Ghosts 

“At the age of 18 I walked into Bankside and had my induction - in those days being allocated a locker and locker room, some overalls and a towel and a bar of soap. 

To me, it really was a Cathedral of Power - very noisy, very hot, very steamy, very dirty.

The Turbine Hall was huge and imposing as you entered...  the basement, below ground ...was dark, dingy and, at times, very intimidating to a new starter.


Bankside had a range of smells. Hot Fuel Oil from the underground storage tanks, flue gases from the leaking boiler casings and sulphurous fumes from the aerating chambers.

  Heavy Fuel Oil sticks to anything and hard to remove from skin and clothing... it is like thick treacle. Spillages require solvents to be used to clean it up and inevitably leave stains in the concrete,  still visible in the Tate Modern extension.”

- Gerard

_{©Daniela Couling 2016}

“Two were asleep in the Jetty hut on a summer night when the door opened and saw a tall soaking wet ghostly figure covered in plastic silhouetted against the moonlight, in blind panic they sprinted back through the tunnel to report what they had seen and form a pose to return to the jetty only to find the ghost asleep in the hut - he had fallen off one of the disco cruise boats and found a ladder to the Jetty.”

- Gerard 

_{©Daniela Couling 2016}

FRANK

"Frank', he was a guy who had lost his teeth but never wore false teeth, it was very difficult to make sense of what he said anyway. He also had a thing about oral hygiene, he's the only person that I ever knew who use to actually put TCP in his mugs of tea. You could smell him a mile away.  
He was the one who found a corpse draped across the dark handrails below the jetty on a low tide, thinking it was a piece of plastic until he shone his torch on it”

- Gerard 

_{©Daniela Couling 2016}