Caerau Park

A Memory of Caerau.

I have very fond memories of Caerau. I was born 1946 and I loved Caerau. We had real fun times in the summer picking whimberries and your mam making delicious tarts, families gathering on the mountain for picnics, spending hours on end in the park and making up our own concerts. Picking flowers from the woods and pushing each other down the slopes in the park and see who rolled down the furthest. We played cricket in the streets with our family and friends, we went to the church on Cymmer Hill every week and on Whitsun our parents would get us new dresses to parade from top of Caerau and when we got back we would have a lovely tea laid on for us and when we finished we would have racing games and we had a lovely time.
In the winter we would be up the mountain sliding on a peice of cardboard until it got too wet, or if you was lucky you had your gran's tin tray. We spent all day out playing in the snow, unless it was too bad to go out; the snow was so bad sometimes it would be up past your living room or in them days it was called a palour and our parents would light the fires in our bedrooms. I went to Blaenllynfi School, it was a lovely school. In the winter, when everything got frozen, you took ages to get to school and you would be freezing when you got there and Mrs Bell would be there to help you get your coats off and take you to have a warm by the roaring fire, and on the hearth would be lots of little milk bottles of milk defrosting, she was lovely. It was infants when I was there, and when you went to the juniors, girls went to one part of the school and the boys went to another. And when you was ten, girls went to cookery classes in a building in the top of the yard with Mrs Davies; you spent a day with her, it was brilliant and I never forgot anything that she taught us. And it wasn't just about cooking, you would learn to wash clothes by hand and starch them and also ironing them, and once a month you would have to write about what you had been learning and enjoyed every minute of it. We were all friendly and always had fun.
I remember going to the library when I was young, I think it was called Christian Aid and we would be singing lots of songs. One of the songs sticks in my mind, it was called 'deep and wide' and we used to sing on the top of our voices. If you was lucky enough to go to the cinema, on your way home you would have to go to Mort's fish and chip shop for a battered fritter or two - aw they were delicious.
I loved living in Caerau, the people that lived there were fabulous and everybody was friendly. You knew everyone and they knew you. We never had much but what we had we were grateful for. Kids today have too much and don't apprieciate it - have no value on it and still wont more. What they get for their birthdays is ridiculous big presents, exspensive parties, we used to have a party in our houses and they were great and we had a little gift whch we thought was great. There would be no quarrelling and arguing or any jealousy because we all more or less had the same.
I forgot to mention about our beautiful summers, exept sometimes the first or second week of holidays (the miners holiday) it would be tipping it down, but other than that they were boiling and we would be brown as a berry. We would walk from Caerau Park to the open air swimming pool in Cymmer, we loved it, we would take sandwiches and squash and spend the day having fun and picking flowers on the way home for our mothers.
The fifties and sixties was a fabulous time. My only regret is I have no photos of my school time in Caerau which I loved very much and have never forgotten.