Joe Bloggs

Once upon a green time there was a boy who lived in a big tree. The Tree was in a huge wood called Coed y Cwm. But everyone called it The Cwm.
His e-mail address was cochyn@coed.cwm. His hair was red, and his name was Cochyn. Everyone called him Cochyn y Cwm.
At the top, The Tree had millions of leaves. They glowed in the sun and made the tree's dinner from Sunbeams and Air and Rain.
At the bottom, The Tree had roots which spread underground until they were just tiny white lights. They made sure The Tree had enough to drink. And when he’d had too much, the roots made sure The Tree stood up straight – especially when the Big Wind blew.
When Cochyn looked up he saw The Tree shooting on and on like a fountain until the leaves splashed green into the bright blue sky and then on and on to the sun and moon and stars.
When Cochyn looked down, The Tree flowed down and down like a waterfall until it dived into the warm, black earth with all the warm things living on it and in it, and then on and on almost to the banks of the runny river that ran through The Cwm. The river was named Nant y Graig. But everyone called it The Graig.
The foxes and badgers and rabbits and moles and mice and rats and worms and mushrooms and bluebells and earwigs and all sorts of things from all the ends of the Earth lived in The Earth. The Tree itself lived in The Earth.
The fish and frogs and otters and eels lived in The Graig.
There were things living in The Tree too.
There were all the birds. They sang songs all the time to tell each other the time, or what the news was. The birds were very interested in the news. But mostly they just sang because it was fun. When he heard them sing, Cochyn saw colours in his head and felt like he was a bird too, flying in the sky.
There were lots of other things living in The Tree with Cochyn.
Moths that came out at night and danced like brown fairies in the light of Cochyn’s computer. They loved dancing and reading. It was the moths that showed Cochyn how to dance.
In the daytime, there were the Butterflies – always dressed up in their holiday shirts and always looking for sweets. It was the Butterflies who showed Cochyn how to tell jokes.
Then there were all the shiny, busy beetles. They lived in The Tree and in the earth and sometimes, at parties, they would fly. Just like the birds, only fatter. They were very polite and shy, but sometimes they would say “Hello Cochyn please” and ask if he had seen their pencils anywhere. The beetles were always losing their pencils. All except the Ladybirds. They didn’t use pencils. They had tiny shiny biros, and were always getting the ink on their shells. Especially at parties.
And then there were the Squirrels.
But more about them later.
In between the leaves at the top and the roots at the bottom was Cochyn’s house. It was made from woven Willow wands and branches. It had a roof of leaves, and was warm and dry in the winter, and nice and cool in the summer. It had a big bough outside the front door, where Cochyn could sit and look out through the leaves and branches at all the other trees in the Cwm.
Or look up at the sky and clouds and wonder what they were made of.
Or look down, down to the ferns and grass and bushes below with all the animals scurrying about and rustling in the brambles and eating the blackberries. Or down at The Graig chattering and splashing on to the sea and the islands where there were red and green parrots and elephants and dinosaurs made of ice – or so some of the birds said.
The Graig was very busy too. It had to keep moving.
“Sshhh ... gotta-go – Gotta-go … Shsshhh..”
it would say when it was too busy to chat.
“Sshh ... gotta-go – Gotta-go … Shsshhh..”
Because it rained a lot, there was always more water to get to the sea. That was The Graig’s work. To get the rain into the sea. Everyone in The Graig had a job they liked to do. Sometimes lots of jobs.
Cochyn loved living in the big tree. The Tree was in a huge wood called The Cwm. His e-mail address was cochyn@coed.cwm

Standard 3E. Felinfoel County Primary School. 1962. Master Mr John Williams.


Back row L>R Noel Rees. John Armstrong. Vincent Rees. Robert Bartlett. Phillip Williams. Barry Brooks.
Middle row L>R Gareth Roberts. Douglas Jones. Stephen Evans. Robert James. Robert Kenyon. Haydn Beynon. Desmond Butler.
Front row L>R Maria Edmunds. [unnamed] Karen Davies. Ceridwen Price. Melita Hopkins. Gaynor Lemon. Elizabeth Norris. [unnamed].
Master: Mr John Williams.

We all came here aged seven, after 3 fuzzy years of combined drudgery and astonishment at being alive, although we had no idea how new we were. Ysgol Y Babanod, our old school was, in fact, space-age new. Looking back, it was like something out of Tomorrow's World.  It was a shining example of 50's modern architecture, and still is, though we didn't know that then, and most still don't. It had a massive parquet hall, where the beautiful Miss Parkinson, our headmistress, would play the piano with the sunbeams from the wall-high windows lighting her hair. She made all the boys fall in love with her.
Felinfoel CP was a step back in time. Our desks must have been over 60 years old, and unlike the Modernist tubular steel and plywood creations at Ysgol y Babanod, were gnarled, oaken and ink-stained, and held together with curved black cast-iron. They looked like they were made by the same company which forged the black open-hearth stoves some of us still had at home. There was something grim and grown-up about them, compared with the innocent post-war optimism of our gleaming infant worksurfaces.
We soon discovered that the entire week at Felinfoel County Primary used to revolve around singing. There was a hymn to begin and end the day. And on Wednesdays there was the radio singalong session, instilling for life old favourites like 'John Peel', 'Widdicombe Fair', 'Men of Harlech' and 'Hearts of Oak'.
On Thursday, there was the 'rehearsal' for the friday 'assembly' In the formidable Mrs Walters' class. This was a serious trial. For an hour and a half, the entire school would stand in rows, youngest at the front, oldest at the back, and repeat the forthcoming Friday's programme until Miss (Fatty) Walters, or Miss Thomas or Mr Williams or the ghoulish Mr Morgan was satisfied.
People would be beaten for being late on the beat, humiliated for having no tone, and screamed at for singing too loud - which I never thought fair even at 9 years old. In the winter, people standing too near the coal fire would faint, or throw up.
But the real highlight of the week was the BBC's schools singing programme.
The year had two musical highlights. The eisteddfod on St David's Day in the packed Festri Hall of Adulam, and the Christmas Carol Concret in the full glory of the chapel itself, where the boys all wore white shirts and red ties.

Additions from fellow alumni.

... Domestic water drawn from a spring. Rabbits caught for the table. Foxes killed for the bounty of 10shillings on the tail. These are some of the things I'm old enough to be privileged to be able to remember - just.
This was one corner of industrial South Wales until about 1965.
The man in the haystack was called Dai Blaen-Nant. 'Blaen-Nant' being the field he lived in. 'Near the Spring'.
He had moved in to a corrugated iron shed sometime after the war. As the roof began to need patching, he used the annual straw from the field, piling it on year after year until it was five feet thick on top and reached the ground.
There were 3 other single men living in the same kinds of casual dwelling within a quarter mile radius. One in a fairly lavish affair with an iron fireplace and a grandfather clock. Another in what was barely a garden shed.
All the fields, and most of the cows in them, had names. Cae Glas, Cae Garw Mawr, Pen Nant, Cae Bach, Llandyri, ...Most fields still have names, but who is writing them down?
Some of the trees had names. The 'Devil's Oak', with a great burnt chamber big enough to hold two boys, glowering over the formidable 'Devil's Hill'.

People in fancy dress would appear at certain times of the year trying to sell Indian carpets, or clothes pegs or onions. Or would offer to sharpen knives and scissors on a huge bicycle-driven grindstone. The Indian Carpet man, with his turban, was supposed to be none other than Hollywood star 'Sabu' of 'The Arabian Nights' and 'Kim'. The onion seller wore a beret and a striped jersey.
Gypsies would pass the house once or twice a year in hooped wagons. They would graze their horses for a couple of days on the little green in front of the little council estate built in 1956. One horse one year was white, and I was a big Lone Ranger fan at the time. The rest is predictable enough. I was still very much in short trousers, and horses have their pride, and they have other uses for their teeth besides eating.
This estate (Bryn-Y-Felin' - 'Mill Hill') had electricity and gas and inside toilets and a bathroom. Most of the other houses, farms and smallholdings along the road didn't. Not until about ten years later in the mid sixties were all those things guaranteed. The C19 had survived until then in some parts of the country.

By the early 60's, we had progressed from the traditional 'long-drop' soil trap, to a modern, hi-tech Elsan, with its own cosy asbestos cubicle proudly standing in the middle of the garden for all to admire.
When it was full, my brave father would dig a big hole and bury the contents.
It was a beautiful Summer's Day. I was 7 and not a care in the world. I had been watching the Red Army Ensemble on Sunday Night At The London Palladium the night before, and was 'Cossack dancing' around the garden in my new brown wellies, which in themselves were a source of great novelty and joy.
Then there was the brief sensation of not landing when I should have, and then of being dragged out of the mire by my chortling father who kept telling me how I would be lucky for life. As he hosed me down.
I never saw the wellies again. I think they're still there.

wales rural industrial history childhood social

Llethri Road 1900's. 1940's.

Stage Manager, Con Murphy.
Con was a wiry Irishman with eyes like coals, The lines

'You could tell at a glance
When he took up his stance
That he sailed in The Irish Rover'

could have been written for him.
In spite of being a true Swansea Jack who was not of the Welsh-speaking, chapel-going, rugby-following tradition of my side of the Loughour, he had to endure the enforced Welshness of prounouncing all his 'S's as 'Ll's'. This exotic speech defect turned Swansea into Llwanlli. Not that this cost him any respect or fear from the crew. In fact, I never remember any banter about this, either to his face or behind his back. And most of us were under 25. Con could and would do anything associated with putting on a show, and made the rest of the crew want to match him.
In spite of not being as Welsh as the Urdd Gobaith Cymru would have liked, it was Con who told me why the Welsh call each other 'Butt', and explained a lot more in the process:
'..because down the mines, it's easier to shovel coal into the dram if you work 'butt - to - butt' with someone. You use each other as support. So the man you worked butt to butt with was naturally your 'Butty'. Then the Yanks got hold of it from Welsh miners in Pennsylvania, and because they can't talk tidy, it became 'Buddy', and now they think they own it. Typical.

Bill. (head electrician) How anyone could balance so much electrician on such a rickety ladder was a miracle. And always in the same knitted blue jumper.

Stage Crew.
Adas/Sebbs. (son of Con.)
Knuckles.

FOH.
Mary. cleaner.
John Chilvers.
Viv Ellacott.

memories:
The Flies.
Maurice. (stage doorman, flyman.) Would sit in the wrecked horsehair sofa in the flies, smoking his pipe and doing the Times crossword between cues. He read the Times from cover to cover every day, and thought that Pinter and Wesker were now very past-it. He seemed in his 60's to me at the time, and had obviously been well educated. He was a classic Gent, if a little down on his financial luck, or merely eccentric - possibly working in the Grand to smell former glories? He invited speculation and enquiry, and as young men in the late Swinging 60's, we ignored his story completely, and treated him with as little respect possible. He cleaned the toilets.

Else. (fly chargehand) With the roguish Mexican moustache. About 20. Knew the ins and outs of the flies by heart. Operating a snowbag, running a brail line, setting a dead on the line... everything. If he's not running a stage now, he's probably making a lot of money from selling something or other. Favourite song: 'Coal Miners In The Sky'
'And when they got to Ammanford they found they'd been forsook.
For poor old Donald Piers had fallen in his Babbling Brook.
You hear them call
"We want no small!"
Coal Miners in the sky...'
Favourite local figures of fun:
'The miners from the valleys in the TopRank on saturdays in they wellies.'

John. (flies. oppo of Else)

There were two ways up to the fly floor. Directly up from the stage by the long wooden ladder with the square rungs worn and polished by thousands of feet, and through the trap; or through the door on the prompt corner, up a flight of stairs and up a short ladder and through a white plank door with a large iron handle. Either way, the first thing you saw and smelt was the giant rug of the ropes squiggling everywhere.

Get ins and get-outs.
Welsh N.O. which lasted all night and saw us carrying naked (plaster) women across the road to the bus garage, where everything was kept, and then going for breakfast in the Volunteers where the milkman’s horse would put his head through the door for his Guinness.

As a casual, I only worked the shows which needed at least 3 flymen. Either this meant there was a load on one bar which needed 3 to raise it, or there were two cues happening at once. Most of the time I remember there were four of us.
At the technical rehearsal for each show, the flats and borders and lighting bars were carefully flown into their positions for the performance, and each line of the three in each set levelled off. The set would then be first tied around the bottom cleat on the rail, then the top cleat, and coloured tape used to mark each line at the top of the oak rail. The In Dead.
Once this had been set, the bar would be flown out until it was out of sight, and the position marked in the same way. The Out Dead. For a big performance, most of The Grand's twenty-odd bars would be needed.
At the same time in the rehearsal, the flying needed would be plotted and cues noted along with any special requirements, such as the speed of the haul or drop. This was Else's job, as was dropping the 'iron' or fire-curtain.
On the big night, when our big moment came, Con would reach the first fly cue in the book and press the standby botton. The red light alert would glow on the flyfloor, and we stood by our cleats. If we were dropping a bar, the 'cleat man' in the scrum-half position would untie the lines from the top cleat, and take the locking turn off the bottom cleat, leaving the set curling against itself around the bottom arm of the bottom cleat, the whole load kept in place by friction and hand pressure.
On the green light, it was simply a matter of relaxing the angle on the turn, and allowing the set to slide until the In Dead reached the rail, and the shimmering landscape of Old Baghdad was revealed to gasps of wonder...
When in place, the set was deftly whipped around the rest of the bottom cleat - and then the top one, with almost one movement, like a cowboy or sailor in action.
It would all depend on the weight. A very heavy bar might need two men to anchor the drop - that is, to form a little tug of war team against gravity - plus an extra turn around the bottom cleat to add enough friction on the line to stop several thousand pounds worth of lanterns plummeting through the stage. When I worked my first theatre with counter-weights, I thought it was very dull.
Flying a bar out was generally a two-man job, at least. At the green light, Else (generally) would undo the top cleat, then everyone would haul until the dead was reached while Else dropped to his knees to undo the bottom cleat, and take up the slack while we would take the strain in best sea-shanty fashion. When the dead reached the rail, Else would tie off the set in its double figure of eight knot. First at the bottom,. then the top. To this day, I get irritated when people tie their window blinds off sloppily, in a random, a-symmetrical fashion. Don't they realise they're doing it all wrong!?
When the load needed five or six, as it sometimes did, we drafted reinforcements from the stagecrew. One backdrop for the Welsh National Opera's Magic Flute consisted of a curtain of aluminium poles the width of the stage. It took at least six of us to get it into position, hauling it up a foot or two at a time, with two of us using the tactic of the Human Counterweight, jumping from the flyrail, using our combined body weight to drag the Hall of the Mountain King or Prince Charming's Ballroom away into the cobwebby dark of The Grand's flytower. I can truthfully say that at that time I was worth my weight in lead.

Stagecrafts
. The sight of a skilled stagehand throwing a line around the cleat on a 20 foot flat is something not to be forgotten easily.

Panto. The crowds of pinky-blu chorus dancers crammed into the old dressing rooms near the stage, mostly toughened circuit professionals who could drink any of us under the table, but never did, choosing instead to tease us rotten.

Opera.

Ian McKellan. Chips With Everything.
Ray Smith. The Lion In Winter.
Nat Gonella. When Con sat crying at the prompt corner, listening to 'Georgia'.
Bernard Miles. Treasure Island.
Thelma Jackson. Mother Courage.
Derek Roy. Panto.
Ronnie and Ryan. Panto.

The Vol.

Limes.
At this time, The Grand still had a set of authentic old acetylene lime-lights. The contraption, which was in the top control room, was a mass of stalactites and stalagmites.