Chapter XIX: Rhuddlan
Life in Rhuddlan was very pleasant as it offered far more amenities than Llandeilo. Actually there was not a great deal of cultural activity in Rhuddlan itself apart from the meetings of the Welsh Society and of the Women’s Institute. However there was a great deal of such activity in towns not too distant from Rhuddlan. Rhyl, of course, was near enough to be considered as the focal point for all entertainment and cultural activity. Indeed Rhuddlan could be considered a close suburb to Rhyl.
Rhyl was a town of two sharp contrasts: one, between east and west, and two, between summer and winter. It was really our shopping centre, but when we needed to relax and to enjoy the proximity of the sea, we proceeded through the town to the front, where we had the choice of turning to the east or to the west.
It was very rarely that we turned to the west. It was here that the bingo and chips, which the ‘hoi polloi’ preferred, were provided. It was here, too, that you took sometimes those children who came to see us or to stay with us, so that they could be entertained by the fair-ground amusements. If Carrie and I were on our own or with Nest and her children we invariably turned east along the promenade, where there were pleasant open spaces, dotted with a brilliant display of flowers and plants.
One of the attractions was the Floral Hall, which had a display of exotic tropical plants; another was the nearby bowling greens, where you could watch the amusing antics of some of the elderly but keen bowlers. At the far end of the promenade you were not overwhelmed and jostled by the merrymakers with their candy-floss-eating children. In our first summer we were, or rather I was, tempted to bathe in the sea, but the sight of revolting sewage floating on top of the waves soon deterred me. Indeed during the holiday months of the summer Rhyl was by no means an attractive place for us to visit.
In the winter Rhyl changed its character completely. Gone were the noisy crowds, and even the west Promenade, with the closure of the Bingo Halls and of the Fair, was quite a pleasant and relaxed area, in which we could take a walk. The entertainment provided in the winter differed vastly from that in the summer. It was not of the music-hall type, but a more high-brow kind of entertainment – Opera and Symphony Orchestras in the Pavilion, plays, English and Welsh, in the Little Theatre, the performance of oratorios in the Churches, and all sorts of sober entertainment in the various Chapels.
You could go further afield for cultural entertainment. We used to go, more often than not with Nest and Bryn, to classical concerts, mainly symphony concerts, in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, as well as uniting with the Liverpool Welsh Choir to perform oratorios like the Messiah and the Elijah. Then in the summer, usually in June, the Welsh National Opera gave performances in Llandudno from their vast repertoire of operas. We hardly ever missed a performance of one or two operas every summer.
There were other attractions which made life in Rhuddlan very pleasant and interesting. Nest and Bryn, with some of their friends on the staff of Rhyl High School, were very fond of walking the mountains of North Wales, and it was they who, in the first place, induced us to join them in these mountain expeditions. Having been encouraged to follow these pursuits, we often set off on our own to enjoy the rugged but marvellous scenery of the Welsh mountains, to enjoy the fresh, clean, clear air.
The nearest of these mountains were the Clwydian Range that could be easily approached form the Vale of Clwyd. The most spectacular height of the Range was Moel Fammau, from which you could have a breathtaking view of the Vale and, beyond, the towering mountains of Snowdonia. The Clwydian Range was near enough for us to take our cars on a summer’s evening to a convenient spot where we would disembark at one end of the Range so that we could walk along the ridge and then descend further on to be driven back in the cars that had been taken there by the drivers.
But the real pleasure came when we drove, usually on a Saturday, to such places as Penypass, Llanberis, Beddgelert and Capel Curig. However, we dared not follow Bryn and Nest and their friends as they ventured on steep walks and even actually mountain climbing. One of their favourite climbs was Tryfan, which could be climbed, although with difficulty, without ropes and the other paraphernalia for real mountain climbing. They even took Geraint with them to the top of Snowdon, albeit on the easiest route, by way of the Watcyn Pass from near Llyn Gwynant.
Carrie and I, on one or two occasions, climbed or rather walked a good way up Snowdon, starting from the Youth Hostel at Penypass. Our only attempt to reach the summit of Snowdon was by the Snowdon train from Llanberis. But our attempt to reach the summit by the easy way was frustrated. It turned out that the train could go no further than Clogwyn, where we disembarked for a while, because it was too windy at the top. But even there the views were really spectacular, a consolation for our failure to reach the summit.
My experiences in Rhuddlan, especially in the initial years, were not altogether pleasurable ones. Soon after settling in I met one or two teachers who had retired before reaching sixty five, the qualifying age for drawing the Old Age Pension, or, as it was called, the Retirement Pension. They informed me that they intended drawing the dole until the age of sixty five. The conditions laid down by the Department of Social Security were 1) if you had retired voluntarily and not at the request of your employer, you incurred the penalty of not qualifying for the dole for the first seven weeks of unemployment, 2) if you were offered work which was comparable with that from which you had retired it had to be accepted provided it carried a comparable wage or salary.
I had already been unemployed for more than seven weeks when I decided to apply for the dole. As for the second condition I declared that I was prepared to take on a Latin post in a Secondary School at a salary similar to the one I had been having. It was quite obvious that it was highly improbable that there could be such a vacant post within travelling distance of Rhuddlan, and what is more it was very unlikely that the Education Authority would want to employ a teacher whose salary was at the maximum, a maximum made up of a Post of Special Responsibility and of a Deputy Headship. However on one occasion I had an interview with the Chief Social Security official in the Rhuddlan office, when he kept me there while he telephoned several Secondary Schools in the area to see if such a post could be offered to me – of course, with no success.
What was unpleasant about drawing the dole? Well, I had rather a guilty conscience when joining the long dole queue for the weekly payment. They were almost all quite obviously the lowly paid manual workers, who genuinely needed the dole money for subsistence. But when I voiced such an opinion to those in similar circumstances to mine, they produced the argument that we had paid our social insurance contributions all through our teaching career, and that we were now only drawing the benefit that was due to us. Nevertheless the weekly long wait in the dole queue was far from being a pleasurable experience.
Another experience that detracted from the pleasure of retirement, and from the interests and entertainments that I have already described, was the development of a skin irritation which plagued me for many years, and indeed still plagues me to some extent. I consulted several doctors in the area, all of whom had different ideas about the cause of the irritation and possible cures. But the condition became steadily worse, and in the end I was sent to Alexandra Hospital, Rhyl, to see a skin specialist, a lady doctor named Emslie. I think she attributed the irritation to dry skin, an attribute of old age. She again prescribed several different treatments, some of which gave temporary relief, and so it has been ever since, temporary relief lasting maybe weeks or even months, and then followed by a recurrence.
I remember on one occasion having a week’s holiday of fine summery weather in Tenby, when I bathed in the sea twice a day on each of the days of our holiday. I derived so much benefit from this that I decided to carry on with sea-bathing in Rhyl. But, as I have mentioned before, after a few dips I soon had enough of bathing in a sea of waves floating on which were lumps of revolting sewage. I moved further on to Abergele, and then to Llandudno, but the whole of the North Wales coast must have been highly polluted. Finally I managed to keep the condition fairly under control by applying some special ointments, and that is still the situation today.
Back to one of the pleasures of living in Rhuddlan! When teaching and living in Llandeilo, my main relaxation and recreation came in my once- or twice-weekly round of golf, first of all on the old nine-hole course on the other side of the Towy from Alan Road and Thomas Street, and then on the new course at Glyn hir, Llandybie. One of the features which helped me, if not Carrie, to decide on buying No 3, Bodrhyddan Avenue, was its proximity to the Rhuddlan Golf Course. In fact the ninth hole could be seen quite clearly from the lounge, just about two or three hundred yards distant across the intervening field.
But in spite of the course’s proximity and in spite of its suitability for a retired person, as it was a flat course, unlike the courses in Llandeilo and Glyn hir, more than a year elapsed before I ventured on the Course. Being a high handicap player, I was loath to thrust myself as a stranger on golfers preparing to set out on a round. Before I could confidently attempt playing, I felt I must get a partner or partners that I had come to know fairly well. The people that I met were two or three neighbours, members of Ebeneser Chapel, those who attended the Welsh Society meetings, and the members of the Rhyl Choir, and I failed to find a single one among them who played golf.
It was after about twelve months that I came across a golfer who appeared to be a possible ideal partner. It was in this way. Carrie and I attended a Local History class in Rhuddlan, whose tutor was Mr Mesham, the History Master in Rhyl High School. This class had been recommended to us by Nest and Bryn, colleagues, of course, of Mr Mesham. I very often sat at the back of the class in the company of a Basil Nuttall, a name which seemed to be that of an Englishman, who could not converse in Welsh. But it was not so, he was Welsh-speaking and also lived in a neighbouring street. So we became quite friendly.
But even then I did not find out that he was a golfer until we both met in an Open Day for W.E.A. classes in Bangor University College. In conversation at the meals in the College it transpired that he was a high handicap golfer and was a member of the Rhuddlan Golf Club. He told me that he could not play in the quieter times in mid-week but that in about nine months time at the age of 65 he would be retiring from his work as an accountant at the Pilkington Glass Factory and would like very much to have me as a partner. However he said that he knew of three members who would like to have a fourth able to play on two afternoons of the week, and who would be ideal partners for me.
I was introduced to these three, and indeed found them to be ideal partners. They were Les Walker, a retired Prison Officer, Arthur Grimshaw, a grocer in Rhyl, and Frank Bracchi, an Italian who owned a Bingo Hall in Rhyl. Perhaps on considering their background they did not in any way seem to be ideal partners for one who had a completely different background. However, I was received with open arms. They were excellent company, being intelligent, well-spoken, and having a keen sense of humour. Arthur Grimshaw and Frank Bracchi were golfers on a par with me, even more erratic than I was. Les Walker was a much better golfer than anyone of us, being a very long hitter and winner of several competitions. But he seemed to enjoy the company of us lesser golfers, and by judicious pairing we had quite close and interesting matches.
After the nine months required by Basil Nuttall to qualify for Retirement Pension had elapsed, there became complications in the arrangement of partners. We were now five, and, of course, it was incumbent upon us to make arrangements for Basil to play. There were times when we had to split up into two and three. This soon proved unsatisfactory.
But the problem was soon solved. John Stretton, my next-door neighbour, had just retired and had offered to play with Basil and me, and then came a fourth, a retired chemist who also lived in Bodrhyddan and was fairly friendly with John Stretton. So it was arranged that Basil Nuttall, John Stretton and I could become a regular foursome, with the intention of playing every Monday afternoon and every Thursday afternoon. I must admit that I was sorry to abandon the initial foursome, as they were such a happy and accommodating lot. However, the arrangement between close neighbours worked quite satisfactorily, as we were so near if we wanted to make any change in our arrangements.
Yet the arrangement was not wholly satisfactory as one of the foursome did not always promote a happy atmosphere, and he happened to be the best golfer of the four. Ivor Jones was a stickler for rules, and the three of us incurred his displeasure on more than one occasion. This, of course, did not encourage a good sporting spirit. Our ability as golfers differed too. Ivor Jones was the best, John Stretton came next, and then myself, with Basil Nuttall a poor fourth. The ideal pairing would have been Ivor Jones and Basil Nuttall versus John Stretton and me. But Ivor Jones always insisted on my being his partner, with the result that we two were almost always the winners.
In spite of a few pernickety disagreements we managed to keep the same foursome going for several years. However, there came a time when both John Stretton and Ivor Jones were failing in health. John had a heart complaint and Ivor suffered from back trouble. The result was that we had very often to cut down on the number of holes played, and worse still, John, who had played a few holes with us on a Monday, had a heart attack on the following morning and died during the attack.
Another partner came to fill the gap later on. He was a Mr Richards, a retired Post Master, who lived in the street parallel with Bodrhyddan Avenue. He was rather a novice, who could hit a long ball, but was so erratic that we had to spend much of our round searching for his ball in the rough. There were other reasons, which will probably be explained later, why our golf became less and less satisfactory.
A long time, indeed over eight months, having elapsed since writing the previous paragraph, there is a danger that some repetitions will creep into my narrative. This addition to my advancing age is another cause for some confusion, especially of dates. So I have decided to deal with topics only, discounting the chronological method.
I have given an account of my playing partners in golf. I want to add my impressions of the social side of Rhuddlan Golf Club. The majority of the members were English, and the majority of these were retired pensioners from the Liverpool and Manchester areas. Occasionally when one or two of the usual foursome was missing, we were joined by one or two of these English pensioners.
When chatting during the progress of the round, these casuals would comment on the fact that I was Welsh, and then the usual questions followed – Was I a Welsh Nationalist? Did I approve of the destructive methods of the members of the Welsh Language Society? As far as possible I avoided any contentious arguments in case I became so heated that our golf would be affected. One thing became obvious to me; although they tried to express sympathy with our desire to preserve the language, they had no idea what Welsh culture meant, and failed to understand that we were jealous of our heritage.
Since we played our games in the afternoons we never entered the club-house in order to have a drink. Indeed the bar was not open at the time we finished our round. The only time I did present myself at the bar was on two or three special occasions in the year, such as the Christmas Party with its annual Draw, and the Annual General Meeting and only then after being persuaded by my golfing partners to join them.
I was wary of over-indulging in the ‘demon drink’ for two reasons. I did not like alcoholic drinks, and I was also aware that I could not ‘take it’. That had been proven when I was in the Army. Twice I had joined friends in celebratory drinks. Firstly on Christmas Eve when I was stationed in Woolwich. A few of us working in the Documents Office crossed the road to the soldiers’ favourite pub. I believe we were five and that meant there would be five rounds. In my innocence I consumed five pints of beer in order to be on a par with the others. When we decided to return to barracks I was priding myself on being absolutely sober, but when I encountered the fresh air outside, my legs started to become wobbly, my head to become fuzzy and when I arrived in my billet I became violently ill. Instead of hitting the bed, the bed was hitting me.
There was another occasion when I became drunk and violently ill. It was during demobilisation time in Beirut. One evening I was alone with another sergeant in the Mess when he told me that he was being demobilised in a few days, and he asked me to celebrate this by drinking a bottle of cherry brandy with him. He collected the bottle from his billet and again in my innocence I drank with him the whole bottle, with the result that I was even more violently ill than on the previous occasion. I vowed then that I would never indulge to the extent that there would be a danger of my becoming drunk.
So when I attended the Annual General Meeting or the Christmas Party, along with my regular partners, I made a point of ordering the first round, so that when the others ordered their rounds I could politely opt out of further drinks without appearing miserly and a spoil-sport.
Golf was not the only recreation for me. I did quite a lot of gardening. I turned over part of the lawn in the back into a vegetable garden. Actually the soil was so sandy that the digging afforded gentle exercise rather than hard labour. As the soil was so light the garden could be planted early in March or April. This enabled the plants to have an early start and to be well-established before the end of June, when there was the danger of the soil becoming so dry that it continually required a liberal watering. On the whole I managed to produce quite good crops. Another means of exercise was frequent walks over to Plas yn Cwm Lodge and then to Llwynderw where Bryn and Nest had their homes.
So my physical well-being was taken care of in this way, while the mind was well-nurtured by cultural pursuits and by light entertainment. What were the cultural pursuits? Every Thursday evening Carrie and I attended the rehearsals of the Rhyl Choral Union. My musical interests were widened, and my ability to read music became much improved. The works we sang were Requiems, such as those of Verdi and Mozart, and well-known oratorios, such as the Messiah and the Elijah. Strangely enough, or perhaps I should say naturally enough, our most popular performance and the most well-attended was that of the Messiah. This we performed almost every December, just before Christmas.
During the winter the Rhuddlan Welsh Society met once a month. These meetings could be described as partly cultural and partly entertainment. Attending the Welsh Society enabled us to become acquainted with the Welsh-speaking community and to make friends with quite a number of them.
We plunged into deep water, as it were, in the very first week of our residence in Rhuddlan. We decided to present ourselves at the first meeting of the winter session without knowing what to expect and without being introduced by a member of the Society. We could see people taking a curious look at us, wondering who these strangers were. At half time coffee and biscuits were taken round to everyone present. A young woman brought round a bowl of sugar and asked us if we wanted sugar in our coffee. Just answering ‘yes’ in Welsh convinced her that we came from South Wales and immediately a kind of rapport was struck as she herself came from South Wales and indeed from the same county. She then introduced us to one or two of the V.I.P.’s such as the local Headmaster, who turned out to be a prominent chapel elder and who was a leading light in the village. Tom Charles, a man of charm whose powers of persuasion were irresistible, persuaded us to become members of his chapel, to join an evening class whose tutor was the Rev. Hugh Williams, the minister of the flourishing Presbyterian chapel, and he even persuaded me to join his Sunday School class.
A prominent member of the Welsh society and also a member of the Chapel was Aled Jones, with whom I struck up a close friendship and whose interests were similar to mine. Indeed he had much wider interests than I had and it was these further interests which made him such an attractive personality. First of all, he was a teacher. He taught Mathematics at Glan Clwyd School in St. Asaph. Although he had only a pass degree in Maths he achieved brilliant results, succeeding in getting some of his A level candidate accepted in Cambridge University, where they gained good Honours degrees. He had a keen interest in Astronomy, having started his career in the Greenwich Observatory. He had a large and expensive telescope in his garden, with which he watched any interesting development in the skies.
But his interests were not only in Science, but also in the Arts. His knowledge of Welsh Literature, especially of Welsh poetry and the special composition of Welsh ‘cynghaneddd’ was phenomenal. Indeed the only word that could adequately describe him was ‘polymath’.
We came into his company very often in the W.E.A. class held by the Rev. Hugh Williams. His views on religion were very liberal, just as mine were. So in the discussion held after Hugh Williams had concluded his three quarter hour lecture, generally on a religious topic, a great deal of heat was generated. Some of the members of the class held very orthodox views and were horrified by the arguments we two produced, quite sincerely. I feel sure that I was also a kind of black sheep of the Sunday School. Tom Charles, the teacher of the class, in all fairness made the more orthodox members take heed of my arguments and insisted on their answering my what seemed to them almost blasphemous questions. I adopted the Socratic method of asking Why? After every answer. Looking back now I feel that this method was somewhat unfair, as religious tenets are those of the spirit rather than of the mind.
Rhuddlan was a centre convenient for the many cultural activities in the North Wales area, and also in the Liverpool area. Plays, both Welsh and English, were often being performed in the Theatr Fach in Rhyl, a convenient place for us as it was located on the Rhuddlan side of Rhyl. It was noticeable that whenever a Welsh play was being staged there was always a packed house. Another popular and larger theatre was the Pavilion on the Rhyl Promenade. Until it was demolished because of its unsafe structure, plays and concerts there were well patronised. The Halle Orchestra was one of the favourite attractions.
Other popular events were the Gilbert and Sullivan Operas performed by the Rhyl Operatic Society. We even went as far as Liverpool to attend orchestral concerts in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. The orchestral concerts were mostly given by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Another attraction that was not too far to attend in the evening was the annual week of operas performed by the Welsh National Opera Company in the Astra, Llandudno. We saw many different operas, among them being Nabucco, I Puritani, La Boheme, Madam Butterfly.
Stratford-on-Avon was also not too far, but, of course, not from Rhuddlan but from the several homes that Una and Glen had in the Midlands, such as Cheltenham and Harbury near Leamington Spa. By that time we had seen quite a large number of Shakespearean plays, as we had had several trips before then from Llandeilo School and Capel Newydd Dramatic Society trips. Later on, when Glen was working in Enfield and they had their homes in St Albans and Marlow, we were taken to London to an orchestral concert in the Albert Hall and to plays in the theatres.
When we went to stay with Bethan at Knaresborough, we had opportunities too to frequent places where we could attend concerts of classical music. Harrogate was only a short distance from Knaresborough, and there we had concerts in the Royal Hall. We also went to a concert in one of the churches when Monteverdi’s Vespers was performed by the Harrogate Choral Society, of which Bethan was a member. Although York was a fair distance further from Knaresborough we drove there one evening to hear a performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius in York Minster. But although it was an unique experience for us, the concert was a little disappointing as our seats were right at the back where the acoustics were far from good.
Frequent trips to places of interest helped us to have a wider appreciation of the surrounding towns and rural locations. I have already mentioned our trips to he Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool, but we also visited the city itself. The cathedrals, one Protestant and the other Catholic were well worth a visit and especially the Catholic one with its modern circular structure, not unlike the cathedral in Galway, which we visited when on holiday in Ireland.
An exciting experience when visiting Liverpool was the drive through the Mersey Tunnel, especially when we negotiated it the first time. There was, however, an unpleasant and bewildering experience later on when emerging from the tunnel on the Liverpool side. There seemed to be almost permanent road works with instructions to follow a different route each time to the centre of the city. This, I am afraid, discouraged us later on from further trips to Liverpool, unless driven there by Bryn or Nest.
The various shops were an added attraction, Owen Owen’s being the favourite for shopping and for eating. It was also interesting to visit the Docks and the famous Liver buildings. Although the port was not so extensively used for large liners, there were still some ships, which were exciting viewing for land-based people like us. Most of the ships at that time were ferry boats of Ireland or across the Mersey to Birkenhead.
We also made quite frequent visits to the Wirral as far as Birkenhead. Birkenhead brought back memories of an interview that I had had there for a teaching job in Birkenhead High School. This is one of the ‘ifs’ of my life. What if I had been successful in obtaining this job, as indeed in my application for a job in Hawarden Grammar School? The course of my life would have been very different, and probably not as happy as the fate that I eventually enjoyed.
The Wirral was an attractive area; several of the towns and villages had a special rural beauty not often seen near such an industrial area as Liverpool. The most interesting attraction was the Botanical Gardens belonging to Liverpool University. These were open most days apart from midwinter. All sorts of plants, familiar and exotic, could be seen in the well-kept gardens.
Another town, or rather city, which we liked to visit, indeed much oftener than to Liverpool, was Chester. Its Roman remains, with the well-preserved wall and baths and the museum were of particular interest to a Latin teacher. It was a real pleasure to walk round the Rows of the city centre, where one could find everything in the way of all kinds of shops and of eating places. Chester cathedral too was visited quite often, either for peace and quiet from the bustle of the town or for studying the history of the church in medieval England.
Whether trips to Snowdonia and other rural areas of beauty could be considered cultural I am not sure. And yet an appreciation of beauty must be looked upon at least as partly cultural. Those people who came for holidays in North Wales seemed on the whole to have no appreciation of the beauty of the countryside. One old lady who went to stay among the beauty of rushing streams and dense woodland maintained that there was nothing of interest in Betws-y-Coed – there were only trees and no bingo and chips.
We really enjoyed trips to Capel Curig, the base for mountaineers in Snowdonia and the location of the shop of the famous climber Joe Brown. Then we proceeded either to the right along the Ogwen Valley as far as Bethesda with a return trip to Rhuddlan via Conway with its imposing medieval castle, or to the left and then turned right up Penypass to Llanberis. At Penypass you could start one of the easier routes up Snowdon. We did walk up part of the path, but decided that walking right up to the summit was too arduous at our age. Sometimes instead of turning up to Penypass we drove straight on to Beddgelert where you could see the grave of the brave dog Gelert whom the Prince Llewelyn killed thinking that he had attacked his child in the overturned cot, whereas too late he discovered that the child was safe and that the blood on the floor was that of a wolf who had tried to attack the child.
Then we proceeded through Aberglaslyn Pass to Porthmadog and along the Cob, a causeway specially built over the marshland, and on to Portmeirion, Clough Williams-Ellis’ fantastic village built in the manner of houses along the Italian Riviera. These were some of the pleasant and even cultural areas that we visited. There were others, of course, too many to relate, such as the Menai Bridge and the beauties of Anglesey. There was also the sea trip from Llandudno to Douglas, Isle of Man.