The Good Old Days

A Memory of Treherbert.

My grandparents lived in 45 Bute Street next to the barber's shop and a few doors away from the cinema. I was evacuated there in 1941 and went to school in Treherbert for a couple of years, and I have the most happy memories of the place. Pumping the organ at Carmel chapel where my grandmother was the organist; going to Jim the Baker's place and getting my ears rubbed by a pair of very callous hands; watching the barber (Ivor?) get wax spills and burn the hair at the back of his customer's heads - why? Taking the cat in a carrier bag to the cinema because my cousin and myself thought he would like the film (it was the first time I ever heard a cat growling as he hurtled up the aisle and ran home); ice cream at Bracchi's cafe on the corner; the night when the Germans dropped a landmine on Cwmparc; my grandfather in a tin bath in front of the fire when he came from the pit, the women going discreetly into the middle room; the frustration when my family broke into Welsh whenever there was a piece of gossip too risque for my delicate ears; watching my uncle demolish a huge pile of food (not much meat, plenty of gravy and veg) so the the reappearance of the plate itself seemed a minor miracle; this before he went on to war and the 8th Army - he came back; and, above all, the  warmth and fun of family and friends. It is certainly true that there was not much money around in those years but there was something else - a sense of community and solidarity. I really don't think that I am over-sentimentalising the past. Then, of course, there was the rain!