Characters it. In the process, his straw hat got soaked in mutton fat. When he awoke next morning, there were only a few wisps of straw where his hat had been. During the night, rats had eaten it.
Orator Randell Randell was unique among Portland's many wayside orators. He could speak with wit and logic when he had no audience but, as soon as an audience gathered, he was struck with stage fright and could not say a word. His stage was at the Tank, in Chiswell, where he would harangue passers-by. "Are you afraid of the truth?" "Do you want to live in poverty for the rest of your life?" "The day of the new society has come." People were naturally intrigued and would stop to listen, whereupon Randell would push off. Randell was a member of Portland's very small Communist Party, another was Fuzzard who chose a very strange pulpit. His chosen audience were the Sunday afternoon strollers, and lovers, who thronged West Weares. He spoke to them from the cliff, at the end of Cove Cottages and it was so far away that nobody could understand what he was saying. The leader of the party was a Castletown publican and he, and a bunch of party members, travelled to Weymouth at dead of night. They were going to make a political gesture by painting the statue of George III red. The statue was bigger than they remembered and Weymouth was well policed so they put all their paint in a bucket, with the intention of hurling it over the statue. With the assistance of an onshore breeze, they managed to soak themselves and leave the King virtually untouched.
Fighting on the home front Old Nan was a familiar sight in Underhill before the Great War. She spent all day shopping and never bought a thing. She regularly turned over everything in the shops' stock and would often get as far as having things wrapped, or weighed out, but always changed her mind. The exception was the Jug and Bottle of the Sun Inn, where she regularly bought a quart of ale, which she transported home in a massive teapot. If anybody was there when she bought it, she would say, "Doctor's orders m'son." Old Nan came into her own during the Great War when she gave herself the task of defending Fortuneswell against the Germans. Unfortunately she had no idea what a German looked like and many a visiting sailor, or soldier home on leave, was subject to attack with her flailing umbrella.
Learning to ride a bike Portland is famed for its doughty old men, none more so than Old Man Gill. In his latter years he spent most of his time in Castletown, then a thriving Port and Naval Base with a lot of traffic. He had a conviction that the roads were for pedestrians and he would walk slowly down the middle of the road, making the traffic wait. On one occasion he refused to budge and had to be lifted out of the way so that commerce could continue. He was famous for picking fights in pubs, well into his eighties. The trouble was that he wore a wig, which was as realistic as shredded up cardboard. Every time somebody laughed, he took it for granted that they were laughing at his wig. When he was dying, the family took him up to the top of Fortuneswell, well away from his beloved Castletown. The old man responded by rising from his bed, climbing on a bike, which he had never ridden before, and careering down Fortuneswell, nightshirt flapping, whooping at the top of his voice. He was caught by some sailors as he fell off the bike in Castle Road.
To Heaven - by bike Another story, in similar vein, concerns an old man in Wakeham, who was on his deathbed. While his wife and family waited for the end in the next room, he got up, got dressed and rode off on his bike. His daughter, arriving to see him, caught sight of him disappearing round the corner. She Page 9