The Day Fidel Castro Came To Rotherham
2016-11-27
[url]
http://www.rotherhambugle.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Castro.jpg
[/url]
Castro in the back room of The Grapes in 1955
The death of former Cuban president Fidel Castro this week, brought back memories of happier times for 90 year old Dalton man Arthur Cox.
Arthur was landlord of The Grapes pub in Dalton in the 1950’s, and remembers a young Fidel Castro booking into the pub on a bed and breakfast basis. He says that Castro was visiting the area on a totally undocumented trip to study worker-management relations in the local coal industry for an early political project. Arthur recalls that Castro came into the bar most evenings where he smoked fat cigars, drank mild and played a mean game of ‘arrars.’ “His English was pretty good,” recalled Arthur, ” which is just as well because my Cuban’s rubbish.”
“There was never any mention of revolution, communism or the overthrow of capitalism” said Arthur “ so all of that came as a bit of a surprise. He just wanted to talk about football, women, and why the Yorkshire board didn’t have a treble ring.”
Arthur is very specific about when Castro paid his visit to The Grapes. It was the week of June 7th 1955 he said. “I know that because it was a few days before Elvis Presley walked in on spec looking for board and lodgings. He didn’t have enough money and so did 20 minutes in the tap side to pay for a steak and kidney pie. He were crap and walked off to the sound of his own footsteps, but you don’t forget something like that.”
Tsk, tsk, Frank. Quoting the Rotherham Bugle without acknowledgement? The website which:
We decided to launch The Rotherham Bugle after identifying a fundamental problem with other news based media covering the South Yorkshire area – they are restricted by a requirement that they stick to reporting on things that actually happened. And here’s the problem with that – what actually happened tends to be boring.
And so from the very start, we made an editorial decision to give facts a back seat. Yes, you may find a grain of truth hidden away somewhere, but it’s more by accident than design. If you do find something that’s true, don’t judge us too harshly. Anyone can make mistakes.
Our primary focus is on stuff that we’d have liked to happen, had a story taken a more interesting turn. They’re the sort of things that might occur to you in the bath, on the bog or while sitting in your car waiting for the sodding lights to change at Whiston Crossroads. Any similarity between the style and content of our stories and those featured in mainstream media, is purely intentional.