One Day At A Time

A Memory of Garnant.

A precised extract from the chapters in my biography relating to wartime evacuation, and particularly to Garnant.

I stared morosely out of the window and watched the landscape slip by as the steam train chugged its way through the Black Mountains. The teacher and I finally alighted at Ammanford and boarded a bus for Garnant. "It is about a thirty minutes ride", he said. "When we get there I will take you to the Methodist chapel where your new foster mother will be waiting."

The Black Mountains loomed larger as the bus wound its laborious way upwards. I thought they were appropriately named. Eventually the road dipped and we descended into the valley and entered the outskirts of Garnant. I hated it at first sight. The whole village looked so sad and dismal it seemed as if it was waiting for a funeral procession to pass by. There was sooty grime everywhere. High above the roof tops of the miners' cottages towered the cause of the black dust-a hulking monster of slate and slag dumped as refuse from the local coal pits. Eventually I came to view it as a communal emblem, like a totem pole or a battle standard, for it spoke of the constant struggle and hardship of the men who spent their lives in the depth of the earth to keep industry on the move.

At the small Methodist chapel, my guide and I were met by a local official, who introduced us to an elderly lady, dressed head to foot in black. She was hardly taller than myself with a slightly hunched back. She looked at me with sharp, birdlike eyes, as if spying a worm.

"This is Miss Williams. She has kindly offered to take you in while you are here." I swallowed hard. and tried to sound polite. "Thank you." "That's all right. Your name is Jimmy, is it? And how old are you?"
"Eleven." "Well, Jimmy, come along with me."

The old lady led me to her home at 57 Cwmamman Road, a terraced stone cottage situated at the east end of the village. I followed her to the back door, which I was to learn was always used as the main entrance. Only the doctor and the chapel minister entered through the front door. Miss Williams led me into a whitewashed scullery with a red quarry tiled floor. The coldness of it sent a chill through my bones. A large butler sink with a single cold tap dominated the room. A tin bath hung on the wall beside another door which opened on to a walk-in larder. Inside were countless labelled jars of all shapes and sizes filled with pickled onions, chutneys and sauces. My new foster mother was obviously fond of preserving. For an awful moment I thought I might end up in one of the jars.

The next room served a dual purpose as kitchen and parlour. A blackleaded iron cooking range stood in the chimney opening at the end of the room. A Welsh dresser held cups on hooks and hand painted plates were propped up on the shelves. A large wooden table with a heavy green baize tablecloth held a globed oil lamp. Two smaller oil lamps stood beside an aspidistra plant.

The cottage had no gas or electricity supply. There was no bathroom or inside toilet or main drainage. The privy was at the end of the long narrow garden beside a tumbledown wooden coal shed.

The front sitting room walls were lined with heavily framed oil paintings of Welsh landscapes. Miss Williams nodded at the small piano in the corner and said she gave lessons to children on Saturdays. It was a room I was not allowed to enter without permission.

A dark narrow staircase led to my allotted bedroom. It was sparsely furnished but clean. The double bed had a deep flock mattress and feather pillows. A small table held a Welsh bible and a small oil lamp.

My first few weeks with Miss Williams were unhappy and fearful. I could not get used to carrying oil lamps from room to room after dark for the flickering shadows on the walls made me think of apparitions. Nor did I like using the privy before going to bed because the door did not shut properly and creaked in the wind. The shed stood beside an old gnarled apple tree, and in the winter when the frosty moon shone through the bare branches I imagined the tree to be a witch with outstretched arms waiting to grab me. I wished I had not seen the film "Wizard of Oz" a few months earlier.

On the morning of the first Sunday in Garnant, Miss Williams took me to the Methodist chapel for the Service. I was sent back for the children's afternoon's Sunday class, and in the evening we both returned for the evening service. This became a regular Sunday routine. Unfortunately for me both the morning and evening services were conducted wholly in Welsh and I did not understand a word for the first few weeks. However, I was impressed by the melodious voices of the congregation during the hymn singing.

On the first day of the 1941 autumn term I joined other students at Addey and Stanhope Grammar School, which had been evacuated from South London, first to Sussex and then to Garnant. The Carmarthenshire Education authorities had provided some school buildings for use by evacuees but not enough to accommodate over 200 pupils. Classes were often split, and even the old Methodist chapel at Twn was used for biology lessons. The Ammanford Central School allowed their Science laboratories to be used on Saturdays. Timetables were not easy to adhere to with the movement between buildings for different lessons and pupils often found themselves in the wrong place for the due subject. It took patience and good humour to get through the syllabus.

Note: My biography One Day At A Time has been published by Authorhouse and is available through the Amazon bookstore. IBSN numbers need to be quoted. The paperback version is 978-14567-9301-2.

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