If you live on Scilly or have visited from time to time over the last 30 years, you probably won?t have trouble remembering a bear of a man who sometimes wore a parrot on his shoulder. You may have been on one of his hugely successful boat trips on Swordfish II and eaten cream tea whilst touring obscure, rarely-visited spots around the Islands, or even seen him hamming it up in plays and pantomimes for St Mary’s Theatre Club.
John Hicks lived on Scilly for 40 years. In that time he ran the Swordfish both independently and as part of the Boatmen?s Association; spent 10 years on the council; nearly 30 years in Theatre Club; owned a guesthouse; started and maintained the Christmas lights; and ran a slideshow about Scilly both at home and on the mainland (raising ?130,000 for charity) - and all of this whilst, in his own words, spending ?nearly every night in the summer months checking that the beer in the pubs was fit to sell to the tourists ? which thankfully it was!?
John left the Islands for good in 1997 and now lives in Bristol. ScillyNews caught up with him recently to get the lowdown on his life so far, his favourite memories of Scilly - and what he?s up to now. Here?s what he had to say:
?I was born in 1955, in Redruth of all places. A fact I kept as close to my chest as I was able until I was about 40. Then one day whilst having a bit of an argument with my cousin, another boatman, he said that all boatmen should be Scillonians and we should never allow any other people from the mainland in to join in the Association. I’m afraid I couldn’t agree so told him and anyone else that was listening that I was in fact Cornish and not Scillonian at all. That hushed the debate somewhat. It was like a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was always very proud to be Scillonian, and do come from a very long line of Scillonians. Indeed, on Father?s side we have lived in Scilly for well over 400 years.
I did all my schooling in Scilly and left in 1971 for four years for a marine apprenticeship in Holmans dry dock in Penzance, which I thoroughly enjoyed but couldn’t wait to get back home. In 1975, I returned and started work with my father, Lloyd Hicks, on the Swordfish ll as crew. We worked fairly well together and he taught me a great deal about the waters and tides of the Islands over the next five years. Each year I took another Council boatman’s test, progressing myself to a full class A ticket, which I finally got on April 23rd 1980. This ticket allowed me to take a boat anywhere within the Islands, including the Bishop Rock.
Dad was not in the best of health during that summer so I tended to take the boat more and more often, leaving him at home to relax (he never relaxed in his life!). He died on 29th Sept 1980 and two days later, it was the turn of the Swordfish to do the Bishop trip. Up until then I had never done the Bishop trip without Dad, so I said I would go down and take the boat. It was probably the hardest trip I ever made in Scilly, but I am so glad I did it because every trip after that was so much easier.
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For the next 11 years, I ran the Swordfish ll in and around the Islands in the Boatmen’s Association but I was becoming increasingly frustrated with all the arguments and rows that were becoming more and more vitriolic. What’s more, I always seemed to be in the thick of them all, so in 1992 I decided to leave the Association so they could get on, they would have a lot less to argue about and life would get a lot more pleasant….. Boy, how wrong was I. They fell out even more and it all got very nasty for a while. It was then that I realised that it wasn’t me causing all the arguments, but I was actually having somewhat of a calming influence, much as my father had many years before. I just hadn’t realised it at the time.
I left the Association and converted the Swordfish to carry just 12 people instead of 72 and did complete day trips out and around the Islands, landing in all the strange and awkward places that none of the others wanted to land. I supplied morning coffee, lunch and a cream tea just before we reached home. It was exceedingly successful, much to the annoyance of some. It was during the next five years that I learnt more about the islands than I had in the previous 17 and was taking the boat and my customers into all sorts of places they would never get otherwise. I loved it, and was really enjoying my job. What I hadn’t realised is that what I was enjoying was the thrill of going to new places and into new nooks and crannies, and soon those new places and nooks and crannies would run out, and soon they did. The job then became monotonous, and I am not good with monotony, so I thought I had better do something about it.
It was then, in 1996, that I decided that I would spend the winter on the Mainland. I went to a small place on Dartmoor called Tedburn St Mary with my two dogs and lived in a small, freezing granny flat for four months trying to earn a crust at Exeter Airport. I have to say that I did enjoy it but wasn’t sorry to get back to Scilly to the comfort of my four-bedroom house, which I was running as a guesthouse at the time. Mind you, the following year I left again for the winter and came to Bristol. I got a job as a grounds maintenance man and in no time I was looking after the playing fields and grounds of three large schools and a couple of other government properties.
For a couple of years I had been thinking that in 2000 I would leave Scilly, but all of a sudden I found myself living in a house (not brilliant by any standards, but at least it was a roof over my head) and I had a good job, which I had been offered full time if I wanted it. I decided that I would take it, so one day in January 1997, I rang my best friend Maggie Perkovic and told her that I had decided to leave the Islands and set up over here in Bristol. I think it was a shock for some people, but many people wished me good luck. I returned in February and in two weeks exactly I had packed up the house and everything I wanted to keep and the remains I sold off in a house sale. Many members of the public came and bought what I wanted to get rid of, and believe me there was a lot after being there for over 40 years.
After working at the grounds maintenance job for about 18 months, I had a heart attack and had to give it up. I found another job at just one school, again looking after the grounds, but I also found that too hard and I was still suffering with the old ticker. I had met my partner, Rod, by this time and we were living together. He was working for the Post Office and hating it, so we decided to look for a business we could run ourselves. We looked at cafes, restaurants, shops and all manner of other things and finally we found a little pet shop that was run down and needed pulling up again, so we took that. Rod went off and did a grooming course, while I ran the shop, and from then until now we have been doing just that - running a pet shop and grooming parlour, very successfully. We have even gone into the fancy dress world and sell accessories for fancy dress, jokes, tricks and novelties too. But again, we have decided that it is time to move on and as I write we are in the process of getting rid of the shop and opening up the ‘Bristol Canine Hydrotherapy Centre’ and ‘A1 Grooming Parlour.? We have both been off on the courses for that and are looking forward to yet another turn in direction.
I am still very heavily involved with a theatre club here in Bristol. I joined a couple and found that they were not a patch on the one in Scilly, mainly due to the way they were run by the committee. So I set up a new group and formed a committee in much the same style as the one in Scilly. It has now been running for four very successful years and I am pleased to say that we have been lucky enough to get some very hefty grants from various places, including the lottery fund, so I think we are doing very well. I am at present in rehearsal for pantomime, Cinderella, and I have had to take over the role of one of the Ugly Sisters at fairly short notice, so that is proving to be a bit of hard work. I’ve played many parts but never a panto dame before, so I am thrilled to have a go at that.
My happiest childhood memories from Scilly were of the ‘Samson Picnic?, learning to row, Sunday afternoons on the beach with my family and cousins, aunts and uncles. It was always the family thing to be the last ones off the beach and sometimes we would have to sit there until seven in the evening until everyone else had gone.
I loved the old school caretaker, Edgar Woodcock, as did all the kids. He was a wonderful old chap who always had a laugh and a quip for everyone. Alas, people like him are just not allowed to exist in our society now. I remember the beer-sodden Father Christmas who used to arrive at the paper shop once a year, we would all line up and in fear and trepidation and be forced to go in and sit on his lap while he breathed his beery fumes all over us. Dutch courage, I think it was probably called. In actual fact, I reckon he was probably more scared of all of us kids rather than the other way round, and now after all these years and having played Father Christmas many times myself for various groups, I think I know exactly how he felt. I remember well, with great interest, the old Vicar?s wife, Mrs. Gillet, who always sat at the back of the church in the high pews and spent the entire service playing with her false teeth so she looked like someone chewing an enormous gob stopper. We were fascinated and could never understand why they never popped out and clattered about on the wooden floor. Us choristers longed to hear them rattle all through the church, but alas, we never did.
I think most of my happiest memories were in my 20s and 30s and most of them include Maggie Perkovic somewhere. She is without a doubt the best friend I ever had, and the laughs we had together would fill a dozen buckets. If I were to long for anything it would be to have those fun times back again, but of course as we grow older we can’t do what we have always done, we have to grow up and mellow, sadly.
But the most bestest and happiest memory of all is the wreck of the Cita in March 1997. For most of my life, I had always wanted to experience a proper shipwreck. I never wanted anyone to get hurt or die, but to experience the things that the old people experienced. Shipwrecks were in my blood, my very being, and my forebears had gone to many a shipwreck to rescue the poor souls and then returned to rescue what they could of the cargo. In fact, my great grandfather actually died at sea whilst trying to rescue the crew of the TW Lawson. So you can imagine my great joy and elation when I heard there had been a wreck at Porth Hellick that morning and then when I got there to see, such joyous sites as I beheld, of the containers spewing their cargoes out for all to grab and collect. I had waited many years for this moment, and it was without a doubt the most defining point of why I decided it was time to leave Scilly. It was the last one thing that I always wanted to experience, and it had now happened. There was nothing more for me look forward to except more of the same.
To wind up, I must say that I loved living in Scilly. I had a wonderful 40 years there, made many friends and enjoyed my boating years. Most of the lads I had as crew were brilliant and were good as gold. The two best ones were Tim Fortey and Robert Powell. They were brilliant to work with and always fantastic with the public, which was the most important thing. One of my greatest joys is the fact that Tim eventually got the Calypso and began running trips himself, and has done a fantastic job. I am exceedingly proud of him. I always said if ever I had had a brother I would have prayed that he was like Tim. Robert was also a true friend; in some ways, he took the place of my father, and I was able to talk to him and confide in him, he was a very stabilising influence on me. I was also very proud to be the first to ‘take on’ a full-time female crew member. Rita Parker worked for me for a full season. We had very many laughs that year, some wonderful times and on the rare occasion not so wonderful times, but I think you had better ask Rita about that one?.
I am sure that I will return to Scilly sometime in the not too distant future. The main trouble is that it is so expensive to get there; the cost has been the main factor in my not returning for some five years. We have been over three times since I left in 1997-8, and it is always in the back of my mind that I may return one day when I am old and crusty and sit on the strand and tell the stories of my experiences wrecking along the shores, just as I used to love listening to the old guys? stories when I was a tacker.?
