Joe's life on canals

Most young men prepare for a date by putting on their favourite shirt, doing their hair and drowning themselves in aftershave.

But Joe Hollingshead used to travel day and night on the canal to Wolverhampton then race to the cinema, only to fall asleep on his girlfriend's shoulder.

"Dating, when you worked on the canals, was almost impossible," says Joe, aged 70, from Compton.

"When I was 21, I met my wife-to-be Hilda, who also grew up on the canals.

"I used to carry chocolate from Cadbury's in Birmingham and they used to give us some free bars so we didn't scoff the load instead.

Hilda used to ask me for a bar of chocolate and one day I asked her for a date. When she agreed to be my girlfriend it made my day.

"We used to have to set up dates for when we thought our boats would be passing, it was the only way we could get together.

"There is a bridge, which is now at the Black Country Living Museum, which used to be at Broad Street in Wolverhampton and we would arrange to meet underneath it. We would agree to meet at the cinema in Wolverhampton and I would drive the boat for days and nights without stopping to meet Hilda there on time. I was so exhausted by the time I met up with her I would end up falling asleep on her shoulder."

Joe was brought up on the waterways and was even born at the side of a canal.

"I was born at Fradley Junction just outside Lichfield on the Trent and Mersey Canal in a boat called the Victory," he says.

"When my mother was about to give birth they moored up at the side of the canal by a pub. Everyone knew the places to stop where a midwife could easily get out to you.

"After the birth my mother and I were left in a cottage with friends while my father and my grandad took flour to Nottingham.

"In those days you didn't stop working and there was no paternity leave, you had to keep going. On the way back from Nottingham they picked us up, so my first stop was at Birmingham. I believe the Victory, where I was born, is still working today as a pleasure cruiser in Gloucester."

Joe, who has two children and three grandchildren, grew up in a large family which meant it was a bit of a squeeze in the small cabin on the boat. "I grew up with two brothers, Albert and Henry, and three sisters called Joan, Phoebe and Elizabeth," he says.

"My father, also called Joe, and my mother had six children in one canal boat.

"We were supposed to go to school but I only went for one hour at a time and to schools in Manchester, Birmingham and Wolverhampton. I remember being kept late at school a few times and running down to the canal crying thinking my parents were leaving without me."

Joe says his main job was helping his mum Harriet with the canal locks.

"It could be hard work but there was always plenty of time to play with the other children who lived on the canals," he says.

"We would tie a piece of rope to a tree and have a swing and other times we would play hide and seek, kiss chase and kick the can.

"When I was 15 my dad made me work because he said he had kept me for long enough. I loved growing up on the boats because I enjoyed the freedom that came with it. When I was 18 I wanted to be able to stop over-night in towns to take girls to the pictures, so I persuaded British Waterways to let me captain my own boat – it was called the Acacia.

"The first load I ever did by myself was taking flour to Wolverhampton."

Joe went on to work for British Waterways making locks and repairing boats. He recently took part in a Boaters Gathering at Dudley's Black Country Living Museum.

"When I was 27, Hilda, who passed away in November last year, moved off the boats to live in Fordhouses and worked at ICI, which made parts for aeroplanes," says Joe.

"The winter of 1963 was very cold and I was stuck in thick ice at Wolverhampton for a few weeks, which suited me because I could see Hilda more often.

"She persuaded me to come off the canals and in June that year we got married and I got a job at ICI where I worked for 26 years before I went to work for British Waterways.

"Living on the boats were some of the happiest years of my life and it was how I met Hilda, so I have a lot to thank the canals for."