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[OVERLAPPING VOICES]
FIRST VOICE: The Empathy Museum presents A Mile in My Shoes
[OVERLAPPING VOICES] [FOOTSTEPS]
The shoes I have here, a pair of men's shoes, they're deck shoes in fact, they're size 8.
They have leather uppers.
There's white stitching around the foot area -the toe area I should say.
They have leather laces.
They're quite well-worn. They're sort of a dark blue, slightly turquoise colour.
There are very strong leather laces,
a different colour from the shoe, they're a sort of brown lace,
quite worn. The interior is leather.
It looks padded and quite comfortable.
So they should be comfortable to walk in.
They look a pretty good, practical shoe, I'd have thought.
These shoes belong to Danny Bulman. This is his story.
DANNY: Hello, my name's Danny Bulman and I work on the River Thames.
[WATER]
The River Thames is the blood line through London.
To see London from the river just gives you a complete unique perspective
and my family have been on the River Thames for over 400 years.
The Bulman family originally came from Russia many many moons ago.
They settled over in the East End, they was boat builders
a couple of hundred years ago and also drudgermen.
When the ships would come up the Thames they’d discharge coal,
they would row up, get the coal, put it in the barge and then sell that coal on.
So that’s what my family was a few hundred years ago.
When you first go onboard a vessel, the first thing that they asked me was ‘who’s your father?’
and my dad’s Billy Bulman, and a very well respected man on the River
and he’s a lovely bloke and I love him to death.
My mum never wanted me to go on the River Thames, she always wanted me to
go into banking and earn lots of money
but unfortunately I wasn’t an outstanding pupil,
yeah I always used to like making the kids laugh,
they said if I applied myself more I could have achieved so much more
but I got apprenticed when I was 16 and it was the wake-up call from hell.
It was 5 o clock,
I think it was like a January morning,
and my dad’s dropped me off on this Greenwich pier
and I’m climbing round the side of this barbed wire fence
cos obviously the gates weren’t open that time of the morning,
everyone else was completely sane and in bed.
And I got dropped off round the corner and my dad’s waving me goodbye as I’m walking down the pier,
onto the River Thames, and I remember there being ice on the ropes
and this bloke’s come out of the wheelhouse
and said ‘who are you?’ and I said ‘I’m Danny Bullman’.
And he went ‘here, are you Billy’s boy? and I said ‘yeah I’m Billy’s boy’
and he said ‘well jump on board son’.
He said, ‘the kettle’s on, go and make me a cup of tea’
and that was it, we set off and went and collected a load of rubbish
out of all the other boats, and that made me realize that
yeah maybe I shoulda listened to my mum and became a banker.
[LAUGHS]
[♩SLOW GUITAR♩]
When you do your apprenticeship on the River Thames, it’s drilled into you how important you are.
And you would be petrified, you would be sixteen years of age,
you’re surrounded by 500 years of history
and they would bind you in to the River Thames, and they’d have a piece of paper they would rip in half
and you’d go off and learn your trade and after five years you came back
and every inch of that River Thames you had to know, every single inch of it.
Your lights, your sound signals, your reaches, your bridges, where it was deep, where it was shallow,
your tides, everything.
I come onfloat in 1991 when I was 16,
I weighed about 6 stone and I was with these two old guys,
they seemed like they was 70 then and they’re 70 now.
They was eating cheese and drinking a glass of red wine at lunch
on the tug, this dirty filthy rotten tug
and I’m sitting there watching this thinking you’re completely mental
and I wanna go to the caff and I wanna go and listen to music with my mates
and I’m sitting there with these two old boys eating cheese and drinking wine.
I was in this tiny little dock, moving these barges around, taking it out into the big River Thames
and then these big tugs were taking these barges away and I was thinking, where they going to?
where they going to? And then the call come through –
right, Bulman, you’re out on the tugs now
and I was like, oh no have I gotta go out on the tugs? where am I gonna go to?
So I went onboard this tug called The Seachallenge
and the only time I was allowed in to drive the boat was when I had to clean the floor,
that’s like Dickens init,
and they we set off to East Tilbury, it’s only like fifteen, twenty miles down the river dyou know what I mean,
but for me when I was 16, it was like Katmandu, it was just like
it was just unbelievable, I was going, I was going to the *** end of the world
it was amazing, unloading these barges full of mud. And then towing them back up again.
I thought we was gone for days but we was only gone for about 18 hours.
They say that traveling broadens the mind and it really does,
I don’t think you should be restricted in going anywhere or doing anything.
I traveled to the Philippines, down through Brazil, and I’ve traveled to Nepal to the base camp of Everest.
If I could give everyone a thousand pound
to at least get out the country and go and see a different place,
it would open their minds and their hearts much wider than they could ever imagine.
[♩ELECTRIC GUITAR ♩]
So the River Thames has gone from a working river to a
place for pleasure. You’ve got the pleasure boats,
the Thames clippers and the ribs.
To paint a picture, back in the day, there was 25 thousand dockers,
there was 6 thousand nightsmen working on the River Thames.
They said you could walk across the Thames on barges,
that’s how many barges were laying next to each other.
To live pre 1970, before the real decline, it must just have been amazing.
Well I s'pose I was about 19 before I went to work on the pleasure boats, doing the guides
[DANNY ON LOUDSPEAKER: so there on your left hand side you’ve got the Tower of London,
you know that in 1078 you got William the conquerer]
DANNY: telling absolute lies to these poor unfortunate tourists
that had come from different countries with pockets full of money.
We would take the hat off and then walk round and practically beg them to empty their wallets into our hat,
and then we’d go and spend that gleefully in the pub.
I was working with this guy called Bertie Prow
and he’s probably one of my most favourite people in the world, without a doubt.
When I first met him I was 19, I wasn’t allowed to go in the pub with him, none of the apprentices were.
He unfortunately lost a kid, maybe about ten years before, he lost a boy over the side,
so he didn’t like apprentices drinking with him.
Did I like Bert? He was stopping me from drinking. Did I like him? I loved him
from day one, absolutely adored him.
He used to make these curried mackerel sandwiches,
he said his mum used to make 'em, but I think he used to make 'em
and then he’d come on the boat and he’d always say to me ‘you got any food?’ and I’d go ‘no’
and he'd mutter something under his breath and go 'here you are' and hand these sandwiches to me.
We was on this boat called The Viceroy
and it was an old Dunkirk veteran boat and I hated that boat, I couldn’t stand it,
I detested that boat, you’d have these little old ladies sliding around the deck
on these little orange plastic chairs that they used to put in children’s schools
and they’d be sliding around the decks, looking at me in despair.
I’d be trying to do a commentary, they couldn’t look out the window because it was too high up
and the window was all misted up because the boat would overheat and
Bert would have the wheel and he’d be standing there, all proud and proper
in his immaculate white shirt, and his tie done up with its Windsor knot
and it’d be freezing cold and I’d see all these other beautiful pleasure boats coming up and
I’d look along in the wheel boxes and all the captains and the boys would all be laughing
and slapping each other's back.
And it just seemed like I’ve been put on this for a purpose
and it must have been something I’ve really done bad in a previous life
and Bert would just look at me and go ‘you alright there boy?’
and I’d go yeah yeah yeah yeah fine and I’d never let him know.
But um... I hated every minute of being on that boat but I loved every minute of being with Bert.
He used to teach me all these old songs.
[SINGS] Mary was a servant girl, she lived down Drury Lane
She had a good old master and her mistress was the same
One day a sailor came rolling home from sea
He was the cause of all her troubles all her misery
Be it in a pub, be it at work, be it at a wedding,
even at a wake at a funeral, one thing that I like is communication,
I like being with people, I like being with people making me laugh
and those guys that I met on the River Thames at the early age are still my friends today.
You got two families on the River Thames, you got your blood family
and you got the guys you grew up with that you trust with your life
and that will be with you until the day that you die. Or the day that they die hopefully first!
[SINGS] If it be a girl child, then bounce her on your knee
And if it be a boy child send the *** off to sea!
[WATER]
The thing that I s'pose really bothers me is looking at what the world’s becoming
through the eyes of getting old and being English,
it’s definitely changing too much you know.
When you do your apprenticeship, it’s drilled into you how special this job is,
the skill of working on the River Thames is revered around the world, it’s the speed of the tide,
how busy the River Thames is, to deal with all kinds of vessels, cargoes,
tides, weather conditions, that’s why it used to take 5 years to do it
and in 2007, they got rid of the Thames waterman lightman license
and that for me was another part of England dying, another part of England we will never retrieve again.
They’ve now opened up the whole licensing to the whole of Europe
and that means that anyone from around Europe can come and work on the River Thames - which is fine,
that’s more than fine, but it’s got to be reciprocated in both ways,
so it’s a tough one for me because although I want it to be open for everyone,
I still want to retain the values of it and retain the heritage of it and I never want that to go.
I want everyone to enjoy what I have
but at the same time respect the values and keep the licences as they were
and keep the traditions and the values.
So being English is quite a tough thing I think.
If you speak to any old lightman they will tell you, they loved going to work on a Monday morning
and I must say that when I first got apprenticed, I couldn’t wait to get to work,
I used to love every minute of going to work, I loved every single minute of it,
and that’s changed for me, quite... quite a bit.
Yeah I’d like to come off the river I think,
because I wanna earn some money! [LAUGHS]
The reason that I want to come off the river is because life has so much more to offer.
I’m not accepting that I’m just going to work on the River Thames,
I want to stretch my wings, I want to see the world
and work round different places of the world.
Perhaps I could do that on boats, but um...
I’ve been on boats twenty years now and I think that’s enough.
[WATER]
FIRST VOICE: Danny's story was produced by David Waters.
His shoes are part of a growing collection of footwear
hosted by the Empathy Museum's A Mile in My Shoes exhibition.
The shoes and stories come from all over the world.
Follow us on twitter, Facebook and Instagram to find out where we're going next.
[OVERLAPPING VOICES] [FOOTSTEPS]