Why you should take your child or grandchild to see the SSGB - by Sue Purkiss

This morning I did a shift volunteering on the SS Great Britain, Brunel's historic ship, which is moored in Bristol's floating harbour. I hadn't been there since before Christmas, and so as I walked round, it seemed very fresh to me, and it struck me as it has many times before what a wonderful achievement it is. I know there are many people, even locally, who haven't visited it, so I thought it might be interesting to walk round again, this time taking note of features that I know appeal particularly to children.

There are a lot of pictures, so do bear with! (But there are still masses more things to see, smell and hear, than I can show here...)

Right, let's go.

Part of the hull, with the sign to the Being Brunel museum, opened just a few years ago. More of this later.

There are all sorts of interesting details all over the place. I hadn't even noticed this one before, in a corner of the dock - it shows the preparations in case of fire.

In the Dockyard Museum, there's a room called Flash, Bang, Wallop, where visitors can try on Victorian clothes, and then have their picture taken against a background showing arrival in Melbourne. (The ship spent the greater part of its career taking passengers between England and Australia.)

Here, children - or adults - can try their hand at raising the ship's propellor. (It was raised when the ship was under sail.)

Now we're on board. The ship carried animals which would eventually feed the passengers - well, the first-class ones anyway.

The ship's wheel. You can turn it and dream about all the places you'd like to go to. (Or you can just admire the view of the harbour.

Bunks in steerage. The voyage lasted for two months, and as you can see, there wasn't much privacy for poorer passengers. There are all sorts of details, based on passengers'diaries and letters, to personalise the bunks: tools for panning gold, sketches done on board ship, simple toys. And there are sounds - a new-born baby crying, two women discussing the events of the night before.

Here's the cook in his kitchen. There are all sorts of other things in the kitchen too - rats, for instance...

Some things are a bit gory. Here's the ship's surgeon, treating a sailor who's had a nasty accident. You can smell the medecines, and there's a jar of leeches in the background. But also, there are some beautiful sea shells on the bunk, because this particular surgeon collected them.

This is a not-very-good picture of the engine room. (The engine is usually working.) But this view always interests me, because it shows the stokers, whose job must have been hellish. My father was a stoker, albeit in a power station, not on a steam ship.

This picture doesn't look very interesting. But that door in the foreground is the part of the ship which almost every child who visits will tell you is their absolute favourite: yes, this is the Talking Toilet! Say no more...

Now we're in Being Brunel - which is actually a good place to start, because it tells you about Brunel and his family, and sets the Great Britain context, as just one of his many achievements. It makes him real. There are talking portraits, treasures to be found by opening drawers, replicas of rooms where he lived and worked - and this reconstruction of a carriage (broad gauge, of course). The carriage moves, and children (and grown-ups) are challenged to try to draw a perfect circle on an ipad while the carriage is in motion - because Brunel once said, after a particularly wobbly journey, that one day, travellers would be able to drink a cup of coffee and write in a notebook with perfect ease. People at the time would have scoffed - but Brunel's mantra was always "Let me try!"

A very large Isambard. (Child in front for scale.)

And to finish, what else but the shop? There is an excellent selection of books - including one by me, which you may be able to spot on the third and fourth shelves down. (It's called Emily's Surprising Voyage, just in case you were wondering.)

 

The Queen, Eeyore, Dylan and me, Muttley

A typical meeting of the writing group starts at two o’clock on a Monday or Tuesday at the Queen’s house. There are four of us.

The Queen – in overall charge.

Eeyore – in charge of doom.

Dylan – anything goes.

Muttley (me) – in charge of disruption.

As we approach the door, we all stop to admire the garden. Hollyhocks, black pansies, trailing clematis and shrub roses, all line the route to the porch. It’s hard not to feel envy. The Queen has fingers greener than the Hulk.

Once assembled, we share news. Of family. Of films seen. Of food eaten. Of builders. Of fellow Bristolians. At some point the Queen guides us onto matters of writing. We are reluctant, like a book group where no one has read the book. Dutifully we report any happenings. This element is short. We move on, taking it in turns to read aloud our latest work. There should be a method in deciding who goes first, but no, we argue about it. Every time.

Eventually, one of us sighs, brings out a few sheets of A4 and the process begins. One voice. Three scribblers, pens at the ready. We mean well, all four of us, truly we do. But it might not seem that way. The reader, sharing her tortured words with us, is rewarded by giggles, sly glances, outbursts . . . There is a rule that we don’t interrupt, but we break it gaily.  Whether it’s Eeyore’s made-up words, my endless internal monologues, Dylan’s love for continuous present or the Queen’s arty descriptions, we let rip. Small tears and then often huge great gashes. The problem is that we don’t agree. Hardly surprising if you consider our books. We have a plotter, a dreamer, a lover of tangents, a repeater, a spiritualist, a pragmatist, a weaver, a schemer, a joker . . . We like first person, third person, omniscient, accents, fantasy, reality, the past, the future . . . We all think the pace is too fast, too slow, non-existent . . . We’d all write the scene differently . . . although not necessarily any better.

The feedback is only about a quarter useful – we ignore the comments we don’t like. (They’re the same every time anyway – old dogs, new tricks.) However, the relationships, support and conviviality are invaluable. Tea and sweet things add to the pleasure.

 

When we’ve all had our moment in the spotlight, we try to arrange the next meeting. This takes some time. The Queen likes to holiday. Dylan has a roundabout to play on, Eeyore doesn’t know when she’s free, and I cannot plan ahead. But we manage, noting the date, and then emailing the Queen a week later to ask what we agreed.

I was invited to join the group after a random chat in an aisle at the supermarket. I barely knew the Queen, and had never met the others. The first few occasions were nerve wracking. Not only did I have to produce a few hundred words I could bear to read, I had to try to make clever comments. I failed at the latter, but they let me stay. Three and a half years later, I still look forward to going. In a world with no structure, the discipline of stumping up the next chapter – because turning up empty-handed is just not the deal – has been a huge part of getting my latest book in shape.

It’s a lonely business, but less so, thanks to the camaraderie in the kitchen of the house with the garden to die for. Long live the writing group.

Dino-boy by T. M. Alexander

My progress up the learning curve was slow to begin with.

‘What’s this?’ Oscar would ask, holding up another grey rubbery four-legged shape and I’d say, ‘Velociraptor?’

‘Torosaurus! What’s this?’

‘Edmontosaurus?’

‘Apatasaurus!’

Oscar, like a lot of children, was crazy about dinosaurs. It’s a rich topic and led us to Charmouth, searching and finding dino poo as well as the usual belemnites and ammonites, to the Natural History Museum to see the skeletons, and to Cardiff to see the Woolly Mammoth – Oscar cried when it moved and we had to leave. Not the slightly bit interested in learning to read, it was the non-fiction dinosaur books that gave him the motivation and like all new readers with an interest he didn’t stop. When his Reception teacher, the lovely Mrs Wallis, tried to take a lesson on the subject, Oscar corrected her, and proceeded to give a short lecture. Any excuse and Oscar would slip into his dinosaur costume, and packing for holidays would mean careful negotiation about how many, what size and which one in the hand luggage. Everyone knew about his obsession, and most tried to avoid showing too much interest because he could go on . . . Except me. I didn’t know anything about dinos, but as my knowledge grew so did my fascination. Fast forward and I could name every model in Oscar’s crate. 

For others, it’s a phase, but Oscar’s passion never waned. He still has a shelf of books with large print and pictures, mostly by DK, as well as two crates containing all the models, life-like and not, and posters and fossils galore. On his bed, there’s a huge Aladar – star of Disney’s take on pre-history.

His interest widened as he got older to include the evolutionary journey from the creatures of that day to this, and wildlife became his thing.

As soon as he turned sixteen, Oscar filled out the form to become a volunteer at Bristol Zoo Gardens. He applied three times in six months but each time was unsuccessful. The zoo, understandably, gets every would-be vet, zoologist and plain animal-lover from the South West knocking on the door.

May 2012 came and in stepped Twitter, advertising a paid position as . . . wait for it . . . Dino-keeper. Oscar got straight on it. The excitement in the house was palpable. Was a dream about to come true? The role was to talk to the public about a series of animatronic models that the zoo had flown in from Texas for the summer. It was full time but Oscar was doing AS levels, so was, with a bit of license, available. He applied and was invited for an interview, where he had to give a three-minute presentation on one of the dinosaurs. Slam dunk! Oscar is blessed with an easy manner, the ability to get on with people and absolutely no nerves ever, his knowledge was undeniable, surely it was a done deal? He chose Baryonyx, and practised his spiel in front of us in full safari gear with a series of props secreted about his person including a fish, a giant tooth and a magnifying glass. Fabulous.

Interview day arrived. There were ten candidates, all the rest graduates of either Drama or Paleontology. Gulp. Oscar went first and said it went well. Nine others followed. The shortlist of seven was announced and the unlucky three sent home. Oscar wasn’t one of them. So far so good. The second element was an interview in which Oscar had to choose from a selection of artefacts and talk about it. He picked a skull and explained all the features that led him to, correctly, identify the animal.

Back home, Oscar waited for the call, and so did we.

            He didn’t get the post.

            He was so despondent, there was nothing we could say to lift his mood. The others were all much older and had more life experience, but that didn’t make it any better for Oscar. He'd missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

            It took a week for me to dare to share my idea with him.

            ‘Why don’t you write to them and ask if you could be a volunteer dino-ranger?’

            Having been rejected so many times already, I don’t think Oscar thought there was a chance, but he emailed and, relief all round, they said he could be a volunteer two days a week throughout the summer. He was overjoyed. The fact that it was unpaid was utterly irrelevant. It was a fantastic lesson in the idea that it’s not how often you get knocked down but how you get yourself back up.

            Oscar loved the job. On his second day the zoo got this email:

. . . we met a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable member of your team. I believe he was called Oscar and he was working in the fossil tent interacting with children of all ages whilst assisting them with the dig part of the exhibit. He was able to talk to a number of children at once and used his impressive knowledge to engage with them across the wide age span. He is an asset to your team. Please pass on our thanks as his involvement made the activity more enriching.

            All good.

But it wasn't over yet . . .

The whole family picked Oscar up from work one day as we were going to Oxford. He got in and said, ‘do you want the bad news or the good news?’

‘Bad news,’ I said.

‘I’m not going to be a volunteer dino-ranger any more.’

We waited.

‘I’m going to be a paid dino-ranger.’

            He ended up working at the zoo from May 2012 until Christmas Eve 2013 in a variety of roles, fitting A levels in between. His last four weeks were as the Reindeer Keeper, complete with Christmas jumper.

I was thinking about the turn of events when, last Saturday I had an anxious few hours wondering where Oscar was. 

Thanks to the experience gained at Bristol Zoo, he was offered an internship at a wildlife rehabilitation centre near Vancouver for four months. In the way that gap year students do these days he flew to Calgary so he could hook up with a few friends doing a ski season in Banff before starting work. He was due to leave on the overnight Greyhound at nine o’clock and travel on Highway 1 through the Rockies to be met at the other end by a volunteer from Critter Care, when the road was closed due to an avalanche warning.

            Silence.

            Writers’ imaginations aren’t always helpful.

            Oscar eventually arrived in Vancouver at five o’clock in the morning two days later. Everything was shut so he took a taxi to the only place he remembered from a trip there when he was nine years old – Stanley Park. (We saw beluga whales.) And rang me. He may know a lot about dinosaurs but there’s still some common sense that needs honing. Thanks to google, I found a Starbucks that was open at six o’clock. Five hours later he was picked up and is now, I’m pleased to say, at the centre. He’s allowed a shower every other day and his laundry day is Wednesday. We Skyped him last night and he looked fine. The dino-ranger is now keeper of bears, raccoons, opossums, coyote, beavers . . . 

It’s been a journey I feel very privileged to have witnessed.

T. M. Alexander

www.tmalexander.com

Author of the Tribe books www.tribers.com

http://www.crittercarewildlife.org