THOSE HAPPY DAYS

Nineteen twenty six, in the depression, my father, then a young man of seventeen, said goodbye to the Welsh valleys and headed for London, where the streets were supposed to be  paved with gold.  He had the princely sum of two pence in his pocket so he was walking all the way, hoping to get the odd job here and there to pay for a meal and a bed, but often sleeping under a hedge or some leaky barn.  His dream was to become a famous boxer.  He had had some experience in the boxing game, as had all the men and boys, who chose to box outside the coal pit on a Sunday morning for pennies.  Sometimes going twenty rounds until one of the boxers failed to get up on  his feet again. 

Fate had other plans in store for my father.  When he reached Swindon, he fell for a girl who persuaded him to abandon his plans for becoming the next world champion and he took up work in an engineering factory.  He saved hard and soon was the owner of a  second hand motor bike and side car.  He set up his own little business of meeting the early morning fish train at Swindon station, buying boxes of mixed fish which he sorted and started a fish round.  His little business flourished and soon he married his girlfriend, who was to become my mother. 

They managed to rent a small cottage in the surrounding countryside and the only disadvantage was that it was in the middle of a field.  A very boggy field.  Every time they left the cottage the mud would ooze up over their shoes, but it was home sweet home to them Both of them continued their working lives, saving hard for what was their dream, a little farm of their own.  Soon my mother to be had to give up her work as she was pregnant
with my elder brother.  She remembered it was a very hot summer that year and often told us of the time my father came home from work, stripped off and jumped in a local pond to cool off, only to discover that there was only two inches of water and several of  black mud.  Laughing she told us how dad had to run starkers over several fields to find  enough water to rinse off.

Shortly after the birth of my brother my father started hankering to return to the Welsh valleys and he proceeded to educate my mother on the beauty of his home land and how much better off they would be.  He was now a family man and determined to get his own place back home.  He went out one day and returned driving an old Hillman car with  yellow spoke wheels, for his return back home.Through his brother in Wales he had purchased a thirty six acre farm on the top of a mountain, which my mother had not seen.  The day arrived when my mother packed  everything they owned in to the old car and bade goodbye to all that was familiar to her. 

It was a Friday, she said, when they set off.  Mum, dad, my younger brother and two cats in a crate, to foreign parts as mum called Wales.  They drove all day and it was early evening when dad turned off the main road and started climbing up a very steep rough  track.  It seemed to mum to go on and on and she found herself slipping into a very deep depression by the time dad pulled into an old farmyard with stone out buildings all around.  Some in a very advanced state of disrepair.  It looked like it had been abandoned years before.  The yard was a pool of stagnant water and the house, for want  of a better word, had been built with an outhouse on the side and both were leaning like a drunken man.  My mother's first thoughts was this cannot be it, but a small beam of  light was shining out of the door, that hung just about on its hinges,  Framed in the doorway was Beat my father's sister, who was eagerly welcoming them both home. 

After a cup of tea my mother wandered all over that old house, room to room, hating it from the word go.  It was so dark, dingy and damp.  There was a little window sitting on the floor in the bedrooms and steep sloping ceilings.  Coming back down the stone stairs she went back into the kitchen, sat down in a chair and burst into tears.  Poor dad did his level best to console her, but quite frankly could not see anything wrong with the place. 
To him it was a promising future and he could not understand why mum did not like it.  He pulled himself up to his full height of five foot seven inches and said, 'look I know it's not up to your standards Brenda, but its a wonderful chance for us both.  I'll tell you what, if after six months you still do not like it we will return to Swindon.'  My mother continued to cry.  All she wanted to do was pile it all back in the car and leave now, but my father was to make that promise of six months to my mother for the next sixteen years.

Every day, my mother begged my father to take her back to Swindon, but dad had put so much into this ramshackled place that mother was going to have to call home.   There was no turning back for him.   So, little by little my mother was going to have  to adapt to living on the wild side.  Mum always said the first couple of years up there was hell, but she was tough and learned to get by.   So the first years of the farm began for our family.