IT was a hot day; 1970 or thereabouts. I’d just finished throwing a ton of black gold down the coyle oyle, sweeping up piles of dust and replacing the ornately decorated metal cover. Drilled with breathing holes, it looked like it had been riddled with machine-gun bullets, courtesy of one of the bang-bang war games we’d enacted in the street as young uns.
“Tha coming, mate?” Hatty asked, breathless and perspiring after a mad dash up the hill. “There’s a big whale in t’ tarn…”
Eyeing further coal mounds lower down, dominating like a procession of giant molehills, I giggled then quipped: “A big whale? Tha sure it’s not a big mole, aren’t tha?”
“It’s reight,” he insisted, proper champing at the bit now. “It’s on t’ back of a lorry and people can go and have a look at it for a thruppence apiece…”
I’d never heard anything as daft. A whale? In Barnsley? What? Really? There was more chance of the pits closing, or the Reds ever making it to the first division.
When he offered to fund the outing, though, I was quickly on board. Changed as quick as Superman, I accompanied him in a frantic dash to the Feast Field bus stop.
“Hey up, Hatty!” I shouted, eyeing a long line of queuing traffic. “Does tha think we should try t’ whale-weigh station instead…?”
We caught the 228 Jump Circular, a double decker as big as a whale but the wrong colour, red as opposed to blue-grey, with Yorkshire Traction sign written across the back and sides. We headed upstairs, occupying vacant front seats, having a whale of a time, marvelling at the panoramic view as we travelled, heading out of town past Priestley’s factory and Yorkshire Brickworks towards the industrial metropolis of Stairfoot. After the Oaks Colliery Disaster Memorial, we rubbed shoulders with blue wrought iron gates of Downings steel and the Slazenger tennis ball factory opposite, eventually entering Cheapside, awash with shoppers, browsing the expansive outdoor market. Impatient as a dog at dinnertime, I scowled at Hatty like an embittered Captain Ahab.
“Where’s flipping Moby Dick, then?”
No sooner had the words left my lips, than we got a whiff of it. Or so we thought. As an unmistakable deep-sea aroma permeated the cabin, a quick glance left revealed a bustling Barnsley Fish Market.
“Look at that lot,” Hatty exclaimed, pouting like an overfed goldfish. “If I ever have kids that want to visit an aquarium, I think that’s where I’ll take them.”
“Don’t talk wet, Hatty,” I laughed. “Everything’s flipping dead.”
“True, but I could always say they were having an afternoon nap, couldn’t I?”
We scoured t’ tarn for ages, getting nowhere fast. We asked a few folk if they knew anything about whales, but all they seemed to want to talk about was the valleys, Mount Snowden and Tom Jones. We were on the verge of giving up the ghost when a large crowd of onlookers suddenly appeared. I could hardly believe my eyes.
“Thar she blows!” Hatty screamed, triumphantly.
We paid our entrance fee, squiggling and squirming to the front. Christened Jonah, the whale was a giant finback, 70-foot long and weighing 70-ton, dark grey with a white underside, jaw spragged wide open beneath penetrating, ink-black eyes. Apparently it had been caught off Norway in 1952. Its organs had been removed and a refrigeration unit placed inside the carcass in preparation for a decades long European tour, visiting literally hundreds of towns and cities on a specially constructed 100-foot trailer – at the time the world’s longest lorry.
According to research, a glass case was placed on the finback’s nose, containing a dormouse, depicting the largest and smallest animals on earth. Equally interesting, a local chap called Steve Deput actually wrote a book about the event. Entitled The Barnsley Whale, I’ve checked and it’s still available for purchase online if anyone is interested – doubtless a cracking read about this extremely surreal event in our town’s history.
Whatever happened to Jonah, I’ve no idea; I’ll just leave you with this: what did the Eskimo say when he arrived home to Vera Lynn pie for tea? Not whale meat again…?
