Memories of a Welsh Childhood

Memories of a Welsh Childhood

By Lily DeVille

Nesta sat on the grass bank overlooking Padarn Lake in Llanberis, North Wales. It was an idyllic village with Lakes Padarn and Peris adjoined halfway along the stretch of water. Towards the further end of Padarn lake was the Snowdonia mountains, which wrapped themselves around the end of the village, giving some spectacular and sometimes haunting views, depending on the weather. Dolbadarn castle ruins also stood silent sentry at the far end of the lake. Along the side of the water was the small steam railway, taking people on joy rides along the water edge. Above that loomed the remnants of a once mined slate quarry. The location had been used in several movies over the years, especially for sword and sorcery types of films.

Nesta’s young grandchildren sat on the tartan rug beside her eating cheese and tomato sandwiches, fruit and cakes, and drinking elderflower cordial. The sun was warm, but mercifully not too hot, though that would no doubt change when the summer arrived. Nesta sighed, dreading the humidity summers now brought. Following the Covid outbreak a few years earlier, Wales had been ‘discovered’, and now was getting very crowded with tourists, which came as a shock to the locals who were used to a calmer and less populous area. Wales was small, especially in the north. No big cities, some towns, but mainly villages, often quaint and made up of stone-built terraced cottages, which were often different to other places in the UK, apart from some rural places in the northern counties of England.

The children, twin girls aged nine, and another girl aged six, finished their picnic.

“What did you used to do when you were our age Gran?” Delyth asked. She was nine years old with dark brown hair and brown eyes, as was her sister Gwen. She could not imagine her grandmother ever being that young.

“I lived in Penmachno for a while when I was nine. It was an old woollen mill village,” Nesta remarked. “We lived next door to the chapel. Dad was the minister there. We had a tiny black and white television, but the reception was so bad that we only managed to get two channels, and sometimes they were crackly, and you couldn’t tell which character was which on the screen. It was because of the mountainous region around us. So, your great grandmother and I used to play cards and board games a lot. I also used to go for long walks. It was lovely in the countryside. Sometimes I’d go with Aunty Gwennie about a mile away to a bridge over a little river and sing songs and skip stones there. I was very good at skipping stones back then. My best was ten skips.” Nesta remembered those outings with affection. Gwennie’s marriage was not something dreams were made of, therefore escaping for a couple of hours with Nesta was something she enjoyed equally. She missed Gwennie when she and her family moved from Penmachno.

“I used to go back for a week every year to stay with Mrs Jones, up in Cwm Penmachno. She was a friend of the family we had met through Dad’s work as a chapel minister. I used to love spending time with her when I was small, as she lived in a quarryman’s cottage up in the mountains, near the slate quarry, which had by then closed down. It was great fun exploring the old quarry and finding the varying colours of slate there.”

“I thought slate was only… slate coloured,” Gwen looked confused.”

“Ah no, when I worked in a local quarry when I had grown up, I found that you can get the ordinary colour, which is mainly used for roofing, but you can also get pink slate, and mint green slate too. People from all over the world used to buy those to make tables. They are very expensive as that colour slate is far rarer.” Nesta explained. “There were different shades of blue slate too.”

“Did you work in the quarry digging for slate?” Seven year old Nia asked in awe.

“No, I worked in the Finance office, but I would go for a walk at lunchtime and see the different kinds of slate. They also had examples in the foyer.”

“In the time when I used to go to visit Mrs Jones she didn’t have a toilet in the house, you had to go downstairs, and cross over a slate path to a converted shed to use the toilet.” Nesta informed three amazed faces gawping at her.

“What did you do if you had to go in the middle of the night?” Delyth asked, an expression on her face indicating that her grandmother had grown up in the middle ages.

“We used a commode or a potty, or we would go downstairs to the toilet, but I generally used the commode as there wasn’t much light in the toilet room, and I was convinced that there were spiders lurking there waiting for the chance to bite me.”

“I would probably have used the commode too.” Delyth decided. She regarded her grandmother’s childhood as almost a form of abuse, not believing for a moment that this break from reality of her day to day life was something she had regarded as a novelty, and an adventure to enjoy.

“I loved staying there, the cottage was tiny, and the steps up to my bedroom steep, but the bed had soft stripey flannelette sheets on it that were so warm and cosy, and the bed mattress was plump and soft. I felt as if I was lying on a cloud. When I would wake up in the morning, all I would hear was the plaintiff bleating of sheep in the field behind the house, and occasionally, after a lot of rain, the running water in the stream at the end of the row of terraced houses. I remember that it was such a soothing and relaxing sound to wake up to.” Nesta often thought back to that blissful quietness of a world less crowded, and less rushed. There was hardly ever a sound of cars, or people shouting or playing music loudly.”

“Did you have TV there?” Gwen asked.

“No, there was no reception at all in Cwm Penmachno. There probably is now with satellites, but not in the 1960s. I spent my time exploring the quarry, walking up into the hills to chat with the farmer who owned the sheep, or playing in the stream. I also used to play with a big jar of coins Mrs Jones had, sorting them out, and counting them.”

“I’d find that very boring,” Delyth said plainly.

“It was a different time, and we were more able to entertain ourselves back then. I did a lot of reading too. I used to love to read Western novels. We also went to town on a Tuesday. It was the only day when there was a bus service. The bus used to pick everyone up at nine o-clock. One day Mrs Jones’ next door neighbour didn’t come out to the bus, so the driver went to knock on her door to check that she was alright.”

“You wouldn’t get that happening now,” Gwen rolled her young eyes at the very thought.

“No, you wouldn’t.” Nesta laughed.

“Was she alright?” Delyth wondered.

“No, she had the flu or something, so the bus driver took her order and also said he would pick up some medicine for her from town, then drop it off later that afternoon when he’d bring the others back from town.”

“I remember one Sunday when I was staying there, Mrs Jones and I were going to Chapel on the Sunday morning. I didn’t really want to go, as I found it a bit boring. Anyway, we were walking down the lane and found a big horse in the middle of the road. There was no one with him, he was just nibbling some grass and blocking the narrow road. Mrs Jones was afraid of the horse and said we had better go home, in case the horse kicked us. I wanted to prove to her that I was braver, so I walked up to the horse and patted him, then led him off the road to a patch of grass at the side of the road. Mrs Jones then told me I was very brave and we could then go to chapel. I remember thinking what an idiot I’d been…”

“Why did you think you were an idiot?” Nia, her tiny face contorted into a confused frown.

“Because if I had pretended to be afraid of the horse too, I wouldn’t have had to go to chapel, and I could have gone to play in the stream.” Nesta laughed. “I thought it more important to look brave in front of her than to try to get out of going to sit in a chapel for over an hour.”

“Mam says I don’t think things through enough as well.” Delyth nodded sagely. “I must get that from you.”

“You must do.” Nesta recognized the trait in her granddaughter. “Anyway, we walked on down the hill to the chapel and went inside. It was a hot day, so the door had been left open to allow a cool breeze to come through. I remember there were only about nine people in the chapel, Mr Griffiths who led the singing, eight others, and the minister. I remember thinking that Mr Griffiths was too old to lead the singing as he sounded very croaky and his voice quavered a lot. The singing was very timid with only a few people there, and the organist played so slowly that you had to take a breath in the middle of a sentence. Then the minister started his sermon. He went on and on and on. He must have talked for over half an hour, and I noticed two people had fallen asleep. I was nearly asleep myself. Then there was a noise in the aisle, it sounded like little clopping noises. Suddenly Reverend Hughes raised his arms in the air and yelled ‘WHOOOSH’, followed by ‘HAARRGH’ and then rounded off by another louder ‘WHOOOSH’. This certainly woke up his congregation, who showed more interest than they had throughout the whole service up to then. We all glanced at each other in amazement, and a great deal of humour, wondering if the preacher had lost the plot, or was perhaps suffering from heat stroke.”

“What was he yelling about?” Delyth asked, as she and her sisters laughed at the scene in their minds.

“We then heard more clopping noises and saw four sheep running back down the aisle towards the door in a panic, rushing to safety from this black-clad monster who was shouting and waving his arms at them like a mad thing.”

“Why did the sheep come into the chapel?” Nia asked.

“I don’t know, maybe curiosity, or to find somewhere cooler to spend time than in the hot sunshine outside, it must be very hot for them in thick woolly coats in the summer. They hadn’t been sheared. But they couldn’t wait to get out once confronted by Reverend Hughes.”

“He should have let them stay, it would have made his congregation half as much bigger,” Gwen said, rather drolly her grandmother thought.

“Everyone in the chapel were laughing at the incident, apart from the Reverend, who eventually told us to be quiet and listen to him, then carried on with his long sermon, though by then most of the people were still thinking about the sheep invasion, a small chuckle sounding every now and then from the people there. I think that was my most interesting visit to a chapel. After that, I forgot about my sulking due to missing my chance to get out of going to chapel during the horse incident. It was the most interesting thing the Reverend had said in the whole service.”

“How long did you go to stay with Mrs Jones?” Gwen asked after she stopped laughing.

“I think until I was about eleven, I started to miss home, the TV, my records, all sorts of things at about that age. I became bored with little to do that hadn’t been done before. I guess I was growing up a little by then.”

“Have you been back recently to Cwm Penmachno?” Delyth asked.

“I did go back with your Dad a few years ago, but the place had changed so much. It is now mostly a place for holiday homes for people from other areas. The only shop there has closed down and the close knit community that used to live there have died off a long time ago, most of them were old back when I was a child. There is no work there to bring younger people in to live. It felt to me that the village had lost its atmosphere of friendliness… probably as I was a stranger walking around then, they didn’t know me, so saw me as an intruder.”

“I think people are more suspicious of each other now too, not like in olden days,” Delyth remarked. “It’s safer not to trust too many people now.”

“I think you’re right Del.” Nesta thought it was a rather cynical remark from such a young child. “I remember those days fondly, when things were simpler.”

The End.