Bugger blogner

Writing mags, younger relatives and now the Welsh Tourist Board are all on at me to become a blogger. My contemporaries shake their wise, old white heads and mutter into their cocoa but here I am! Will just recce around a few others to get the picture (and words!)

An Eight Year Old's 6 Week Summer Hols 1956

I remember...

the escalator at Paddington, a mile of performing stairs, snapping at your heels like crocodiles.

And then the mighty 'Red Dragon' steam train belching smoke, whistles, goodbye to the grown-ups. For my 10 year old brother and I, an endless, moving corridor to explore. Crossing over the erratic, dangerous bridges between compartments... clackety clack... every bolt complaining, threatening to burst free... clackety clack ... the speeding land below.

Great, black beast roaring into the Severn tunnel. Inside the compartment, shaky, liquid-lemon light. Outside, ear-scraping cacophony. A mole blindly rattling through the midnight-black A river above. It's weight pressing. A little crack in the brickwork, a little stream of water, death by drowning. A mile of assaulted senses and then the violent, welcome shock of light; the noise at once liberated.

Leaving Kent was throwing off a tight liberty bodice. Ropes of thick, waist-length, neatly-plaited hair shaken free.

In Kent, everyone moved in little boxes of time. In Wales it didn't exist. No curfews, no restrictions. The day opened and closed it's petals so slowly, it couldn't be seen. We were a little gang of five vagabonds, creating our own day as we went along.

We loved to play up the mountain, daring each other to venture through the little L shaped pit tunnel... alone. Further up, ferns towering overhead, we were intrepid explorers ploughing through the undergrowth, making noise to keep the sleepy adders at bay. Climbing upwards in a green world until the grassy summit was reached. It was here, the sun bouncing off his golden hair, spread-eagled above me, Brian Howells gave me my first Hollywood kiss.

Then, ambling down through the woods, until...  behind us suddenly appears, a crazed, snorting bullock which chases us down, down, down the steep, woodland path, our arms flailing wildly, shrieking like banshees.

Back to a mountain of welsh cakes, hot from the bake-stone, sweet, doughy-crumbly, and studded with fat, juicy raisins. When the last one was eaten, fingers dabbing into the sugar crystals, licking them gone.

Rushing out the door for a game of cricket, lamppost as wicket. Owzat!

Racing up the terraced street, stopping to peer pop-eyed through the big circles of rippled glass into old Bob's tiny sweetshop. Calling in for tuppenny paper cones of sherbet or walnut whips (until the day Wiggy Davies found a maggot in his). Old Bob always cheerful, snow-haired, apple-cheeked, puffing on his black-cherry baccy, a carpet of sawdust over the floor. Patient with us in our serious deliberations.

Then, down the back alleys and in through the gate, past the lavvy, past Aunty Flo's five, clucking chickens cooped in the corner and in through the kitchen door. The old, tin bath off its nail in the yard and set before the range. Pans and big old kettle steaming up the windows. A towel hanging over a chair.

I remember, every afternoon, the women sitting out on their front steps: shelling peas, polishing Sunday shoes or some other chore but always gossiping,

'Our Edie's girl, is it? I haven't seen you since you was a little dwt. Duw duw, but she's the spit of her Mam!'

In Kent everyone spoke in straight lines. In Wales they carolled the words, undulating them like the Welsh hills. I thrilled to the rhythm and melody of them. Even when scolded by fierce aunty Phyl after I'd disappeared off for hours, in the baby-pink, satin dress she'd made for me, returning with a skirt full of blackberries, a purple bruise of juice spreading wide,

'You wicked girl! There's gratitude for you, you little mochyn! Wait 'til your Mam heyerrs about this!'

I remember, Myfanwy Jones eating toothpaste from a tube, relishing it, as we stood watching, fascinated, before enlightening her. She, decorating the cobbled street with splatters of great gob-fuls of white spit as we chant happily 'You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent'.

And as the street-lights came on, a game of mob, or kick the can, or Rat-tat-Ginger. 3 of you knocking on 3 doors at a time, hiding in the next 3 doorways. Ratta tat tat... Giggles, scampers and the pumping of the heart as Maggie Dumphy or old Mr Hughes shouted and threatened. And the more they raged the more we laughed in the back lanes afterwards, impersonating them mercilessly, 'I'll tell your father on you Wiggy Davies... I saw you! You think I'm tup or something?'

And as the dark cave of night fell about us, up the mountain a dragon belched fire from the belly of the pit, it was indoors for supper and bed. Each day endless but never long enough.

Sleeping next to my aunt in the bed I 'd been born in. Rolling into the middle of the lumpy mattress where I loved to cwtch up to her bulky, winceyette clad body. In the lamplight, we read little picture-love comics that we swapped once a week up Caerphilly market for tuppence each (followed by a treat... faggots and peas in the caff). Bus ride home, past the Miners' Welfare Hall where our little gang walked a mile every night for 7 days to cheer on Randolph Scott in 'The Seventh Cavalry.' The fruity smell of XYZ chewing gum impressed upon my memory forever.

Like a glorious sunset you don't see changing, the summer passed us by unnoticed.

When told that my parents were arriving in a few days, I chose to forget it at once.

Even the journey home on the 'Red Dragon', the voyage down the escalator, didn't cheer me. The world grew grey again. The clock began its tick tick ticking. School, the next day. My mum scrubbing my head with greasy, yellow carbolic soap, scraping through the tangled, wet hair and raining lice down onto the newspaper. Each one a drumbeat. And then clicking their bodies away between her thumbnails, click click click...

as if they'd never been.