By: Robin
Robin: Oh there’s Dales Brewery. Sometimes we’d leave the ABC matinee on Saturday morning, the ABC Minors, and we’d either go through the cemetery and play cowboys or whatever around the gravestones, or we’d go via Dales Brewery. And they had a dump of bottle tops and we’d go and collect the bottle tops and lever out the cork and then put the bottle tops on your jerseys and press the cork in from the other side. And you’d be covered in all these bottle tops! Trouble is it made holes in your jumpers and you got in a terrible row when you got home.
Pippa: And what were the bottle tops to represent? Were they sheriff’s badges or were they where you’d been shot?
Robin: I suppose it did look like a Sheriff’s Badge. I can’t remember now. But it looks sort of classy with all these different colours all over your jumpers.
Pippa: I don’t think your mothers would have approved of that!
Robin: No!
Emma: Did you say Dale’s Brewery?
Robin: Dales Brewery.
Emma: Is that still a brewery?
Robin: No, no, it’s now a… there’s coffee bar and antique shops there
Emma: So what road was that then?
Robin: Gwydir Street.
Emma: Gwydir Street.
Robin: They’ve still kept the building and there used to be a – they were a prize winning Brewer because they had a huge Gold Cup on the top of it. Because I was so proud of it.
Interviewed by Pippa Hale and Emma Bearman, May 2023