JeffNZ
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Jimmy Morgan
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Post by JeffNZ on Oct 6, 2020 3:45:51 GMT
Odd things dreams, the one I had the other night took me back to the Tote End where I could smell, I mean really smell the gas (no it wasn't the Mrs) and it got me reminiscing.
Strange, but in some bizarre additive way I looked forward to filling my lungs with that pungent aroma. Maybe it was associating it with the excitement of attending the game.
In my early days of attending Eastville, the first waft of gas hit you as you crossed the bridge next to Her Majesty’s (later the Concord) cinema. (That bridge was also a major and sometimes scary chokepoint after the game). As you edged closer to the ground, walking over the huge car park, the smell became thicker. Sometimes you could see smoke (or something) bellowing out from the gasworks. I have no idea then or now if the gas was harmful but I loved it!
Watching the game you became accustomed to the smell but it was a sneaky blighter and every now and then it would send you a massive reminder as if to say, “Oi, get whiff of that one!”
Goodness knows what opposing fans made of it although I remember some City supporting mates would take the pi$$ with comments like. “I went down the Rovers ground yesterday; I needed to fill me lighter”. As we know, City fans came up with the term Gashead as a pi$$ take, oh the irony that is now one of our unique and best-loved attributes.
As supporters we experienced the delights of the gas every other week, those living in houses close to the ground had it 24/7. As a kid, I thought one day I’d buy one of those houses. I didn’t.
So, given the demographics of some of the posters here who else have fond or not so fond memories of the gas?
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TaiwanGas
Paul Bannon
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Post by TaiwanGas on Oct 6, 2020 4:03:59 GMT
I get a whiff of the Gas and reminder every month, I am off grid and we get bottled deliveries. Lived in Napier Road (parallel with Eastville South stand) in early 80's and have no recollection of smelling gas or was I just used to it!, walking down Greenbank it was strong!.
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Post by o2o2bo2ba on Oct 6, 2020 9:58:33 GMT
..yet we weren't known as The Gas until 80s..
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2020 11:30:19 GMT
..yet we weren't known as The Gas until 80s.. Up the Rovers!  |
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Rex
Predictions League
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Post by Rex on Oct 6, 2020 12:00:07 GMT
I started watching in 73/74, I can't remember any smell around the ground at all , although obviously many do.
The first references to us as The Gas that I remember where in a couple of different chants, one from City fans 'The Gas, The Gas, we gotta get rid of The Gas' and one from us 'The Gas, The Gas, you'll never get rid of The Gas' I think that would have been late 70s.
Also, my wife used to work in a garage, would have been mid 80s, and Harold Jarman was a customer, so I gave her a programme for him to sign and request that he should sign his name and 'Up The Gas' which he did, but he told my wife he had never heard us referred to as that before.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2020 12:22:30 GMT
Started going to games in 1963 as a 11 year old. That smell will never leave me, I am sure the train was still running in the background then behind Muller Rd end.
Later, when I had graduated to the North Enclosure, I must have been 17, there was a poxy little bar under the stand selling Double Diamond on draught. How many points can you drink at half time!??
Night games, there was on old boozer further along Stapleton Rd (towards old market), Wagon & Horses I think, that had the best cheese and onion crusty rolls.
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Post by a more piratey game on Oct 6, 2020 13:51:26 GMT
I started watching in 73/74, I can't remember any smell around the ground at all , although obviously many do. I remember the smell of fags, but not gas Is it our memories failing, or had the problem/distinction been removed by then? |
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Post by outwoodgas on Oct 6, 2020 14:28:44 GMT
I remember the greyhounds barking in the kennels and the long walk from Muller Road to the open end. We went in the open end as we could sit down on the terrace. I too always wanted to buy a house near the Muller Road entrance. I remember an old boy walking out of one of them and going into the ground and thinking life didn’t get better than that. First game was 1966 v Swindon. Harold Jarman and Don Rogers. What footballers they were!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2020 14:59:17 GMT
1949 was my first Eastville visit.
I was only five and do not remember the smell of gas.
Now when I got home to my post-war council house . . .
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Post by a more piratey game on Oct 6, 2020 15:01:48 GMT
1949 was my first Eastville visit. I bet during rationing the pies had the same amount of meat in as they have nowadays - almost none! |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2020 16:53:06 GMT
1949 was my first Eastville visit. I bet during rationing the pies had the same amount of meat in as they have nowadays - almost none! Haha! When I was eight I started watching 'The Rovers' with other kids from our estate, Lockleaze; just up the road, over Purdown. Uncle Joe (I know🤔) the ice-cream bloke, who came round the ground at half-time sold us excellent chocolate (??) lollies. They were tuppence. I usually went to the 'Rovers ground' as it was called in those days with a shilling in my pocket (sixpence to get in) and occasionally used threepence to transfer over to the terraces from the boy's enclosure at halftime, leaving a penny for the church plate on Sunday  The 'good old days' - eh? 🙄 |
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basel
Joined: May 2014
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Post by basel on Oct 6, 2020 17:06:19 GMT
Just about the worse steak & kidney pie I ever had was at Eastville,Tote End.1978-ish.
Cold.Threw it away in disgust!🙂
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Post by swissgas on Oct 6, 2020 17:16:20 GMT
A wire fence separated the gasworks from the walkway behind the North Stand and behind that (often trickling through it) were piles of a granular material with a blue tint which must have been a waste product from the process. Although it was easy to think the clouds of steam which sometimes came over the stadium from the gasworks caused the acrid smell it was more likely from this stuff which I later discovered is called "blue billy".
"Other wastes from coal gas included "blue billy", which is a ferroferricyanide compound — the blue colour is from Prussian blue, which was commercially used as a dye. Blue billy is typically a granular material and was sometimes sold locally with the strap line "guaranteed weed free drives". The presence of blue billy can give gas works waste a characteristic musty/bitter almonds or marzipan smell which is associated with cyanide gas."
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Post by Curly Wurly on Oct 6, 2020 18:00:15 GMT
I started watching in 73/74, I can't remember any smell around the ground at all , although obviously many do. I remember the smell of fags, but not gas Is it our memories failing, or had the problem/distinction been removed by then? I also remember the sweet smell of cigarettes distinctly.
The Stapleton Road Gasworks closed in 1971, during the phase of transition from Town's Gas to a national network of North Sea (natural) gas. As well as the smell from the "blue billy" scrubber waste that Swiss describes, the smell associated with gasworks also derived from the release of sulfur products to the atmosphere, H2S, SO2 etc.from the gasification process. I can only assume that the transition to natural gas, which lasted from 1968-1976, took place in Bristol prior to 1971. I remember it happening, but not the precise date.
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jqgas
Joined: September 2014
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Post by jqgas on Oct 6, 2020 18:03:43 GMT
..yet we weren't known as The Gas until 80s.. That's what I recall as well - I thought it was a nostalgia thing, people looking back at better days when we were first exiled to Twerton Park. Obviously in the end it didn't work out too badly at Bath, but when the nickname first appeared our prospects there didn't look promising to say the least. |
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Deleted
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Oct 7, 2020 9:48:18 GMT
..yet we weren't known as The Gas until 80s.. That's what I recall as well - I thought it was a nostalgia thing, people looking back at better days when we were first exiled to Twerton Park. Obviously in the end it didn't work out too badly at Bath, but when the nickname first appeared our prospects there didn't look promising to say the least. I remember in the seventies the city fans around our way called us tote enders the gasworks gang. |
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irishrover
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Post by irishrover on Oct 24, 2020 1:53:17 GMT
So I have no memory of gas as Eastville pre-dated my Gasheadome by about a decade. However, I do have another pungent smell from the early days at the Mem. If you stood, as I did, on the West Enclosure near the tunnel in the late 90s/early 2000s then at half-time you got the strong smell (by which I mean overpowering) of deep heat arising from the dressing rooms at half time and just before the start of the game. To the extent that on occasion it was actually briefly hard to breathe. Then almost overnight around 2002/03 it seemed to stop so either a)footballers realised that Deep Heat was a total rip off and not worth bothering with or b)we improved our ventilation system.
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Post by chelt_gas on Oct 24, 2020 9:34:54 GMT
So I have no memory of gas as Eastville pre-dated my Gasheadome by about a decade. However, I do have another pungent smell from the early days at the Mem. If you stood, as I did, on the West Enclosure near the tunnel in the late 90s/early 2000s then at half-time you got the strong smell (by which I mean overpowering) of deep heat arising from the dressing rooms at half time and just before the start of the game. To the extent that on occasion it was actually briefly hard to breathe. Then almost overnight around 2002/03 it seemed to stop so either a)footballers realised that Deep Heat was a total rip off and not worth bothering with or b)we improved our ventilation system. I used to stand on the steps to the food hut in the popular terrace at Twerton - I was ten. Greasy Joe’s burgers smelt like warmed up Pedigree Chum and was almost pungent enough to start the gag reflex. However, I still didn’t turn down the freebie burgers that were given away after the final whistle. Terrible burgers, I’m sure a DNA analysis would uncover more than 5 different species in that meat. |
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