Category — prose

There was nothing to distinguish the road from the others I had crossed on my journey there that day. I imagined the nearly identical front rooms in each of the identical terraced houses having little to tell them apart.

This one was different though. On the surface it looked the same and for consistency the everpresent seagull was perched on the rooftop of one of the terraces. But this road had soul.

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Unlike the idealised Dylan Thomas childhood it never snowed at Christmas when I was a boy. I think I can only remember one white Christmas which was when I was an adult and home for the holidays. We walked up Greeba mountain behind the house that year trudging through the snow and getting our feet wet. We were unprepared for the conditions. Also it hadn’t been our intention to make it all the way to the top but we just kept on going and before we knew it we were there. It wasn’t a particularly big mountain.

The view for the short time we stayed at the summit was terrific. It was a crisp clear day and of course there was snow all around. Coming back down was not easy going but we made it back to Ballagarey Road red cheeked and frozen to dry our feet, warm up and get festively comfortable.

Christmas during childhood followed a pattern that evolved over the years. When we were small, in Dolgellau, I recall the bottle of Babycham that we were each allowed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and Dad making badges for us out of the tops of Pale Ale bottles. Not much else from those days although the piles of presents were large I seem to remember. Being the older of the three my large pile got smaller over the years far more quickly than the girls’ in line with a maturing choice.

When we lived in Cardiff I remember sitting in Ann and Sue’s Wendy House watching slides from some sort of projector. Dad, as I found out many years later, had spent half the night trying to put it up, a feature of Christmas that I have since discovered in my own house. That, I think, was the year Ann broke my new Subbuteo rails. She was trying to be helpful by snapping them off instead of pulling them apart. Ah well! Do they still do Subbuteo?

I’m not sure we often had a visitor at Christmas in those days. Nana used to go to Anti Mair’s in London but she must have come to us sometimes as well. These days with my own family we have always had one set of parents or other to stay and it seems strange this year when we have been on our own again. At least we have the children :-) .

I do remember the year that the Amos cousins from Carlisle came to stay when we lived in Waunfawr although my main memory of that occasion was stumbling across some Airfix modelling kits in a cupboard. There was nothing that could be hidden from us kids…

The Isle of Man is where most of my memories come from though those are somewhat clouded by the fact that that is also where I discovered the pleasures of beer. Christmas in those days always included drinks at the Crosby on Christmas Eve. The Crosby Silver Band would come in to entertain us and it was a great evening. Everyone was so friendly. The beauty of Christmas Eve at the Crosby was also that mam would come and pick me up, saving the one and a half mile walk back, the last half of which was up the back lane in pitch darkness.

There were also journeys into town for pub crawls that would end up at Simon Willoughby’s dad’s church for midnight mass, the crates of beer left in the foyer covered with coats. We rarely found a party. Doesn’t seem the thing to do on Christmas Eve but the age of built in irresponsibility the idea that people were busy preparing for the next day didn’t seem to occur to us.

There then came a time when mam and dad’s circle of friends would throw party on Christmas morning, each couple taking it in turns to hold it every year. They were great starts to the day although I remember the first one that we had Tom old enough to appreciate the joys and benefits of Christmas I woke up with a stinking hangover, did not enjoy the present opening and sat out most of the breakfast in the car. That stopped the period of overindulgence on Christmas Eve once and, hitherto, for all.

Christmas Day was spent eating, drinking and afterwards watching the obligatory Mary Poppins or James Bond movie followed by Billy Smarts Circus. For a period of time, where Dad’s social and moral consciousness drove us to the local Methodist Church for the morning service we were well and truly punished with a visit from the Rev Wilf Pierce and his family who would turn up as we were settling into post lunch beer, quality street and the movie.

Off would go the television and out would come cups of tea, Christmas cake and the presents to “proudly” show off. Everyone liked Wilf but his devotion to duty and to the welfare of his flock on the pagan holiday latterly known as Christmas Day was to most of us well beyond the call of that duty and a totally unnecessary step. My return from Bangor University and stubborn refusal to go to church sorted it out. Either we all went or none of us did so we ended up, to Dad’s disappointment I’m sure, with a longer lie in and, result, no visit from Wilf.

On Boxing Day dad and I would sometimes go and play golf. On one occasion some people came back to our house for lunch and I recall two full bottles of armagnac and cognac being presented for comparison. Four of us polished off the bottles, for me, just in time to be picked up by the lads to go into town for the evening!

Christmas rolled on in this familiar vein each year until the time came when, with a family of my own, it became too much of an expedition to travel away and we settled into the more recent routine of hosting the extended family ourselves. The change of venue brought little change to the actual routine. Different destinations though. The Cathedral Carol Service for some, the Morning Star for others and for a while, until time and corporeal degeneration got the better of the willing brain, the Boxing Day rugby match. Dad still buys the rounds when we go out but I am looking forward to the day when I take over the mantle and am buying the beers for our 4.

The piles of children’s presents seem as huge as ever and they still shrink according to age of the owner. The dissatisfaction of others with my ability to time the cooking so that it all came to the table cooked, still hot and at the same time meant that I was relegated to lighting the fire and drinking the champagne in the front room. Result.

The meal is always a huge success and my snoring grows louder every year as afterwards I hog a settee and fall asleep. I still love Christmas but it never ever snows.

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I must have passed it dozens of times but had never noticed it before.

It was a church. The usual sort of ancient edifice, as scattered by the hundred across the ancient land. Surrounding it was the graveyard, fairly full and over the road stood the Vicarage.

The road itself was a small country lane that will have once seen the occasional horse and cart and a flurry of activity on a Sunday though rarely what might be called a good crowd.

The nameless resident cleric will have led a life of rural nonentity, his mechanical existence ordained by tradition and poverty. This was not a rich living. The parish sparsely populated. In return for a small stipend he administered a menu of rites and was not required to contribute with original thinking.

His small flock ruminated acceptance of this with equally unthinking obedience as they had always done.

The church was a few miles outside town and looking round from my vantage point I could count three or four other spires that will have represented the same countryside cameo, a fearful society ruled by the exploitation of ignorance.

I was on a train which passed within a hundred yards of the church across a field. The building of the railway line must have come as a huge shock to the parish, or at least to the clergyman. His peaceful existence shattered by progress, probably concurrent with a dwindling attendance caused by the move into town to the “railhead”.

The big silos of the sugar beet factory gazed down in contempt at the scene whilst dense white smoke emitted from tall chimney stacks.

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Then. Island living. You make your own entertainment. Long winter nights radiating around coal fires in smoky-dark front parlours of elbow-worn public houses.

The road outside leads grimly to the tidal harbour, lashed full of herring boats battened down against the storms that visit now as regularly as tourists in summer.

There is little movement during the shortened days. Beds stay occupied when there is no fishing and the nets have been seen to. Oil lamps supervise the weekly news from the rest of the island. Shadows are cast and the narrow cobbles between the houses rarely see direct sunlight.

Quilts are stitched and there is the unvarying routine of keeping the household going. Fireblack, scrubbing the doorstep, breadmaking, the Monday washroom mangle, the gossip over the doorstep with the neighbours.

Sundays present little variation to the theme. Some tidy up and in their best suits pay homage to the All Powerful, praying perhaps for a gap in the weather.

Now. The jungle is long tamed and grows tidily in pots and on trellises seen through French windows. Concessions are made to island life. The internet brings a choice of entertainments and world news updated by the minute. Virtual escapism.

Beds stay occupied when the storms lash the golf course though nowadays the Church only half fills. The occasional sortie to Safeway replenishes supplies and the hatches are closed again.

There is little fishing except in the long summer days when generations come to visit and chaos reigns. The noise and the laughter evokes memories of other times.

Walks down to the promenade and the lifeboat lead to a spot of rock pooling around the castle. Ice-cream parloured sticky- faces complain about sandy feet and want lifts back up the hill.

Maturer beer-stirred relaxations outside the marina facing Creek Inn are followed by gourmet dinners back at HQ.

Visits all too short though as long as anyone can cope with.

After early morning goodbyes, it grows quiet again and a deep peace settles over The Grove. Old friends, the couple, fifty years young, reflect on the harmony of their half century together and smile.

For Alun and Eileen Davies

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They made it. Across the Cambrian divide and with it came total immersion for her in the language of the hills. The lush surroundings a fertile backdrop for the young couple with a growing family.

Friday night out with the boys, Saturday mornings refereeing rugby matches. Nursing, the stroll down the hill into the village, post office and corner shop, Christmas came with Babycham and bottle top badges proclaiming Pale Ale by the crate.

Mountains were climbed, sandcastles built and long, cross country journeys spent in the car back to the coalfields.

Machynlleth, Aberystwyth, Aberaeron, Lampeter, Cross Hands, bus trips into Llanelli, Carmarthen and Swansea.

Carwyn James, The Farmers Arms. Slack coal on tips picked with Rachel Mary drws nesa’. The shed with the gas mask and world war two helmet. Bryn’s pop factory; coloured bottles that could never be successfully hidden from small prying eyes. Welshcakes, visits from Uncle Glan and Anti Lilian, Cei and Clarice.

John the baker and the co-op van vied with the mobile library to provide distraction. Tenby. Cricket in the back garden, hide and seek in the front. The tin bath in front of the fire, the cupboard under the stairs and the cold, dark, downstairs toilet out the back.

For Alun and Eileen Davies

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He set off, it seems like yesterday. A valley born boy from the western edge of the South Wales coalfield, the census reported religio-mill-working-mining stock with a farming heritage.

A strong community held together by hard work, hard living and a religion. The green valleys scarred indiscriminately by industrial activity shaped his mindset. Echoes of the chapel pulpit bounced off the walls of the cottages lining the road to the pithead where he lived.

He arrived. The dirty, humanity littered streets didn’t feature in the ad. Still it was an adventure. An adventure mapped out by a job offer and piece of paper with an address to hide in.

Everyone succumbs, for at least a part of their lives. Some make it, some don’t. Those that don’t stay trapped, cage-bound in suffocating concrete, bars gripped desperately through which the stares of the lost meet but don’t see.

Outside these prison bars was a jungle. Stark inner city schools and hospitals, emerging still from a bombed-out, war-ravaged London. National service fresh in the mind, petrol rationing a periodic feature, grey surroundings with splashes of occasional colour relieved the monotony, the smog smothered red of the Routemaster bus.

Nurse! An Irish country girl with a strong character that the convent couldn’t kill. A large family meant farming out the kids. Childhood meant driving the donkey and cart into the town dairy to deliver milk. Green fields the playground unaffected by the war that waged on outside the dream.

Country migrants with eyes open wide and gaping mouths learned the language of the streets. They found new words that spelt feelings. There were moments. Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and the Two I’s coffee bar, rock and roll and the sound of skiffle.

They met and lost touch. An age sped by and the jungle forced them together again. Age old instincts cut through the formalities.

19th December 1959, Ammanford Roman Catholic Church. Interdenominational with a hint of inter-racial. It rained. It could rain all it liked. No-one cared. Then back to reality and the return to the city. The time stamped struggle of a young family fighting their way upriver.

For Alun and Eileen Davies

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The harvest is in, except for a few cornfields, left for the sweet anticipation of another day. The stubble that remains provides an interesting contrast with other textures in fields adjacent. The pale green growth of next year’s early season crops. Magnetic brown, newly ploughed terrain, full of seagulls.

The farmer slumps across the wheel of his hi tech controlled-environment crop processing machine; tractor to me and you. Although the air conditioning does away with the need for sweating its soul is there, metaphorical perspiration.

Barns bulge and granaries groan. Tables bend under the weight of produce served up to open eyed families and wider circles of friends, privileged guests for the forthcoming feast. Corks pop, laughter pervades then slows to a silence. We slump into hibernation.

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As I drove down the Lincoln bypass last night there was a wonderful picture in the sky. It merited a 1000Megapixel photo taken with a panoramic lens. The problem was I didn’t have my camera with me and in any event I don’t think they make them yet to quite that high a spec.

I mulled over in my mind how I would describe the effect of that sky using only words. I couldn’t see how I could come close.

The rain had not long moved on and the sky showed the remnants of that activity. Shreds of clouds, strays and waifs of irregular shape and disposition. The pallet that was the sky consisted of eggshell blue, dark grey blues, clouds both grey and white and a white crescent moon suspended amongst it all but looking out of place.

I don’t think any art survives for ever. It all eventually is lost or dies. Last night the painting in the sky lasted until it was almost dark and then disappeared. On my way home it was gone. There will be another but it will never be the same.

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Ten o’clock at night and it is still 24 degrees out, at least according to the dashboard of Anne’s car.

I feel as if I should be strolling down to some café near the harbour and joining in with the clink of bottle and glass. The pesky violinist is a bit of a nuisance but he knows I will give him some money to go away. There is laughter at all the tables around and we sit back quietly enjoying the atmosphere after yet another busy sun soaked day.

The harbour is strung with lights and the masts that grow in it are barely moving in what little breeze there is. In the distance the blink of a lighthouse offers reassurance. The occasional scooter scoots by hooting the occasional squeaky horn.

The smell of barbecued lamb tempts us and we tuck in, squeezing lemon juice over the meat and dipping bread into the juices on the plate. Washed down with red wine it is very satisfying and we order another bottle.

Eventually the numbers start to dwindle. The violinist has packed away his instrument and walked off up the narrow cobbled side streets to his home. We settle up and follow suit. Back at the apartment we fall asleep on top of the bed with the windows open. We will be back the next day.

I drive down to pick Hannah and her friends up from Nandos at the Brayford in Lincoln and drop them at home. I can but dream!

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Early up and the weather at first glance looks good for traveling. This was somewhat deceptive as we were later to find out. A slow journey to Douglas behind a driver unaware that she was allowed to travel faster than 25 mph was compensated for by the fact that because we were towing a trailer we were second onto the boat and second in line to get off. Yo!

The “Snaefell” was a lot more cramped than the Mannanan that brought us to the island. Still we settled into our reserved seats and ate our croissants, baked by my fair hands shortly before leaving the house. What a pro!

Now every person in our family has something to contribute. Specifically at sea it is Joseph who is a bellweather for rough times ahead and promptly chundered into a well placed sick bag taken from the back of the seat in front of him.

It was not long before he was joined by a chorus of small children from the seats around us with a smattering of adults thrown in to provide harmony in the lower octaves. The sweet smell of vomit began to waft across the cabin…

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Back to it’s wet and windy ways, the Isle of Man drove us into Douglas again for a spin on the horse trams.

We arrived almost and hour before the first horse so we “did” Strand Street for the third time. Once along Strand Street is too many times. I can’t understand why people would bother.

Finally the tram. At £12 for the family to go one way along the prom the horse trams were seemingly making an enormous contribution to the Manx economy. I drove to the other end and picked the others up, more due to pressure of time than anything else but assisted by the cost.

Lunch was at Green’s vegetarian restaurant at the Steam Railway Station at the end of the harbour. My old mate Crell and his lovely wife Renate proved pleasant company surrounded by railway memorabilia. A passer by was flagged down to take the obligatory team photo and we said our farewells vowing not to leave it another ten years.

Back in Peel we caught no fish again and finished off with the tour of Moore’s kipper factory, “the only remaining traditional kipper curers”. Interesting enough though I did leave the tour feeling somewhat smoky eyed. Also found out the source of the saying “on tenterhooks”.

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Stop press. Day 8 and it’s a result. At long last our first basking shark sightings, just two or three hundred metres off the breakwater. I tried to get some photographs but some analysis on the laptop is required before I can confirm that I have the hard evidence. The photos just looked like lots of pictures of waves when I looked at them on the camera. The sharks were definately there though.

The rest of today is all planned out, for me at least. This afternoon it is golf with dad in one of the Peel Golf Week competitions followed by a team dinner out with the Shimmins, Kellys and Fletchers at Coasters in Douglas.

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A wet and windy start to the day keeps the crowds at bay. No fishers at the end of the quay and indeed we conclude that they are right and elect to shark watch instead. Still no sharks to see though, despite the admission from a friendly tourist that they had seen fifteen from the Foillan Beg excursion boat yesterday.

In fact at this early stage of the day there are few people around although the presence of around ten cars is somewhat puzzling. The answer lies in the lifeboat house as the tractor trundles out to the end of the ramp and some lifeboatmen distribute rubber batons down to the water. The lifeboat is about to return!

Joe and I move to a vantage point atop the breakwater and keep lookout. There are no boats in sight. Anywhere!

Then I see a small dot on the horizon. Just a bow wave at first, but gradually growing to be discernible as a lifeboat. The boat rounds into the shelter of the harbour, drops four crew members off at the steps and then begins the process of being hauled out of the water. It is all exciting stuff for a landlubber and takes probably an hour or so, including the washing down and cleaning.

By this time the quay has become crowded and the sun has broken through. It is set up nicely for our afternoon of gorge climbing.

Ballaglass Glen is the scene for this. A beautiful walk down with a tree canopy above keeping the sun from ever penetrating to the water itself. The scene might be a tropical jungle as dripping mosses mix with tall ferns, fallen trees and the river roaring over the rocks below.

We climb down into the water and begin our upwards journey through the rockpools and raging torrents fuelled by last night’s rain. Two hours later, soaked, scratched and bruised but satisfied we emerge through the trees to the carpark.

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The annual Southern Agricultural Society show is held at Great Meadow near Castletown. A perfect sunny day set the ideal stage for a day out at the show. It’s a great family day out.

Horses, great brutes of bulls, cows, uncooperative sheep, yapping show dogs, poultry, rabbits, lawnmowers, fridges, picnic tables, cess pits, smoothie makers, cookery displays, vintages tractors and agricultural machinery (including baling machines), beehives, chairoplanes, bouncy castles, slides, Isle of Man Bank, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, WI Refreshment tent, cars, Recruitment Consultants, ice cream vans, burger bars, milking machines, smoothies, potatoes, dahlias, onions, green beans, marrows, roses, apple pies, fence posts, quilting, rhubarb, radish, beetroot, raspberries, blackcurrant, gooseberries, cauliflower, strawberries, cabbages, lettuce, carrots, coconut shy, straw hat, picnic, brass band, car park queues.

Later, Great Union Camera Obscura followed by a spin to the breakwater in Peel. The Seacat is in on a day trip from Belfast. We enjoy a cold beer outside the Creek Inn followed by a meal outside in the garden back at the house.

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A lovely summer’s day which considering that we were off on a trip on the Manx Electric Railway was somewhat of an anomaly. I have years of family photos taken in front of the MER station building in Laxey clad in waterproofs and huddling together for warmth.

Today was different. The sun shone benevolently, bringing satisfied smiles to our faces as we gazed up blindly, eyes closed, taking in the heat. It was only Joe and I, the others preferring retail therapy to trains.

The MER is somewhat of a pilgrimage for me. At the tender age of eighteen I found employment there for the summer holidays before fleeing the coop and heading off to university.

Every year I bring up the same old stories and point out the same old stagers who were there when I was a conductor. They wouldn’t remember me, if nothing else because time has changed my shape, but also as I was only there for the one season, a fleeting eight or ten weeks.

The money was great but at the end of the summer I had saved nothing and ended up finding a low paid labouring job on the Highway Board for a month to try and amass some cash.

Anyway we made our memory filled way to Laxey and alighted for a wander round. I bought an Isle of Man teatowel in the souvenir shop on the way to the big wheel. Then we had an early lunch at Browns Teashop on Ham and Egg Terrace. Browns has a very good reputation but now milks this with high prices. The original owners moved on some time ago.

We caught the 12.25 back to Douglas sitting on the outside carriage so that we could take photos en route. I always tell the story of how one day I was conducting on Number 1 with Gordon as driver. Number 1 is the oldest functioning electric tram in the word. On this occasion we only had a couple of passengers and we hatched a plan for lunch.

Gordon made the 30 minute journey to Douglas in only fifteen. We then stopped the tram about half a mile short of the terminus and just around the bend where we could not be seen. I then ran in to the Port Jack Chippy and bought a couple of fish and chips. The tram made it in exactly on time and we ate our lunch in the depot with the same element of excitement as under age drinkers. Beer never tasted the same after my eighteenth birthday. Happy days.

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