The Early Years – Birth to Bike
The first thing that happened in my life was that I was born. That momentous event happened in Maesteg General Hospital in July 1965, I don’t remember much about it to be honest but my mother tells me we were visited by three very wise men…
That was WAY back in July 1965 so according to the chart below that makes me a Generation X baby, I was kind of hoping to be a Baby Boomer but that classification ended for those born in 1964.
Life was very different then to what it is now. Some might say better, but that depends on what you want from life I guess.
We spent most of our time outside not stuck in our bedrooms playing first person shootups. We actually went out there and acted those scenarios out in real life.
I can remember having a little peddle car and a scooter that I used to zoom up and down the street on when I still lived in Sarn, also remember going up my friends house at the top of the street, bare in mind all this was before I was five….different times.
Perhaps it was because we didn’t have the technology, in fact we didn’t even have computers in school. The closest to that was typing lessons, and only the girls did typing lessons. They also did cookery and home economics. The boys did metalwork, woodwork and technical drawing. Skills that would likely be useful in the future.
In those early years, up until we left school and started work we would have to walk, run or if we were lucky enough cycle everywhere. We never asked for or expected a lift off Dad, Mam didn’t really drive back then, that was a mans job… if it was too far away to walk there then it would mean a trip on a Western Welsh bus. If there was any pocket money left over you could get a rover ticket for a pound or so and spend all day down town or even get as far as Porthcawl.
If my memory serves me right, the 211 went from Bridgend Bus Station and up the Garw via Bettws, the 212 to the Garw via Brynmenyn or the 210 which went through Bettws then Llangeinor and on to the Ogmore Valley.
For my 5th year in Comp I took the option to go to Bridgend College to do a course in Electrical and electronic Engineering(sounds grand) and was issued with a travel card, this could only be used on certain routes, the 211 and 212 but I had a girlfriend at the time who lived up the Ogmore Valley so I decided to doctor my travel card to include the 210, it worked for a couple of months until a driver with good eyesight noticed the little change and confiscated my card, fortunately it was almost at the end of my course so I wasn’t left too much out of pocket.
Lunchtimes while at college were spent in the little arcade room above Asteys chipshop playing space invaders (I preferred the two button controls to the left right joystick) or Astroids, 10p a go back then. My dinner money didn’t last long.
We didn’t go to university it wasn’t really an option, or a consideration unless we were in the top couple of percent in school and wanted to become a scientist, a doctor or a solicitor, we left school with our ‘A’ levels, ‘O’ Levels or GCSEs and then some went to college but most went straight into a job.
That thing they call a ‘gap year’ now, we used to call it ‘being unemployed’.
After a lot of searching for a job I was lucky enough to secure an apprenticeship in the Army and I would eventually leave home, just turned 16, and move to the Army Apprentices College Chepstow to train to become an electrician(more of that later).
How did we manage without technology?
No Walkmans or MP3 players if we were out and about and desperately needed to listen to music the best option was dial a disk, pop your 2 pence piece into the payphone and call 160 for the latest chart hit in crackly mono sound.
Or if you needed to know the time then the speaking clock was reached by dialing 123 from a public phone box and the recorded voice of Pat Simmons read out the time.
“At the third stroke, the time will be hour minutes and seconds precisely.”
Listening to music has always been a big part of my life, nowadays you’ll find me wandering around with a pair of bluetooth earbuds stuck in my lugholes, no more cold, dark, smelly phoneboxes for me.
Here’s a link to the music charts from my birth month.
My first memories(perhaps).
I have very very faint and very likely exaggerated memories of our first house in Tredegar, it was a wooden bungalow by a small stream, I remember that there was a lane down the side of the house and that there was an old abandon car dumped down there, I can remember breaking the glass and cutting my hand on the now smashed front headlight but my mother says no I didn’t and my father says there was never an abandoned car down there anyway.
And there was a huge swimming pool in the back garden: Nope, wrong again: This was just a little fish pond. My sister and I used to paddle in there when the weather was nice.
My mother tells me that one day I wanted to go to the park but she was too busy and would take me later but I wanted to go then so when her back was turned for a minute I decided to walk there by myself, anyway long story short, my mother picked me up from the police station. She says I was sitting on the counter wearing a police hat and had the biggest grin on my face ever. Apparently my mothers emotions weren’t quite the same.
I went for a drive up to Tredegar a couple of years ago and found the house without knowing where it was, I just kind of guided myself, perhaps it was my adventures and wanderings as a 3 year old that helped.
We moved from Tredegar to Sarn when I was about 2 or 3 years old.
I can vividly remember walking through the shortcut from our house to school, it is just a short path between two houses to the main road, there was a shop opposite the exit of the lane that sold sweets, it’s been converted to flats now, if we had been good we might be treated to a penny chew. Mam would then walk my sister and me up the main road to Bryncethin Junior and Infants school, drop us off and walk back up to collect us later.
Again not too many memories of that just that the classroom was down the furthest corner of the school and then there were playing fields beyond that. By the school gates was a huge shelter for when it was playtime but raining. When I look at that shelter now it really is quite small. Once again the young mind exaggerates memories.
Grampa and me had a little secret about that house in Park Place, we were the only ones that knew what got buried in the foundations of the shed. I thought this was just a little family joke until my father asked me last year in all seriousness “what was buried under the shed?” Well I can reveal all now. It was just an old bathroom suite, the smashed up remains of the toilet and sink lol.
It was behind this shed that we would have our bonfire and fireworks, I can distinctly remember a Catherine wheel being pinned to the shed and then shooting sparks for miles and spinning for hours on end. And the rocket launched from milk bottles, I’m sure I saw one land on the moon.
And so to my next home, Llangeinor Post Office.
We then moved to Llangeinor when my parents had bought the Post Office off one of my mothers Aunty and Uncle’s and I continued my education at Tynyrheol Primary School, this would have been the start of my junior school education and have I have some very fond memories of this place and it’s teachers. The day started with a 1/3 pint of milk in a mini glass bottle, some sort of government scheme to stop us getting scurvy or something, we had a milk monitor each day, goodness knows what they did but it must have been important for me to remember that snippet. Dinner was served in the “new” building that also masqueraded as a classroom, there was a huge sliding partition to separate the two areas, I’m not sure whether it was also designed as an indoor gym.
Out to the rear of the canteen/dining hall/classroom/gym is a farm where they used to slaughter livestock, they also had kennels for the hounds from the Llangeinor Hunt. Sometimes the smell from there was terrible, like road kill that’s been there for a couple of weeks, add that smell into school potatoes and cabbage and suddenly school dinners weren’t quite so appetizing.
The toilets were an outside affair, a brick building with a wall to pee up against and a couple of cubicles for number 2’s.
There was a huge oak tree out the back of one of the infants yard where we used to make racing tracks for our matchbox cars or just run around it like fools. Sadly it’s been cut down now.
In the front Junior school yard we used to play British bulldog or a game that involved kicking the football against the school wall until I think one of us missed and then you were out.
The other yard that was infront of the canteen/classroom was mainly laid out as a basketball court, which was a bit odd, but I think one of the teachers used to be a player back in the day.
I was only about 2’6″ back then so never got picked for the basketball team.
One year though we had a sponsored basketball throwing competition where you got sponsorship money for each successful basket, probably 1p per basket, now I might be wrong but despite my height and lack of ability I think I scored the most baskets.
I got my head stuck in the railings on the steps going up from this yard towards the toilets.
We used to play rugby down the football field and then go visiting other junior schools to play against them. I remember being given a brand new rugby shirt, Pitman stole it off me after a match… I was hopeless at rugby but remember Michael Furlong scoring a try and I remember thinking “wow!, if he can do that then so can I”.
I never did though.
The only school sport that I was any good at was swimming, although I don’t remember if there were ever any competitions while I was in juniors, I guess there must have been given we were so close to the pool.
I was joint club champion one year and had a really naff trophy for it, a gold coloured plastic swimmer diving off a white marble base. I’m not sure whether that was an individual trophy and then there was a cup or something too but I do remember that I had to give one or the other back after six months so the “other” winner could proudly display it too.
I used to love school back then.
Next was the Comprehensive, year 1 was in the old Garw Grammar school in Pontycymmer, my father went there as a boy. I was put in form 1A2. There was no such thing as equality back then, if you showed intelligence you went in the “A” classes, if you did less well it was “B” and those with no hope “C”
Classes were graded
- A1 – The top learners they did Latin
- A2 – A4 – Top learners but not quite intelligent enough to do Latin
- A5 – Just missed the grade
- B1 – B4 – A little bit less academic
- B5 & C1 – Even more academically challenged
- C2 & C3 – Couldn’t be taught anything, probably disruptive
The pupils with some kind of disability or impairment were also put in the C classes, it was probably where the few Chinese kids from the local takeaways ended up too. Sadly I guess the schools just didn’t know how to teach pupils who didn’t quite conform to the norm back then.
Year 2 until leaving was in Ynysawdre Comprehensive School. For some reason from year 4 and on if you were in an “A” class this was then renamed to “E” so I was in E2, could be E for Excellence or E for Exams, who knows?
The school buildings themselves were not a nice place, built in the 70’s, on the site of the former Ynysawdre coal mine which prior to that was Ynysawdre Farm, it was made from something that looked like cardboard and had portacabins dotted around used as classrooms. The whole school, including Archbishop McGrath next door was pulled down around 2000, rebuilt and renamed as Coleg Cymunedol Y Dderwen, a nice modern looking place of education now.
As I’ve already said, right next door was Archbishop McGrath Catholic Comprehensive School, the sectarian troubles in Northern Ireland were nothing compared to the hatred between the Catholics and the Protestants of the Welsh Valleys. Our version of the great sectarian divide was the heating and gas pipe gantry that ran between the two schools, nobody with half a brain ventured past that. Obviously by definition that excludes the upper “B” and “C” class members.
I used to love chemistry with Mr Naughton. Health and safety hadn’t been invented back them and his chemistry lessons would generally revolve around nasty chemicals, Bunsen Burners and mercury.
There was no need to dress up like a Nuclear Technician about to enter one of the collapsed reactors in Chernobyl like they feel the need to to now, we were a tougher breed.
How are the kids ever going to learn about danger if they have never had their eyebrows burnt off by an out of control desktop gas tap or getting rushed to the school nurse experiencing respiratory difficulties from inhaling dodgy looking chemicals?
I think every kid had a small stash of mercury in a stolen test tube to play with and most of us didn’t die .
Physics class is where I learnt all about licking batteries to check if there was still any charge left in them and that people with pacemakers fitted should be warned of the side effects before hooking them up to a 20,000volt Vandergraph generator to demonstrate muscle spasms.
Biology was just wrong, cutting small animals up…that was something we did up the lane out the back of Dai Bayliss’s garage on a sunny evening…not in some stuffy classroom.
Enough of school
In our endless time off we would be out playing only going home for food or bedtime. Our little gang was Dai Bayliss, Mark Allen, myself(obviously) and sometimes we would let Marks brother Gareth play too. There were others but this was the main core of our little gang.
Me, Frenchie(Mark Allen), Dai and Gareth would spend hours running around and getting lost in the pine forests, or making camps in the woods that surrounded Llangeinor, or we could be found playing down by the Garw River, building dams or looking for guppies. I sank up to my waist in the orange bog down there a couple of times, or we would clambering up Llangeinor Mountain to the TV mast, just because it was there.
There were very few fat kids in those days.
One memory of Mark that makes me giggle every time I think of it was when we were climbing trees, he discovered he could swing the top of a tree enough to climb onto its neighbour, all was going well until I heard a loud crack followed by lots of smaller cracks then a loud THUMP!! as Mark landed on his back on top of an ant hill. That’s when he learnt that not all trees are built with the same degree of strength or flexibility.
We would spend hours in the evenings outside the swimming baths throwing the Frisby back and forth trying to perfect our techniques.
I went back there last week and it is all overgrown now, no sign of the paved area. The only hint that something was there is a street lamp still standing proud in the far corner nearest the river.
Me and Dai Bayliss had air rifles, mine was a Diana .177 bought from a second hand shop on Cowbridge Road West, Cardiff, we would spend hours shooting at “targets” or loading the barrel with a small amount of salt from the horse feeder and then chase and shoot each other, salt hurts too you know! Dai’s brother Andrew made quite a good “target”.
We had CB radios and were determined to talk to each other from our houses, we lived about 600m apart but never did get them to work. I could talk to people dozens of miles away but never to Dai in his house.
Dai would come up my house and we would mess about in the living room which was above the shop until one of my parents would come upstairs to investigate the herd of elephants charging about up there. According to them the ceiling was about to collapse: It never did.
We recorded our version of The Kenny Everett Video Show on the old stereo player, I still have those tapes somewhere. We would laugh at how funny we were, I must dig them out, I bet they are rubbish.
My bedroom was another storey up, effectively the 3th floor way up in the attic with a big dormer window overlooking the swimming pool, playing fields and railway line. When I was about 14 I got obsessed with counting the coal wagons, usually there were 33 but sometimes up to 38. I don’t know if a lot of kids go through that but I would count everything, bricks in a wall, railings in a fence etc.
Then there was Llangeinor disco
This was the place to be of an early evening. Held in the legendary Richard Price Centre or Richard Rice Centre as we used to call it because the P had fallen off. My neighbour Chris was the DJ for a while and he would play a very eclectic mix of music, much to our pleasure. Remember that the late 70’s was most probably the best time for music, we had heavy metal, the tail end of rock and roll, psychedelic music, supergroups playing their endless rifts, punk rock, new wave, ska, reggae, two tone, love songs and unfortunately disco. I couldn’t dance to save my life but anyone can pogo or turn round in circles to a love song so I managed.
All the girls would dance in lines with their friend doing the same in another line opposite. The boys would all be sat around the edges looking moody, just waiting for Chris to play a punk record or some heavy metal.
One evening he played Friggin’ in the Riggin’ by the Sex Pistols, one of the committee members rushed up onto the stage, pulled the record off the turntable and snapped it in half muttering something about not having to listen to that filth in here.
I remember riding my skate board down the very steep path that ran down the side of the Richard Rice Centre to the car park at the bottom, loosing control and landing on my head at the bottom, I had a lump the size of a tennis ball on the front of my noggin.
The previously mentioned Christopher Thomas and I used to spend a lot of time together too, he was a year older that me and used to fancy my sister, which is probably why he would let me hang out. We used to play Subbuteo in the front room of his house when the weather was bad or cricket up the common or down the football field when the weather was good. We would go for mammoth bike rides together over the Bwlch and Rigos mountains, no lycra back then just jeans if it was cold or shorts if the sun was out.
Chris’s father was a farmer and owned the land between our houses and the Garw River, the other side of which was my favourite place, Llangeinor Swimming Pool.
I spent a lot of my time in and around the pool, one day Mark and me were having a two man underwater swimming competition, I managed 3 lengths underwater without coming up for air. Phew! Mark also tried to emulate this feat, I seem to remember that he was sick after his effort lol. We would also wedge ourselves under the ladder down the deep end and see who could stay down the longest. I think that was his idea.
I completed my Bronze, Silver, Gold and Honours personal survival awards and One and Two Mile swimming awards before I was 13. I think it must have been the thought of the oxo soup from the vending machine in the foyer afterwards that used to keep me going.
Holidays would be down the caravan in Happy Valley with my grandparents, they were the best holidays ever. I’d walk down to Porthcawl through the sand dunes and if I had any cash left over that I hadn’t been sensible and already spent it on those little Commando war story books I’d fritter it away in the penny slots or freshly cooked sugar donuts in Coney Beach.
Being a ladies man 🙂 I would inevitably have a girlfriend most years while staying at Happy Valley, there was only one though that I carried on seeing after the summer holidays ended, Annmarie from Newport, the others never wanted anything to do with me and probably never returned to Happy Valley just in case they bumped into me again.
I would get the train to Newport to see her and her father (mother’s didn’t drive back then don’t forget) would pick me up from the station and we’d go back to their house, have some sandwiches (I probably looked undernourished) and then go out meet Annmarie’s friends, hang around the estate, go to Newport Shopping Centre or whatever.
When Annmarie stayed in Happy Valley it was with her best friends’ family, and coincidently a few years later that friend, Debbie I think, started seeing one of the Apprentices at Chepstow who it turns out I was friends with. Small world.
I think I was very lucky back then and I think I was probably given a lot more freedom than most of my friends, I would often go out cycling on my own to Porthcawl or up the Bwlch mountain and the sometimes all the way to the top of the Rigos mountain too. I still enjoy doing most things on my own. Swimming was always a regular thing for me too but not so much for the others.
So many memories, must expand on them…