A Weymouth long since passed by

A CHANCE conversation opened up a whole world of forgotten history for me.

I’d walked in to Brunches in Maiden Street, Weymouth, for a coffee when an acquaintance of mine hailed me and asked if I knew where I was standing.

A bit wary, I queried what he meant and he then told me that Brunches used to be the Old Coopers Arms pub.

I thought this would make a quirky little story and so did some research to find out more about the Grade II listed building which dates back to the early 1800s.

The pub’s existence was swiftly confirmed but it was Pigot’s 1844 Directory of Dorset for Melcombe Regis which really fired my imagination.

We live in an age of space travel, chilli flavoured ice-cream and communication anywhere in the world at the touch of a button, but Pigot’s directory took me back to a world Weymouth has long forgotten.

For instance, in 1844 Melcombe Regis was the official residence for Vice-Consuls representing Spain, Sweden and Norway.

It had numerous businesses and pursuits including two gunsmiths, nine pork dealers, two slate merchants, seven straw hat makers, two tallow chandlers and even a conchologist who studied shells.

Melcombe Regis also had nearly 20 listed taverns and public houses… and included in the list was the Coopers Arms with the landlord recorded as Levi Honeyman.

Amazing what can happen when you go for a coffee!

Fine example of the human being at leisure

ALL I had to do was collect someone and take them home, but doing so at 3:15am on a Sunday was a real eye-opener.

On the drive in to Weymouth town centre I could barely go 100 yards without passing a staggering girl supporting her drunken boyfriend, a staggering man supporting his drunken girlfriend or a drunken couple supporting each other… or not in the case of one pair who could only giggle hysterically while sat in a hedge. In town it got a lot worse.

Two drunken women tried to roll themselves cigarettes while sat in the middle of the road, a man tried to do a handstand on a road barrier, other drunks seemed to be actually going in to pubs for more booze and everywhere there were arguments and tears, although I didn’t see a fight.

Apparently that was being reserved for the inside of some clubs where bouncers were earning their keep throwing miscreants into the street or tipping police off about drug dealing in its crudest form, so inept that dealer and addict’s exchange of drugs and cash was like a bad soap opera it was so obvious.

Having picked up my passenger in the town centre we negotiated our way out somewhat better than various weaving pedestrians and I dropped him safely at his home. Providing a lift as a favour suddenly seemed a much better idea than leaving him to negotiate that fine example of the human being at leisure.

Dog taking the boy for a walk

IT’S nice to see children helping out with general duties by taking a dog for a walk.

It shows willingness, it shows responsibility… and it shows they should have got a smaller dog!

This one was some sort of massive crossbreed and the boy in question was heavily out-muscled.

When the dog stopped because of some canine point of interest the boy could haul on the lead all he liked but the dog refused to budge until it had sniffed everything which had captured its attention.

Equally it could not be held back and in the rush along a section of grass near the pavement there was no question of who was taking who for a walk because the dog practically dragged the boy along the ground to the next lamppost it was so strong.

So if anyone is missing a boy and a large dog then the last I saw of them they were heading at speed down the hill towards the police station.

Buried somewhere in a winter wonderland

WINTER is just a few weeks away, so I was able to raise a chuckle when a friend told me about one Weymouth man’s snowy experiences at an English airport last year.

His plane came in low enough for passengers to make several appreciative comments about the snowy winter wonderland beneath them and how pretty it looked.

Those comments were in very short supply once the man had landed, walked through customs and gone outside into the cold.

He walked to the car park to collect his car, but the snowfall meant that his vehicle and every other one he could see for hundreds of yards around looked exactly the same, just a mounded hump of white!

No problem, he thought, and he used his key fob to trigger his car’s lights… and so did a couple of hundred other passengers who were also trying to find their cars.

To cut a long story short, it took him one and a half hours to finally identify his car and by then he was freezing and Christmas spirit was not so much limited as non-existent!

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