Kipper’s can-do attitude triumphs (From Worcester News)

Kipper’s can-do attitude triumphs

8:30pm Saturday 13th March 2010 in

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A CHANCE encounter with a blind student 54 years ago inspired a railway worker to raise more than £10,000 for a guide dog charity.

Alan Fish, of Newtown Road, Malvern, was 16 years old and working as a shunter at Worcester’s Shrub Hill Station when he went to the aid of a young man who had bumped his head on a support column.

Although the pair chatted for just a few minutes, the experience was enough to affect Mr Fish for the next 54 years.

The 69-year-old said: “He was a bit shaken up so I got him in the office and they gave him a cup of tea. We had a natter and he told me that if he had a guide dog, he could go out to work.”

Mr Fish, known as ‘Kipper’ to his friends, began collecting silver foil from cigarette packets and pie cases to raise money for Guide Dogs for the Blind. In 1991, he moved on to aluminium cans and built up a network of local pubs and clubs which would leave cans out for him to collect.

But his fund-raising efforts do not stop there. Every morning, six days a week, Mr Fish catches the 6.50am train from Malvern Link to Shrub Hill to collect empty drinks cans left in the train carriages.

He has now reached the £10,000 mark, funding three guide dogs, and is working towards the fourth.

He said: “I might have its two hind legs and a tail at the moment.”