A Rhondda girl
Genetically speaking my life began in west Wales. My grandparents on my mother’s side were simple farming people from Carmarthenshire and Pembroke, who moved to the Rhondda to work in the coalmines. My mam was born and grew up in the Rhondda valley in Penygraig, and spent her childhood living through the depression. Hitler came closer to her house every day as she used to put it. At the end of the war grandfather died of the consequences of pneumoconiosis, the miner’s lung disease, and our mam was evicted from their house and joined the army. There she met my dad, an English officer and a gentleman of Somerset farming stock. They did not marry, a great sin in those days, and she spent her pregnancy scrubbing floors for the sisters of Mary Magdalene, luckily not in Dublin, otherwise I would have been killed at birth. Those Irish nuns are hardcore bitches. After four idyllic years in the Cheshire countryside we moved to Cardiff, which in those days was a grey, wet city with a steelworks, a lousy football team and Shirley Bassey to entertain us. My mother’s Sunday school teacher was George Thomas, who by coincidence was also our MP many years later. He came to our house every Christmas and became the Speaker of the House of Commons. George was a gent, a fine Welshman and a wonderful public speaker. Nobody ever said, “Order, order!” in the house quite like he did. Mam loved Beethoven so I grew up with the symphonies and concertos of the master. I used to hum the slow movement of the fifth piano concerto on my way to school. In those days you could smoke on the top floor of the cream and brown double decker buses that ran from the Pier Head past our house and on to Cardiff High, where I went to school. Number nine if I remember rightly, and they were electric trolley buses. Elvis was king and we greased our hair with coconuts. Cliff went on a summer holiday and we bought a brand new Dynatron TV in a beautiful walnut cabinet. Then came the Beatles and everything was different.
Tags: Rhondda
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