I settled into the Rhyl Journal offices quite quickly as the rest of the editorial team were a friendly bunch.
Mind you the working move to Rhyl was very quickly followed by another move – except this was a very short trip.
When NWN bought out the Journal the red-brick building on Russell Road housed not only editorial and advertising staff as well as the newspaper presses but also ran as a jobbing printers running off stationery, fancy invitations and anything else people needed.
The presses were obviously not needed as all printing would be done at Oswestry and these were sold off. The jobbing printing also ceased operation.
This just left editorial and advertising rattling around in a great big Victorian building.
It wasn’t long before we moved 100 yards down Russell Road into bright new ground floor offices. In fact it was my first time in a ground floor office (except my part-time role at the Gazette). Even the Leader office at Mold had been on the first floor.
One of the perks of being a young, single junior reporter was that sometimes you got sent on the less important stories while the seniors were covering crime and politics.
One such job was covering the beauty queen contests at the open air swimming pool.
I often accompanied our photographer, Glyn Roberts, but the job wasn’t always just for a caption on the lines of a page three.
The beauty contest above was for a “Miss Rhyl Festival” and instead of the standard parade of contestants in bathing costumes this was “a thrilling contest for the Junior Miss”.
It was a contest for girls aged 14 to 17 and the dress code was afternoon frock or cocktail dress.
The previous day a “Miss Bikini” contest at the same venue had 12 contestants.
The “Miss Festival” contestants had just enough entrants to ensure all three prize slots were filled.
The story angle was based on the bathing beauties being considered more glamorous than those more fully-clothed.
All three were local girls and the winner, Davilda Corry, had previously won a “Miss Rhyl” contest and a “Miss Scene”.
All this and she was still only 16.
It wasn’t all beauty queens that summer in Rhyl
Fun as it was to spend half an hour or so each week watching all the girls go by there were more serious stories as well as the somewhat mundane ones.
There were also some good nights attending the opening of a new club, or a midnight entertainment show. As it happens both of these were at the same venue – Billy Williams’ Downtown Club.
Billy belonged to one of the main amusement business families in Rhyl and when he was just 27 he opened a brand new club for late night entertainment and dancing in the town.
My first visit was to the opening of the club and, as it was only a walk along the promenade from my home and all refreshments (including drink) were on the house, I felt it would be churlish to claim expenses for night working.
The next time was when it had been open for a few weeks and I did the editorial for an advertising feature about the club.
We always made sure pieces like this were clearly marked “advertising feature” but I never went over the top in the way I wrote the piece.
To be honest in its first year Billy’s club didn’t really need any advertising stunts as it was a top value venue.
The third visit was when Billy launched his midnight cabaret season and the first star was Ken Dodd.
Now I knew of Ken mainly from his Sunday radio show (one of his catch-lines was “where’s me shirt”) and his appearances on Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
Ken Dodd: a favourite family entertainer but more than a little blue once the clock strikes midnight.
His midnight cabaret act was quite an eye-opener. This was no panto-style, slightly risqué act keeping just on the right side of decency.
If I had known what to expect I certainly would not have taken my girlfriend. Even Billy appeared somewhat taken aback at the content. I think there might have been a few members of Rhyl’s social elite who would not have been invited if he had known Doddy’s act.
Even the Diddy Men would have blushed.
This was not the first time any of my comedy heroes turned out to have feet of clay. I caught a well-known comedy duo at another late-night cabaret only a couple of months after this and their act was even worse than Ken.
At least when I stood in the wings of a Morecambe and Wise show five years later I didn’t hear anything that would make even Mary Whitehouse blush.
That summer in Rhyl proved one of the most varied of my life up to then but I didn’t know what lay over the horizon.
Dear friends and readers – sorry that the blog part of this post has been somewhat erratic in recent weeks.
I have been keeping up with the poetry each day because I believe it would be discourteous to leave a void for those who visit daily.
This covid19 has been tragic for so many even though there have been the good news stories where people such as the brilliant author Michael Rosen have teetered on the edge but pulled through.
Some say the government should have acted sooner in getting people to isolate but is it possible they did not realise the danger we all face?
Should we give them the benefit of the doubt?
I remember at the beginning of March there was a lot of talk about avoiding direct contacts outside your home and people did start to panic buy (think of the lack of toilet paper) but the government didn’t appear to show much concern at that stage.
Where we blasé about it because the government seemed blasé or did the government try and play it down in an effort to stop panic-buying?
I had noticed shortages from the very beginning of March. I didn’t go filling my trolley with two or three times the amount I normally bought, but I did buy a few extra bits.
I think my wife Marion recognised the dangers more.
I had been for the normal Friday shop and said maybe I should go out in the morning and get more in case of a lockdown.
Marion said “No.”
When I said better safe than sorry and one more trip to the shops might see us through for a couple of weeks she was even more adamant with her response “NO”.
I will never forget what she said when I asked why not:
“Because I don’t want to die!”
That brought me up with a jolt.
Marion is a very levelheaded person and her concern at the situation made me realise how serious it was getting.
We started our lockdown on Monday 16 March, my 70th birthday. Our son had been working from home for a week by then, directed to do so by his bosses.
It did mean our household was properly shielded as nobody needed to go out.
On the downside we would not see our eldest daughter and our two grandchildren. At least we had Skype.
Our other daughter proved a godsend. As she was still working at the school, where she is assistant head, she was still going out and did a weekly shop for us.
To avoid any contact she would leave it inside the gate and then back off to a safe distance. Then we could at least wave and blow kisses.
A few weeks ago we did manage to get a weekly delivery slot, although it did mean using three different supermarkets depending on who had a delivery slot.
I know many more of you have seen a lot worse and suffered much more than us but the whole thing does prey on the mind.
We are still shielding because we don’t believe it when the PM says everything’s OK again and then the figures shoot up because people believed him and flocked to the beach.
This situation does weigh heavily but I didn’t intend to bother my readers with it. On the other hand it was unfair not to provide a reasonably ordered blog and I thought you deserved an explanation.
The poems will continue and I hope to get my life story back on the road with at least four updates a week.
If I do occasionally fall behind please forgive an old man who wants to keep his readers happy but sometimes finds he can’t concentrate.
In the early years, when a young journalist is still in training, where they first work can make a great deal of difference.
I was raised in a large, busy, seaside town where my father was a businessman and one way or another I knew a good many of the people in Rhyl – the goodies and the baddies.
I started my proper newspaper training, however, in a small, inland rural town where I had to find my contacts from the base up.
If I had started in Rhyl I might have found it too easy to rely on people I knew already for my stories rather than building up my own network.
Obviously because I had attended a college in the area I did have a few contacts in Holywell, Dilys for one.
In the main, though, I was starting from scratch.
That is how you find the best contacts.
A reliable PC or police sergeant might tip you off to a good story which puts you in a strong position when you are talking to the inspector or chief inspector in charge of the district.
You don’t talk to the magistrates about upcoming stories – better to get your info from the magistrates’ clerk’s office. Not necessarily the actual clerk (who is normally a senior solicitor and far above talking to junior reporters) but one of the clerk’s juniors.
The bosses of these contacts don’t really mind basic information being passed on because it saves them time when you are really just asking for official confirmation.
At the end of the day, however, the real strength in your early days learning by experience is the type and measure of what is happening.
In Holywell it was quieter and more laid-back. Even crime was much more gentle. Very few armed robberies or political shenanigans.
At times the biggest thing to hit the news might be a row over who really should have won the prize for best giant marrow at the local vegetable show.
This time was not wasted, however, and at the end of the day what mattered most was reader interest and circulation.
A revelation about rates being frittered away on jolly jaunts (investigative studies in council parlance) for councillors and council officials would do less to sell papers than a report with pictures of the local school sports day.
A picture of the five winners of the major sports day events could add 30 or more to the circulation figures.
Each little Jack or Jill will have two lots of grandparents wanting a copy as well as: Uncle George who now lives down South; cousin Mary whose parents moved to Australia 30 years ago; godparents who now live in Scotland or England; and two or three spares in case somebody has been forgotten.
At the end of the day local papers serve local people and they tend to want local news.
There is only so much news in a rural township, however, although a bright spark did say, once upon a time: “Isn’t it amazing how there’s always just enough stories to fill a newspaper each week.”
If he only knew that sometimes there isn’t enough and what there is has been padded out, or “leaded”, to make the copy go further.
At other times there will be more than enough and some reports will be held over for a week but will still get in.
After all local newspapers are as much a matter of record as they are of news.
Robin's Nest 