Clarence Street, Pontypool

A Memory of Pontymoel.

I moved to the Avana cake shop on Clarence Street when I was 9 years old from The Wern, Old Furnace, Nr Pontypool. My mother became the manageress of the cake shop. My father loved the iced jam cream slices! I went to Park Terrace School where Mr Griffiths was headmaster. After school I used to go to the park and play. I remember fishing for minnows with a jam jar in the stream in the park and walking up to the grotto with my parents. Two doors down from the Avana cakeshop was a paper, sweets and general shop where I bought a comic each week. I remember falling off the brick wall which edged the entrance to the park that I was walking across and cutting my leg badly - I had to have stitiches done by Dr Siddons (Mrs). On Sunday afternoons there was a parade of young men and women who used to walk up and down the street eyeing each other up!
I remember the Italian cafes and frothy coffee, and the noise of the steam as they made it, and the library where I borrowed all the Enid Blyton books. Woolworth's, Fowlers, Hughes, Smith's and the Coop etc.

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