My father accepted a job as manager of a radio and television shop in Llanelli, and when I was four years old we moved into a small semidetached house in a village called Pwll just along the coast. There were two strange things about the house that probably explain how my parents managed to afford it. The paving slabs at the front had subsided significantly at some point and the front porch was at a rakish angle, only partially attached to the house. The other and probably more important item was that the house sat a few feet below sea level and was rather prone to flooding if it rained during a high tide. This happened quite often.

 

Whilst I do not remember moving house, I do have some good memories of living there, but there are also darker, distressing memories, confusions, secrets associated with my mother’s mental illness and other things that I cannot define, understand, or properly remember. In hindsight I could have found out more, but fear of the truth probably stopped me from doing so.

 

My small bedroom had a large sash window that overlooked the road, the village post office, a field with a small river snaking its way to the sea, a railway line, the sea wall, the estuary and on clear days the opposite coastline.  Against my parents’ wishes I moved my bed right up to the window so I could see the sea when I woke up in the morning. This was great in the summer but not very sensible in the winter when the frost on the inside of the windows made huge fern patterns and I would scrape it with my fingernails. There was however something very satisfying about lying in bed pinned to the mattress by layers of heavy blankets topped with a patchwork quilt whilst my window was buffeted by a westerly gale and lashed with horizontal rain. I loved that room, it was my sanctuary, my safe place.

 

The village was mainly Welsh speaking and consisted of a butcher’s shop, post office, general grocer, wool shop, and an ironmonger that rather strangely sold draft sherry in casks from which customers filled their own bottles and paid by the pint. In those easy-going days, I would be sent out with an empty “pop” bottle to get it filled with either sweet or dry best quality ironmongers’ sherry. It seemed normal at the time. To be honest my parents did not drink very often, and my mother’s limit was one glass on a Sunday whilst cooking dinner after which she was incapable of making the gravy “Oh Brian come and finish the gravy I’m feeling tiddly”. In hindsight her lack of alcohol tolerance was possibly due to a reaction with the numerous different, brightly coloured tablets she took to control whatever symptoms her deteriorating mental illness was causing.

 

Even as a child I wondered how the wool shop survived because apart from my mother I seldom saw anybody else buying wool. I guess balls of wool do not have a sell by date and there was a social aspect because ladies of the village gathered in the shop for endless cups of tea and to gossip about whichever ladies were not present at the time. I can imagine my mother  entering the shop and the ladies stopping mid gossip, tea slurping on pause whilst she requested balls of wool that had been set aside for her. “Lovely colour” the ladies would say “that will knit up well” then the instant the bell on the door signalled her leaving the shop “Duw that was a horrible colour, why did she choose that but what can you expect, they don’t go to Chapel and the children have never been to Sunday school”. To be fair it’s true that we did not go to Chapel and for this reason we were never fully accepted in the village. When we became Catholics and Nuns were seen at the house it caused quite a stir, tutting, shaking of heads, stares, but that is a subject I will explain later. My mother was constantly knitting but seldom finished a garment so there was a growing pile of carrier bags in the living room alcove, spilling out onto the carpet like a multicoloured woolen lava flow, each bag containing a garment missing a critical item such as a sleeve or a back, a polo neck jumper without the polo neck etc. During intense knitting moments my mother would tell me to “shush I am casting off” and whilst to this day I don’t know what casting off is, I knew to keep quiet. Having seen some of the garishly coloured pullover pieces ominously growing on her knitting needles, the lack of completion may have been a merciful release. 

 

It’s amazing how thinking back to my childhood stimulates long forgotten memories and writing about the wool shop reminded me of a particular cold winter’s night. The road from Burry Port into the village snakes down a hill and curves to the right opposite the wool shop. Unfortunately, due to speeding, slippery roads and stupidity, from time to time cars failed to make their way around the corner and came to an abrupt stop impaled in our front wall. Come to think of it, with severe subsidence, porch falling off, being below sea level, and cars trying to enter our best room, the front of our house seems to have been a rather dangerous place to loiter. Anyway, I digress; on the night in question, it had drizzled, and my father said that the roads had now frozen and were treacherous. We had eaten, washed the dishes and with a coal fire blazing were cosy, warm, and watching the Val Doonican show on the first colour TV in Pwll. It was a tiny room and therefore no space for me on a chair, so I was lying on the floor, resting my back on the hillock of unfinished knitting when the all too familiar sound of an out of control vehicle hitting a solid stationary object brought us all to our feet. We ran to the front porch, happy to find it was still there and also our front wall intact, there was however a car jammed up to its front doors in the wool shop window, lights still on and horn blaring. My parents extricated the driver, and he was now sitting in our living room, wrapped in a blanket being force fed tea by my mother whilst Mr Doonican was singing Paddy Mcginty’s Goat in the background. There are probably two reasons we did not turn off the television, firstly it took ages for the valves to warm up again and the colours to settle down and also, I would not be surprised if my father, was, despite the crash still trying to impress the battered, bruised, shell shocked driver with no teeth sitting in our living room. Hang on a minute, no teeth. He had been trying to tell us something and pointing to his mouth, so my mother assumed that he wanted more tea and had been pouring it down him. My father asked him if he had lost his teeth and he nodded furiously. My father and I put on our coats grabbed a torch and headed back to the crashed car. We searched the foot wells, down the sides of the seats and then my father shone his torch into the shop. Sitting on the counter exactly where the Chapel ladies have their tea was a set of seemingly undamaged dentures. I jumped out of the car and before my father could stop me squeezed between the car and an unbroken section of window to get the poor man’s teeth. My father was shouting at me and telling me to stay in the shop whilst I was wondering how I could pick somebody else’s teeth with my bare hands. I grabbed two balls of wool with Sirdar on the label and picked up the teeth using the wool as mittens. That was the moment that the rest of the window collapsed, exactly onto the space I had just squeezed through. My father was next to me in an instant, gave me a huge hug, no words were exchanged, and we returned to the house with me proudly carrying the dentures. With his teeth reinstated, the driver looked a lot better and being now able to speak no longer seemed quite as demented and deranged. The police arrived and a Constable came into the living room. He looked at the damaged driver and then beyond him. 

 

“Is that a colour television Mr Jones” he asked. 

 

“Yes” said my father rather proudly. Based on the fact that the Nolan Sisters were singing away happily in glorious colour I rather doubt this young constable ever reached the rank of detective.

 

The next day, my mother sent me to return the two slightly soiled balls of wool. The window had already been boarded up and the Chapel Ladies were in their usual position. They stopped talking immediately I arrived, and I explained that I had taken the wool in order to pick up the drivers dentures that we had found in the shop. 

 

“Were they broken” asked one of the Chapel ladies”

 

“No, they must have flown straight out of his mouth and landed on the counter exactly where you piece of cake is right now” I replied. She looked horrified, I put the wool on the counter and left quickly.

 

Looking back at this incident, I could quite easily have been severely injured or killed by the falling shards of glass, but I was not. Luck or fate?

 

The butcher’s shop was on the corner close to our house, sawdust on the floor, large chunks of animals hanging from hooks, a smell of cold raw meat and frighteningly sharp knives that the butcher or Dai the meat as he was known, constantly sharpened. We did not buy meat there often because it was too expensive, but I do have two clear memories. On one occasion Dai was showing off his meat chopping skills and cut his thumb quite badly. I passed out cold and regained consciousness out on the pavement covered in sawdust and with a crowd of Chapel ladies in old lady coats staring down at me. They probably thought I was possessed by demons or had been struck down for not going to Sunday school. The second occasion did not mean anything to me when it happened and it only stuck in my mind because I heard my mother and father talking about it, pretending to be disgusted but laughing at the same time. I was waiting with my mother because Dai was serving another lady. He was in a particularly mischievous mood.

 

“How are you today Mrs Evans” he loudly asked the middle-aged lady in front of us.

 

“Not too well, I had a funny turn, so I have been under Doctor Morgan this morning” she replied.

 

“I hope he gave you a tonic Mrs Evans,” said Dai

 

“He did give me a tonic, but he said I need more red meat for my blood” she replied

 

“Good advice Mrs Evans, very good advice, you will soon feel better with a big piece of meat inside you”

 

My mother’s reaction seemed odd and her attitude to Dai winking when poor unknowing Mrs Evans left with a bag of stewing steak was to say the least frosty. That night when my sisters and I were supposed to be asleep I crept down in the darkness and sat in my favourite position halfway down the stairs, out of sight from the kitchen. I heard my mother telling my father about the butcher and how disgusting he was whilst my father seemed to find it highly amusing. It still meant nothing to me, and I would surely have forgotten this minor event, but I heard the story repeated so many times to my parents’ friends whilst in my position on the stairs that one day I got it.

 

I went to Pwll Primary school, and I have very few memories of my primary education so this may well be a short paragraph. I was good at reading and devoured books but from what I have been told, I was only good at subjects that I found interesting and my attention span outside of these subjects was a matter of seconds. The toilets were outside, and the urinal was a trough along a wall without a roof. I will always remember the pungent smell of the white disinfectant that the school janitor used to throw over the floor from a galvanised bucket. Obviously having a concrete wall to pee against led to challenges as to how high up the wall one could reach. I don’t want to be big headed, but I was the champion because I once managed to pee right over the top of the wall and onto the heads of the girls in the playground on the other side. That achievement and by some miracle passing the eleven plus exam sums up my time in primary school. On the subject of the eleven plus, a pass was needed in order to gain entry to Llanelli Boys Grammar School and failure resulted in being thrown onto the educational scrap heap also known as a secondary modern school. I sat the exam and to be honest it was obviously not of importance to me as I have no memory of it. One day at the end of the summer term my class was called to the assembly hall to receive the results and I was presented with a slip of paper to say that I had passed and would start in the Grammar school after the summer holidays. I went home for lunch with my mother and as usual she gave me a milky way bar to eat as I walked back to school. That is when I remembered the piece of paper in my pocket. The screams of delight must have been heard by the entire village.

 

I sat at my place on the stairs that night and listened to my parents happily talking about my exam pass but wondering how it had happened because they had assumed, and the school had warned them that I would fail. This did not bother me; I had done something good for once and I went back to my bed next to the window with a big smile of my face..

 

I have painted a picture of a rather happy and contented family life, and indeed there were many good times, but below the surface my mother’s health issues and long absences in hospital had a considerable impact on our lives. I am not sure how the Catholic church found out about my father trying to do a full-time job and look after three children during the lengthy periods my mother was in hospital or unable to leave her bedroom, but they did. I have mentioned that my memory has been damaged by my past excesses, so it is incredible that I remember the names of two wonderful nuns, Sister Ignatius and Sister Francis. One of the reasons I dislike religions so much is because even as a child I could see people pretending to be God fearing and believing that attending Chapel every Sunday absolved them from behaving badly the rest of the week. These nuns epitomised exactly what religion should be about. They helped clean the house, washed our clothes, cooked us food, took us on day trips and generally provided support. Would we have managed without them, well probably we would have survived as a family but the fact that I am still grateful to them more than fifty years later is testament to the level of help they provided. What did the wonderful ladies from the local Chapel do for us apart from their barbed comments and disdainful looks. Nothing!

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When I was a child, I thought that fishing was just a hobby, a pastime that thankfully both my father and I loved. Looking back on it, what we were actually doing was putting first class protein on the table by catching fish we could never have afforded to buy at the fish shop. This probably explains why we went out in all weathers and even stayed out when soaked to the skin and freezing cold. On a perfect weekend, the tide would be out on the Sunday morning allowing us to go down to the mud flats that were easy walking distance from our house. We had an old aluminium bucket, and we would dig for lug and rag worms until we had enough for our fishing expedition later that day. The estuary was empty at low tide apart from the river, but it was so wide that it was only inches deep. The tide would however come in faster than walking speed and we would be in position on the large rocks that had been put in place to protect the sea wall. We would fish for hours but in reality, there was a period of approximately one hour on each tide during which we caught ninety percent of our fish. In the summertime we would catch plaice, dabs and flounders as well as the occasional sea bass, but in the winter, we would also catch small cod. Summertime trips to one particular beach with fast moving tides and surf would see us hardly able to walk for the weight of sea bass hanging off our belts. The mackerel season was looked forward to as we loved the oily fish even though it stunk the house out when cooked.

 

There was almost no control over my activities at this time so I would go fishing on my own and venture out onto the sandbanks at low tide, walking along the shallow river with bare feet, feeling for flat fish hiding in the sand and spearing them as they tried to escape. The sand banks were full of cockles and the rocks covered in mussels, so these were also used to provide food. Social workers would be involved if a child of ten disappeared all day fishing or getting up to mischief in the woods, but for me it was totally natural and rather than being at risk on the sand banks, I knew them so well that I saved many tourists from being stranded by the fast moving tide.

 

You may note that I have not mentioned my sisters and that is not fair because the younger of the two (Anne) was very organised and looked after cooking and cleaning, whilst Mair was a great friend to me and filled some of the emotional gaps that my mothers’ absences caused. I referred to them as my evil sister and nice sister because despite doing the cooking etc, Anne was constantly trying to get both of us in trouble whilst Mair was my protector, the person I could go to at times when I was missing my mother the most.

 

During the summer, I was sent to live with my grandparents in Aberdare and spent the majority of the school holidays there. We had two names for my grandfather, Daddo and Dirty Duster and I have no idea how this came about. Daddo was tasked with keeping me occupied, and as he was a great trout fisherman this involved trips to all his favourite rivers and streams. We would hitch a lift on lorries up the Brecon Beacons and spend the day fishing with worms, coming back with a huge catch that we would fry and eat that night. He took me to a reservoir where only fly fishing was allowed. He taught me how to fly fish and he was the most patient man in the world, but on one occasion he could see that none of the anglers were catching anything, we were all aimlessly casting and no fish in evidence, it was just one of those days. Not wanting me to get bored we walked to the very top of the reservoir where a stream entered and there were some deep pools. He went off in search of bait and after lifting several cowpats he came back with a big juicy worm. Fly off hook on and the worm as bait, we crept along the bank and he showed me exactly where to gently cast my line to allow the worm to follow the natural path of the stream into the deep pool. The bait was immediately taken with a bang, and I landed a large, beautiful trout. We packed up and walked back along the bank of the reservoir and each angler asked us if we had any luck. He showed each the beautiful fish and told them “The boy caught it on a “Coch Y Bondy fly”. I was so proud even though I had used a forbidden worm. That trout tasted especially good, and I was so happy to be with my wonderful grandfather. I was supposed to be going home before the end of the school holidays so I could see my friends but instead of collecting me my father said that my mother had to have an operation in hospital so I would be staying longer. I was so disappointed and the next morning I had just come downstairs and my lovely silver haired grandmother was in the kitchen preparing my breakfast. I watched her lift the big white milk jug for my cereal and then she dropped it and fell to the ground. I was so upset because this was her favourite jug and at the time, I could not understand that she had a stroke and was now paralysed down one side. I could not go home so I stayed there spending my days sitting next to Nana as she lay in a bed made up for her in the living room. She could not move or speak so my wonderful Auntie Dorothy took over caring for me and she became almost a substitute for my mother.

 

When I eventually went home at the end of the holidays, my mother was still in hospital, but my father said that the operation has been a success and we could visit her. He did warn us that the operation meant that her hair had been shaved off, but it would grow back. It was wonderful to see my mother and with her head still bandaged the lack of hair was not evident and I could not wait for her to come home. I am sure there must be other memories of her recovery, but they are either erased or blocked, although I vividly remember the day she came home. I arrived back from school and she was sitting in the big chair in the living room and I climbed carefully onto her lap for a cuddle, tears running down my face. My happiness at that moment is a memory that will stay with me for ever. She opened her handbag and like all handbags, the item she wanted had disappeared to the bottom but eventually she found a packet of fruit pastilles and I was the happiest boy in the world. That was the last time my mother went to hospital although she still took a large number of tablets every day, she was able to get a job in a factory and even better working in the “pop’ factory that was in the lane at the bottom of our garden.

 

My memories of Llanelli Boys Grammar school are limited but I do remember that the only important sport was Rugby and I hated those ice cold mornings with the grass so frozen it cut your knees. I was skinny so no match for some of the others but to be fair a number of them ended up playing for Wales. I was however fast and manoeuvrable but that was my downfall because when I did get caught, I was hammered into the ground. There was no concern over concussion or the spilling of blood in those days and on one occasion I started a run and a short pass back landed perfectly into my hands. It was not the fullback thundering towards me that was my primary concern, it was the pursuing heavyweights that I can only describe as a stampeding crash of Rhinos that would inflict considerable damage to my fragile frame. Fullback Rhino was not known for his intelligence, so it was enough to run straight at him and then jink to the right at the last moment. The line was in sight and the chance of glory by touching down right between the posts spurred me on. I could literally smell the thundering, sweaty, steaming pack behind me so dived over the line, touched down for a try and for maybe a second enjoyed the moment, then my pursuers piled on top for a touch of gratuitous revenge. Largely unscathed, I was about to stand up when Full back kicked me in the face. I checked my teeth and apart from one of my front teeth that was already broken from coming off second best in a fight, everything else seemed ok, but my nose was bleeding profusely. I got to my feet, doubled over due to the pain in my ribs and continued bleeding onto the grass. I have never been good with blood, especially my own blood, so I was also feeling as if I might pass out. “Get back on the fucking pitch Jones” the games master yelled at me, and I knew better than to argue because corporal punishment was allowed in those days, and he loved nothing more than to inflict both pain and humiliation.

 

Academically I was middle of the road, mostly because I only concentrated on subjects that interested me and of course my home situation was not exactly normal and there was nobody to make sure I did my homework. Everybody was too busy with their own problems. You may think that the school sounds like a terrible place but to be honest I rather enjoyed it and had a good circle of friends although the damage inflicted on my brain by both consistent and binge drinking means that I do not remember the names or faces of my school friends. 

 

I was fascinated by electronics, and it all started when my wonderfully intuitive father bought me a Phillips electronics constructors kit for Christmas. Transistors were fairly new technology at that time, but this kit allowed me to build a number of projects with the most complicated being a simple radio. I was fascinated and having spent hours listening to Luxembourg on the breadboard constructed radio whilst in bed, I started buying magazines and building up circuits for myself. My father by this point was a travelling television and radio salesman and one of the items he sold was a communications receiver called a ‘Yacht boy’. I dreamed of having one but they were far too expensive, although on one occasion my father let me use a damaged unit that had been returned and I stayed awake all night listening to trawler Captains swearing, the local police and of course radio amateurs from all over the world. I was devastated the next day when it was packed in its box to be sent back. I didn’t say a word or show how upset I was because I knew we would not be able to afford such a luxury. To add to my disappointment, my father was leaving for a weeks travelling in North Wales and my mother had fallen into one of her depressions so I was at the mercy of my sister Anne for five long days. The week was bad, with my mother not able to leave her bedroom, my sisters fighting and rightly or wrongly I was permanently in trouble. I would creep up the stairs and cuddle in next to my mother even though she was sleepy from the tablets she had to take during these episodes. Friday morning was good because my mother was feeling better and cooked breakfast for us before school. I as so happy even though I knew that the demons would return and she would slip back into her deep depression. She ruffled my curly hair, pushed on my school cap and promised that I could stay up late until my father arrived back from his travels. I came home from school so happy, my mother was in great spirits and cooking, how could life be better, my mother cheerful and my father coming home. Even though it was already dark and my father was not expected for a few hours, I went to the best room, covered myself in a blanket to keep warm and watched the road for his arrival. It started snowing, a few flakes at first but soon the wind picked up and the snow was swirling in the street lights and I could no longer see the post office across the road. My sisters went to bed, but I refused so my mother snuggled under the blankets with me and we watched the road together even though eventually the snow was so deep that there were no more cars. I was about to fall asleep when I heard the snow muffled sound of a car engine and eventually headlights. The car, covered in snow and with icicles hanging off the front bumper stopped outside our house, and my father got out.

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We went to the relative warmth of the tiny kitchen and my father was eating a warmed up dinner along with a steaming mug of tea. In those days and before microwave ovens, it was common to plate up a whole dinner complete with gravy and then reheat it under the grill. I was starting to fall asleep but my father asked me to stay for a few minutes because he needed to get something from the car. He returned with a box with the name Grundig on the side and gave it to me. It was my very own Yacht Boy, not new but it worked perfectly. I was no longer sleepy but ran up to bed to start scouring the airwaves and planning how to put up a long wire aerial the next day. So many hours lost in my wonderful world of radio, listening to radio amateurs and radio stations from all around the world. I became totally immersed in searching the airwaves and building electronic projects and I guess it was a way of shutting out the bad things in my life. In today’s world it would probably considered as a fixation and I would be deemed to have at least one syndrome. 

 

That gift put me firmly on the path to my eventual career as a Radio Officer whilst very young, and if there was an early intervention to guide me towards a specific career then this is when it happened.

 

I was about to say that I can remember no more about my life in Pwll when the small matter of building a boat in our conservatory flashed into my mind. How could I have forgotten building a boat? Not content with fishing from the rocks or a beach, we would occasionally go out on a boat trip from Tenby and spend the whole day fishing then drive back home when the sun had gone down. The boot of our Ford Popular would be full of various species of fish but that did not stop us from stopping at a fish and chip shop on the way home. I seem to remember that it was called ‘Dick Bartons’ and this really was a huge treat. My father therefore thought it would be a good idea if we had a boat but unfortunately everything was too expensive until he saw an advert for a kit boat called a Puffin. This was a very small boat made from marine plywood and plastic with a sail and the possibility to use a small outboard motor. This was not a pretty boat in fact it was incredible ugly and did not even have a sharp bow but we built it in the conservatory and stunk the house out with the resin used to hold it together.

 

Having glued and varnished wooden panels every evening for weeks, the boat was eventually complete and took up most of the floor space in the conservatory as well as blocking access to the downstairs toilet. A roof rack was installed on the Ford Popular and we eagerly awaited the weekend and our first fishing trip. Sunday came and the weather was good, so with fishing tackle and soft crabs for bait in the boot of the car we triumphantly lifted the boat and planned to head down the garden path. This failed immediately because no matter what angle we turned the boat, it was too big to go out of the door. Eventually my father after a lot of swearing and hammering managed to knock the door off its hinges and we went down the garden path leaving my mother staring at her doorless and damaged conservatory.

 

I cannot say that the boat was a great success because for the first few trips we headed out into deep water, way beyond the fishermen on the beach or rocks but we caught very few fish. Eventually we came closer to the shore and ended up in exactly the same area of the estuary we had previously fished from the shore. We did not have to cast very far but basically we caught the same fish in the same place. It was however great fun until the day that the little one cylinder seagull engine would not start and we were stranded at sea.

On this occasion we did not install the sail because the low boom got in the way of our fishing so we headed out into deep water in search of the elusive sea bass. Somewhere near the middle of the estuary we anchored and lost track of time whilst using various types of lures, live bait and spinners in the pursuit of our evening meal. The tide had turned and the great mass of water that had entered the estuary was now building up speed as it escaped back to the open sea. The current could get so strong that our little engine would not make headway so, looking back on it, I think my father panicked and with the anchor still down he started frantically pulling at the engine starting rope and repeatedly pushing the little button to prime it with fuel. The smell of petrol was strong but there was not even a hint of the engine firing. The anchor was now starting to drag across the sandy sea bed so we were slowly being pulled out to sea. We started waving and shouting to the people on the distant beach but they could not hear us and merrily waved back to us. We had little in the way of options available, so my father decided that we should lift the anchor and he would row towards the beach. We would be dragged sideways by the rapidly increasing current and make landfall considerably further down the estuary and a long distance from our Ford Popular.

 

Skinny arms straining I started pulling in the anchor and with it still hanging below the boat but off the seabed, my father stared rowing frantically but we were still rapidly heading out to sea. Our next decision was easy because, trying too hard, he lost one of the oars over the side and we picked up even more speed. I hurriedly dropped the anchor again and thankfully it held. We stopped moving. Our next and only remaining plan was to stay where we were until low tide but we would end up sitting on a sandbank in the dark and miles from the beach. We would not be able to get the boat back so the plan was to wait until the water receded, walk all the way back to the car in the dark, carrying the engine, repair it in our doorless conservatory, return it to the boat and wait for the next tide to come in. Not a good plan and short lived because the outgoing tide was really picking up speed and the anchor suddenly started to drag again. This was now serious and I could see the panic in my fathers eyes. Only one oar, a dragging anchor, we had not told anybody where we would be fishing and waves were already splashing over the flimsy plastic sides of the boat. In desperation my father gave one more tug at the engine starting rope and the little seagull spluttered into life, misfiring and producing black smoke. The only way to keep it running was at full throttle but with the anchor still down we now tearing around in circles. If the Gods were looking down on us, they would surely have been shaking their heads at the sight of a plywood and plastic boat going round and round in a cloud of noxious smoke, with a man screaming at a small boy over the noise of the engine to ‘lift the anchor’. The anchor was stuck on the bottom and there was no way I could free it. My father was now shouting ‘cut the rope, cut the rope’ but it was not easy because I had to lean over the side and nearly fell out of the boat. Something made me decide to give it one last try and with water pouring over the bow I pulled as hard as I could and the anchor lifted off the seabed. It seemed to take forever to get it onboard and I was screaming with the pain in my arms. The engine note steadied, the black smoke stopped, I started bailing out water with the bait box and we headed to the shore whilst still hurtling down the estuary sideways. Towards the end of the sandy beach and close to the rocks, the current reduced dramatically and we were able to turn and make headway in the shallows, eventually reaching close to the point at which had entered the water.

 

A short while before, we thought we were going to be dragged out into the Irish Sea and drown but now we were navigating between happy laughing swimmers in bright costumes and stopping the engine as the waves dropped us onto the sandy beach. As usual, our ugly boat was the centre of attention and a kind man offered to help carry it up to the car which we gratefully accepted because my arms were just too painful. One minute, close to death, and the next in amongst happy holidaymakers on a sunny beach, the sound of children laughing and an ice cream van loudly blasting out a jangly tune from the car park. Boat strapped to the roof rack, I sat in the front seat and my father bought two 99’s. Face covered in chocolate and vanilla ice cream, I forgot about my aching arms, the day no longer seemed so bad and the bond with my father grew even stronger.

 

There is not much more I can say about my early childhood in West Wales because my memories are mainly of fishing and summer holidays in endless sunshine. This rather proves my point regarding the damage inflicted on my brain because Wales is famous for its high rainfall.