Mick Beattie An appreciation
Memories of a true WRG character: the man responsible for training weekends, canal camp griddles, Bungle’s nickname and much much more...
R. I. P. Mick Beattie [Overheard on the two-way radios in use by the site volunteers at an IWA National Festival] [Mick Beattie’s voice]: “Daddy Cool: ‘Dickhead’ is one of the words we do not use over the radio. Other words we do not use over the radio are...” [long string of expletives and no doubt, much laughter follows] I started with that quote from a festival some years ago, because it combines three essential elements of Mick – direct, mischievous, and helpful – plus a bit of basic Anglo-Saxon thrown in for good measure. However there was a lot more to Mick than the guy who scared new volunteers with his sometimes rough mannerisms, horrified Navvies readers with his bad language, and drank Pernod by the bucketful, but had a genuine heart of gold and would do anything to help. Throughout his involvement in WRG from the late 1980s, he was absolutely committed to the principle that despite being a volunteer organisation it could and should take a professional attitude to matters such as Health & Safety, training and the quality and condition of tools and equipment supplied to canal camps – and his legacy remains with us today. At the same time, he managed to lead numerous canal camps at sites as diverse as Bude, the Cotswold Canals, Chichester, Lancaster, and IWA festivals in Manchester and Huddersfield; get heavily involved in the WRG Navvies Anonymous mobile group; and mastermind the WRG Logistics operation maintaining tool kits and trailers from his home in Blackpool (often to the bemusement of his neighbours). But rather than fill this page with my thoughts and memories, I’ve filled it with quotes from many of the other WRG folks who knew him better than I did, and whose recollections will go much further towards doing justice to someone who Mark Richardson rightly describes as “a unique and irreplaceable man”. Initial impressions of Mick could be of the tattooed, skinhead, hard drinking, heavy smoking, womanising, swearing, aggressive sort of chap that you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of, but you soon realised he was actually kind, helpful and if you were in the shit he would help get you out of it (often before you had even realised you were in the shit...) Mick was brilliant like that – helping anyone in trouble. If he liked you, he’d tell you that you’d been a bit of a ‘Silly Billy.’ If he didn’t, he’d use a whole string of other rude words I dare not repeat. Either way, he’d never leave you in a hole. Mick had a desire to make everything better whether that was for volunteers, colleagues or just bailing out a friend in need – which he did a lot.
I had to give Mick’s report to the Festival meeting regarding craning boats as he couldn’t stay. I had to rephrase it a little: “If you want to lift jolly big boats a jolly long way, tell them they will need a jolly big crane!” My parents donated a tumble drier to WRG for use at festivals. Mick and Roger Burchett turned up to collect it while they were out, and my parents got a phone call from my very worried sister “Father Christmas and a skinhead have turned up to take the tumble drier away….”
The biggest influence he had on me was when I arrived at the Salford National for my first camp, he asked me what my name was and I said “George”. “Right, we’ll call you ‘Bungle’ then” At Salford National we got introduced to both the Lightweight Land Rover (which had a stereo fitted that played one Pogues album continuously at full volume whenever it was turned on) and the frankly glorious 101 forward control Land Rover with its V8, the gearing of which meant it was the fastest thing on the road up until about 50 MPH at which point it was flat out! Still, it was interesting leaving the boy racers in Manchester behind at the lights (and nearly leaving some of the volunteers
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