Joe, more than most people, didn’t take long to fathom out because he was so clear himself aboutwho he was. He hated waste and was sensibly frugal. He once worked out that the cheapest key to play in for fiddlers is E, because your fingers hit the less frequently used parts of the strings thus spreading out the wear and tear. I vaguely remember that his Lost E jig (Tape 11 No. 622) was written in order to capitalise on this newly discovered truth.
As the Old Ropes we had several fairly lengthy meetings about whether or not to get a sharedmobile phone. Joe thought we’d got perfectly good landlines to do business on so why waste themoney. Input from our partners who were sick of fielding messages, eventually persuaded him. Thismakes him sound like a penny pinching twat which couldn’t be further from the truth. He wasgenerous to a fault and would be the first to stand a round or donate to whatever cause struck him as worthwhile.
He was a great mender. A lot of his clothes had professional looking and very discreet patches on them. Very good at sewing and handy with a riveter he was quite at home with canvas and leather. The panniers he designed and made for our bike trip to Spain were a work of art, holding 2 fiddles in their cases with room on top for clothes and a handy measured pocket to hold a wine bottle. He much preferred making something himself if he could, rather than buying it.
He collected tin. Brightly painted old fashioned tin with sunny mediterranean colours cut out from Spanish pilchards or Greek olives which he tacked onto polished wooden boards and hung in his kitchen. You could eat the pilchards and then decorate the house. The hobby overtook the pragmatism when he started buying tins with unappealing content on the strength of their design.
He kept bees. I don’t think Fenham’s flora would have sustained more than a couple of them butwhen I first met him he had an active hive back at the family home in Hartington which he worriedabout. This was another win win hobby because it’s great to keep bees and then you get honey.
He cycled on one wheel or two. He would generally use his uni-cycle for local journeys. The peopleof Arthur’s Hill got used to him and stopped looking twice at the bearded uni-cyclist with two bags ofshopping on his way back from Bev’s veggie shop on Stanhope Street. He wasn’t so much a show offas a man who thought that eccentricity was a good thing and to be celebrated. Trips into town wereeither undertaken on foot, which meant that he could read a book at the same time (seriously, he’dscan ahead for obstacles and then absorb another paragraph) – or on his two wheeler. He wasn’treally a great one for cycling just for the sake of it. He certainly didn’t own any lycra, but if he could do the journey on a bike, he’d use the bike.
Ice skating on the other hand, on the frozen canals of the Actherhoek where Rihanna lives, was very much done for its own sake and he was even keener to get over there if there was a freeze on. Joeused to say ‘the worse the incident the better the story’ but they went through the ice once, him and Rianne, and in that case it wasn’t true. He was a good, hands behind back, long glide skater.
Margaret Thatcher had come to power and we started having Kitchen Ceilidhs in Sydney Grove. TheRed Herring café was in its beautiful anarchic infancy. Joe was developing his ‘Joey the Musical Clown Act’, a career that led him to such gigs as Jarrow Shopping Centre which is maybe where his famous whispered catchphrase began. It was why we used to call him ‘Joey the Foulmouthed Clown’. In fairness he very rarely needed to say it and then only to the bigger nastier boys. His tuba
would usually explode with flash bang hilarity but he got 2nd degree burns one time when it didn’t.A fake snake arm would play his fiddle and he would eat fire despite really not enjoying fire eating. He was a very good clown.
After Joe died I found some felt pen graffiti on my son Arthur’s bed. He was six and had scrawled‘ Joe was a very good man’
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