It was a february friday I think, and it was really cold. In fact it was snowing. Now I wanted to goto town to buy a train ticket and i'd roped Kev into coming with me with the promise we could goto the college and play on the computers, a duke3d death match i think was on the cards. So anyway, as always I insisted we walked into town, which disgruntled Kev as its only 35p on the bus - but its a nice walk along the riverside where there is all kinds of modern art.
So we set off - in the snow and wind - when I take the walk myself its always quick but when someone else is there it takes ages because you walk slower when with another person, unless you don't like them.
So we got down to the posh re-built quayside and started walking while looking at the river and trying to avoid the snow hitting us in the face. About a quarter of the way there I started a conversation on how cool it would be to find a dead body - afterall, this was the banks of the tyne and you see all sorts washed up.
The snow was getting so heavy we started to walk backwards to stop it hitting us in the face, it was not pleasant and i got the impression kev really wished we had got the bus. Only 35p. but that 35p could have been the worst 35p we ever spent as what happened next was about to confirm.
I was discussing a friend who i saw at the college, he was a scruff, looked like Bob Geldoff, and in the split second we stopped walking backwards, facing the snow once more I saw a guy apparenly looking for something down next to the river and said 'yeah hes such a scruff - looks like that guy down there'
Then the next few seconds seem like slow motion in my head. Slowly we realised that that guy was not looking for somehting - I think one of us said 'Wait a minute' and it became clear - that guy was dead - frozen solid like a bizarre ice sculpture.
Words I remember on realising this were 'cool', 'wow', 'oh god, we were talking about this 5 minutes ago'.
So, we had what we really suspected to be a dead body on our hands, frozen over a wooden beam on a fishermans pier. We walked round at all angles to try to establish he was dead, but it was impossible to get anywhere near him due to the slope and mud from the river - he was blue, which i suppose was a good sign. So, what do you do when you find a body? Bear in mind this was an age where all us kiddies didn't carry mobile phones (1996) and there was no phone box's anywhere near - but I didn't realise that as i started to run to find one, leaving kev at the scene to guard the corpse. It was our corpse after all - we found it.
So i ran, and ran and ran. In fact, i've probably never ran so far. I ended up right back at the start of the quay where there was a phone box. Now i'm not sure exactly what happened here - but i got doubts about the entire situation - it was quite strange but i thought if I phoned the police and was wrong, i'd look a fool - also i had no change for the phone. So i reverse-called my mother. I told her 'Come here NOW.' to which she replied her usual 'NO, i'm not picking you up' but this time I had an ace to play, and play it I did. 'But mother, we have found a dead body'. Silence. mumbles. 'No you havent' 'Mother, I have, come here to the quayside (gave directions) as fast as you can' Now come on, mothers can make everything OK usually, and I suppose in my teeny tiny head I thought she could and would sort it out - or something. I wanted to share my discovery of a rotting carcus with everyone also. one of those reasons is the real one. So I then ran (again) upto the top road and waited for her - and I must say, this was the quickest i've ever been picked up by mother in my life. We drove, with her looking at me with suspicion, and asking questions. She didn't believe me. We arrived - to find kev still there, and another character by the name of 'Steve Rock'. Apparently he had arrived on the scene shortly after i left and used his mobile phone to contact the emergancy services. And i must say, when they turn out - they certainly turn out in force.
First a police car arrived, a normal cop and what i'm quite sure was a rookie came onto the scene, asking questions and also trying to establish if it was a real body - my mother was adamant it was a dummy. then the fire bragade arrived, these guys knew what they were doing, and set about assesing the situation - the best way to get the corpse upto the path. In the meantime me and kev had to go and talk to the rookie cop in the police car, answering questions on the discovery, where we walked and what we did. You could see our footprints in the snow, so they knew where we had been already. after we emerged from the vehicle, I noticed about 3 more police patrol cars had came to have a look what was happening.
Then an ambulance arrived, sort of un-needed in the circumstances I suppose. Then the local coroner, who drove a van just like TV's 'Quincy', he came over and spoke to us, my mother went back to the car. The firemen got a huge plastic sheet and threw it over the mud so they could walk to the carcus and inspect it. The coroner was explaining what they were doing, and they did it a lot i'd guess as they were laughing and joking about it. We were asked at that moment if we were mentally disturbed or anything, if we maybe needed to talk to someone about it. 'no, this is soooo cool' was basically my thoughts. I saw that the police boat had now turned up on the river, i guess they don't have much to do so they had came along for a look, this meant we had got just about all the main emergancy services on the scene. Then something really unexpected happened. Because The corpse, who we had named 'jimmy' by now, was frozen, the fireman snapped(!) him in half. Which made a noise like dead wood breaking. Quincy (the coroner) casually said 'That will be his legs and spine snapping'. nice one.
So the firemen stuffed jimmy the corpse into a body bag and left him there, on the sheet over the mud and climbed back up the the path, then they used a rope i'd not seen to pull him to the path, at which point it was visible to one and all that jimmys remains all sloshed to the bottom of the bag. Then once up on the path he was unzipped and photographed, much to the cheers of the firemen, but to the shock of the rookie cop who turned away covering his mouth. We discussed if we had any salvage rights as, as i understand it, anything found at sea belongs to the person who found it. But we didn't try to invoke those rights, i mean he was rotten - no eyes, really just a skeleton with clothes on. I doubt he had anything much in his pockets anyway.
Prologue:
Turns out that jimmy was spookly really called jimmy, and he was a small time criminal who had been found out, rackled with shame he killed himself - or someone he crossed chucked him into the river from the tyne bridge. No one will ever be sure exactly. We got an mention in the paper - it was actually front page news - however, we were not named - just called 'a passer by'.