Sooty rules The Globe

by Louisa Adjoa Parker (Weymouth)

He was born on the last day of the war, 7th May 1945. I’m effectively a war-baby, he tells me over coffee, I’ve lived here most of my life. All he knows about his father is his surname, and that he was tall, too. He was treated as different by his family.

Imagine war-time, he sighs, think what went on! Once, my mother was cycling home and saw the bottom half of a woman’s body dangling from the telegraph wires. The shoes were still on. Meeting a black guy, dancing, jitterbugging – it was different for her.

I owned a pub, he says, didn’t just run it. At 23 I was the youngest landlord in Britain, and the only black one in the South West. It was the Sixties, a music revolution. There was graffiti on the wall "Britannia rules the waves but Sooty rules The Globe".

He is always ready with a smile, seems to know everyone. We walk over a bridge that lifts up every now and then to let boats through. I can’t complain, he says, I’ve had a wonderful life, got wonderful kids, been all over the world. I can’t complain.

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What Louisa Adjoa Parker says about Sooty rules The Globe:

Inspired by talking to John, who is the son of one of the many hundreds of African-American GIs who came to Weymouth during the Second World War. Everyone locally knows him as Sooty, because he’s a chimney sweep, and quite literally everyone seems to know him!