Nottingham Castle by night

What draws us to a city, a town, or even a small village? Is it something we have read about the place? Perhaps a story told by someone who visited it, or who worked there. What brought you to Nottingham is a question that has been put to me many times over the years? It may seem strange but I came to Nottingham through a cigarette packet.
Now some of you reading here may not know what a bog is. Well you will find them all over Ireland, especially in County Galway where I myself was born. Peat bogs are remote marshy places where fuel which to us Irish is known as turf is cut. It is cut into sections known as “sods” and spread over a wide area to dry. When dry it is then built into a rick. Then covered over to ward off the rain.
Many years ago when my brother Tom and myself were engaged in turf-cutting something strange happened. It appears my brother who was a few years older than me, decided he would indulge in one of life’s luxuries a cigarette. He pulled this packet from his waist-coat pocket and lit a cigarette. After he had taken a few pulls of it he offered it to me, but I refused. I felt he was doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Hen handed me the packet. It was a king of temptation gesture on his part. I had a look at it, and there on the back was a picture; and underneath the words “Nottingham Castle”. Where is Nottingham, I asked? Don’t you know, he said, in a tone that didn’t sound too civil?
Somehow I knew that my brother knew where Nottingham was. He was older than me and he was always an avid reader. Nottingham is in England, you fool, he said, pulling hard on the cigarette he held between his lips. I thought everyone knew that, he said, casting the half-smoked cigarette into the stream that flowed near-by.
I told myself there and then, that when I got older that I would find out all about this place called Nottingham, and I did. Strange enough there was another connection with Nottingham and tobacco in my young life. You see, my Uncle Tom was a pipe smoker all his life. Often he would give me money to get him an ounce of Bendigo Tobacco. “Don’t forget the “Bendigo” whatever you do, he would utter, as I went out the door. I learned later that “Bendigo Tobacco” was named after Bendigo Thomson the old Nottingham prize fighter. Bendigo Thomson was Nottingham’s strong man, and Bendigo Tobacco was strong too, that was the connection.
Now to complete the connection with Nottingham and myself I have to tell you that today I live only a few hundred yards from where Bendigo used to fight in days gone by. “Bendigo’s Ring” is to be found in Bestwood Park, here in Nottingham. It’s an area enclosed by tall trees on high ground. It can be seen out against the skyline as you travel along Edwards Lane towards the City Hospital, and to quote the catch-phrase of that Irish comedian, Jimmy Cricket, there’s more”…..
Yes, when I took that cigarette packet from my brother Tom all those years ago I didn’t know then that one day I would be employed by John Player and Sons in their tobacco factory here in Nottingham where I have lived since 1949. At that time Players had their factory in the Radford area of the city.
Every morning as I got up to go to work on a building site I could see Players Factory
from my bedroom window, yet it would be twenty years in the future before I would be employed there. I had some reservations of course at the time of working indoors. All my life I had worked out-doors on the farmlands of Lincolnshire, on building sites, and on Power Stations in different parts of the English midlands. I soon found out that the working conditions in Players were the best I had ever known. Also the pay was excellent. When I retired in 1983 it was with a touch of sadness and regret that I bid farewell to my workmates.
So when you come to think of it, isn’t it strange what twists and turns our lives take. In my case my journey to the city of Nottingham began all because of a cigarette packet my brother Tom handed to me all those years ago in a peat bog in my own native Co. Galway.