My Childhood Days Brynna Boy

A Memory of Brynna.

8 Southall Street /16 Tan-y-Bryn. We, the Brynna Boys, used to run to school, Mr & Mrs Davies Head Master and thei two daughters, strict and friendly, firm and kind. I can only describe those happy days, Coronation year, getting our school free mug, watching on a black and white12 inch telly crammed into class. Those days long gone but memories will never die.
I have walked over every inch of the mountains, I have lived as Tarzan in Brynna Woods, I learned to swim down the river ducker and caught my first trout. I helped gather the harvest on all farms around. Held a horse at the Eagle pub on hunting days. Played snooker in Geeks, freezing cold, Aunty Bess's Fish and Chips shop, and Bessie Price for Gobstopper sweets and cakes, food for chickens, pigeons, goldfish, horses, cows you name it, Walt and Bessie Had everything at the General Stores.
Sung in the choir of St Peter's every Sunday, Roger Turner, Jimmy Evans, Philp Evans, Philip Dauncy, Ivor David.and myself, leading the way Enoc Read and Cliff Evans, Vergers. Phil's father Ron Dauncy ran the Friday Village Church Hall Dance, Rock and Roll, football Saturdays or weddings choir and Sadly funerals.
If you saw a funeral in Brynna, miners would start the top of Southhall Street and sing those songs that make the hairs rise on your neck, stopping outside the beareved house, Silence as the coffin comming out through the window onto the cart and singing to church and singing to the grave site. Welsh miners saying goodbye to old friends as only they could do.
The summer would bring long school holidays to play out the black and white TV shows in the woods or ducker or farm or mountain, Brynna, you have it all there with two rivers (Vawr and Fach) where trout would hide under stones waiting for gentle hands to tiddle out.
Collecting strawberries, hazelnuts, loganberries, fresh eggs and bacon from Cwm Cwc, passing by Ianto Howell's Old Mill farmhouse, seeing the water wheel turning, admiring his orchard full of apple trees to make the home-made cider, and some dark nights we would play the robber and steal just a few. The Brynna Commandos.
Who still can remember sleeping out in Twm Greens Garden! What a life we all shared those years of pals growing up in Brynna.
When sadly I hear that the Eagle pub is now closed it's so sad, the beating heart gone out of the village life. Silence creeps into people's lives, and they become so insular within society.
I was shocked at the Brynna Woods house prices, sky rocketed, I would never believe Brynna Woods Madness at prices only dreamers can afford, and did the council tell those buyers of the Ghosts of the Green Feeder in Brynna woods, even gypsys would not stay there long.
With the proximity of railway lines seems would not appeal to a woods romantic rambler !! More the ghost writers club. Strange there were never many birds nests in those woods compared to the Woods on the Ducker side. The old mine shafts, creepers on the trees, I saw my first Adder snake. The old Gypsy grandma warnings not to stay after dark, maybe old wives' tales to frighten kids But the Green Feeder pond has or did have a look of life gone seriously wrong. Arthur Hopkins and Mayo and I sat throwing bricks into this green-covered mess, ready to run if the dead miners, cows, dogs, cats came out of that pond, we were told that if you fall in you're dead.
I think as you get older and remember back then fear still has a direction of time locked within ones soul. Some Brynna boys remember the Gypsy boy who came into our class. Cyril Thomas, Arthur Hokins,and I were invited to hedgehog supper at the camp with him, laughing at us as I nearly died looking at this dead hedgehog his old Grandma prepared for the meal, mud encrusted the carcase, she looked at me and said "Best meat you will ever taste!". I never did!!

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