Over the years we’ve walked many times around the Llys – y- Fran reservoir, now called the Llys-y-Fran Country Park.
Back in the day (as my grandad used to say), the walk around the reservoir (about seven miles) was more of a hike and a scrabble around rocks, trees, and, sometimes, through streams.There’s still a little negotiating of streams, as I mention later.
But first the technical and public information bits…
Llys-y-Fran Country Park is three hundred and fifty acres in all, which includes the two hundred and twelve acresof the reservoir. In the parish of the village Llys y Fran, the community of New Moat, it’s on the southern slopes of the Preseli Mountains.
Llys-y-Frân dam was constructed between September 1968 and 1972.The final concrete was laid on the nineteenth May 1971, completing a total of over 500,000 tons of the stuff since the project began. By May, the depth of water had risen to forty feet but it was only on the fifth of December 1971, exactly nine months after impounding had started, that the reservoir overflowed for the first time.
The reservoir was officially opened by HRH Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, on Tuesday, the ninth of May, 1972.
The dam is a hundred feet (thirty metres) high and the lake is fed by the River Syfynwy.The water is used by homes and industry in south Pembrokeshireand is managed by Welsh Water. It’s one of eight-one reservoirs in Wales.
The forecast for the day was good, so we donned walking boots and rucksacks and set off. I’m cheating a little here – the photograph below was taken on the last stretch of the homeward-bound section, as we looked back with smugness on how far we’d walked.
Back to the beginning… These days the walk is a wider, if still steep and winding in places, gravelly track around the circuit of the lake, and is interspersed with cycling routes of varying degrees of difficulty. I promise you, (and am most disappointed that I forgot to ask husband to photograph it), there was one route highlighted by a sign of a skull and crossbones… with a note that the route was only for those of the highest skill and fitness … (and, I added to myself, the most crazy!).
“There’s a lot of water to cross, isn’t there?” I remarked, after wobbling on strategically-placed rocks and tree trunks in one particularly wide stream.
“Well, it is a reservoir,” he replied, striding manfully through the water.
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit!” Was the only remark I could summon up, as I stopped trying to balance and sloshed after him.
The whole time we walked we met only two cyclists and three couples with dogs. The sun shone (most of the time) and there was just a slight breeze that moved the grasses, the patches of daffodils, the leaves and petals of the primroses, the early gorse. Except for the calls of the Canada Geese and, at one point, the noisy squabble of seagulls, it was peaceful. Through the woodland there were stunning views all along the way.
We stopped for a picnic. I won’t admit we stopped to catch our breath – although we did do a bit of puffing up those steeper parts. I’ll even go as far as to say it stopped me talking … sometimes!Anyway, we were ready for a bite to eat, a coffee, and another photograph opportunity .
The photographer! What isn’t seen here is the robin who followed us around for a least a mile after we’d fed him some crumbs, and is a few inches behind David, patiently waiting for him to move (he had his foot on a crust of bread).
What used to take us two and a half hours to walk this trail, this time took us over three and a half. I claim mitigating circumstances – we stopped often ( very often) for husband to take photos. Oh … and to eat the picnic.
And I refuse to talk about the fact that we both walked like ducks the day after!
N.B. The word llys translates into English as “court” and y frân translates as“[of] the crow“. Just thought you might like to know that.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I am really pleased to welcomeauthorAngela Petchto tell us about her special memories of her family, her wedding and Italy.
This favourite photo from an old album captures a special moment. The day before my wedding in Italy, I went on a picnic with my family: the last day as a single woman. My mother gathered a bunch of wild flowers to hand to me and the moment was spontaneously captured on film.
These poor-quality photos of long ago represent memories embedded in my brain and which creep back nowadays in my writing.
I came late to publication and I truly believe I wouldn’t have been ready earlier. I needed life experiences to write about and most of my books include something from my past or my family’s past.
In my new book, The Girl Who Escapedhttps://geni.us/B0BYC1V9NHcover I revisited the city of Urbino, where I married forty-five years ago, to site my story. Much of it is a true account of my husband’s Italian grandfather. Luigi Micheli was a courageous partisan. But he kept quiet about it. We found more out after he died, from papers he left in an old box, and I have threaded details into my story. I used the abbey where we married as an invented location for secret meetings of partisans. Many priests were involved in the underground movement, so who knows if somethings did go on there?
My books, published by Bookouture, are all set in Italy.
In 1960, my young suburban life was uprooted from a London dormitory suburb and planted in the Eternal City, Rome.
My father had accepted a job at the headquarters of the branch of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I still remember my first impressions as my mother and brother and sister stepped off the train at Rome Terminus into the noise, heat, bustle and bewildering babble of a strange language.
The traffic was scary and so my father swapped his new, white Ford Consul for a tiny, dented second-hand Fiat Topolino. He barely fitted in with his long legs and in the summer his head poked through the tiny roll-back soft top “lid”. In this car he could give as good as he got and join in the terrifyingly lawless traffic that sped through the streets of Rome.
Our garden in the countryside outside Rome was surrounded by peach orchards and vineyards. Dotted around the gravel paths were a roman bath and ancient statues and columns. We cycled round fig, orange, lemon and medlar trees, always wary of snakes. The highlight was a rudimentary, unchlorinated swimming pool filled by hose pipe and emptied when the water started to go green. We shared it with tadpoles and baby frogs in spring.
Our classmates at St George’s English School were international. I sat with a Ghanaian girl called Dorcas, an Australian boy called Gregory, and there were South Africans, Italians, American, French and a handful of Brits too. I’ve always loved mixing with people from other nations and this early experience was the start.
St George’s English School Rome
Italy is an integral part of me. If I were “born again”, I’d choose to be Italian. I went on to study Italian at university, work in Sicily, marry a wonderful half-Italian, teach Italian, live in the Tuscan mountains for six months each year, and now I have had five books published by Bookouture, all set in Italy.
Little did I know that the hamlet of Castel Cavallino where I married, outside Urbino, would be an important place in my new book and that forty-four years later, I would perch again on the wall surrounding the houses, to jot research notes.
Italy, 1940. The girl sobs and rages as her father tells her the terrible news. “Italy is entering the war alongside Germany. Jews are to be arrested and sent to camps. We have to be ready.”
As fascists march across the cobbled piazzas and past the towered buildings of her beloved home city, twenty-year-old Devora’s worst fears come true. Along with her Jewish parents and twin little brothers they are torn away from everything they love and sent to an internment camp huddled in the mountains. Her father promises this war will not last long…
When they are offered a miraculous chance of escape by her childhood friend Luigi, who risks everything to smuggle vital information into the camp, the family clambers under barbed wire and races for the border. But Devora is forced to make a devastating choice between saving a stranger’s life and joining her parents. As shots fire in the moonless night, the family is separated.
Haunted by the question of whether they are dead or alive, all Devora can do for their future is throw herself into helping Luigi in the Italian resistenza in the fight for liberty. But posing as a maid for a German commander to gather secret intelligence, Devora is sure she sees her friend one night, in a Nazi uniform…
Is Devora in more danger than ever? And will her family ever be reunited – or will the war tear them apart?
An absolutely devastating but ultimately uplifting historical novel about how love and hope can get us through the darkest times. Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Rhys Bowen and Soraya M. Lane.
Read what everyone’s saying about Angela Petch:
‘Wow!… The writing is magnificent… A story of love, loss, secrets and hope… I have truly fallen in love… A beautiful, touching story that I would recommend to everyone.’ Cooking the Books
‘The mysteries and the discoveries come fast and furiously: leaving the reader often gasping for breath… A lovely read.’ I am, Indeed
BIO:
Angela Petch is an award-winning and bestselling writer of fiction – plus the occasional poem.
Every summer she moves to Tuscany for six months where she and her husband own a renovated watermill which they let out. When not exploring their unspoilt corner of the Apennines, she disappears to her writing desk at the top of a converted stable. In her Italian handbag or hiking rucksack she always makes sure to store notebook and pen to jot down ideas.
The winter months are spent in Sussex where most of her family live. When Angela’s not helping out with grandchildren, she catches up with writer friends.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m pleased to welcome Gail, who writes as, G B Williams and who tells us about an embarrassing incident she had in Paris, Francemany years ago, that inspired a moment in her book, Breaking Free
The city of Paris is beautiful. It is also dirty, busy, and crowded, like all cities. There are many places I remember well of my visits to Paris, I could wax lyrical about the Eiffel Tower swaying in the wind (hope you’re not seasick), or the Louvre (which in places really needed more ventilation to keep the visitor going), perhaps I could tell you about the Mona Lisa (overwhelming impression – is that it?), how about the boat ride down the Seine (have actually done this every time I’ve visited Paris because it’s spectacular).
But no, the place in my memory that I’m going to tell you all about is in the Metro.
Now the Paris Metro is, historically a fascinating place, the art nouveau signage and features are gorgeous, the history should be read more, the engineering that went into the building the Metro was ground breaking (and I mean that in every sense). Really, read up about how the Metro was built and you will find out about a lot of innovation in civil engineering.
But the place I’m going to tell you about didn’t have any art nouveau signage or features. There’s nothing historical about it. I don’t even remember which station this happened in. What stuck is my mind about the place was the incident of my own sheer stupidity.
Imagine if you will, it’s 2008, not a year of much note, but it was when this happened. I’m with my husband and our two children, both young at the time (14 and 10). Not one of us can speak French and we needed assistance with our journey. We needed to ask someone.
Now I’m not afraid of admitting I don’t know something, and I’m not afraid of making mistakes, but I do get hugely embarrassed when I make them. I’m not shy, but if a mess up, I will crawl back inside my shell and try to hide from the world, this was one of those times when I didn’t have that luxury, which is probably why it sticks so much in my mind.
Without any confidence at all, I thought I could at least ask the woman at the information desk if she spoke English. That’s not hard really, we’re all taught phrases like that. The phrase in this case is: “Excusez-moi parlez-vous anglaise?”
Did I say that? No, of course I didn’t. I said: “Entschuldigen Sie sprechen Sie Englisch?”
So, just in case like me, you are not a linguist, let me lay that out for you. I asked a French woman if she could speak English, in German.
The worst thing about this is that she switched to English, was very helpful and I thanked her, with “Merci” which for once was French. She never said a word about my idiocy. It was my husband pointed out it out as we were walking away. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. That woman must have thought me a total idiot.
So why pick this as the place in my memory? Because this memory has stayed with me. Because when I wanted to demonstrate a woman out of her depth, Elaine Blake in Paris, travelling alone for the first time ever, and abroad for the first time in over 25 years, what did I write about? That’s right. I had her ask a French woman if she could speak English, in German. If you want to see that, read Breaking Free, if you want to know what other trials of being human Elaine goes through, finish the story in “Play The Game”. Either way, I hope you enjoy my embarrassment more than I did, am now going to go hide in my shell for a while.
Bio: GB Williams specialises in complex, fast-paced crime novels, most recently, the Elaine Blake Novels – “Breaking Free” and “Play the Game” – and the standalone novel “The Chair”. GB was shortlisted for the 2014 CWA Margery Allingham Short Story Competition with the story Last Shakes, now available in “Last Cut Casebook”. GB is a member of the Crime Writers Association, Crime Cymru, and with working with others to organise the Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival in Aberystwyth while working as a writer and freelance structural editor. GB hates every photo ever taken of her including the publicity shots.
As some of you may know, I hold creative writing workshops and I also tutored creative writing for the local council for many years before Covid came along. Tutoring adults can be rewarding (discovering wonderful writers), chaotic (my lesson plans were rarely followed – someone inevitably took things off at a tangent) hilarious (the undiscovered comedian/ the completely unaware comedian) and thought-provoking (especially with memoir writing and poetry) I’ve kept promising to share some of their work. Here is a thoughtful piece of free verse poetry, written quite a few years ago, by the now very successful author, Alex Craigie. It’s one of my favourites., and, I feel, appropriate for these times.
Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back. When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.Trish has had three books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart. Her third book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller.Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m really pleased to welcomePatricia M Osborne, friend, author and poet and supporter of many writers, whose work she highlights every week.
When Judith asked me if I’d like to submit a blog about a place in my memory it was Bolton that instantly jumped out. I often wonder why my years as a child from the age of seven to ten were so impressionable. Maybe it was because we first arrived in Bolton after becoming homeless and were housed in a half-way house.
It was January 1963, I was seven coming up to eight, and the snow was thick on the ground when my dad made me go to the shops with him so I’d know where to go in future. Freezing, I sobbed. I wanted to go home, but Dad told me off for whinging, saying he was cold too. The day afterwards I got sick and couldn’t keep food down for weeks other than a bowl of Oxo. Maybe that’s why I hate snow so much because it takes me back to being so poorly.
Our two-up-two-down terraced house in Bamber Street, Daubhill, had a front room, a sitting room, a tiny scullery and two upstairs bedrooms. There was no bathroom, just a tin bath stored in the yard which Mum had to drag in, fill with hot buckets of water from the stove, and bath us in front of the fire. The toilet was at the bottom of the yard and I was terrified to go out there on my own in case there were any daleks.
It was at this house my late sister, Heather, got carried out on a stretcher to hospital. We were like inseparable twins and after being left alone without a playmate for two whole weeks, I was jubilant when she returned home. We’d play upstairs in the cold bedroom for hours. She’d be John Steed banging a large umbrella on the wooden floorboards while I was Cathy Gale.
I loved the museum in the town hall which also consisted of a library and aquarium. It’s still there. This was a place where Heather and I spent most of our time. If not choosing Milly-Molly-Mandy books in the library, we’d be exploring the mummies in the museum or hovering around the glass case of porcelain dolls. There was something about those dolls that made me yearn to own one while Heather found them spooky.
The tiny church school we attended consisted of only three classrooms. It was situated at the bottom of our cobbled street, and although only five minutes away, Heather and I managed to be late most days. A lot of the time was spent being taught the catechism, or learning subjects via the wireless such as the Monday morning singing lesson. Whenever I hear The Skye Boat Song it takes me back to those times.
In the playground the older kids loved swinging me around because I was so light. It was in that same playground during out of school hours when a flasher exposed himself to Heather and I, but we were too frightened to tell Mum and Dad. And then there was the kind teacher who at the end of term offered me the three-foot Christmas tree from our classroom to take home because she knew we didn’t have one.
My best friend, Susan Brown, lived over a wallpaper shop. Sometimes when I’m playing table tennis out on my patio, I experience a kind of déjà vu when I’m back in Bolton as an eight-year-old in my best friend’s backyard pushing her doll’s pram.
On my ninth birthday party, the landlord, who was a taxi driver, turned up at the door. He grabbed my mum by the wrist and made her cry as he tried to pull her out of the house because he wanted it back for himself. It was only when Dad came home from work we were safe. My sisters and I used to lie in bed at night petrified at the sound of a car going by or when car lights shone over the ceiling in case it was the bad man back.
Daubhill holds a lot of memories for me, good and bad. Two years later we were housed in Tong Moor, a different area of Bolton, in a three-bedroom house with a bathroom and garden but still an outside loo. It was here that my youngest sister was born. But then that’s another set of memories.
Thank you, Judith, for letting me share some of my memories.
Thank you, Patricia for sharing. Your memories brought back many of my own, especially the outside loo, where my fear was the spiders!
And If ever you feel like coming back to tell us more of your memories you will be very welcome.😊
Photograph of the places that Patricia remembers can be found through the links below…
In February 2019, she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing via the University of Brighton. She is a novelist, poet, and short story writer. When she’s not working on her own writing, she enjoys sharing her knowledge and acts as a mentor to fellow writers.
In 2017 she was a Poet in Residence at a local Victorian Park in Crawley and her poetry was exhibited throughout the park. In 2019 her poetry was on display at Crawley Museum.
Patricia has had numerous poems and short stories published in various literary magazines and anthologies.
1. How did you feel when you were nominated for the Wales Book of the Year Award?
It was a strange feeling, The Memory was published around the first week of the first lockdown and, I felt, became subsumed in all the disruption and anxiety of the pandemic. So, when I first heard that the book was being nominated, it was a complete surprise. Naturally I was also thrilled, because The Memory is so different from my other novels, which are all historical family sagas. And I wasn’t sure how it would be received by readers. To be recognised by Literature Wales for the Wales Book of the Year Award 2021, The Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award, was a great accolade for me.
2. What made you want to write the Memory?
I believe we are all affected by our pasts; experiences that shape our present and future. And, as writers, memories feed our stories. Families fascinate me: the love, the loyalties, the rivalry, the complex relationships. Layers that are in all families. The casual acceptance of one another in a family can bring the best and the worst out in all of us, so there is a wealth of human emotions to work with. This is how The Memory evolved. Some of the background comes from a time when I was a carer for my aunt who lived with us. She developed dementia and I kept a journal so we could talk about what we’d done each day. Many years after she’d died, those memories crept into The Memory. And then there are memories from my childhood, when I had a friend who was a Downs Syndrome child. The affection she gave, the happiness that seemed to surround her, is something I remembered long after she died of heart failure at the age of eleven. And I wanted that love to be a huge part of the book, a main theme. Fundamentally it’s the story of a secret that is never discussed within a family, but which has had a profound lifelong effect on the relationship between the mother and daughter. The Memory is sometimes poignant, sometimes sad, but is threaded throughout with humour.
3. What would your words of advice be for aspiring writers?
The way you see the world is different from anyone else, so write from your heart. If you don’t feel the emotions as you put the words on the paper or screen, no reader will feel them either. Basically, your job is to write the story in the best way you can; you will know if you have. And then accept that not everyone is going to like your work; just understand that every reader will have a subjective opinion of your book.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m really pleased to welcomeChris Lloyd, who I seem to have known for quite a while, yet I can’t remember where we met, but who has since become a good friend.
Over to you, Chris…
Thanks, Judith.
So here I am, remembering Girona …
You can’t help but feel love for a city that puts up a statue to books.
I knew very little about the language of Catalonia and nothing of its history when I went to live in Girona for six months in 1979, my year abroad on my degree course in Spanish and French. Sending me to study Spanish in the heartland of Catalan language and culture wasn’t perhaps the wisest move, but in the end I had no complaints. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was the first and one of the most important of the turning points in my life.
When I turned up one very hot morning at the end of August to start a teaching job in September, Franco had not yet been gone four years. Institutions were changing, slowly. Spain’s new Constitution had been approved, and a Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia voted in and enacted shortly after I turned up. Changes small and large, visible and not so visible, were taking place all around us. The most disreputable street names had been changed – either back to their original pre-dictatorship names or to new ones to mark the passing of the dictator and the return of democracy – but there were still others high up on the walls of buildings that were still in Castilian Spanish, waiting to be replaced.
The Catalan language had been banned under Franco, its use in public office prohibited, no songs recorded or books published (with the exception, eventually, of a small set of Catholic-funded tomes few people read). No Catalan holidays were observed or traditional celebrations allowed, and a pan-Spanish pseudo-culture was imposed on the country, not just in response to a burgeoning tourist industry but to dilute national and regional differences.
Catalan hadn’t been taught in schools since 1939, and there were at least two generations of Catalans who could speak their language, albeit with many ‘Castilianisms’ creeping in, but few of them could write it. So much of what had been taught about history and culture, hijacked by a petty and brittle dictatorship, had to be untaught and old subjects and thoughts rediscovered. Years later, researching for a guide book, I came across stories of archaeological sites that had been destroyed during the Franco years as the evidence they provided didn’t fit in with the new narrative that the dictatorship had demanded.
All around me, it felt like a people sloughing off a hide of oppression. More than that, it was a rebirth. A nation emerging dazzled into the sunlight after decades of darkness, suddenly being given a second chance, this time with a determination to get it right.
It was the most exciting and optimistic of times. And it just seemed to fit in with me and with my stage in my own history. I’d grown up in an insecure Wales that was torn between trying to revive its old identity and searching for a new one. I was the same. I was the youngest of three siblings, a bit of an age gap between me and my brother and sister, uncertain of where I fitted in. At twenty, when I went to Girona, I still had no real idea of who I was, collectively or individually, or of my place in the world.
Girona – and Catalonia – changed that. I was swept up in their renewal, in awe of their determination never to return to the days of every decision taken away from them and to move forward in asserting their own identity. It formed a sense of community in me and a sense of me in a community. The Catalans’ belief in the validity of their own language and culture made me take a fresh look at my own, at Wales. Beyond all of that, it made me take a fresh look at myself, at where I fitted in. And the lynchpin of that was the language. Lacking in self-confidence but blustery to hide shyness, I found that speaking in another language allowed me to overcome that. It was a façade I could hide my real uncertainties behind – my initial lack of fluency gave me an excuse for my lack of confidence and a way of overcoming it, while becoming fluent over time and the kind words said about my Catalan finally dispelled some of that insecurity.
Quite apart from the effect that that period in that place had on me, Girona itself is a beautiful city. To a twenty-something me, it was a whole new school and playground. An old quarter half-encircled by medieval city walls – in one of the most unfortunate urban decisions in history, the city council decided to knock down the other half of the walls in the 1930s to create an avenue – that was a den of minuscule alleys, smoke-filled jazz bars and elderly people sitting on upright chairs outside their front doors. A Jewish Quarter that had been so forcibly cut off from the rest of the city, it had created its own micro-climate. A cobbled hill that eventually led to Rome, part of the Via Augusta, and a towering Baroque cathedral atop Europe’s largest flight of Rococo steps that dominated the city as far as the Pyrenees.
And bookshops. A city with barely 100,000 people and there are about twenty bookshops, the vast majority of them independent. That’s why the city put up a statue to books. And it’s probably why, thirty-five years later, I set my first three novels in Girona, the first a story of clinging to the past while embracing the new. Full circle. From that first day in Girona, it gave me exactly that: the confidence to write and the curiosity to pursue it. Even my new series, set in Occupied France, owes its genesis to the lessons I began to learn in Girona.
I stayed in Catalonia. I went back to Girona for a few years after graduating before moving on to Bilbao, Madrid and Barcelona. In all, I stayed twenty-four years in Spain, twenty of them in Catalonia, and while Barcelona was where I lived the longest and the city I loved the most, Girona has always stayed with me as that first love you never forget and to which I owe so much.
Straight after graduating in Spanish and French, Chris Lloyd hopped on a bus from Cardiff to Catalonia and stayed there for over twenty years. He has also lived in Grenoble – researching the French Resistance movement – as well as in the Basque Country and Madrid, where he taught English and worked in educational publishing and as a travel writer. More recently, he worked as a Catalan and Spanish translator.
About Chris:
Chris now lives in Wales, where he writes the Occupation series, featuring Eddie Giral, a French police detective in Paris under Nazi rule. The first book in the series – The Unwanted Dead – won the HWA Gold Crown Award for best historical novel of the year and was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award for the best historical crime fiction. It was chosen as Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month. The second book in the series, Paris Requiem, will be published in February 2023.
He has also written a trilogy set in present-day Girona, in Catalonia, featuring Elisenda Domènech, a police officer in the devolved Catalan police force.
Today I’m really pleased to welcome wordsmith extraordinaire, Kathy Miles, to tell you about her memories. I’ve known Kathy and her works for some years, and today, for a change, I’m going to leave it to her to express her thought onPlaces in our Memories.
The places in our memories are constantly changing. New insight or knowledge might lead you to view a cherished place with different eyes; sometimes the place itself will have altered beyond recognition over the years, and your memory of it becomes elusive, so you ask yourself whether what you remember is the truth, or built upon a desire for it to be so. Sometimes they vanish. I live near the coast at Aberaeron, and sea-mists often obliterate the landscape so completely that it becomes hard to remember what it looks like on a hot summer’s day:
Some days the land is stolen from itself,
chimneys and slate roofs swallowed, village
and pit-head lost to this cold mouth of mist
as it muffles hymn and chapel bell, silences
the scold of crows that crowd around
the plough like a flock of ranting preachers.
(‘Vanish’)
In my case, these problems of recall are compounded by a breakdown I suffered in my mid-forties, which wiped away a good many of my childhood memories. What remains is fragmentary and fleeting; a series of impressions that appear occasionally, like landmarks emerging from a sea mist, or footprints that might at any moment be washed away by the tide.
Growing up in Liverpool, the sea and river were constants. My paternal grandfather and great-grandfather had been merchant seamen, and their love of the sea passed to my father and on to me. I remember standing with my Dad on the Cazzy, the Cast-Iron Shore on the banks of the Mersey, where the sand was rust-coloured from the residue of an old iron foundry. Dad was wearing a shirt and tie as always, jacket slung across his shoulders. His face had already reddened in the heat. We kept a wary eye on the tide. The river creeps quickly and silently over those mudflats, brimming up as suddenly as an unwatched bath. A slub of saltmarsh, shards of driftwood, and just up the river bank, old shipyards festering in the sunshine. From there you can see the outline of Welsh mountains across to Moel Famau. But it was the water Dad was staring at, with a kind of longing, as if he wished he could be whisked away to far horizons.
It was inevitable that our annual holidays would be taken by the sea. Cemaes Bay, Cornwall, and later on, Guernsey and Sark. Mum would pack a picnic basket with boiled eggs and sandwiches, a thermos of tea, and the three of us walked to the nearest beach, stopping on the way to pick field mushrooms for next day’s breakfast. I’d head for the nearest rocks, fishing net in hand, and was soon absorbed in a rock-pool, catching tiny shrimps and sometimes a rockling or blenny. Dad fished for mackerel from the shore, whilst Mum would scoop out limpets to use as bait, and patiently rewind my crabbing line when I’d tangled the twine.
Home in Liverpool was a small bungalow, built on farmland in the 1930s as the edges of the city expanded. It was eight miles from the Mersey, but still close enough for us to be able to hear the ferry hooters blasting out in chorus to mark the start of each new year. Dad took the train to work each morning, and in the evenings I’d race up the road to West Allerton station and stand on the bridge as his train came in, usually getting covered in steam and smuts. If trains can be special memories of place, then these old steam trains are mine, with their plushly-covered seats, leather strap to pull up the window so the door could be opened, and pictures hung above the luggage rack. Even now I still feel the excitement of boarding a train, the promise of new experiences and unknown places.
At 18, having failed most of my A levels, I went to work in the Everyman Theatre for a year. I had to retake my exams if I had any hope of getting into university, and we also needed the money. The Everyman at that time was a shabby building in Hope Street, in desperate need of renovation, but with a fabulous bistro in the basement run by Paddy Byrne and Dave Scott. My job was a combination of ASM and general dogsbody. I helped out in the wardrobe department, sourced props, answered the telephone and manned the box office. On one occasion I even appeared on stage, though as I was crammed into the frame of a large fabric-covered snake, it was hardly going to make my fame and fortune as an actor. The company then included Antony Sher, Jonathan Pryce, Roger Sloman, Alison Steadman and David Goodland, and the director was Alan Dossor, who produced gritty, contemporary agitprop plays. The actors shared a single dressing-room; costumes were often held up by safety pins or my dangerously-loose tacking stitches, and in one notable production of Caucasian Chalk Circle, Roger Sloman was carted off to hospital after being hit on the head by a large iron hook that descended from the ceiling at the wrong time. It was chaotic, but it was also fun. Everyone worked as a team, and when I left – very reluctantly – to go to university, I was presented with a large publicity poster of the whole cast as a present. Although the Everyman is now a state-of-the-art modern theatre, I’ll never forget that old building, which stank of fags and paint, sweaty tights and damp wood, and to me was as glamorous as anything in the West End.
When I came to Lampeter, however, I finally found my special place. The Everyman had been a wonderful experience, but I’d never felt truly at home in Liverpool. My Mum in later years said that Wales had stolen me away, and she was right. I had grown up with Welsh-speaking aunts, and from the moment I stepped off the rickety old Richards bus that brought me from Aberystwyth, I felt I had truly found my cynefin. Here I was near my beloved sea, and a landscape I instantly felt rooted to. In 1995 I published an anthology of poems and photographs, The Third Day; Landscape and the Word (Gomer Press), commissioning work from poets such as Dannie Abse, RS Thomas, Gillian Clarke, Sheenagh Pugh and Raymond Garlick. Travelling around Wales to photograph old Welsh sites gave me new places to tuck away in my memory, including the then-unrestored Aberglasney, where the photographer and I kissed surreptitiously in the Yew Tunnel, and a different chapter of my life began. If my memory of those early years is sometimes veiled in sea mist, and many of the places of my childhood no longer exist, the ones I have gained since then provide a constant source of delight, and inspiration for my writing.
About Kathy:
Born in Liverpool, Kathy Miles is a poet and short story writer living in West Wales. Her work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, and her fourth full collection of poetry, Bone House, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2020. Kathy is a previous winner of the Bridport Prize, as well as the Welsh Poetry, Second Light, Wells Literature, Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival and PENfro poetry competitions. She is a regular book reviewer and workshop facilitator, has co-edited The Lampeter Review, and guest-edited Artemis magazine.
Poetry Collections
Bone House (Indigo Dreams, 2020)
Inside the Animal House (Rack Press, 2018)
Gardening With Deer (Cinnamon Press, 2016)
The Shadow House (Cinnamon Press, 2009)
The Third Day: Landscape and the Word (Gomer, 1995)
The Rocking Stone (Poetry Wales Press, 1988)
Other
Ugly as Sin and other clichés (Pentad Books, December 2020)
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m really pleased to welcome Hugh Roberts to Places in our Memories. Hugh has been a friend for many years and, besides being a writer, has a wealth of knowledge on blogging and how to get around all the glitches that WordPress throws at us. And he is always so generous in helping those of us who are technophobes.But, today, he’s here, telling us how he’dmuch rather have chocolate for Christmas dinner.
I have always been a lover of life. Yes, it’s thrown many curve balls at me and said: “here, deal with that!” but my love affair with life has never ended or been anywhere near ending. I could just ‘like’ life, but I have always adored it and will continue doing so until my’ sell-by date’ comes along. If I could marry life, I would have proposed many years ago.
There is one part of my life that I especially enjoy – Christmas. Unlike others who quickly grow out of Christmas after they reach teenager years, Christmas has never lost its magic. In the 60 years I have been on this earth, Christmas has never failed to deliver its magic to me.
The memory I am sharing with you today is extraordinary only because it includes three wonderful ladies I will never forget. So, let me take you back to a day I can remember and tell you what it means to me.
I’m sitting on the floor in the huge living room of our house. It’s the second home I have lived in since the day I was born. In front of me is a big high, dark wooden table and, on top of the table, I can just make out the brightly coloured yellow truck I had been given that day. The colour fascinated me and became my favourite colour until about twenty years ago when blue took over.
Sat at one end of the table, to my right, is the first of these ladies, my grandmother, Nana Wallington. She looks down at me and smiles. She has thick, black-rimmed spectacles, which make her eyes look huge. She’s wearing a green pork pie hat with two red cherries and a bit of tinsel stuck to the side and is dressed in a velvet green two-piece jacket and skirt. I wonder if the house isn’t warm enough because she hasn’t taken her hat off.
Underneath the jacket, I can see a cream cardigan helping her keep warm. She’s quite a chubby lady and adores me because I am her first grandchild. She has some white pearls around her neck, a Christmas present from my Grandfather Sam. He’s not my real grandfather but has always been in my life. Her lips are painted a bright red, and she has a pair of flat, black shoes and beige-coloured stockings on. They remind me of the stocking I was given the night before to hang on the bottom of my bed. My sister had the other leg of the stocking to hang on her bed.
To my left is the kitchen. I can see the back of the second of these extraordinary ladies, Mum. She’s busy peeling sprouts, and my grandmother reminds her to put little crosses on the bottom of each sprout with the knife. I wonder why the sprouts must be crossed. As if by magic, my mother asks the question. Because that’s what your grandmother did with sprouts at Christmas, my grandmother replies.
I can see lots of steam from various pots boiling away on the stove, and the house smells of ‘roast dinner.’ But I’d rather delve into some of the selection boxes I’d been given that morning. Full of yummy chocolate, I’d much rather eat chocolate than cooked dinner.
Mum is wearing a green and red festive dress and a new pair of slippers, which are tartan green and have cream-coloured fur inside them. She continues to talk to my grandmother about how long it will be before the men return from the pub.
Behind me, I can hear a baby stir. My baby sister, Jayne, is the third of these special ladies in my life. She doesn’t understand what day it is. Stupid girl, I think. You’re missing all the fun.
I look behind me. In the corner sits a small, artificial Christmas tree lit up by colourful Victorian-looking lanterns. I love looking at bright red, green, blue, and yellow lights. I squint my eyes to make the colours blend into each other. For the rest of my life, coloured lights will always be a part of Christmas. The tree is on a small table to prevent me from getting my hands on the pretty foil-wrapped chocolates which hang from some of its branches. There are no gifts under the tree because they’ve all been opened, most of which are scattered across the living room floor.
Jayne starts to cry, and my grandmother gets up and peeks inside the carrycot while my mother continues to prepare dinner. Besides me, I notice some of the selection boxes my mother forgot to move, one of which is opened. On the front of each selection box is a picture of Father Christmas in his sleigh, pulled by some reindeer over some snowy roofs and chimney pots of houses. The scene on the boxes gives me a peaceful, snug, cosy, happy feeling.
Pictures of the various chocolate bars and sweets inside the box are displayed on the back of each box. To my grandmother’s dismay, I’ve eaten most of the contents of the opened box. She tells Mum that I won’t want to eat my Christmas dinner! She’s right. I’d much rather have chocolate for dinner.
On the ceiling are two colourful honeycomb paper bells, one just above me and the other down the room’s far end. When taken down, unclipped, and closed, they both look like the shape of a boot, the type of boot my mother wears when going out. When taking them down from the ceiling, my father would always say how when folded back, they reminded him of a country called Italy and that one day he would like to take us all there for a holiday. Only I ever made it to Italy.
My grandmother and Mum continue to talk while I play with one of the toys delivered the night before. It’s a spinning top that makes a whirling noise when I push down on the handle. Letting go, I watch with amazement as all the colours on the toy merge into each other.
Mum eventually comes into the room with two small glasses of sherry and hands one to my grandmother. Even though I am just coming up to school age, I already know that these three special people will be the three most important ladies in my life and that the date will always be special to me.
“Merry Christmas,’ says my grandmother as she raises her glass.
“Yes, Merry Christmas, and Happy Birthday, Hugh,” replies my mother.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
This is a round-up of the Places in our Memories posted over the last few weeks. There have been some wonderful memories shared.
Phil Rowlands gave us a very poignant account of the many special memories he has ofNewgale in Wales. https://tinyurl.com/wkevacw6
Liz Hines brought to life her memories of growing up in a house that was once a public house (called Albert House, her childhood home has, unfortunately, been in a state of disrepair for some time now), and told us what it was like to live in a strong matriarchal family.https://tinyurl.com/2anfptxb.
Marjorie Mallon talked about her love of botanical gardens, recalling,in particular, her admiration for Cambridge Botanical Garden in the United Kingdom, and her respect for sculptural/artistic and wonders of engineering science. She also shared one or two of her poems with us.https://tinyurl.com/yc325da8
And finally,Jane Frazer told us us how, although enjoying a wonderful holiday in… she missed her homeland of Wales… and how it brought other thoughts: https://tinyurl.com/msnchysx.
This month, in the lead up to Christmas, we’ll only have one post in December, on the 19th, but I can guarantee it will be a fascinating Christmas memory. I hope you enjoy reading it. In January 2023, we will begin another round of Places in our Memories.
‘Let’s go to Lake Vyrnwy,’ Husband said. ‘Take some photos.‘
“Take some photos”, is a phrase that has been used many time down the years of our marriage. Sometimes it makes my heart sink; it often means I carry on walking along a chosen trail, before realising I’ve left Husband behind, oblivious, and capturing, “just the right shot” and have to retrace my steps. I have complained that this means I have walked miles more than him, but he, (“quite reasonably,” he says) means I’m burning more calories off. I ignore the implication of this… normally… but make sure I eat his chocolate bar as well as my own, when we stop for lunch.
Anyway… Lake Vyrnwy...
Just on the edge of The Snowdonia National Park and south of Lake Bala, Lake Vyrnwy is set amidst the remote and beautiful Berwyn Mountains. With spectacular waterfalls, and unspoilt open countryside. Except that, although the scenery is, as always, fantastic, the waterfalls are sadly depleted. As is the reservoir. However, since these photos were taken in August, and we’ve had such downpours, with fingers crossed, an inch or two may have been added to the water level. One can but hope!
We parked in a designated area that was supposed to be on the edge of the lake. It wasn’t; the water was so low we could have walked quite a few metres on shingle that should… would … in ‘normal times’ be submerged. It reminded us that, underneath, was a village, lost many years ago.
Llanwddyn was a village on the hillside next to the Cedig river. There were thirty-seven houses, three chapels and a Church of St John, and, in the surrounding countryside, ten farmsteads. Farming was the main occupation of the people in the valley, they ate simple food, such as mutton broth, porridge, gruel, and milk and burned peat from the moors in their fireplaces.
But, with expanding industries in the the Midlands and the north-west of England, and the prospect of higher wages, many people left. To make matters worse for those still trying to make a living from the land, in 1873 the local vicar,Reverend Thomas H. Evans published a report that the area was useless for agriculture, because it was waterlogged for much of the winter.
Seeing this, made us realise how many streams must has poured down the hills. Imaging the rush of water, I suppose it’s easy to understand the Reverend’s statement. Yet it has left me wondering why he wrote the report. Was he paid? Were the villagers aware of what he’d done? If they did find out, what was the reaction? I haven’t been able to discover that. The writer in me is itching to research that time. It did coincide with a time when the authorities of Liverpool were exploring the country for sites to build a new reservoir to cope with the growing population on both sides of the Mersey. So who’s to say!
Various sites were under consideration in northern England and Wales, but in most cases there were snags By 1877 a group of engineers arrived in Llanwddyn. Their visit was to look into the possibility of damming the river Vyrnwy. A survey revealed a large area of solid rock, just where the valley narrowed, two miles south of the village, which could act as a base for creating a large, artificial lake that had the potential for holding many millions of gallons of water.
It brings a feeling of awe, of sadness, almost, to be walking on land that is normally submerged under water, on land where a village once stood, where people once lived.
Driving further around the lake we pass a sign at the side of the road – “Track to impressive hillside view. Not to be missed”. Well, if ever there was a challenge to a photographer, that was it. Husband got out of the car and disappeared for a few minutes, soon to return. ‘It doesn’t look too bad. Come on.’
And indeed the first few steps were not too bad. And then we turned a corner… to be faced by an almost vertical path, a rocky vertical path. I stopped; why do I always let myself be fooled?
‘Come on, it’s not far!’ He said that numerous times for the next ten minutes. Hauling me from bend to bend. ” Think of the view!”
I couldn’t think of anything, except how to get my next breath.
But I had to admit, the view was worth it. The coniferous forests planted around the lake by the Forestry Commission are impressive.
On the way back, Husband found two stout branches to use as walking sticks, to scrabble down between mossy rocks and sliding muddy stones. It was either that or an undignified descent on my backside.
In 1880 the Liverpool Corporation Waterworks Act was passed by Parliament, and received the Royal Assent. Preparations were at once put in hand to gather the work-force and equipment necessary for the construction of what was to become the first large masonry dam in Britain and the largest artificial reservoir in Europe at the time. Work on the site began in July 1881.
The stone for the masonry was obtained from the quarry specially opened. All other materials were brought by horse and cart from the railway station at Llanfyllin, ten miles away. Stabling for up to 100 horses was built in Llanfyllin. The labour force topped 1,000 men at the busiest stage of the work on the dam. Many of them were stone masons working in the quarry, dressing the stone which was not easy to handle.
In a very short time the dam was completed. The village of Llanwddyn, and all buildings in the valley that were designated to be covered by the water, were demolished.
St Wddyn’s church was built on the hill on the north side to replace the parish destroyed by the flooding of Vyrnwy valley. Many of the graves were relocated from the graveyard of the old church to St Wddyn’s before it was flooded. It was was consecrated on the 27 November 1888, the day before the valves were closed. It took a year before the water reached and spilled over the lip of the dam.
On a previous walk, some years before, we witnessed a wedding procession coming from the church, led by a chimney sweep in all his glory. Apparently it’s considered lucky to see a chimney sweep on your wedding day, the belief being they bring good luck, wealth, and happiness. The bride and groom did look joyous. I would have loved to have tagged onto the procession, but, that day, we were looking for “a good view of the water”, further along the road.
On the same hill as the church a monument was erected in memory of ten men who died in accidents on the site during the building of the dam and another thirty-four who died from other causes at the time.
Stone houses, matching the stone of the dam, were built on either side of the valley for the people whose homes had disappeared under the lake. I suppose there must have been a lot of opposition to flooding the valley to provide Liverpool with water at the time, and since, but records have apparently shown that it brought prosperity and stability to the area.
Our final excursion on our walk was to the waterfalls.
One of the highest is the Rhiwargor waterfall at the northern end of Lake Vyrnwy. From the car park I was relieved to see the relatively flat path along the valley of the river Eiddew. There was a trail leading up and up along the side of the falls. Despite much attempted persuasions, I declined, and opted for a coffee and a picnic at a nearby picnic table. And I ate his chocolate bar! Well, after that impromptu climb earlier, I thought I deserved it.Who said I hold grudges?!!
N.B.The Lake Vyrnwy Nature Reserve and Estate that surrounds the lake is jointly managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the Hafren Dyfrdwy (Severn Dee). The reserve is designated as a national nature reserve, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Special Protection Area, and a Special Area of Conservation.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I am so pleased to welcome MJ Mallon. I have known Marjorie through her great support of other writers, especially with her work as poet, a blogger, and a book reviewer. She is also founder of the Authors Bloggers Rainbow Support Club. I have long admired her work.
Welcome, Marjorie.
Thank you so much to Judith for inviting me to talk about my places in our memories.
There are so many precious memories in our lives gathered from childhood to adulthood and beyond. In this series, I would like to talk about my love of botanical gardens – in particular Cambridge Botanical Garden in UK, and my respect for sculptural/artistic and wonders of engineering science.
In particular, nature has been a wonderful inspiration in my writing… I visited the Botanical Gardens in Cambridge often, working nearby – and being in the lucky position of having a free pass from my work! My employer encouraged us to attend an in-house mindfulness course which further enhanced my sense of awareness, allowing me to utilise all my senses on my daily walks.
I am a visual writer gaining ideas from immersing my consciousness in the world around me. I remember our first task in Mindfulness training was simply to eat a raisin slowly, savouring it, and noticing any sensations as we did!
The mindful magic of the garden kept me enthralled, with the leaves of the trees gently rustling in the breeze, or shedding, or colour changing their welcome celebrating all the seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, the changes in colour delighting me.
Let me introduce you to some of the unexpected animals and birds who greeted me there… one day I spotted a ginger cat who became one of the inspirations in Mr. SagittariusPoetry and Prose as did the cute robin and the dragonfly.
Here are some poems and photos from the collection…
Tree and nature poems are also the focus in my latest poetry collection: The Hedge Witch and The Musical Poet and nature will also feature in my soon to be published Do What You Love.
I have to say I miss the gardens now I’ve moved away from Cambridge. I am currently spending time in Portugal in a long stay holiday residence and the rest of the time in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Whilst I was in Edinburgh I was delighted to be asked to provide copies of two of my poetry collections: Mr. Sagittarius and Prose and Lockdown Innit Poems About Absurdity to prestigious libraries in the UK: National Library of Scotland, The Bodleian Library Oxford University, National Library of Wales, Cambridge University Library, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, and The British Library in London. And… my Curse of Time fantasy series, (which is with a Japanese Publisher,) are now held at my old school FP library at George Watson’s College, Edinburgh. It’s nice to know a little piece of me is to be kept for posterity for people to read in the UK!
So, with regards to poetry, my botanical delight has served me well! Giving me a chance to explore a happy place in my writing.
Further memories… sculptural and artistic in nature… drew my attention and captured my heart in Cambridge, England… the Corpus Christi grasshopper clock in King’s Parade and Juniper Artland’s Anya Gallaccio’s crystal grotto provided the initial inspiration for dark fantasy The Curse of Time series, Bloodstone and Golden Healer which are published by Next Chapter Publishing. And… I was so lucky to meet and be invited to lunch with the world renowned inventor of the clock, Dr. John C. Taylor, OBE in Cambridge, UK, which was definitely a highlight of my life in 2017! There was such synergy in the meeting as he loves clocks and crystals too! Talking to him has given me such a respect for the wonders of engineering innovation.
Just to add – exciting news on Marjorie’s behalf. Her next new book is out to preorder.
Blurb
Do What You Love Fragility of Your Flame Poems, Photography & Flash Fiction is a personal poetry collection celebrating how the fates may have a part in all that we do.
With special poems and short reflective moments inspired by family, flowers and nature, love, scrumptious morsels, places I’ve visited, lived and intend to live in, the friendships and hopes I have for the future. The overarching theme is to live a life well lived… And to do what you love.
float along with me
create clouds of sweetest joy
to do what you love
hold fate’s hand as we venture
near and far on life’s journey
Release Date: 25th November 2022, able to preorder via the following links.
Until we meet again… sweet robin, dragonfly, cat and scary grasshopper… and all the other creatures both real, created or imagined… Goodbye, adeus, tchau!
MJ’s favourite genres to write are fantasy YA, Paranormal, Ghost and Horror Stories, various forms of poetry and flash fiction. She celebrates books, the spiritual realm, love of nature and all things magical, mystical, and mysterious at her blog home:https://mjmallon.com
She’d describe herself as a reading, blogging and photography enthusiast! M J Mallon was born in Lion city Singapore, a passionate Scorpio with the Chinese Zodiac sign of a lucky rabbit. She spent her early childhood in Hong Kong. During her teen years, she returned to her father’s childhood home, Edinburgh where she spent many happy years, entertained and enthralled by her parents’ vivid stories of living and working abroad. Perhaps it was during these formative years that her love of storytelling began bolstered by these vivid raconteurs. She counts herself lucky to have travelled to many far-flung destinations and this early wanderlust has fuelled her present desire to emigrate abroad to Portugal. Until that wondrous moment, it’s rumoured that she lives in the UK, in Edinburgh. Her two enchanting daughters have flown the nest but often return with a cheery smile to greet her.
She writes fantasy/magical realism because life should be sprinkled with a liberal dash of extraordinarily imaginative magic! Her motto is to always do what you love, stay true to your heart’s desires, and inspire others to do so too, even it if appears that the odds are stacked against you like black-hearted shadows.
My favourite genres to write are Fantasy YA, Paranormal, Ghost and Horror Stories, various forms of poetry and flash fiction. I celebrate the spiritual realm, love of nature and all things magical, mystical, and mysterious at my blog home: https://mjmallon.com
I’d describe myself as a reading, blogging and photography enthusiast!
M J Mallon was born in Lion city Singapore, a passionate Scorpio with the Chinese Zodiac sign of a lucky rabbit. She spent her early childhood in Hong Kong. During her teen years, she returned to her father’s childhood home, Edinburgh where she spent many happy years, entertained, and enthralled by her parents’ vivid stories of living and working abroad. Perhaps it was during these formative years that her love of storytelling began bolstered by these vivid raconteurs. She counts herself lucky to have travelled to many far-flung destinations and this early wanderlust has fuelled her present desire to emigrate abroad. Until that wondrous moment, it’s rumoured that she lives in the UK, in the Venice of Cambridge with her six-foot hunk of a rock god husband. Her two enchanting daughters have flown the nest but often return with a cheery smile.
I write fantasy/magical realism because life should be sprinkled with a liberal dash of extraordinarily imaginative magic! Her motto is to always do what you love, stay true to your heart’s desires, and inspire others to do so too, even it if appears that the odds are stacked against you like black-hearted shadows.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m really pleased to welcome Liz Hines to Places in our Memories. She brings to life her memories of growing up in a house that was once a public house, and living in a strong matriarchal family.
Home
It took the builders three days to knock through the wall of my bedroom to put in a window. Day after day, they chipped and hammered and swore until the hole in the four foot thick wall was big enough to let in the sun, but bigger than the view of Polly Garter next-door’s garden deserved.
The slate steps that led up to the always-open front door featured in countless family photos
My bedroom was at the back of the house in the part that had already withstood eight generations. In my great-great-great-grandfather’s day it had been a public house. Years later, when it was finally rid of the smell of ale and gin, my great-grandmother wanted the front, which at that time still bore the legend, ‘Albert Inn’, fashionably pebble-dashed. The work had scarcely begun before the local bigwig, Harry Libby, came thundering to the door, ‘What are you doing, woman? This is sheer vandalism, destroying the heritage of the village.’ My great-grandmother didn’t give birth to twelve and raise eight children to be told what she could or couldn’t do with her own home — especially not by an upstart village boy — and she told him so.
That house, the place of my birth and my home for twenty-five years, stands in the middle of a terrace in the heart of the village. It was a matriarchal household: throughout my childhood there were four generations of women living there, my grandmother being the dominant force. My grandfather was a quiet gentle man, content to sit in his chair by the window, listening to the wireless and smoking his cigarettes. The room he sat in we called the kitchen, though all cooking, and washing of clothes, dishes, and bodies, was done in the scullery under the corrugated tin roof.
The kitchen was a low-ceilinged room where the light was always on and the fire always lit. The one window looked out onto a limed wall, eight feet high and three feet away. It was a small room crowded with furniture – a settee, two armchairs, a bureau, and a dining table with assorted chairs. Shabby but clean and polished.
I see my grandmother now, bustling in.
“Put some more coal on, Jack, the fire’ll be out in a minute.”
Her husband chooses to not hear her.
“I suppose I’ll have to do it myself. Wait till I see that coalman, giving me this English rubbish, I’ll tell him.”
She rakes the fire and shovels on more coal. Standing up she wipes her hands on her pinny and then stops in her tracks. She picks up a candlestick from the mantelpiece and tuts.
“I’ll have to clean these tomorrow.”
It will take her all morning to polish the candlesticks and horse brasses and souvenirs of trips to Tenby, and when she’s done, the house will smell of Brasso for the rest of the day.
It is she who is largely responsible for my upbringing, my mother having to go out to work in order to keep me fed though I was clothed in hand-me-down dresses from my conveniently six-month older and much richer cousin.
My grandmother’s father had died the year before I was born leaving a legacy of legend. He – almost single-handedly if family history is to be believed – built Ford’s first factories in America. When the hiraeth became too strong, and he returned home to Wales, Henry Ford himself – again, the stuff of family myth – came to our village and begged him to return, offering to transport the whole family back to the States. But the women wouldn’t go and a good thing too else my story would be completely different.
As I said, my great-grandmother had eight surviving children and her presence in my growing-up home meant a constant flow of visitors. The encompassing of me within this extended family provided a shelter, the walls of which were stronger than bricks and mortar, and it was easy to ignore the non-existence of one person, to have only a vague awareness that something was missing but that it didn’t really matter much. I was surrounded with love and its Welsh synonym, good home cooking. When there were lots of us, the family, there for dinner we would pull out the table and I would squeeze onto the bench next to the wall. This was my favourite place, where the bricks I leaned against were warmed by Mr Shires next door’s fire. I sat quietly in the glow of conversation and knew that here I was safe.
Back in the late 1920s, two of my gran’s sisters were married from Albert House in a double wedding.
In 1964 I passed my eleven plus and the door to the another world, to Glanmor Grammar School, a more precarious world of Latin and physics, was opened to me. There was one other fatherless girl in the class but her father had had the decency to die. I lied to those who wanted to know that my father worked abroad. The summer of love was still to come and, in any case, free love only applied to the beautiful people out there, not the parents of good grammar school girls in South Wales.
My French teacher was called Miss George. She was soft-spoken with a gentle face and greying uncontrollable hair. In her lesson she asks around the class the question, “Est ce que faites votre pere?” Thirty three girls sitting in rows waiting for their turn, or in my case, praying for the bell to ring, please, before Miss George gets to me, please don’t let her ask me. Shall I lie, make up an answer? “Il est un medecin. “”Tres bien,” where does he work? No, I’d blush, stutter, be caught out. “Mon pere est mort.” Convenient but they all know. The bell rings, the problem goes away for today, and I go home to steak and kidney pie and rice pudding.
So was that it? The worst I had to bear? It stands out in my memory but when I stop and think, try as I might, I cannot recall one unkind comment, not one slur on my parentage through the whole of my childhood and adolescence. If that was as bad as it got, then surely the family did its job well.
When I enter the house that is now my home, I breathe in the same sense of security that my first home gave me; I hope my children feel it here too.
Albert House has been in a state of disrepair for a few years now
I was the last of the family to be born in Albert House and I linger over the link with the past. I’ve looked on old maps, tried to locate the public house that was to become my home. I’ve never been able to find it.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
This is a round-up of the Places in our Memories posted over the last few weeks. There have been some wonderful memories shared:
Georgia Rose lived in several different houses as a child but here she told us about the one she loved and thinks about most frequently; the one she and her family moved from when she was around four years old: https://tinyurl.com/y2u3anvt
Darlene Foster told us about the time her baby brother was born during the blizzards at her near Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada: https://tinyurl.com/mr2us8tb
Jan Baynhamwas transported back to her happy childhood growing up in a tiny village, Newbridge-on -Wye, in mid-Wales, where her family lived with her lovely grandad: https://tinyurl.com/44phx2z3
Jane Risdon told us how, shortly after she was born,herfather left for the Korean War and so she and hermother moved in with her paternal grandfather — a former British Indian Army Major: https://tinyurl.com/mtdcrdkp
Today we begin another round of Places in our Memories. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do.
There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.
Today I’m pleased to be welcoming online friend, Jane Risdon, hereto tell us about her childhood memories.
Thanks so much for inviting me, Judith, it is lovely to be able to share my memories with you.
Soon after I was born, my father left for the Korean War, and my mother and I, moved in with my paternal grandfather — a former British Indian Army Major —with my dad’s sister, and brother, although not long after, my uncle immigrated to Australia.
During my first two years living with them all, I recall the house being filled with music when my uncle was there, and he, his sister, and my mum, would jitterbug and waltz around the breakfast room to the radio or their 78rpm record collection, to the music of Nat King Cole, Johnny Rae, Guy Mitchel, Alma Cogan, Bill Haley, Ann Sheridan, Doris Day, and so many others whose music I grew up to love.
My parents met when my dad was an Officer Cadet Instructor at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, in 1947, when she and her sisters used to go to the dances in the Old College. Eventually, she married my dad, and one of her sister’s married his best friend, who was an instructor too. Sandhurst features greatly in our family history – another story one day, perhaps.
Grandfather’s Victorian era house in Aldershot, was on three floors and was full of Indian memorabilia and furnishings. Tables with elephant tusks (I know, don’t let’s go there), and grand carvings on the wooden legs and surfaces. Rugs and tapestries weaved by Indian artisans with scenes of tigers, and other animals covered the walls and floors. There were various other pieces of art and furniture I can barely recall. But I can still remember the smells of camphor in the parlour, and the ‘carpet’ smell given off by the wall hangings and Persian rugs which were everywhere.
On the ground floor as you stood at the front door, there was a lovely entrance hall, with decorated floor tiles. On the left there was the parlour, where a grand fireplace dominated the room. On the mantlepiece there were various vases and other ornaments and, eventually, I was bequeathed them by my grandfather, who inherited them from his mother. Apparently I was fascinated by them as a toddler, and I must admit I loved them as I was growing up.
On the right looking ahead there was the staircase with ornate bannisters. Opposite the stairs on the left, there was a breakfast room leading into a scullery and kitchen with a backdoor onto the garden. ‘Joey,’ the budgie had a cage in the breakfast room, which had a huge dresser along one wall, displaying most of my parent’s wedding presents, in the form of a full white dinner service, Japanese fine porcelain tea and coffee sets, and in the huge drawers their Indian linen was held, along with their damask table linen, and canteen of silverware, and similar items.
Joey, the budgie, was fun too. He used to talk all the time and said funny things, because I can recall everyone going into hysterics every time he said anything. Years later, I learned that he used to swear, not that I ever heard anyone in the family using bad language, Joey seemed to have picked it up from somewhere.
The scullery held the sink and gas cooker. I’m not sure if there was a fridge when I lived there – I was only there from birth until I was two, but years later I used to visit with my parents and siblings and so the timescale for my memories probably get intermingled with other times. I’m always transported back to that scullery, whenever I smell Lifebuoy, Imperial Leather, and Wright’s Coal Tar Soaps. Sticks of celery in a glass container filled the air with their fragrance whenever we had afternoon tea. I’m sure we ate other things, but I cannot recall.
Years later when I had brothers and sisters and we’d visit him on a Sunday, the smells were still there, although, by then these were joined by the smell of baking because grandad had a live-in housekeeper who was an excellent cook.
Grandfather in his Major’s uniform. Grandfather and his brother before deploying to France
My grandfather was strict. Children were seen and not heard. I was another of his soldiers under his command, although he was a kind man. One was not allowed to speak until spoken to, one was not allowed to fold one’s arms or rest them on the table. There was a certain way to behave when dining and his training has never left me. Bad table manners drive me mental.
Grandfather lied about his age and joined the Army aged fourteen, having been a boarder at the Duke of York Military School for the children of widows of soldiers, where he was joined by two of his brothers who also enlisted in the Army. Apparently they didn’t question Grandfather’s enlistment and he was in France soon after, fighting in WW1. My Grandparents married in England in the 1920s. They went out to India soon after their marriage and lived there until partition in 1947. He served in Africa in WW2, leading his men — including Gurkhas, Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus from India, to fight Rommell in the desert. He rose to the rank of acting Lieutenant Colonel but retired as a Major.
During WW2, my grandmother drove ambulances carrying wounded soldiers from the docks to the hospitals where they were living in India. She was a fashion icon, I gather, wearing trouser suits when ladies were frowned upon if they wore them, and she favoured huge picture hats when driving, which caused a stir. She also took in lodgers when my grandfather was in Africa, and her guests included jockeys for the various Maharajahs, including the Maharajah of Jaipur’s favourite rider.
My grandparents divorced when my father and his siblings — who were born and grew up in India — were very young. Grandmother remarried and went out to South Africa where she and her Argentinian husband, purchased an ostrich farm, and later a grand hotel in the Valley of a Thousand Hills in Natal. She died in her late forties, in South Africa. My father and his brother never saw her again, although their sister spent time with them in South Africa as a small child, and later, which I will go into further on.
My father, and his younger brother and sister in India
Ayah with Dad and Roy
My father and his siblings were educated in the Himalayas. He and his brother went to a college in Simla (Shimla), known as the Queen of Hill stations, and their sister went to a convent elsewhere. The boys could count future presidents, prime ministers, princes, and maharajas amongst their school mates. They spent nine months of the year in the mountains and came down for the summer which they spent with their parents in Quetta, Poona, and other places they lived. Although, mostly they were looked after by their Ayah (nanny), it seems from all accounts, their childhood spent in India, was idyllic and magical most of the time. The boys were taught by Christian Brothers, although the family was Church of England, and my aunt was taught by Catholic nuns. One day her school had a visit from Mahatma Gandhi, and she was introduced to him, and shook his hand. He then went outside the school, sat by the gates, and greeted various people, wearing his loin cloth! She has a clear memory of it but has no idea why he was visiting in his loin cloth.
My father in Sumatra circa 1953 –
Father as a child with brother and Quetta Hills Tribesmen
My father joined the British Indian Army in India after the war, when he was old enough, and was sent to Africa and various other ‘hot spots,’ before ending up in England, at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, where he eventually met and married my mother.
Back to the house. In the hall, next to the stairs, there were steps down into the sitting room. Again, the smell of Indian wooden furniture is a prevailing memory. I can’t recall what else was in the room, but there were double French doors opening on to the back garden. In the garden, the smell of creosote is a vivid memory. It coated the wooden fence panels, and the garden shed, and when the sun shone the creosote seemed to smell stronger.
Fatherin the Korean War
When I was two, Mum and I flew to Singapore to join my dad, who’d been posted from Korea to Malaya — The Malayan Emergency — to take part in the counter-insurgency operations by Britain, which lasted from 1948-1960, and resulted in the defeat of Communist rebels, attacking the rubber plantations and murdering Malayans. We lived in Singapore for a few years, and I have quite vivid memories of our time there. I recall meeting my father for the first time at the airport, and shooting up inside my mother’s skirt, apparently wanting, ‘that nasty man’ to go away. It took months to accept him. It seems that as a toddler every man I met I called ‘daddy,’ and even the station master on Aldershot railway station was called ‘daddy,’ until one day he took my mother aside and suggested she tell ‘that poor child,’ who her father is.
Flying to Singapore, before Jet engines, took over a week, one way. We had frequent stops for lunch, and refuelling, in various countries, and we overnighted in a number of other countries, unable to fly at night. Sights and smells I can still recall, especially India; staying in Calcutta, Karachi, and Bombay — as they were known back then. I clearly remember coming off the plane for a lunchtime stop, and seeing an Indian lady, in a sari, with rings through her nose, with bare feet.
On the first floor in my grandfather’s house, there were several bedrooms and a bathroom. The floor in the bathroom was tiled in black and white, and one afternoon I managed to lock myself in there and had to be rescued by my uncle — via a ladder — put up to the bathroom window. He was able to unlock the door from the inside.
The next floor had more bedrooms and a bathroom, and I suppose I must have gone inside them at some point. I can’t recall. Although, I know one bed was so high off the ground, my great grandparents, when visiting, used to take a running jump to get on to it, which must have been a sight for sore eyes, considering they were both in their nineties!
I’m not sure where my grandfather’s room, my uncle’s, or my mother’s was, but they were on this floor. But I do recall my teenage aunt’s room. It was like an Aladdin’s cave. She had so many pairs of shoes and handbags, which I liked to play with. And, she had an amazing collection of dolls which were on her bed. The dolls could be turned upside down and there would be another doll under their clothes. I spent many hours playing with them, carefully, of course.
Jane around 1952
Just before we left for Singapore, my grandmother visited from South Africa, mainly to see if her daughter would go back with her to live at their hotel, The Valley of a Thousand Hills Hotel, in KwaZulu-Natal. She arrived at my grandfather’s house with her new husband — they were on their honeymoon in Europe — complete with chauffeur-driven car. She refused to pick me up in case I messed up her furs and haute couture outfit. She gave me a dress and a doll, I believe. After a while they took off with my aunt in tow, to tour the West Country, so my aunt could decide if she wanted to go to South Africa or not. My aunt decided to remain with her father. Grandmother returned to South Africa and died four years later.
Amah 1954 with her niece.
Singapore was amazing. So different to the way it is today. My husband, and I, have lived there on several occasions throughout recent years, when working with Chinese recording artists. In 1954 it was a town surrounded by jungle, and I can clearly remember how it was.
Singapore Junk with city in the background.
We lived in flats, with the parade ground behind us, and every morning you could hear the men on parade, the music, and the marching. I had an Amah (nanny) to look after me. She used to take me into her room and feed me raw fish and rice, and I would squat on the floor with her to eat it with chopsticks.
I had a little friend, older than me, called Janice, and we used to swim in the sea together, and go to the park for picnics and play on the swings. We also went to the Botanical Gardens. Our parents had an amazing social life and would often cross the Straits from Singapore to Jahor Bahru, to dine and go dancing.
I cannot recall the flat. I do remember sitting on the steps inside the flat with Janice, and somewhere there is a photo.
RMA Heritage Day 2016
Having a parent in the Army, I spent my childhood until my teens, travelling and living around the world. Going to so many different schools, it was almost impossible to make long-term friends. Eventually, working and living overseas with my husband, in the music business, I’ve found it hard to call anywhere home. Picking one place to concentrate on, has been difficult. I hope you’ve enjoyed my memories of the early years with my grandfather, and of living in Singapore.
About Jane: Jane Risdon is the co-author of ‘Only One Woman,’ with Christina Jones (Headline Accent) and ‘Undercover: Crime Shorts,’ (Plaisted Publishing), as well as having many short stories published in numerous anthologies. She writes for several online and print magazines such as Writing Magazine, Electric Press, and The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine. She is a regular guest on international internet podcasts including UK Crime Book Club (UKCBC), Donnas Interviews Reviews and Giveaways, and on radio shows such as theauthorsshow.com, chatandspinradio.com, and The Brian Hammer Jackson Radio Show. Undercover: Crime Shorts is being used by Western Kentucky University, Kt. USA, in an Introduction to Literature Class, for second year students from Autumn 2021 for the foreseeable future. Before turning her hand to writing Jane worked in the International Music Business alongside her musician husband, working with musicians, singer/songwriters, and record producers. They also facilitated the placement of music in movies and television series. Earlier in her career she also worked for the British Ministry of Defence in Germany, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London. Jane is represented by Linda Langton of Langton’s International Literary Agency in New York City, New York USA.
Judith Barrow 