receive a blast of white powder and a trip to A&E where yours truly was held down while his eyes were washed out!

This year’s celebrations will be a more low-key and risk-free (fingers crossed) affair. n

Richard Wyatt runs the Bath Newseum: bathnewseum.com

I have pot-holed in dark and wet caves...and have been swept up into the air by a man on a hang glider ❝