Back Door View was a feature we ran for a while to allow space to publish various kinds of short pieces from new contributors.
Joe Millson was the skater who had the ramp near Newbury with one platform supported by an old car.
The hope was that providing a small space which did not have a defined format would attract more contributions — but filling it remained a struggle. It was a familiar problem at the time: a magazine desperately keen to find new contributors and readers who perhaps thought they could never get anything published.
Things may now have changed. The print magazines probably still struggle to find fresh contributors, but there’s no shortage of new writing (and lots else) flowing through other channels.
Yes, I feel wistful about this. If we could have just hung on a bit longer…
7 responses to “The Bird the Boy and The Bat by Joe Millson”
Joe’s ramp was the coolest despite it’s somewhat raw construction and was pivotal focus in the early days of Newburys skate history. The ramp first came into life at a local rich kids house in Newbury. Grant was one of the older kids and had this huge house, at the front he had built what started as a 6 foot tall, 6 foot wide, quarter pipe for his BMX that was then added onto to make a half pipe. For many years we only heard stories of this kid who had a ramp in his garden and could acid drop a telephone box. Later on we all became friends with him and finally got to skate it. At some point Joe managed to get him to sell it and it was loaded on a truck and driven across town out to Joe’s farm. Legend has it that Joe never actually paid for it. Joe slowly added to the ramp giving it an extra 2 feet of width and most importantly adding a platform to the end that was originally the quarter-pipe. It seemed completely logical to Joe to hammer posts down through his dad’s old car that was parked at the back of the ramp.
Over the years that ramp saw some great times and some very “innovative” modifications to keep it going. Another legend tells of Joe sitting waiting for the bus to school and realizing that the bus stop sign would make for a great piece of coping. A quick trip back to the house and the very next weekend there was the new coping. We used to camp out at Joe’s sleeping in the back of an old box van. Some pretty funny sh%t went down during those days. Things only got better when the mini inside the barn was built.
Joe was a great guy and you could always tell that he was going to do something great with his life. He skated just a little different than everyone else with a strength and maturity older than his years. Joe wrote this when most of us couldn’t even pass english at school.
Thanks for all the good times Joe,
James.
It meant the world to me that you accepted my little story Tim, and i remember the conversation we had when i called to see whether you might print it, you seemed really stressed out as i remember and said something along the lines of “at the end of the day it’s just a load of adolescent bollocks really, teenage angst …” there was a pause where i tried not to cry and then you suddenly said it was “qhite good adolescent bollocks” and that you might be able to print it after all. You paid me a new decks worth of sterling for it and i was over the moon. I haven’t read it since and do you know what, it’s bollocks. no actually i think i’m still proud of it all things considered. I’ve since had various pieces of my angst published here and there. James Knight, so stoked that those days were as important and hilarious for you. thanks for all you said. My old man passed away six years ago. he loved you guys and would be thrilled that we are back in touch. one of his favourite anacdotes from those days which sums up the Sadgrove experience for me goes as follows…. he came home from work one day and said hello to the 2 or 3 skaters on the outdoor ramp as he parked his car, looked down through the farmyard and saw that the barn with the mini had a session in full flow with screams of laughter and a sterio blaring out music. he went through the back door (which was broken and never closed) into the kitchen where some of you guys were getting stuck in to a round of toast, he was offered and made a cup of tea by one adolescent skater or another and moved on to what used to be his sitting room where my brothers band were rehearsing thier prog smiths/rem vibe at full volume. he went in and sat on a speaker to listen to a bit and realised that my brother was not amongst those playing, he asked one of the groupies where he was and they said they had no idea. keen to hook up with one of his children he took his cup of tea down to the mini ramp/barn session and watched for a while before he realised i was not among the crowd, and on asking was told that i was probably still at school. He was always so impressed by how polite all the skaters were they made themselves at home, literally but always cleared up and respected our home, cherished the freedom that was granted them. I hope i can be half the man he was and that my kids might lose themselves for a summer or two like we did.
Ouch. Did I really say that? I’ve no way of proving this, but I suspect that I was trying to make some kind of flippant comment which went horribly wrong. I assure you I was a lot ruder about the stuff I produced myself.
Very embarassing. I cringe.
Thank goodness for the rest of the post. That’s exactly the kind of thing I liked to imagine was going on and I’m so pleased to hear that in your case it really was. All that “out there” and “is this that summer” stuff we used to print was an attempt to share that feeling.
There was something very special about what was happening in Newbury and your Dad was clearly one of the people who made it possible. Over the years I met a few such people through skateboarding and it was one of the quiet pleasures of my work at that time.
please don’t cringe. i should be cringeing, at my spelling, i typed that response with all the lights out while trying to get my youngest off to sleep. I’m Clearly having some kind of skateboarders midlife crisis, I found myself eating a peanut butter, jam and cheddar cheese sandwich today something i haven’t done since those very summers. Enough now i promise not to hog this site for any more time, don’t want to turn it into ‘skaters reunited’ do we. do we?
Well, I do cringe. In fact I cringe more because I’ve just spotted an example of the same kind of thing happening in print in this very issue, with me possibly having a bit of a pop at Gavin.
I think it’ll appear just the other side of Easter.
Skaters reunited is fine by me.
When I was working on Knowhere we used to be slightly sniffy about people posting messages trying to get in touch with old school friends. There was a lot of it going on until somebody else recognised the real need.
this is amazing.. call me nostalgic but this is truly great.. james knight, joe millson, my brother all chatting on here.. TLB what you’ve done here is fantastic and i thank you very much.. Also thanks so much to Joe for your hospitality during those years.. I learnt all my tricks there and basically loved every moment.. Sorry for running you over in my chevette! remember that? crikey.. you just got up and laughed and we skated afterwards..
And James, well man.. thanks for everything..
this is the coolest site.. hope you email me Joe.. leighton.dyer@publicismojo.co.nz
Wow, I remember reading this piece when I was 13 at the back of the school bus on my way home – Was a piece of writing that seemed far more important to me than anything we were doing in English lessons at the time.. Given current events in the Gulf of Mexico, the meaning behind it is more relevant than ever…