Gazzis Pontnewydd

I was born in Pontnewydd too (1954) I remember Gazzi's well. Thanks Sair Mann for reminding me about the barber shop in New Street ! I lived in Tymynydd

I have very vivid memories of my childhood and can remember all the shops and businesses in pontnewydd village from a very early age. On Chapel street my uncle Alan Powell owned the iron mongers on the corner of Stanley Place, Also on Chapel street I recall Cooks the grocers on the corner of Harold Street. Mr Cook was a joker and would often put us kids in the freezer! Imagine that happening today. Next door to Cooks was the butchers (the name has escaped me for a minute but it'll come back to me), Opposite was Coopers shoe shop and the doctors surgery, further up was Chans chip shop where a small portion of chips could feed a family. Behind the shops on Chapel Streeet were the abandoned allotments, known to us as the lots our playground and source of free fruits such as raspberries and goose-gogs. On commercial street were the 2 sweet shops - Hortons was the old fashioned one where we bought everything by the quarter and Mrs Whites who sold more modern fare such as golden cup bars, raspberry ruffle bars, black jacks and fruit salads. it was the grocers on New street that we went on hot summer days to buy jubblies and also where challengers chip shop gave free bags of scunchies (later they charged sixpence a bag). Morleys sweet shop on hill was the place to go when the shops were shut because they had chocolate vending machines outside where you could get a bar of nestles for 3d. Besides the shops in the village, there was the midlands bank which had long closed it's doors, but not locked them and we often dared each other to enter through the front door on commercial street, run down the 2 flights of stairs and immerge through the back door in the lane behind chapel street. On Richmond road was the White rose cinema where I clearly remember seeing Snow white and The jungle book as a very young child before it closed and was turned into a carpet emporium, forcing us to watch future films in the fleapit in old Cwmbran.

Did you forget the excitement of the steam engines going under the pontnewydd bridge

We lived in Tymynydd, number 72 what was you surname?

I haven't forgotten the excitement of the steam engines, although they were replaced by diesel very early on in my childhood. The railway was a huge part of my life. My father worked for a time in the signal box, which was immediately outside our house on the bottom end of Stanley Place. Apparently, nurse May, who was the midwife at my birth, laid me in a napkin as soon as I was born, knotted the corners together and held me out of the open bedroom window for my father ( in the signal box) to see, announcing that he had another daughter! My mother used to say that she gave birth to.me and then had kittens.
Living on the end of the street, our garden driveway ran alongside the railway line with nothing but a narrow grass banking between the two. Not even a fence acted as a safety barrier for a family of 5 children. We played on the line, we picked blackberries along the side of the railway , between our house and the town centre bridge, jumping off the line out of the way of the trains when they came.
My school, Maindy infants and juniors were accessed regularly by crossing the line and jumping down over the school wall or squeezing through a gap in the school fence.
My grandparents lived in Tynewydd Road on the opposite side of the railway and we took the short cut across the line and out through the gate of the old goods yard to visit them, often returning in the dark. We knew every step by heart.
The railway line, the old goods yard and the grass bankings was the playground for all the local children and many of our games were both daring and dangerous. In Harold Street ( nicknamed ' the second street'), we played a game called ' kick the can', which literally involved the child who was ' on it' kicking a drinks can as hard and as far as possible ( often across the railway line) and then having to retrieve it a quickly as possible while all his or her playmates hid between the garages or in the allotments until they could run out and ' kick the can't before getting caught.
A more dangerous game involved shimmying on our bellies along a thick branch that overhung the railway from the grass bank on Harrold Street. Once you were level with the line, the idea was to wrap your arms and legs around the branch until a train passed underneath and hang on for dear life as the branch bounced up and down . I did it just one time and thought I was going to die. Nobody did die.
Years later, after getting married, we bought our first house in Stanley place and lived there for 4 years our two young sons. Although happy to ' come home', I was grateful that by then the railway line was by then disused and a much safer place for my own boys to play and go Blackberry picking.