A potted historie...

I was at secondary school with a girl whose Grandfather was from Aberkenfig. I asked her to find out what he knew about my family. This is what I learnt. My Grandfather married a woman from the coaltip (Llanelli) and my Dad went away in the forces and came back with a foreign woman (Maltese, from Egypt - it's complicated...!)

I love the summary of our history - I guess not the most common background for an Aberkenfig family...

Family History: My father's family

Several years ago I asked my Auntie Gladys (Dad's sister) about her family and wrote this based on what she said and bits I knew. The stuff about my grandparents is based on what my Gran told Gladys:

 

Alice Maud Llewellyn and Hubert Gunston were my paternal grandparents

Hubert was from Gloucester and ran away when he was 13. He went to sea and lied about his age. He had brother Ernie who was a postman.

Hubert was known as ‘Fiery Bert’ and was small but fierce.

Bert took lodgings with May Pullman in Llanelli.

Alice Llewellyn was from Llanelli and told her daughter Gladys that she dreamt of a man with brass buttons and a twirly moustache and it seemed that that is what she got!

Alice had brother Will who was a blacksmith. Brother Dai was lay preacher and sister Emmy was tailoress.

Bert  was possibly a wagon repair man. He was with Steelworks and may have been an inspector. Bert quarrelled a lot.

Bert and Alice moved on to Swansea, then Aberkenfig.

Lived at no. 31 or 21 the moved to 11 Dunraven Street.

Their children were:

Florence May

Harold William

Ernest Reginald (my father)

Gladys Elizabeth

Florrie’s children were Shirley, Rita and Jeanette:

Shirley married Ken and their children were Julie, Steve and David

Rita married Cliff and had Wakely, Guy and Victoria

Jeanette married Ian and their children were  Graham, Richard and Stuart

Harold and Gladys never married nor had children.

Ernest (my father) married Daria Molinari and had three children: Diane, Sheilagh and Irene.

The top picture is my maternal Grandmother with Harold as a baby. Harold was (we thought) the eldest, but apparently not. Because I've been writing  about Aberkenfig and came across the 1911 census website I decided to check out the family presence in 1911
I knew my Grandparents were living here and found them as expected - but also what would have been my uncle - named Bert after his father -  born in 1910! He didn't survive to overlap with my father and known siblings as far as I am aware - but what a surprise. Of couse child mortality was high in those days. I know that my Molinari grandparents lost a little girl - Emily - but didn't know about a lost Gunston...

This is the link for census: 

1911census

 The second picture is my father (sat on the right)  looking amazingly cool when having your photo taken was an event!

  

Tick and Tallymen - Credit and Callers in South Wales

Further to my earlier post on Christmas clubs and other forms of credit I've found the info on tally men.
This is the post:
Hitchins,brilliant breakfasts and...

Tallymen and credit in the Valleys feature  in the Bernice Rubens novel "Brothers". She lived in Cardiff and has a real feel for life in South Wales shown in "Brothers" and other novels.
Brothers by bernice Rubens

This is what she wrote:

Pavel was a credit draper. This was a trade most favoured by those immigrants who did not have a particular skill. Its great advantage was that it required little initial capital and even that could be credited. The trade itself was concerned with the sale of clothing to lower income groups at the minimum payment of a shilling a week, and the main hunting-ground for such clientele was the Welsh mining valleys. The tallyman would buy his goods on credit from the wholesale merchants, and make the rounds of his customers.The profit margin was narrow, the working hours long and arduous, but it already provided Pavel with a living, as it did many of his 'Landsleit'.*  Some of them, after a year or two, had bought their own houses, and some, like Max, had used the profits to set up a shop of their own...


...The job required little skill except that of book-keeping. Its major demand was on physical strength and endurance. Pavel set out on his journey encumbered with large parcels. He would travel by train to the central town of the valley, and from there would walk or wagon along the roads to the outlying villages and hamlets. It was back-breaking work, and especially hard in winters. But there was always a welcome in the valleys and the great bonus of the trade was the friendship and warmth of the mining communities. 

* a Landsleit was an  immigrant Jew sponsored and supported by a fellow countryman and enabled  to make a fresh start in a foreign country after leaving Russia

 In the sixties and seventies Blooms and other such credit salesmen travelled by van and would have an array of stuff with which to tempt and would take orders for specific items as well. This along with Provident cheques, catalogues, Christmas clubs and such were how people in Aberkenfig and other villages managed their budgets and accessed the limited credit available to them. Of course Provident and the Christmas clubs were saving schemes rather than the credit of the catalogues and tally men, but all seemed to make buying everyday goods and luxuries more painless for those on tight budgets.

Omp Pomp Pee and a Lousianna...

...My black cat can play the pianah...

Been thinking about street games played wnhen I was a youngster. The above was part of the rhyme for a very imaginatively named game of "Kerb or Wall" This was the rhyme and and counting/choosing rhyme for person to compete:
Omp Pomp Pee and a Lousianna
My black cat can play the pianah
 Omp Pomp Pee,
Stick him up a tree
Kerb or wall?
Kerb or wall? 
Person picked would choose kerb or wall and race against the picker. Race by chosen would be to wall (if chosen), back and then to kerb and back. Chooser would run to kerb (if not chosen) and back, followed by wall and back. How sophisticated is that?! 


I was fascinated by kids' games and also the differences between language and games in different areas.The Opies have written extensively on this:
Lore andLanguage of Schoolchildren

In children's books, kids played "tag" and in Aberkenfig we played "touch". Touch came in a variety of forms: off ground, twty down, tunnnel and aeroplane to name a few. When one was off ground or twtying (crouching down) one was safe from being touched/tagged/caught/losing. In tunnel touch one became static, but could be released by someone crawling through one's legs...

I was also very taken with the idea of respite words varying according to one's location - something mapped out by the Opies.  In Aberkenfig if one needed a break in a game one asked for "bars". Cree and Pax I believe are most common and as "barley" is used, "bars" is likely to be a version or corruption of it. Just had a google and discovered the term for such words is "truce term":
wiki on truce terms

I shall write more about childhood games in Aberkenfig and surrounding areas again.

No sex please, we're Welsh...

As you know if you have visited my delightful village or read previous posts, there is a sex shop in Aberenfig which causes me much amusement. I was chatting about this to a neighbour (as you do!) and discovered that a very nice man working in te shop when it had its protester used to provide her with a cup of tea - How sweet (and slightly mad) is that?!

ps If you've not already found out -  clicking on pictures gives a bigger version and you can magnify further if you want to read the article.

Grilled cheese, poached eggs and kitchen suppers...

 Just read an article about the language of meals and their  social history and meanings
kitchen suppers, francis maude and Rachel Cooke
It seems that even the word "meals" is "non-U"!

"Supper" seems to be one of those words that is  completely working class, posh or pseudo-posh depending on what you eat and what you call your other meals. Not sure how "supper clubs" and of course the most famous one - "The Last" Supper" - fit into this...







In Aberkenfig in the sixties and seventies to my knowledge and recollection,  the meal in the middle of the day was definitely "dinner" and those that toook it at school needed dinner money rather than lunch money. 

On weekdays we'd come home to "tea" which was another substantial meal taken quite early after school and work. This meant that one often got peckish after about nine and that was when the movable feast that was supper took place. All meals were taken at the kitchen table except supper which was eaten in the sitting room in front of the TV.

My younger sister and my father were rather fond of  grlled cheese. This was like cheese on toast without the toast - slices of cheese just grilled on an enamel plate. My father added HP sauce to his, but Irene ate it as it was.

my favourite supper dish was poached egg(s) on toast - preferably with a firm white and runny yolk. I'm still fond of a poached egg and will settle for a more set yolk that risk the dreaded runny white! I've experimented with various ways of helping the egg to set, but still prefer a freeformed egg cooked in a pan of water with a good slosh of vinegar in it and sometimes some salt as extra insurance against an over-floaty white. Somehow egg poachers are not the same... I like to spread the egg over my toast and sprinkle with an obscene amount of black pepper, then eschew cutlery and eat with my fingers.

Sundays were - and still seem to be - different as most people have a significant meal in the middle of the day - Sunday lunch or dinner. As a youngster I loved the idea of a "high tea" on Sunday evening with sandwiches and cake all served at the table and looking my idea of  a meal from books. Tinned fruit and icecream elevated this even further. Irene and I didn't like tinned fruit, but loved the syrup from the tinned pears and peaches that the rest of the family ate. This was before we had a freezer and the block of icecream would be purchased from the only shop in the village to be open on a Sunday and bought wrapped in newspaper and borne home in some excitement.

Of course, nobody fully understands and expounds the significance of tinned fruit as the late and great Dylan Thomas in "The Peaches"
See below for summary and response to the short story:
"The Peaches" in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

I still love high tea/ party food/buffet type meal with basics of sandwiches and cakes with additions of sausage rolls, pasties, crisps, nuts etc.

Illicit Bluebell Picking and May Altars

Listening to The Archers I realised it was May Day and memories of May Altars and picking armfuls of bluebells came flooding back.

Many Catholic (and other) churches have an altar dedicated to Mary, but there is also a tradition to have a home altar to her in "her" month, which is May.

Info on May Altars from "Catholic Fire"

As a youngster, I would turn a chest of drawers top into my May Altar, with a statue and some candles and said bluebells. I did try Mayflower (hawthorn) which seemed appropriate, but didn't last.

An elderly neighbour also told me it was unlucky, but I was not particularly superstitious.  Just looked up hawthorn and was reminded of the Joseph of Aramathea connection and the famous Glastonbury thorn:
about the hawthorn/Mayflower

I'd also put violets and other flowers on the May Altar, to complete it, but they didn't last as well as the bluebells. The forestry as we knew it had glades of the flowers as well as ones growing on the roadside along the path and Dee Greepo/Ty Cribwr Hill.

Seems strange that picking wild flowers didn't get a second glance then and was encouraged in a hymn:

"O Mary We Crown Thee." (Copyright 1938 St. Basil Hymnal)

Refrain:
O Mary we crown thee
With blossoms today
Queen of the Angels
Queen of the May.
Bring flowers of the fairest
From garden and woodland
And hillside and dale.
 Extract from "Catholic Fire" as above

Of course I wouldn't pick wildflowers nowadays and enjoyed the bluebell woods in the Forest of Dean last year. The bluebells were out very early this year though and I saw some in March in the grounds of the "castle" at Southerndown - they were out at the same time as the daffodills whch was rather nice. There is this lovely enclosed garden which is great fun.
Information on Dunraven House/ "castle" at Southerndown