| When I was young. [message #149] |
Sun, 22 February 2009 18:06  |
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When I was young and life was a promise, Wales seemed to be the whole world. From my bedroom window, I watched ships sail from the locks at Cardiff docks. I often lay in my bed and listened to boisterous seamen enjoying their shore leave around the streets of Butetown where I lived. Those were the days of dreams waiting to come true, dreams of travel to places where all those ships went when out of sight from me.
There were trams and eventually Trolley buses ran their routes. I remember the introduction of petrol engine buses on certain routes throughout the city and the came the advent of the era when buses had diesel engines. Tram lines started disappearing from the city streets and tarmac started to cover cobble stoned roads. Cardiff dock tugboats were coal fired and often when they were stoking up, I could smell their acrid smoke while I looked out of my bedroom window. There were warships of all sizes moored throughout our docks and often submarines came in to visit and parents would take us children down to see these black cylinders of underwater mystery and legend. Then, the West Dock was still open for sea trade and small collier ships were always coming and going. Harkers barges brought oil and fuel from other coastal places and they went up to a pump out station in the Ely River.
Those days of long ago, Penarth docks was jammed full of mothballed warships of all sizes ans even confiscated German ships that were prizes of the recently over war. There was the remnants of a Zoo in Victoria Park and also a quite large man made pool where parents and children often paddled or sailed their model boats. If one travelled east along Newport Road, one found they were seeing countryside just after passing the Colchester Avenue Power station that must now be long gone. Often I stood and wondered what it was that caused all the steam to rise from those giant cooling towers. Rhumney was a village of its own and nothing lined the muddy banks of the Rhumney river.
There were rag and bone men and also the salt and vinegar men who patrolled the city streets driving horse and carts. Coal men came door to door and brought the black gold that kept us warm on winters cold nights. Beer was delivered from the Brains Brewery by their own horses and giant dreys and as the passed houses people would wait to rush out and gather the garden fertiliser that those wonderful animals so often gave us as their bi product. I remember the stringing of the extra electric cables that brought the trolley buses to our streets. The school I attended, was heated by large coal fires in each classroom and often my family knew the meaning of being on the parish.
For those of you that do not know what that means, it was being looked after by the church. Back then there was no unemployment and often people ended up on the streets when rents fell behind. We all attended church and most all the boys were in church choirs alongside their fathers. Vicars, priests and curates always paid family visits every week without fail. Then a church looked after its flock. Often Parish boxes came along with the church visitor and these boxes contained much needed food and perhaps blankets or clothing for the needy families. We ate bread and dripping with lashings of salt on it and often that was the best meal of the day. School meals for many children were free and for those who had the money to pay, it cost three pence for a WEEK!
School Christmas parties were not a time for people to say they are sorry for being religious, it was a time for all to celebrate something good that had happened to mankind and also to allow people to be good to all others no matter what their religion or colour was. On the day of a school party, we all took a little something made by our mothers and also our own spoon and fork with an elastoplast label and our name attached to those and our own plate. In the Month of May, our school erected a Maypole in our playground and we all practised dancing the Maypole. Yes it was a Pagan ritual and our school was a church school, but no one thought about it being anything other than a chance for children to laugh and enjoy themselves. We had Whitsun treats and rode on the backs of open lorries to fields out in the countryside where games and side show waited for the children to enjoy a special day.
In Cardiff we still had peasouper smogs and people died because of them. Children with chest complaints died when these fogs hit and they often stayed for days at a time. We never had counselors invade our school to make things right. Mothers gave birth at home with a midwife in attendance and people died at home in their own bed. All this was accepted by us children and we saw life as it truly is. We knew what birth was and also death. No one councelled the children after the war and after they had seen bombs fall and death all around, we coped and damn it all, we grew up healthy and well adjusted people.
I guess this post is not really about being Welsh, it is just about the life that once was all we knew and has now passed almost forgotten in to history. So, shall I write more about times that have long gone and places now changed?
'Lexis
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