Day Off Week 5 2025

Proper day off today. Dressed for it in t shirt and trainers, I headed off for a walk on the Heath quite early and had an early cuppa too, reading David Copperfield. Read quite a bit of that through the day (it's brilliant, of course) but also found time to watch the latest University Challenge, do some blogging and write a letter for someone, etc. Got some cheese in Waitrose to write up on my cheese blog. Near the end of the day I had bottle of pear cider that I bought from Marks and Spencer. Very nice.Reading Dickens description of Copperfield and the waiter brought back a memory of school days and acting out the scene in class (Year 8?). I was the waiter and sought to extract as much comedy from it as I could.

Stan Freberg Banana Boat Song ft Bugs Bunny & Speedy Gonzales et al

This used to come on the TV from time to time, when Iwas a kid. I thought it was hilarious There is another one I can't find, where the Yellow rose of Texas gets a simialr treatment.

Childhood Anecdote 2

I thought this morning for some reason about an incident from my childhood. I was five or six years old and I was at the top of the stairs and for some reason decided to out my wellingtons on. As I did so I fell down the stairs. When I came to the bottom I remember both my father and mother rushing to see what had happened (it must have been a Saturday). I recall sitting at the bottom of the stairs and looking up at them. They were really concerned and were seeking to interpret the signs on my face as to whether I was injured, which I was not. Meanwhile, I was only thinking that I must be in big trouble for playing with my wellingtons on the stairs.

At the same time I remember them looking at my toes and noting that both of my big toe nails grow double (ie split - not because they are damaged but because of a genetic abnormality). It is the first time I remember being aware of this.  

Blog of the Week 8

Micah Thomas 1778-1853

The first oil painting that I ever saw
Was of a man who had lived long before.
Micah Thomas his name, the people said,
Who for many years back had been quite dead.
Yet in his day, God's people he had led,
Serving as principal of a college
Filling young men's hearts with holy knowledge.
This blog is now here to elucidate
Who he was and why to appreciate
What he did on earth, his point of view,
One sev'n sev'n eight to eighteen fifty two.

As the above doggerel reveals the first oil painting I ever saw was of Micah Thomas. I must have been four. It hung in the main Sunday School hall of the chapel where I was eventually converted. You can see it on the blog clip. Micah Thomas was the principal of the Baptist College that preceded the one that later moved to Cardiff. I began the blog in 2012 It can be found here. There are 56 posts there. There have been a modest 5000 hits or so, 

Most popular post on the blog is the first part of an article by E W Price Evans in the Baptist Quarterly in 1951. You can find it here. .

When I was 5

We're helping our oldest grandson celebrate his fifth birthday.

I remember what I had when I was five in 1964 - a Triang two wheel scooter.
I should add that I remember being in the kitchen of what was then our new home and seeing the scooter still in parts in its cardboard box. My dad then put it together. I am now 60 and my dad is long dead but there is an unfading picture in my head of being 5 and watching the scooter appear at my father's hands. He has set eternity in ourhearts.

Childhood Anecdote 1

https://www.historics.co.uk/auction/lot/lot-223---1961-ford--mk-ii-zephyr-6-convertible/?lot=8606&sd=1

Somewhere around 1965 I went as a six year old with my family on our usual summer caravan holiday to Porthcawl. At some point my dad's younger brother Peter (still alive and well and living in Canada) turned up with a new car he had bought secondhand, perhaps his first car. It was some sort of Ford Zephyr, a convertible if I remember correctly. Anyway, the think about this car was the registration, GAR 12. My uncle told me (as uncles do) he'd got it with me in my mind (we had just moved into our new home, number 12). I remember thinking at the time that he might have been better to have had GARY B and dropped the 12. GAR would make it a Hertfordshire registration I think.

Funeral St Bride's Wentloog

I was at a funeral yesterday. Going back home is always a little troumatic I find. I grew up in Cwmbran and the nearest boy of my age on the street where I lived, lived three doors up. His father was older than mine (and had fought in the war) but both worked at Lucas Girling (though my father left when I was 10). Stephen and I were thrown together from babyhood. Sadly when we were 6 Stephen's mother left home and we lost touch a little not really reconnecting again until we were 9 or 10. He is the one who invited me to the church where we were both converted and baptised. I was his best man when he married Fay, still quite young, and he reciprocated some years later when i married Eleri. Unlike me, he has continued to live in the same general area. He is an accountnat.

This month his dad, Uncle Eric, died at the grand age of 95. He was buried in the graveyard of St Bridget's,.St Bride's Wentlooge near Newport, where he grew up and where my friend Stephen lived a short time. It is a distinctive low lying part of the country. It makes me think of the Kent Marshes in Dickens. We were only about 25 present at the church, where we sang Hark the herald and Abide with me with food served later at the Ashbridge in Cwmbran. I enjoyed being with my sister and talking to some old college friends and members of Stephen's family.

Uncle Eric was a distant figure for me. My main memory is of him coming to our house weekly on a Thursday night to pay my mother the rent she had paid for him. It always seemed to be during Top of the Pops. I spent a lot of time when he was out at work in his house in the summer holidays as a teenager jumping down the stairs or over the hedge (they moved immediately around the corner and we moved across the road when sisters came along but we were still only yards from each other's homes). We listened to Uncle Eric's records (Last train to San Fernando, Trains and boats and planes, Ernie, etc) adn soemtimes Stephen would try to horrify us with his dad's spare glass eye. As was said in an excellent eulogy, he was a conservative man of humour who loved to tell stories. It was right to honour him and his good deeds. Whatever age you are it is never good to lose your father.

Childhood Memories

This video alludes to four childhood memories growing up in the sixties - the revolving ashtray (my dad smoked and we had one - great fun unless full of ash) the toy woodpecker (we didn't have one but my friend did and it endlessly fascinated me) Betta Bilda (made by Airfix - the inferior version of Lego) Minibrix an even earlier building kit from the thirties passed on to me by an uncle.

10 Classical works for children

woodley wonderworks, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

1. Carnival of the animals by Saint-Saens
2. Toy Symphony by L Mozart or Haydn
3. Noye's Fludde by Britten
4. Young persons guide to the orchestra by Britten
5. Peter and the wolf by Prokofiev
6. Children's corner suite by Debussy
7. Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck
8. The Nutcracker suite by Tchaikovsky
9. Mother goose by Ravel
10. The sorcerers' apprentice by Dukas

Kids say the UnPCest things

soulchristmas, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

https://www.krokant.ch/de/sortiment/weihnachten.php

I was out shopping this afternoon and I overheard a kid, seeing the chocolate Father Christmas, say "Oh look it's a black one not like the normal ones". I don't think anyone else heard him but me.

Grammar Schools

I've been thinking of doing a post on Grammar Schools and as I have five minutes I thought I'd go for it. In 1970 (or whatever year it was) I sat the 11 plus. I have the vaguest memories of it. Some kid had seen the chairs and desks were arranged differently (I think we did it in the classroom not the hall - I can't remember if there was more than one separate session). My parents had spoken about it to me and my mother had bought me non-verbal reasoning tests so I was familiar with them. Up until that point I had always wondered if I was thick or clever (I then held to the theory that everyone is one or the other). My confusion arises from being quite good with words but hopeless with numbers.

Once I passed the 11-plus and got to the school of my choice I was confirmed in my notion that I was actually bright. I remember my mother's delight that I had done so well. I remember the post coming and making the choice from Croesyceiliog, our local, West Mon (boys only) and Abersychan (so far up the valley I'd never been there - and they wore brown uniforms). The choice was not hard as I had no wish to travel on a bus daily. I did get my first choice but what we seemed to be unaware of was that Croesy would no longer be a Grammar by the time I got there. I do remember being treated like a Grammar kid at the beginning, however. We were left in no doubt that we were special, and considering there were kids from as far up the valley as Blaenavon it was believable.

I pretty much remember which school most of my class and the one next door went to, even kids I never saw again. A lot is made of how damaging it is to label kids failures at the tender age of 11. In my case the problem was labelling me clever when in fact I was pretty average. I worked it out, eventually, of course.

The basic flaw with the Grammar idea is that you cannot take a child at 11 and know what sort of career lies ahead for it. It's nonsense. I'm not a strong advocate of Comprehensives but for most of us that is the most likely way to make progress.

10 Things said to be bad for you

Looking for inspiration to Orwell's Coming up for air once again, he has a list of six things his mother would always tell him were bad for him. It's the basis for this current list.

1. Raw potatoes are poisonous (apparently they are unlikely to kill you but it's not recommended)

2. Raw gooseberries give you colic and raw raspberries a skinrash

3. Swimming after meal causes stomach cramps (Orwell has having a bath)

4. A cut between the thumb and forefinger gives you lockjaw (my mother passed on this myth to me - untrue although that area is a likely one for tetanus if you do cut it)

5. Sweets are bad for your teeth (true if you don't clean them pretty soon)

6. Eating between meals is bad for you

7. Not drying properly will give you a yeast infection

8. Wearing unaired clothes or going out with wet hair will give you a cold (another favourite axiom with my mam)

9. Egg shells or water used to boil eggs will give you warts

10. If you swallow chewing gum it just stays there (apparently not)

A childhood memory

I began my preaching yesterday evening with an anecdote from childhood.  It is from the days of cigarettes and fireplaces. It is of my nana or grandmother (my dad's mam) leaning over the open coal fire at home and burning the edge of the white tissue paper on the back of the foil from a packet of her cigarettes (Gold Flake or Kensitas she used to smoke – lots of people smoked in those days). She was then able to peel the white paper from the foil and add it to her collection of silver paper.

Lots of people collected silver paper in those days, in the sixties. My other nana who didn't smoke was collecting it too. The silver foil was sold to companies who would use it tin the steel making process. The money they paid for it was used by charities seeking to help the blind.

There was quite a high awareness of the needs of the blind then. My parents and grandparents were especially concerned about toxacariasis, which can be caught from dog faeces, if the dog has ring worm. They always seemed to be reading about cases where children had become blind by this means.

An anecdote from childhood

John Grayson, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I just put this on another blog of mine.
My father was a fine sportsman. His main sports were soccer, (British) baseball and swimming. I never saw him play soccer but I did see him play baseball on the winning side in a final in 1965. I also remember watching him swimming once. It was at Maindee swimming baths in Newport and the annual Girlings swimming Gala (which we all pronounced Gayler) again some time around 1965. I can see my dad now in his green bathers lining up for the obstacle race. He was 6' 2" and had perfected an amazing racing dive so when they were started he went straight into the lead and I was sure he would win. But my mother knew better and tried to prepare me. One of the obstacles was to bite through balloons and she knew that with his false dentures (which he had from the age of 21) he wouldn't be able to go on as fast as the younger men. And so it proved. He came in third and won a set of three decorated chalice style beer glasses, which we had for years and almost never used.
(By 1965 my dad was 36).

Comics as a kid

One of the perks in our house was that we were allowed a weekly comic. As best I remember these were the ones I took from the ages of about 5-11.

Farewell Friends Reunited

I hear that Friends Reunited is on its last legs overwhelmed by the social media sites that have come since it began. I must confess I have only been on it in my wife's name. My wife signed up and after she had had a little go on it I tried and found I could look up my old schools using her log in. I felt reluctant to put my onw name put there. I'm not the only one. A friend told me had been on there and had been disappointed to find lots of names he didn't recognise. He also said that he had gone on there using an alias. Not the only one I guess! Your school days may take up only a small portion of your life but how fascinating it is to think where all the kids you once knew may be now.

News story here

Skivers, Moochers

I have a clear memory of the first time I heard the word skiver. It was my first year, the first weeks probably, in Grammar School. Our class (1E) was in a demountable classroom near the woods - out of bounds, of course. From the woods we heard singing it was Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep by Middle of the Road. A helpful voice said "Skivers miss". I wasn't a hundred per cent sure what the word meant but no doubt it referred to what I had until then known as moochers (everyone else says mitchers). I think I assumed that skiving from Junior School was mooching and mooching from big school was skiving. Mark Twain called it playing hookey I later discovered.

I see mooch is listed here

mooch Verb. 1. To idle away time, to loaf around. E.g."The kids were just mooching about the streets looking for something to do." 2. To amble along, to walk casually. 3. To play truant. [Welsh use] Noun. 1. The idling away of time. 2. The act of ambling or walking casually. E.g."I'm going for a mooch around the shops."
I'd meant to put this on my Proverbs and sayings blog here, which I have now.

All my Christmases at once

So not to be too tedious about this. I had this curious idea that I'd like to be scientist. This lead to the gifts of a microscope (1967) which was good fun. Even a human hair looks interesting under the lens of a microscope. I don't think I ever really learned anything much from it. The chemistry set (1968) was as boring as one might expect. Nothing blew up. I did learn to make copper sulphate crystals, however, and was later placed in a competition at school for the best ones. In 1971 it was a telescope, which again wasn't quite the fun you hoped for. I tried looking at the night sky with it and learned very little. I do remember the joy of being able to read the words Lin Pac clearly on the factory across the valley from our house. When I began at the grammar school I joined an astronomy club that met on Friday nights and gave a talk on telescopes once. Beyond knowing a few obvious constellations my knowledge of the night sky is very poor. The electronics kit (1972) was as disappointing as all the rest. I managed to put something together once but it never worked. It was beginning to dawn on me that science was not my metier and I eventually dropped all science subjects at school not pursuing any of them to exam level. I like to read popular science books from time to time but have no aptitude for that area whatsoever.

The bicycle and the cassette recorder break up the sequence. I think the bicycle must have been around 1969. I was quite late learning to ride a bicycle being rather big, having little sense of balance and no bicycle for many years. I must have been able to ride by then as I recall going out on it on Christmas day (nor raining but the road was wet). The receiving of the gift stands out as we would always have our gifts in our bedrooms - a stocking with an apple and orange at the bottom, a comic down the side and various little items (I remember a mini stapler once and putting a staple directly into my thumb. Ouch!) and then a sack of toys. The bicycle was never brought upstairs, of course, and so I thought I had had all my presents until I went downstairs and found it in the front room. It was grey, a sort of shopper's bike. I had a lot of fun with it. Once you crossed the main road from us you were in the countryside and I loved cycling out there with friends. The bicycle was a Pegasus.

The cassette recorder seemed quite a revolution at the time and the cassette tape certainly did have its impact. This thing was made by Standard and weighed quite a bit. At that time Japanese companies were still trying to look English not the other way round. Anyway it did the job okay. I remember they had a steel band at the school summer fair, which I taped. I also have a memory of Telegram Sam by T Rex being performed on Top of the Pops for the first time and trying to tape it with a microphone. Great fun.

I have no strong memories after that. I suppose I'd reached that stage where they would buy me clothes. It happens to the best of us.

A Child's Christmas in Wales

Dylan Thomas began his wonderful little book with the above title

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.

I have been trying to recapture my childhood Christmases. There is some confusion in my mind but as best I can remember each Christmas between 1965 when I was 6 and 1972 when I was 13 I had a main present from my parents and the order was as follows

1965 Johnny Seven

1966 Trik-Trak

1967 Microscope

1968 Chemistry set

1969 Bicycle

1970 Telescope

1971 Electronics kit

1972 Cassette recorder

The first two need some explanation. The Johnny Seven (and I write the day after the death of Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK47) was a child's gun that had seven components. It shot plastic white bullets, had a rifle action trigger, made a machine gun noise, had a grenade launcher and had a detachable handgun. I can't quite remember the other two (anti-tank rocket and armour piercing shell). It was big thing for a six year old (perhaps I was seven) and I remember that it was useless for lugging round in a game of war. In the end I just used to use the detachable handgun.
As for Trik-Trak see the video above which will show you both how exciting it seemed (especially after the effort involved in setting up Scalextric) and how basic it actually was. I think I was slightly disappointed even on the day I received it. The "scenery" was never used (except, oh yes, a cardboard tunnel - useless). I remember reading on the massive box that it was made in Northern Ireland.
You can see what a sucker I was for advertising. If I was little today I'd be recommending a Wonga loan to my parents.

Another present Christmas 1964

I've been thinking about the Christmas of 1964 and I think it must have been that Christmas that I also received an orange plastic Beatles guitar as above. The guitar survived for many years without strings serving as a prop for miming to records. I had forgotten it had only four strings. Not an issue at the time.