Little Boy Left Home

A Memory of Cwm.

My mam had died not so long ago when I was 8 years old. Me and my brother and sister, and my dad, we lived in Elm Street, near the wall at the river that came out of the Ebbw Vale steel works, a nasty smelly water way that would change color over night.
I went to first school over the bridge, left turn and up the road a little bit, and then I went to school at the bottom of Marine Street, Dyffryn. It was very hard for my dad, he worked shift work at the steel works and us kids were moved around to different family friends.
I missed playing on the mountain at the back of Elm Street very much. I used to go up to the three big hills made of all the red hot waste that came from the steel works in Ebbw. It was all red hot big chunks of something, I don't know! Up the mountain a bit further I sometimes got some trout out of the big pond that was there, we called it the parky pond. I cried my eyes out for losing my mam, and again when my dad took us Australia to live. I have just returned to Wales after 60 odd years to rebuild my mam's grave, thanks to Mr Albert Janes from Ebbw Vale, the monumental stone mason. I shall be forever grateful. She is lying in Cwm cemetery and I am one day hoping to see her again. If not, I am happy knowing that part of me is still forever in Wales. I am proud of being Welsh, and all Welsh people I know must feel the same. Cymru am byth. Good bye. Roy Compton, Australia !!
finally ! made it back home . after all those years, went through all the old streets and backs . the changes were many. they were just building the first of the so called at the time ( prefabs ) left cwm before they were finished. what a change to old cwm, started building in ,I think 1946/7. and now they are old buildings .. I walked into elm street where I was born , number 13 . new windows and rendered walls, the front room is where my mam died and has now got a bay window. walking up to the front door I was shaking a bit with confronting the years that had gone past ! I knocked on the door not knowing what I was going to say when someone opened it , no answer , one more knock
no answer , I thought what a relief. I walked away shaking a little more than before . then a lady
from a few doors up said that the lady that lived there had gone shopping with her little boy and would be home in a little while! I then left and went to cwm cemetery to visit my mams grave and the tears filled my eyes . I could not the face going back to my old house as I would have been a rite mess .! the joy of being home again to cwm and seeing all the places I new as a child will keep me going for the rest of my life, and then I will meet up with mam again, and my dad, and spend the rest of eternity in my cwm out there somewhere in the rhealms of heaven !! send me some daffodils !!!!!!