Bristol Urban Legends E-Book

Wilf Merttens

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 280

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Bristolians' love of banter and outlandish gossip provides a perfect environment for the urban legend to breed, expand and ferment. One can never be sure that these stories are not in fact entirely true – or that the truth behind them may not be stranger than the legend itself. What one can be sure of is that these stories have been passed, with increasing delight, from child to child, from uncle to aunt, from granddad to everybody, until they have become right rollicking tales. Forget small talk – this here is Bristol Urban Legends.

Leseprobe

For Pete Hogg,the only Bristol urban legendwhom I consider a personal friend

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Wilf Merttens, 2018

The right of Wilf Merttens to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8864 3

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

one

The Parking Attendant

two

The Robins and the Gas

three

The Bus Boycott

four

The Hotwells Crocodile and Other Beasts

five

Alfred the Gorilla

six

Clifton Suspension Bridge Stories

seven

The Catacombs

eight

The Homeless Wanderer and Other Stories

nine

The Dreaded Hummadruz

ten

The Bamboo Club

eleven

Ghosts

twelve

A Book Bound in Human Skin

thirteen

Crime

fourteen

Slender Man

fifteen

Bristol Free State

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MANY THANKS TO the many, many Bristolians who took time out to speak to me during my research for this book. I am sure some of you would have preferred to be named but I have kept everyone anonymous I’m afraid. There are only a few names that I have not changed in the text: some people are long dead and I so I considered them fair game. For others it is too late because they are famous and already incurably associated with a particular tale. Also, I have decided to give Banksy’s real name. The artist’s identity is already well known in Bristol and sooner or later someone was going to make a quick buck hawking it to the rest of the nation; it may as well be me.

Who I certainly will name are the following fine folks. Thank you to Amy, Rhodri and Louis Wray-Emanuel; Vanessa Vasic-Janekovic and Thomas Johnson; Angela van Straaten, Mike Palmer, Ridwan Kartahadimadja and (if I must) Thomas Huygen. These people all fed and watered me for solid weeks of writing and without them I doubtless would have lost the plot. They also added a great deal to the book by asking pertinent questions and listening to me hold forth at length upon my favourite subjects.

Research help and guidance on the writing was offered by my constant friends and advisors Anna Freeman and Jamie Harrison. Some choice pointers came by way of Danny Noble, Gus Fairburn, Ewan King and Thomas Huygen. A distinctive mix of encouraging feedback and cracking illustrations emanated from Chris Groenveld. Many thanks to you all.

Thank you to The History Press, who asked me to write a book I already wanted to write.

Special thanks to dad for passing on to me his love of stories.

Lastly, I’d like to thank the Bristol, Avon, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset area, which has its own soul and is even more than the sum of its distinctive histories, geographies and populaces. It is this general region whom I view as the author of the following tales.

INTRODUCTION

IF YOU HAVE only the time or inclination to read just one of these sundry Bristol urban legends, I urge you to read The Parking Attendant – for it is not only the best urban legend in this collection, but it is also the best urban legend I have ever encountered anywhere. Our city has gifted a truly beautiful thing to the world, and I am honoured to retell it herein. Bristolians will know it already, of course, but should read on for they may not know all the juicy details you only get from hearing it from hundreds of people, and I’m almost certain they will not have encountered the incredible document (reproduced here in full) which I uncovered during my research. Skip this introduction and go straight to a stone-cold classic urban legend.

In other languages you’ll encounter terms equivalent to ‘urban legend’ in that they pick out the same kind of story (i.e. local tales believed by someone). The English offering is distinctly pedestrian compared to the Dutch een broodje aap verhal, ‘monkey sandwich story’ – presumably named after an archetypal example of the form. Neither does our term have the explanatory grace of the Swedish vandringssägen or ‘friend of a friend story’, which neatly expresses the movement of such tales through the world of human conversation. Still, we are who we are, and we call them urban legends.

There is much discussion about the truth or falsity of urban legends, and any resident of Bristol will remember, just from scanning the contents list of this collection, the controversies attached to certain tales. To me, debates about croc-or-not and so forth miss the point. While news should be rigorously fact-checked and reasonably fair-minded, urban legends primarily need to be meaningful and enjoyable. That said, an urban legend is not a Disney movie: it is not entirely on the fictional side of the line. Rather, urban legends grow in the dangerous wasteland that exists between fact and fiction, and cannot bloom if taken to one side or the other. To be free, an urban legend must be forever not untrue.

There are indeed many hard facts knocking about in Bristol’s canon of urban legends. Some of them are the same ones that the history books avail themselves of, but there is also that gristle of local life: the little mysteries that the historians cannot digest but the people cannot forget. Furthermore, all urban legends, even shoddy ones like the Clifton Big Cat, will express diverse truths in a more oblique fashion. What I have collected here are the stories that Bristol itself tells about itself, so of course you can learn a lot about us Bristolians by listening to them. The Clifton Big Cat story, for instance, expresses the following knot of truths: a) there are beasts in Bristol, b) be careful in Bristol, there are beasts, and c) in Bristol be delighted, for there are beasts. There is no Clifton Big Cat, and I speak as one who has wasted a lot of time scrambling round in the brush up on Clifton Downs looking for the blasted thing, but still, a), b) and c) are true and such truths are most effectively communicated (or at any rate most enjoyably) by a story.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO there was a young work experience student who had been lucky enough to win a placement at Bristol Zoo. His name was Timothy Rod, and in stark contrast to your standard Bristolian 15-year-old (the teenagers here are legendary for their low charisma and bizarre logic) he was a remarkably trustworthy and useful young fellow. In recognition of Timothy’s unexpectedly normal skillset, the zoo decided to promote him from shovelling elephant dung and moved him to the office. After some customary rounds of tea making, the admin team bravely entrusted the boy with a few routine emails.

Now, several members of staff at the zoo had recently noticed that the little car park that was over the north wall, on the edge of Durdam Downs, had been left unattended for several weeks. There was a little patch of gravelly earth just up on the verge where some of the temps (lacking, as they do, full parking privileges) left their vehicles each morning. A taciturn old fella in a high-vis tabard attended the place, collecting the modest sum of £2.50 for a day’s parking.

The attendant was quite a character. He was smallish but solidly built. He had a head like a chiselled block and his tanned skin was thick as a crocodile’s. When not collecting coins in his bucket, he reclined on his little camping chair with his eyelids resting shut, gently absorbing the sunshine whenever it poked its nose around the clouds. He always wore the same thing: a clean but crusty pair of old chinos, a North Face jacket with the logo half rubbed off, a decent (if battered) pair of work boots, a rather strange dark green beanie, and (of course) the high-vis. He was stately, mysterious, meditative – something like the sphinx in Egypt. He was an object of some fascination to his patrons, sitting up there whatever the weather, wrapped in silence, looking for all the world like an illustration of himself.

He was also something of an anachronism, for even large car parks are rarely attended these days. It seemed an outmoded old system, an attended car park. But all who parked on his patch were glad that Bristol had left it in place. The old man had probably worked for the council for donkey’s years and was tight with the union. It would be impossible to lay him off, and anyway, he was long in the tooth and already looked a lap or so past retirement age. When he finally did leave they would no doubt replace him with a machine.

People who saw him regularly all wanted to have a chat with him, but he was always reticent. More than that, there was something about him that demanded quiet. He moved slowly and deliberately, and only when he had to, receiving the required coin and throwing it in his bucket with a chink. Although he never spoke you could tell that he had a voice as deep and Bristolian as the gorge itself. One woman, Affia Appiah-Grant, told me that she had developed a detailed plan in order to start a conversation with the old gent. She wasn’t going to rush it. She had been perfecting an opener. She had laid some decent groundwork with congenial gesticulations regarding the weather. Nothing too much: an eye roll for rain, a wink for sunshine. These were strong choices. The parking attendant would nod in reply, dipping his small chunky head forward and smiling broadly, his little eyes twinkling. I have heard it from several sources that the man was a connoisseur of weather. The way he tilted his head back made it clear that his eyes were reading passing clouds, divining their plans. He grabbed what pleasantness he could, basking like a lizard, and for the rest he did not complain. Noting all this, Affia had planned what to say to him. She was going to wait for one of those days that is warm and sunny, with only a few very picturesque clouds sailing above. But as innocent and marshmallowy as these clouds seem, there is a danger that they will amass and cause trouble. Some days that start like this can turn out to be really miserable by the afternoon. Affia planned to wait for such a day, slow the car, look past the attendant at the sky beyond, kiss her teeth, and ask, ‘What do you think we’re due today then?’ He’d have to answer. He’d be compelled to. An answer would roll out of him like a stone egg. And once she had gotten something from him – even if it were but a single word – she would then be able to get more. Of this she was confident.

The day came. It was perfect. It was a Wednesday. Wednesday’s are notoriously bad for changeable weather. Affia was going to say the line. She was so excited! Her fingers were drumming on the steering wheel as she drove up to Clifton. She was 15 minutes early, just in case they really did get into a proper chat today. She wasn’t banking on it, but she was sure she would at least get a reply. But when she reached the car park he wasn’t there. The little camping chair and the bucket were gone, too. There was no sign of him. He was absent the next day and the next day and the next. In fact, he never came back.

The parking attendant had left. And no machine had appeared in his stead. Sure, it was nice to park your car for free, but now several people in the zoo were getting officious about it. Something wasn’t right. The car park without him looked oddly desolate. It had no fence, and you had to go up a steep little verge to get into it. While this had seemed fine when you had the attendant’s leathery, shamanic little face imparting a sort of customariness to the manoeuvre, without him it felt illegitimate – even dangerous, like you could easily slip back onto Downs Road and get taken out by a truck full of 7 Up. More worryingly, who was to say where the car park ended and the Downs began? There was no fence, after all. All it would take would be one precocious parker and people would be leaving their cars willy-nilly on the grass. It could easily turn into a free-for-all up there.

So, the zoo saw the parking attendant’s absence as a problem, just as it would be a problem if the keeper of the monkey enclosure failed to turn up one morning. Perhaps too there were those who missed the sight of the old man. They were worried about him. The little nod of the head he sometimes gave as you walked off. The gentle way he had of waving vehicles in and out. The bright tabard, the bucket and the stoicism: all were comforting. The cocktail of curiosity and uneasiness stimulated by the old man’s disappearance was mild in the great scheme of things, but it was sufficient to get a memo to young Timothy Rod.

The trail of emails that Timothy followed was actually rather thrilling, and as he travelled deeper into the bureaucratic maze of City Hall, he became emboldened and migrated to the telephone. This was how he eventually began speaking to Ms Aisha Aitifa, Bristol’s erstwhile ‘Parking Czar’. Timothy’s script was practised by the time he reached Aisha, and he rattled off the location of the car park and asked if Bristol City Council planned to have it attended again, or else renovated for safety and from thereon entrusted to a machine.

There was a miniscule pause as Aisha found herself, for the first time in a decade or so, unable to locate a car park on her internal map of Bristol. She checked the system. ‘No, Sir,’ – I think it was safe to say that Timothy was thrilled to be called ‘Sir’ – ‘I’m afraid that is not one of our facilities.’ Timothy kept Aisha on hold while he asked (with an endearing mix of urgency and sheepishness) round the office about a possible mistake, but his new colleagues all but blanked him. Eventually, tiring of the game, one woman slapped a map on the wall as if she was squashing a bug. It detailed the Zoo’s property. Timothy dragged his forefinger across the north boundary. It followed the perimeter wall the whole way, staying south of Downs Road.

On hearing this, Aisha did some research herself. Several of her colleagues at the council had believed the car park belonged to the Zoo, and the attendant to be on their payroll. She next thought it might well turn out to belong to a prominent Bristol family, a Marquess or Duke perhaps. She dug around at the Land Registry, but to no avail. In the end, the land, Aisha was assured by numerous authorities, was for common use. The car park was not a car park at all: it was just an arbitrary little strip of Clifton Downs. The car park attendant was not an official: he was a chancer. He had stood there with a high-vis tabard collecting coins in his bucket for a number of years, and then he had gone.

Why does Bristol love this story so? This was often the first one that people would tell me when I began an interview. Or they would try to skip over it because of its familiarity, rightly assuming I had heard it a thousand times: ‘Of course, you’ve already heard the one about the parking attendant…’ But I always wanted to hear it again, for I wanted to capture these stories for you with a full complement of those details that build-up over many tellings.

One lady I spoke to saw it as a moral tale, with the parking attendant lauded as a kind of exemplar. After all, £2.50 is not a lot of money for a full day’s parking in Clifton. He wasn’t greedy. Furthermore, he could have kept going but didn’t. He knew when to quit when he was ahead. Perhaps he was playing it safe, or perhaps he just felt like he had earned enough. Perhaps he had a target, and, having reached it, packed up and moved on.

People like imagining where he is today. Possibly he took an Arctic cruise and, by some coincidence (such as happens to the patient and the grateful) met his childhood sweetheart upon the deck. Perhaps they kissed beneath the Aurora Borealis. Now he reclines on a beach somewhere presumably, as tanned as a handbag, a cocktail beside him and a broad-brimmed straw hat shading his chunky old head.

The old man had duped everyone and no one. All he did was pitch up on some common ground in his hi-viz. He didn’t say anything either way. People made their assumptions and all he had to do was hold out the bucket. Perhaps you’ve heard of the age of enclosures, when land that had long been used cooperatively was privatised and taken from the common people. The landowners turned it into profitable farmland: never mind the peasants who were already relying on it for hunting and fishing and grazing and growing. The fens were drained. Forests were cut down. Fields that had once supported entire communities were given over to sheep, because the market said that sheep make more money than people. To go on the land to which your family had been tied to for generations was suddenly trespass. I think Bristolians can sense that the parking attendant gleaning a living from the commons is none other than the Spirit of the People, making her quiet stand atop the ancient birthright. We like this story because it shows that while us ordinary folk so often lose, and end up, historically speaking, on our arses, there is something inextinguishably cheeky about us that we have never lost and never will. There is a chaos that can never be properly managed, that always finds a way into the system, or out of it; a bubble under the carpet that when pressed down in one place, simply pops up in another. To me at least the parking attendant is a manifestation of the kind of irrepressible resourcefulness that, should you know how to look, you will always find blossoming somewhere.

*  *  *

A man I spoke to had a friend who told him a story about attending a funeral down in Whitchurch cemetery just off the A37 out of Hengrove. The deceased was Bristol born and bred but had emigrated to Spain and lived out his final decade in the sun. According to his wishes, Fred (for that was his name) had been brought back to be buried in his home turf. After the ceremonials were over, and the coffin had been lowered into the ground, Fred’s brother got up and spoke to the assembled mourners. ‘Fred wanted me to read this after he was dead an’ gone. Gave me strict instructions not to open it till after he was in the ground.’ The breeze moved between the graves and the shadow of a cloud passed over the little cemetery. There was silence while the old fella took the Manila envelope that was in his hand and ripped it open. He took the neat, white cartridge paper from inside and unfolded it. In a voice threatened at some points by laughter and at others by tears, he read the final confession of the famous parking attendant of Clifton Downs:

Dear all,

First off, I would like to thank you lot for doing what you done over the years. It was appreciated.

I am not sure if what I did hurt anyone but I do not want to take it with me to my grave. It perhaps was wrong in one way of thinking, but then it wasn’t in another. Either way, I’ve hid it these years, and it’s time I came clean.

I’d always spotted that patch up on the Downs there by the Zoo, and thought it looked a fine place to park. One day I gave it a try, just to see if anyone would say anything like. I’d sat down on the bonnet to eat a sandwich when some gent in a Discovery comes up right next to me and asks me where he pays for parking.

One thing led to another, and soon I was up there every day. I’d always wanted a place in the sun, see? If the money hadn’t gone to me it would have gone to someone else. But it was still stealing. I know that. Even if all car parks are daylight robbery I was still a robber.

Anyway, I hope you’ll have a bash and not a benny on my account. I ask you to play a bit of Adge Cutler to see me off. Don’t need no tears for an old man who died happy.

All the best. Long live City.

Yours,

Fred

IALMOST HESITATE TO dive into this particular quagmire of stories, for they are impossible to tell without losing two-thirds of your audience. If you tell the stories of City you lose the Gasheads, to tell a story of the Rovers means all the Robins fly off, and either way you get a groan from the third of Bristolians who just couldn’t care less.

But anyway I’m going in, and since I’m going to be making some enemies, I may as well do it properly: I’m a Gashead myself and I’ve skewed the whole chapter toward the Rovers by only speaking to my fellow fans. I hope you enjoy the story, and remember, ‘If you see a Robin bob bobbing along shoot the b*****d.’

So where does the term ‘Gashead’ come from? It’s proclaimed loudly from the terraces of the Memorial Stadium today, and will be forever linked to the blue and white. But for much of the post-war era the fans universally hated it (some still do), for it was actually a smear created by our arch rivals Bristol City FC. And the most hurtful thing about it was that it was completely true. You see, the old stadium in Eastville was right next door to a gasworks, and the smell of gas was present at every match and every practice. Hell knows what they were doing over at the gasworks but whatever it was it certainly involved some potent discharges, and each new payload of gas had the power to cause nausea, headaches, diarrhoea and even hallucinations.

The home team had grown quite hardy to all this, but unfortunately any prospective advantage was severely mitigated by the unfortunate long-term effects of the gas on both players and fans. This was never proved mind, but it was said to cause mood swings, digestive problems and a slow retardation of the frontal lobe. The other negative was the merciless treatment that we received at the hands of the Robins. They were continually tormenting us just because of the fact that the stadium stank like toxic gas. Probably you know the chants and things they goad us with to this very day: ‘The club that stinks!’ is one, which they always say while pinching their noses at us. And of course, there’s the irritating sound of 5,000 idiots in red hissing: ‘I can smell GASSSSSS!’

But in the 1970s something incredible happened. The hard-core of fans who stood at the Tote End of the Eastville Stadium were a vigorous mix of punks and greasers, who did their best to counter City at every opportunity they had. The ‘Tote Enders’ were a creative bunch, coming up with such timeless chants as ‘Sh*t fans of a sh*t club with a sh*t mentality!’ There are many more gems in the canon, but I need to tell you about the Tote End chant that was to change everything.

Promoted to the second division in 1973/74 season, things were going pretty OK for the Rovers. We were now in the same league as our old arch nemeses down at Ashton Gate. (Which reminds me: ‘If I had the wings of a sparrow, if I had the ass of a crow, I’d fly over Ashton tomorrow, and sh*t on the b*****ds below!’) Unfortunately, however, the last few derbies had yielded nothing but a run of draws and then a humiliating 2–0 defeat. It was 1975 and the two teams were meeting once more. All right, it wasn’t a league match, but it was for the (still very prestigious) Gloucester Cup. Anyway, like every derby, it meant something to all concerned.

After City scored the opener the mood began to sour, and many feared violence. The City fans were giving their usual guff about the gas and the fans in the blue and white began to despair. But just before the end of the first half those legendary Tote Enders pulled the cat out of the bag and set it loose among the robins. Out of nowhere they began the (now famous) chant:

‘We’re Gas,

and we’re proud of it,

we’re Gas,

and we’re proud of it,

we’re Gas,

and we’re proud of it,

we’re Gas,

and we’re proud of it!’

The effect of this was electric. The chant tore around the stadium. The fans were pumping their fists in the air, screaming it at the top of their lungs. We weren’t gonna be ashamed any more! We were invincible!! We were THE GAS!!! The enemy simply did not know what to do.

The Eastville gasworks happened to let out a huge payload of noxious gas during the half-time break, a mishap that took place due to an ordinary build-up of pressure that was mishandled by the workmen on duty. The company later offered a routine apology, but such things were not at all an uncommon occurrence. The presence of the gas was tangible to all those in the stadium. It was worse than usual in fact: a real eye-waterer. To the Robins the halftime oranges seemed to taste different somehow, a bit gamey almost – and several of their players reported feeling lightheaded. The Rovers on the other hand, buoyed by their fans’ love and pride for the club, stink and all, re-entered the field a changed team. They were now The Gas, and proud of it. We went on to win the game 2–1. The genius of the Tote Enders had been to take the stinking truth and turn it into a legend.

It worked a treat. It was shortly after this match that Bristol City began their spectacular decline, becoming the first English club to suffer three relegations on the trot. Lord knows the Rovers have certainly had their downs too, and, of course, fortunes continue to fluctuate all round. However, I like to think that the chant that was born on that bright April afternoon was the trigger for the ensuing downfall of the Robins. Those renowned Tote Enders had officiated at the symbolic inauguration of Bristol City FC’s embarrassing ‘yo-yo period’.

The Gas name has always been controversial; some Rover fans forever associate it with the derision emanating from Ashton Gate. Certain characters in the Rovers community have fought tooth and nail to eliminate the usage of the term altogether, and ensure that we are known by our ‘official’ nickname of the Pirates. Personally, when people start talking about ‘official nicknames’ I always start wondering what’s gone wrong with the world. The Pirates is an OK name, I guess. It ‘references Bristol’s maritime history,’ as they say. It is certainly better than ‘The Robins’, a name that fails to conjure any emotion whatsoever, even for City fans. But ‘The Gas’ is the name with the story.

Anyway, when the Rovers finally moved away from Eastville to Twerton Park in Bath in 1986, God Herself weighed in on the debate. In my view it has been clearly ordained that the Rovers are Gasheads for life. For what was waiting there, just a block or so upwind from the new stadium and clearly visible from the stands? That’s right: a gasworks.

WHAT IS AN ‘urban legend’? Many people contend that to be an urban legend, a story must be untrue. You hear people say, ‘Oh no, that’s not true, it’s just an urban legend.’ On the other hand, some feel that Bristol’s canon of urban legends, far from being a pack of lies, is a sacred treasury of local goings on: the mysteries, comedies and tragedies that unfolded before our eyes and were carefully stored in the collective memory.

In order to settle the question of urban legends, we must first ask, Who gets to say? Once we can answer that question, we can answer the rest and provide a working definition of the term. During my research I spoke to many people: writers, academics, journalists, collectors of local lore and curios, ghost hunters, raconteurs, tour guides, drunk mums, strange uncles, second cousins once removed, guys-at-the-bar, and many more. For a long time I thought that the answer would be that there is a diversity of equally valid definitions of what an urban legend is, and that we all have a right to say what the term means to us personally. But I was surprised to find out that one particular person’s definition is in fact simply more correct than any of the others. And, as luck would have it, it’s mine.

Firstly, urban legends are stories about local events that are at least nominally true. You tell them as if they are, or at least could be, true. Secondly, these stories must be in current circulation. It is only an urban legend while it is still being told, while it lives in the dream life of the city. That’s it. It can be true or false, exaggerated or dumbed down, set in 1992 or Roman times; so long as people are telling it in today’s pubs and playgrounds, and telling it like someone believes it, then it is an urban legend.

I say all this to ensure that no one thinks that the inclusion of the following story means that the events described are not true. I know them to be true. That does not stop them being legendary though, does it? This is a tale still told all over the world, for it is a justly famous and important piece of history: the Bristol Bus Boycott.

In the 1960s the Bristol Omnibus Company, owned by the council, did not hire non-white people as conductors or drivers on the buses. This was a perfectly legal policy at the time. People from Bristol’s South Asian and West Indian communities could work in the garages, but they could not be seen working on the buses. Management said that it would scare the white workers away and the Transport and General Workers Union agreed with them.

Somehow though, and this bit could be considered a bit confusing, both management and the union were, simultaneously to enforcing this policy of a white-only workforce, claiming that there was no colour bar. ‘There is no colour bar,’ they said, ‘it’s just that we happen to bar people of colour.’

Black activists and various people had made a noise about this before. Not least among them was Roy Hackett, legendary community organiser and founder of St Paul’s Carnival. But nothing changed, even when the Bristol Evening Post ran an exposé on the injustice of the de facto colour bar.

There is a big question about context here. How racist was Bristol in the 1960s? What was it like to live here for West Indians and for Asians during that time? Of course, being a tiny white whippersnapper I can’t properly answer that, and so it is beholden on you to go and find some old lady or gent to fill in the blanks. What I will do is tell you some of what I heard for myself. I’ll stick to the experience of Jamaicans for a minute. Remember that many of them had not long arrived: the Windrush was only a little over a decade previous. It was very hard to find a room in Bristol, due to the fact that many landlords would not hire rooms to black or brown people. Many pubs refused to serve you. So too did some of the shops. There were also violent gangs of Teddy Boys who would chase you through the streets and subject you to horrible beatings or worse.