Fifteen six and one for his nob*

During my time with the Herald I was never called on to do weekend work. Delwyn enjoyed covering football matches on Saturday afternoons and took Friday afternoons off in lieu.

As I normally had weekends off I am sticking to the routine here for now.

I have always enjoyed playing cards, whether a two-handed game of six-pack bezique or four-handed gin rummy or even Newmarket which we used to play with buttons instead of money.

The games I enjoyed the most, however, were the times I played cribbage with my grandfather, Harry Lloyd, my mother’s father.

In the late 60s he came to live with us and a few times a year my great-aunts would come over from Liverpool on a Sunday visit and Grandad would join them in a game of cards.

Auntie Flo and Auntie Bea were my mother’s maternal aunts and Flo was married to Uncle Bill who was also my grandfather’s cousin and best friend. Auntie Sally was Bill’s sister and Grandad’s cousin as well.

One thing Grandad rarely talked about was his experiences in the two major wars of the 20th century.

In 1914 he had answered the call of Lord Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, who sought to raise a battalion of “Liverpool Pals” as part of the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment. He ended up with enough volunteers to create four battalions.

All I knew of that time, however, was: Bill was in the Liverpool Scottish battalion and his younger brother Bob was in another of the Pals battalions; Grandad was in an entertainment group called the Verey Lights; and Grandad took a bullet through his hand which got him a couple of weeks of “Blighty Leave”.

He was also called up in the 1939-45 war as a Reservist and helped train many of the raw recruits to the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment.

He never talked about his experiences in the trenches and he never mentioned the people who were his “enemy” in both wars.

He was not living with us when I went to Germany with the Little Theatre group.

By the summer of ’67 he was with us, however, when our German friends made the return trip and I took the week off to spend time with them.

The lad whose family I had stayed with was unable to join his friends and a young man called Anton Mütschler was to stay with us instead.

I must confess I was not sure how Grandad was going to react to having a German in the house.

On the day of arrival we all met up at the theatre and renewed old acquaintances and made new ones.

Because I hadn’t passed my test yet my mother drove over to pick up Anton and myself and his luggage. When we got back Grandad had already gone to bed and Anton and I had a late supper.

The following day we left before Grandad got up and went on the first of the excursions that had been planned.

It was a fun day out visiting some of the sights along the coast and there was an evening out planned for later. In the meantime I headed home with Anton to introduce him to my grandfather.

With some trepidation I took him into the lounge where Grandad was watching television.

I gave him my usual hug then said: “This is Anton. He’ll be staying with us this week. Remember I told you about the trip we took out there.”

He started to get up carefully and Anton stepped forward saying: “No, don’t get up sir. I am very pleased to meet you.”

As Grandad sat back Anton put his hand forward and there was a polite shake between them.

Then our guest said: “Excuse me a moment, I have to get something from my luggage.”

He came back with a bottle-shaped package, another flat package and an odd-shaped small package.

He put the first package on the table and said: “That is for your parents.”

The flat package he handed to me and the final one to my grandfather.

“This is for you Herr Lloyd, a small token of respect from a generation of young people who want to reach out in friendship.”

I waited whil Grandad opened his gift to reveal a rounded-off triangular ashtray with a floral decoration handpainted on the base and a gilded greeting:

“Grus aus Gögglingen”

Grandad looked at it, then looked up at Anton and said: “That is a very thoughtful of you young man.”

I almost breathed a sigh of relief. As I said my grandfather rarely spoke about either of the wars, although I was aware of one other incident.

On the first day of the Somme in 1916 Grandad, Bill and young Bob were each with their Pals’ battalions ready to go over the top. A few days before they had met up in a little town near the front.

The three of them had no idea it was the last time they would all be together.

At the end of that first day Grandad and Bill made it back to their appropriate trenches.

Bob did not.

We had quite a busy itinerary that week, including a trip up Snowdonia. On the third night it was a home evening for the hosts and their visitors to get to know each other better.

Grandad and Anton had not spent much time together but that evening he asked our visitor if he played cards.

He did, but we did not recognise the names of any of them. Then Grandad asked Anton if he would like to play cribbage.

I don’t know if any of you have ever played this game but I used to spend hours playing it with my grandfather.

Points are scored by matching up cards in your own hand and a dummy hand. The points are marked up on a board with holes and pegs.

Although he had never played it before Anton took to the game very quickly, although he only beat my grandfather two or three times.

In fact he was so keen on the game that he asked to play it with Grandad at almost every free moment.

It was a joy to see this simple game not just bridge the gap between generations but also between nations – nations which had been at war with each other not just once but twice within living memory.

This was not the highlight of the visit.

That came on the last day when Anton was due to leave. He had shaken hands with my parents and my sister but when he turned to say goodbye to my grandfather he said: “Anton, I have enjoyed your visit here very much and especially our time playing cribbage. I want you to have this.”

With that he presented Anton with his cribbage board.

That may not seem very much but Grandad had had that board since he first played cribbage and he had taken it with him in 1915 when he was shipped over to France.

I have never felt as moved by the presentation of such an apparently simple gift as I did that day. I know Anton was moved as well. He was literally speechless and he gave my grandfather a hug with tears in his eyes.

I stayed in touch with Anton for a few years after that and he always asked after my grandfather.

A simple gift but presented with so much friendship behind it.

(*cribbage points are made by by matching values to make 15. A five plus a 10, jack and king would give 15 three times making six and if the jack is the same suit as the start card the winner gets an extra point – one for his nob.)

PS: I bought Grandad a new cribbage board and played many more games with him. I still have that board.

The Vixen

by John Clare

Among the taller woods with ivy hung,

The old fox plays and dances round her young.

She snuffs and barks if any passes by

And swings her tail and turns prepared to fly.

The horseman hurries by, she bolts to see,

And turns agen, from danger never free.

If any stands she runs among the poles

And barks and snaps and drives them in the holes.

The shepherd sees them and the boy goes by

And gets a stick and progs the hole to try.

They get all still and lie in safety sure,

And out again when everything’s secure,

And start and snap at blackbirds bouncing by

To fight and catch the great white butterfly.

Lady Midnight

by Leonard Cohen

I came by myself to a very crowded place. I was looking for someone who had lines in her face. I found her there, but she was past all concern. I asked her to hold me; I said: Lady, unfold me, but she scorned me and told me I was dead and could never return.

I argued all night, like so many have before, saying: Whatever you give me, I need so much more. Then she pointed at me where I kneeled on the floor. She said: Don’t try to use me, or slyly refuse me, just win me or lose me — it is this that the darkness is for!

I cried, O Lady Midnight, I fear that you grow old; the stars eat your body and the wind makes you cold. If we cry now, she said, it will only be ignored. So I walked through the morning, the sweet early morning, I could hear my lady calling: You’ve won me, you’ve won me, my lord.

Enjoying a drop of the holy spirit

Bill kept to his word and the next day I went to talk to the local vicar, the RC priest and three non-Conformist ministers.

One was down in Greenfield and the others were at all four points of the compass in Holywell itself.

The “stories” were nothing to write home about, really just snippets about the Mothers’ Union, or the church choir, or an upcoming fete or jumble sale but the vicar and two of the non-Conformist ministers, including the Presbyterian, offered me tea and biscuits.

The priest was the best, he was Irish, not of Irish descent but real Irish Irish, and instead of an ordinary cup of tea he slipped a slug of Irish whiskey in it.

It was lucky he was my last call and he was the closest to the office. In fact I had parked my scooter at the office and just walked down a side road to find him.

I had only ever had whisky in tea once before and that was when I was going to play tennis with a girlfriend, Vanessa.

She was still getting changed when I called to pick her up and her mother invited me in for a cup of tea while I waited.

I thought it tasted odd but just thought she used something like Earl Grey or some other fancy tea. I was too polite to make a comment.

Vanessa came down, all set for tennis with a short pleated white skirt, a short-sleeved white blouse, and sandals. She carried her racquet and a pair of white plimsolls.

I thanked her mother for the tea and we headed off to the tennis courts. By the time we got there I felt a little light-headed but thought the exercise would set me right.

After missing two serves completely I managed to strike the ball and it skimmed the net. I missed her return and then nearly tripped over my feet.

Vanessa came round the net and asked if I was OK. She then asked if the tea had tasted “odd” and when I told her it had but I was too polite to comment she laughed.

“My mother must have put a couple of shots of whisky in it. She doesn’t bother asking, she just does it.”

There was certainly no way I could play tennis that morning so Vanessa and I just went for a walk in the park and the effects wore off.

The priest’s whiskey took a little while longer to wear off and there was no female companionship to help me over it. Luckily that day Roger was on a late shift so I had time to let it wear off in the office.

Later that afternoon when Bill returned I reported to him about the parochial calls and he seemed satisfied. He also gave me an expenses form and told me how much per mile I could charge for petrol and how much I could put down for “refreshments” such as coffees with Dilys.

It wasn’t a life-changing amount but it made the following week’s wage packet a little bit heavier.

The weeks turned into months and the routine remained the same. We typed up reports; I did parish calls; Delwyn was given the odd afternoon off in return for going to one of the local clubs’ Saturday afternoon matches; I got a few tips from Dilys about local “happenings” (Girl Guides off to a jamboree, sometimes even abroad); and every day Bill left the office at 11am and got back at about 3.15 pm and then sounded as though he was typing up enough to fill a newspaper three times over every day.

Then one day, about four months in Delwyn and I decided it was time we found out where Bill went by ringing the contact number.

After five rings someone picked up the phone and said: “Crown Inn Holywell, can I help you?”

I quickly put the phone down and we both crossed to the window and looked up the High Street to where we could see the sign for the Crown Inn.

At least we now knew where Bill had his second office and where he probably picked up most of his stories.

Looking back I don’t now blame Bill for spending so little time trying to explain journalism to two raw recruits. After all it was quicker for him to do most of the work himself than spend hours teaching us journalism.

At the time I did feel I was being short-changed.

Later on I found he did do something special which was to make a great difference to my future.

Groundhog Day in Holywell

Each day Delwyn and I turned up at the office and each day Bill set us tasks which were basically typing up copy in a presentable format.

Newly-fledged copy typists could have done the job straight out of secretarial college and they would probably have been paid at the same rate.

Then one morning, when I was down in the kitchen making coffee, the receptionist came through and said a young lady was at the front desk asking to speak to me.

I went through to the reception area, basically a landing in between Bill’s office and the advertising/administrative office, and was surprised to see one of my former college classmates, Dilys.

I was delighted to see her and asked if she had just popped in on the offchance I would be there or had made a special trip to see me.

“I’ve got a story for you,” she said. “I thought you might be interested. I’ve just been to London to receive my Duke of Edinburgh Award.”

I kept an interested look on my face, after all Dilys and I had been quite close at college in a platonic way, and I didn’t want to insult her.

“That sounds great, I’ll tell you what, let me just take this coffee up to my colleague and grab my notebook and pencil and we could pop out for a coffee and talk about it.”

I told Delwyn I was just nipping out to get a story. He barely looked up as I put his coffee down and just kept on tapping away at a sports report he was writing.

I took Dilys to a little cafe on the High Street and bought two coffees.

Once we were seated I asked her how she was doing and discovered she was still looking for a job.

It then turned out there was more to it than “Holywell girl gets Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award”.

Dilys had written to the DoE award office before the presentation asking if she could have her certificate in Welsh but heard nothing before going down to London.

I knew that she was very proud of being Welsh and was bilingual. I also knew that it was national pride as opposed to nationalist pride.

When she attended the award ceremony she had been taken to one side and told her letter had arrived too late to be dealt with before the ceremony. It had, however, been decided that a certificate would be drawn up in Welsh and would be personally signed by the Duke and sent on to her within a couple of weeks.

By now even I had realised this was a good story – a year later I would have realised that it was a story worth selling to various big newspapers as well but I didn’t know about that extra source of income at the time.

As it was I took down the details Dilys had given me and made a note of a couple of comments she had made about being “honoured” and “proud”. I also made a note of her address and telephone number in case Bill wanted a photograph (I had learned by now that all pictures for our area were taken on the same day, a Wednesday, when a photographer came over from Chester for about three hours).

We finished our coffee and I thanked Dilys for the story before saying goodbye and going back to the office.

I told Delwyn what had happened and then got back to whatever routine tasks Bill had arranged for that day.

I probably rewrote the Dilys story three or four times and I still wasn’t really happy with it.

I set it aside when I headed off for lunch with Roger at the pub. It had become a regular occurrence depending on which shift he was on. It was turning into the high point of each day.

When I returned I rewrote the story yet again and when Bill came back I didn’t wait to hear him start typing but went straight down to show him the story I had written.

He glanced over it and nodded approval and asked if I had a contact number for her as it was worth a picture.

“Is she pretty?” he asked.

“Well, yes. I think so.”

“Good, the photographer does take a better shot if he likes the subject.”

“Did you say you took her out for coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Well you’d better claim that back on expenses. In fact you can go out tomorrow and call on the local God squad to find out if they have anything for us.

“You’ll need to go on your scooter or you’ll be out all day, and you can claim that as mileage. I’ll explain it to you on Friday.”

That was it. I went back upstairs and got on with my work.

We had, by now, reached a stage where we took it in turns to take the copy down at the end of the day and it happened that day it was my turn.

When I took the copy down Bill looked up from his typewriter and said: “Good job today. You’d better take this and start building up your contacts.”

He took a small notebook out of his desk drawer, smaller than the reporter’s spiral-bound notebooks we used, and tossed it over to me.

When I opened it I realised it was an address book with the letters shown down the side.

That was my first little black book and it was to become invaluable over the next few years.

The first name I entered in it was Dilys.

That day was to become a memorable one over the next few months – mainly because it was different.

Delwyn didn’t seem to have any local contacts.

Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carroll

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the JubJub bird, and shun,

The frumious Bandersnatch!

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

Long time the manxome foe he sought —

So rested he by the TumTum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of black,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through, and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head,

He went galumphing back.

‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’

He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

The Ballad of Rudolph Reed

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Rudolph Reed was oaken.

His wife was oaken too.

And his two good girls and his good little man

Oakened as they grew.

‘I am not hungry for berries.

I am not hungry for bread.

But hungry, hungry for a house

Where at night a man in bed

‘May never hear the plaster

Stir as if in pain.

May never hear the roaches

Falling like fat rain.

‘Where never wife and children need

Go blinking through the gloom.

Where every room of many rooms

Will be full of room.

‘Oh my home may have its east or west

Or north or south behind it.

All I know is I shall know it,

And fight for it when I find it.’

It was in a street of bitter white

That he made his application.

For Rudolph Reed was oakener

Than others in the nation.

The agent’s steep and steady stare

Corroded to a grin.

Why, you black old, tough old, hell of a man,

Move your family in!

Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed,

Nary a curse cursed he,

But moved in his House. With his dark little wife,

And his dark little children three.

A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye

That squeezed into a slit.

But the Rudolph Reeds and the children three

Were too joyous to notice it.

For were they not firm in a home of their own

With windows everywhere

And a beautiful banistered stair

And a front yard for flowers and a back yard for grass?

The first night, a rock, as big as two fists

The second, a rock big as three,

But nary a curse cursed Rudolph Reed.

(Though oaken as man can be.)

The third night, a ring of silvery glass.

Patience ached to endure.

But he looked, and lo! small Mabel’s blood

Was staining her gaze so pure.

Then up did rise our Rudolph Reed

And pressed the hand of his wife,

And went to the door with a thirty-four

And a beastly butcher knife.

He ran like a mad thing into the night,

And the words in his mouth were stinking.

By the time he had hurt his first white man

He was no longer thinking.

By the time he had his fourth white man

Rudolph Reed was dead

His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse.

“Nigger –” his neighbors said.

Small Mabel whimpered all night long,

For calling herself the cause

Her oak-eyed mother did no thing

But change the bloody gauze.

Setting standards

How and when do we make a decision to follow a particular political ideology?

Is it actually a political decision or is it something we grow into?

Some might think I was born in a privileged position. My father, as a pharmacist, was considered to be professional rather than trade and although he managed shops for others when I was born it was not too long before he had his own business.

Added to this I attended a grammar school and was expected by some to go on to university.

Then came the twist.

I rebelled.

Not an uncommon happening in the 1960s with the hippy movement and the “summers of love”, when the children of the middle class turned on their parents and adopted the ideals of socialism and muddled it up with free love.

I didn’t rebel against my parents. I initially adopted the principles they appeared to live their lives by.

My mother and father never really talked about politics at home. We did talk about almost everything else. In fact mealtimes could get quite heated – not acrimonious, just heated as each tried to support their point of view.

Later in life I was surprised to find people who shied away completely from this form of discussion, seeing it as argument.

It was more like democratic socialism in that we all were allowed to put our point of view and nobody actually “lost”.

Also my father sometimes talked about his wartime service as a Sgt. Dispenser in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

The majority of this service was in the Middle East, serving at base hospitals in Khartoum and near Tel Aviv and Suez.

He also spent time on troop ships going from Durban to Suze and across to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and India.

He rarely talked about the serious side of war but occasionally he did talk of the sights he saw which really moved him.

One such was seeing the caste system in India and seeing people living in the gutters while others lived the good life and never gave a thought to the poor. He was always very emotional about this and blamed himself for not being able to do anything.

His attitude to the troops he dealt with, including the people he worked with, was also egalitarian. He did not care who they were, what they had been before the war, or even what colour, religion or sex they were.

As he said: “We carried troops from all over, often taking them up to join the desert fighting. We had Australians, Indians, Boers, Kiwis and African troops and at the end of the day they were all the same to me. The Boer and the Kenyan were treated the same. If they were sick they got medicine.”

With that sort of attitude when I was growing up it was not surprising I did not differentiate between people on the basis of their colour or their creed.

Yet my socialist beliefs, which were mainly based on everyone doing their bit and if they were not capable then others would do it for them, may have been passed on to me by two people I met when I was really too young to know better.

We were living in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, and Dad was managing a chemist shop.

I was still a toddler and sometimes Mum would take me shopping and we would stop at the shop to see Dad.

One day he had two customers in, a man and a woman, who were chatting away to him as though they were old friends.

When my father introduced my mother to them and then myself they both smiled and the man ruffled my hair and said: “What a lively lad. Let’s hope he grows up to be a socialist eh?”

Of course, at the time, I had no real idea of what he said, just that they had smiled, which was always a good sign, and the man had ruffled my hair.

It was years later that my father told me who they were. They were MPs who lived on a farm just outside Chesham because it made it easy to get into London when Parliament was sitting.

The man was Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan and the woman was his wife and fellow MP Jennie Lee.

To me nowadays they are two of the finest Labour MPs of the 20th century. Both were part of the great Labour victory of 1945 and served with Clement Attlee during the time the NHS was created.

Meeting the Queen or Prince Philip after that would have been an anti-climax.

My full enlightenment to politics was still to come but that was an auspicious start.

Anne Hathaway

by Carol Anne Duffy

“Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed . . .”

from Shakespeare’s will

The bed we loved in was a spinning world

of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas

where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words

were shooting stars, which fell to earth as kisses

on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme

to his, now echo, assonance; his touch

a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

Some nights I dreamed he’d written me, the bed

a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance

and drama played by touch, by sense, by taste.

In the other bed, our best, our guests dozed on,

dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –

I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head

as he held me upon that next best bed.