Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Peter Thrower MANX HERITAGE FOUNDATION ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPT ‘TIME TO REMEMBER’ Interviewee: Mr Peter Thrower Date of birth: Place of birth: Interviewer: Roger Rawcliffe and Charles Guard Recorded by: Charles Guard Date recorded: 23rd April 2007 Topic(s): Isle of Man booklet for UK ex-patriots Working in Hong Kong Buying ex-farmers cottage for retirement National Trust cards Isle of Man Bank advertisement in Hong Kong paper Hazel Hannan and Tubby Taubman Isle of Man Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group Farming fraternity Euro Club and Miles Walker Felices ice-cream and local restaurants Veal and organic beef production ‘Come-overs’ and ‘Whinging Poms’ Taxation and pensions Nobles Hospital and surgeons Peter Thrower - Mr T Stella Thrower - Mrs T Roger Rawcliffe - RR Charles Guard - CG 1 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Peter Thrower Mr T ... starting at the front, here, this little booklet ... which Charles has seen, and err ... we agree it’s really rather well done of that period ... and umm ... I’ve umm ... RR (laughter) Contented person sitting in their deckchair! Mr T That’s right. CG Do you know him? Mr T You see him – the wife toiling in the background – wonderful, isn’t it? CG He was quite well known, though, wasn’t he? Mr T That’s right ... Tam ... here we are, pardon me, umm ... Mr and Mrs Tamtrained [??? sp] of Onchan. CG Oh right. Mr T I think it was Onchan, wasn’t it? CG Wasn’t he involved in the bank ... or Town Clerk, or something? Mr T I don’t know, he umm ... (laughter) ... he may have been in the Royal Navy – this is at the Trafalgar Day Ball. CG Ah right, yes. RR Yea, he’s got his medal on there. Mr T Sorry? RR He’s got his medal on, so it looks as if he was in ... Mr T That’s right, there, and umm ... the Mayor and Mayoress. But if you look through, there are undoubtedly the ... err ... people who do it, and pictures of the lady who – I shouldn’t say this, but she looks slightly agonised, doesn’t she? (laughter) Anyway, there we are. 2 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Peter Thrower RR That’s not a bad little booklet, is it? Mr T It’s not bad. As a matter of fact, you ... you’d be flat-out to find a better one today, I think. RR Hmm. Mr T So ... I’ll stick that in there, because we had them in a different place, you see. So, that’s what we got back, and then, we follow on with umm ... various bits of umm ... communication. There’s a ... quite a long letter from the bank, here, which ... umm ... indicates they’re not umm ... they’re not un-eager to get hold of people from elsewhere. But the whole thing, I think you’ll agree, was from that, is pitched toward the ex ... or the UK ex-patriot ... RR Oh, I’m sure, yea. Mr T ... and not to Australians like us, for example. (laughter) RR Yea, hmm. You’re Australians, are you? Mr T Both of us, yea. RR Are you? Mr T Hmm. RR Oh well, you’ve got all sorts of little games, extreme player – or did have. Mr T So that’s the drill. There is, incidentally, there, what we might call a personal invitation from Charles Kerruish, who was then ... RR Charlie himself, eh?! Mr T H. C., not Sir Charles, umm ... inviting us to the Isle of Man, and err ... you could ... almost ... used to say ... umm...what’s the word I’m looking for? ... umm ... Frances Piece, or something. (laughter). CG That’s in the book ... in the booklet. 3 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Peter Thrower Mr T In the booklet, yes. CG Yes. Mr T Hmm. RR So you’d ... you’d been working in the ... in the University of Hong Kong, have you? Mr T Both of them – the University of Hong Kong first, and then the Chinese University of Hong Kong after that. RR And you’d been there a good long time? Mr T We were there for twenty years, totally. Eight years in the one, and twelve years in the other. RR And you’d come from Australia to do that? Mr T From Australia to Hong Kong – well, we were actually in Britain when they said, ‘We’d love to have you.’ RR Hmm hmm ... [rustling of paper]... hmm, and [unclear] the [unclear]? Mr T Something like that, hmm ... and umm ... RR So there’s all the bits ... Mr T ... then in ... it was June, you’ll get the precise dates from this, if you’re interested. June ’74, which you’ll notice is the June following that advertisement ... RR That ... that advertisement ... Mr T ... and the correspondence. Umm ... June ‘74. We came over here for sixteen days only, stayed at the old Peveril in umm ... opposite the Lemon Squeezer, and umm ... umm ... 4 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Peter Thrower RR Before ... before ... Mr T We found this place, seeing it umm ... going toward Ballasalla, we saw it in the rear vision mirror of the car. (laughter) So there it was ... ex farm-worker’s cottage. And then we ... RR Because they ... they did restrict ... farm-worker’s houses, didn’t they? Mr T That’s right. Yea, we’ve got the ... the data in there, and umm ... the umm ... I’ve got, in fact ... the government gave a hundred pounds, some time before the second world war, for umm ... improvements to be done. And umm ... the ... err ... the condition was that the rent should be so-and-so – or so much, I should say, for a number of years. It’s all in there, if you’d like to see it. And umm ... then umm ... umm ...that it could only be let ... let to a farm worker. CG So did you have to get change of use – under planning? Mr T Umm ... I think it lapsed, yes, by that time. CG Lapsed ... yea. Mr T Err ... RR I noticed you ... you, like I, did the bargain and got your life membership of the Manx Museum and National Trust ... Mr T That’s right. RR ... for ten guineas (laughter) ... each! Mr T Yes, that’s right ... umm ...oh! I don’t know what it was. I can only say it was ... RR Ten guineas – well, you said twenty-one pounds, by the look of it. Mr T That’s right – a tenner, was it? Twenty-one pounds for the two. RR Yea, ten guineas each. I did it for ten guineas. 5 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Peter Thrower Mr T Ten guineas, that’s right, that’s right. It’s a ... RR They even work in Australia, our cards [unclear]. Mr T Umm ... sorry? RR They even work in Australia. Mr T Does it? RR Yes! CG The membership, yes. Mr T Well, blow me down! We’ve used it in Britain, and, you know, umm ... RR Oh yes, it works in Britain. Mr T And we went ... went to Powys ... Powys Castle on one occasion, and err ... we wanted to go to the [unclear] museum and we were ... RR Powys – Powys Castle. Mr T Powys, is it? RR Powys, yes, that’s right. Mr T Yes. We were ... embraced, really, by the umm ... RR Yea, I know, they’re quite funny, when they see them, and some of them say, ‘I’ve never seen those before!’ So now I say, ‘[unclear],’ they look at it suspiciously! (laughter) Mr T Well, I ... I ...we wrote ahead, you see, and the ... Major someone or other came along and gave us a personal umm ... tour before the ... hoi polloi came in. RR Oh. 6 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Peter Thrower CG So, in Hong Kong, then, you were thinking about retiring somewhere ... Mr T That’s right. CG ... and how did you first hear about the Isle of Man? Mr T (laughter) Well, if I can put it this way, in my case, at any rate, the Isle of Man has been in the back of my mind, since I was ... probably four years old. Umm ... no Manx connections that I know of, but there were two things; one is, we met two fishermen shooting their nets off a beach into a place called Bamorris [sp ???], into umm ... Portlemouth [sp ???] Bay, and umm ... one was named Quilliam, and the other was named Goodbody, and they were mates from the Royal Navy ... CG Right. Mr T ... and umm ... I can remember saying to my grandmother – I was only a little boy, well before I went to school – umm ... you know, something about Mr William ... I knew about the Christian name ... CG Hmm. Mr T ... and she said, ‘no, no, dear, Mr Quilliam, he comes from the Isle of Man.’ CG Oh! Mr T And the other thing is, my grandfather, again, no Manx connections, used to sing to me Ellan Vannin ... RR Oh! CG Good heavens! Mr T ... and, anyway, we wanted to come, we wanted to retire, we’d grown away from Australia, umm ... we wanted to come to the British Isles – among other things, we were interested in the European Union and what was going on there, and err ... so we read up a bit, and err ... we even visited places like Oxford and [unclear], you know, a month or so a couple of months, umm ..