The Garden

by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

How vainly men themselves amaze

To win the palm, the oak, or bays;

And their uncessant labors see

Crowned from some single herb or tree,

Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade

Does prudently their toils upbraid;

While all the flowers and trees do close

To weave the garlands of repose.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,

And Innocence, thy sister dear!

Mistaken long, I sought you then

In busy companies of men:

Your sacred plants, if here below,

Only among the plants will grow;

Society is all but rude,

To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen

So amorous as this lovely green;

Fond lovers, cruel as their frame,

Cut in these trees their mistress’ name.

Little alas, they know or heed,

How far these beauties hers exceed!

Fair trees! wheresoe’er your barks I wound

No name but shall your own be found.

When we have run our passion’s heat,

Love hither makes his best retreat:

The gods who mortal beauty chase,

Still in a tree did end their race.

Apollo hunted Daphne so,

Only that she might laurel grow.

And Pan did after Syrinx speed

Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wondrous life is this I lead!

Ripe apples drop about my head;

The luscious clusters on the vine,

Upon my mouth do crush their wine;

The nectarine and curious peach

Into my hands themselves do reach;

Stumbling on melons as I pass,

Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,

Withdraws into its happiness:

The mind, that ocean where each kind

Does straight its own resemblance find;

Yet it creates, transcending these,

Far other worlds, and other seas;

Annihilating all that’s made

To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,

Or at some mossy fruit tree’s root,

Casting the body’s vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide;

There like a bird it sits and sings,

Then whets, and combs it’s silver wings;

And, till prepar’d for longer flight,

Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state,

Whil man then walk’d without a mate;

After a place so pure and sweet,

What other place could yet be meet!

But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share

To wander solitary there;

Two paradises ’twere in one

To live in paradise alone.

How well the skillful gard’ner drew

Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new,

Where from above the milder sun

Does through a fragrant zodiac run;

And as it works, th’industrious bee

Computes its time as well as thee.

How could such sweet and wholesome hours

Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs.

In the beginning

In 1967, while I was still too young to have driving lessons, I bought a secondhand Lambretta scooter to get to college and back and be able to get around at the weekends.

A 1950s Lambretta similar to the secondhand one I bought for £25 in 1967. Mine was a faded dark red.

I will set things straight, here and now, I was NOT a mod and I was NOT a rocker. I bought the transport I could afford and listened to the music I liked and was as happy in a smart two-piece Italian-style suit as I was in jeans and a T-shirt.

Now to get back to the story.

At some point, and I still don’t know whether I saw it advertised or if one of the lecturers told me about it, I discovered there was a vacancy for a probationary trainee reporter at the Holywell office of the Flintshire County Herald.

The head office was in Chester at the Chester Chronicle offices.

I had obviously completed my exams and one fine May morning I headed off from home at Rhyl but part-way to Kelsterton I turned off the Coast Road at Greenfield and headed up the hill to Holywell.

A busy Holywell High Street in the 1960s. A sight that became very familiar for two years.

The entrance to the offices was via a side door to a three-storey building, the ground floor of which was a general hardware shop.

On the second floor was a reception office, where advertisers could drop in with their details; and the chief reporter’s office.

There I met the Holywell grandee, the Herald’s chief reporter, Bill O’Brien.

He was not just getting on, he was old. His hair was white as was his moustache, two of the fingers on his right hand were stained brown with nicotine and he had a figure that would have won him the part of Falstaff in any Shakespearean production.

He sat at a large, old-fashioned table desk with a sit up and beg typewriter, an overflowing ashtray, two wire filing baskets, and a spike with numerous typed sheets on it.

One wall was lined with filing cabinets and there were two straight-backed chairs facing the table and the larger than life character seated at it.

One of the chairs was taken by a young chap about my age, with curly black hair and a lack of fashion sense when it came to matching up shirt, tie and jacket.

Bill spoke: “Robin, this is Delwyn, he’s starting as a trainee reporter as well. You’ll share an office upstairs and I’ll start you off on some basic stuff this morning but you’ll have to fend for yourself later as I’ve got meetings to attend.”

He took us upstairs to a large dusty room with a single large window giving a view straight up the High Street. There was a large table desk similar to the one downstairs with a similar sit up and beg typewriter at each end; a half-pint glass full of pencils (there was an old-fashioned pencil-sharpener screwed to the desk half way between the typewriters); and two reporters notebooks.

“This is where you’ll work. There’s a file of this year’s newspapers over there and recent copies of the newspaper on the desk. Study them to learn the style, especially wedding reports and funeral reports.

“When you type your stories you make a carbon copy. The copy paper and carbons are in that cupboard.

“At the top of each page you type a story name and number each folio; double space and leave good margins; at the bottom of each folio you type “mtc” if there is more to come or “ends”; use a paper clip to hold together pages of a story.”

He looked at us as though to ask if we had any questions.

“Right, in that case once you know the style you can start on typing up the wedding reports from those forms in that basket and the funeral reports from the other basket. Completed stories go in that basket on top of the cupboard.

“I’m going out soon and I’ll be out until 3pm but if anything important turns up you can get me by calling that number on the noticeboard. Other than that I’ll see you later.”

Then he was gone and that was our introduction to local newspapers.

We spent the next half-hour getting to know each other and then began looking through the newspapers.

After an hour Delwyn said he was going down to ask the receptionist where we could get a cup of tea.

I picked up a wedding form, with a picture attached, rolled my two sheets of copy paper with carbon in the middle into my typewriter and typed:

Jones/Jones . . 1 RGP

and began to type up my first wedding report as a “proper” journalist.

Delwyn came back in with two mugs of tea, it appears there was a kitchen downstairs. He had also discovered the toilet was opposite our “office”.

As he settled down to type a funeral report we both tapped away on our first day as journalists.

Little did we know what was to come.

How do I love thee?

Sonnet 43

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s,

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

How time flies

Time can play funny tricks with your memory.

For instance I know I started at Kelsterton College in September 1966.

I thought that I completed the college year the following June or possibly early July.

That would mean I started work (yes I actually got a job very quickly) some time in July or August 1967.

Yet I have documentary proof that I was working by the end of May 1967. How do I know? The answer lies with the Beatles and Sergeant Pepper.

Let’s backtrack to late 1966.

Things were going well at college. My typing was going great guns, as were the mathematics, English and office skills – apart from that terrible Pitman’s which was harder to grasp, as far as I was concerned, than quantum physics.

My only real problem was following information on the chalk board at the front of the class. Gradually I was moving closer and closer to the front, sitting next to a different girl almost every other day.

I don’t know if any of them thought I was sharing my favours (young boys can be very vain) but I was just trying to concentrate on the chalk board.

I didn’t cotton on to the actual problem until one day at Flint station, a simple two-track line, I realised the station name sign on the other platform was a fuzzy white on purple blur.

Now these signs were big with bold white lettering on a purple background. The lettering had to be over a foot high and just five letters.

I only knew I was at Flint station because I had stood there every college day for weeks.

By the time Christmas came I was the proud owner of a pair of black-framed spectacles in the style of Harry Palmer (Michael Caine).

The glasses did make a lot of difference, even if my vanity was pricked a little.

I had always had keen eyesight and when at sea whether sailing or manning the rescue boat I was always first to spot any marker whether it was a navigation buoy or a marker buoy we had dropped to establish a course.

The glasses didn’t help with the Pitman’s, however, and if I did make it as a journalist I would need to perfect my own form of speed writing.

Now we come to the anomaly.

I know I finished my course because I have all my certificates including one from the strangely-titled English Speaking Board. This had involved public speaking amongst other aspects of the English language. That certainly proved useful in later years with regards to political ambitions.

College terms usually ended in mid-to-late June.

I know that I managed to get a position as a trainee reporter with the Chester Chronicle group at the Holywell office of their Flintshire County Herald newspaper.

My fellow trainee was a lad called Delwyn Edwards and we spent more than six months in a large dusty office on the second floor of a building at one end of the High Street. The ground floor was a general hardware shop.

More about that in the future but one thing Delwyn and I did was to launch a new record release column.

There it is. My review of the Beatles’ new album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was released in May 1967.

Funny how you can remember certain things with clarity yet other memories are out of time.

Next time: Learning the ropes?

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

by Emily Dickinson

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading – treading – till it seemed

That Sense was Breaking Through –

And when they all were seated

A Service like a Drum –

Kept beating – beating – till I thought

My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank, in Reason Broke

And I dropped down, and down-

And hit a world, at every Plunge,

And Finished, knowing then –

Peacock parade

As I mentioned yesterday I was quite prepared to be a peacock preening my gaudy feathers for all to see.

Mayhap it has always been a part of me, that desire to change my outward appearance, possibly because I loved the attention but also because I enjoyed being someone else for a while.

The Little Theatre gave me one outlet. Many of the parts I played were either from another era – Macbeth; The Deserted House; The Rocking Horse Winner; Night Must Fall – or else another world – Alice in Wonderland; The Princess and the Swineherd; or the play wherein we were marionettes come to life; all of which required dressing up in some fashion.

Playing the elderly bookies’ runner in the Rocking Horse Winner

I know my father enjoyed such changes of character as he had done am dram in Much Wenlock in the late 40s and had played a Fu Manchu style character in one production.

This desire to get dressed up was released for him in later years by the annual fancy dress party at Rhyl Yacht Club.

With only a once-a-year chance to let his imagination go wild he didn’t stop at some home-made costume just to give a nod at the subject – he let rip.

I remember one year the theme was pirates. Angela loaned me a pair of pirate-style trousers in black and gold stripes (probably from a production of Robinson Crusoe) and a black buttonless waistcoat with gold trim (which I am sure I later wore as the marionette gypsy) to help me out. A bandana round my head and a sash to stick my wooden cutlass in completed the outfit.

Not so simple when it came to my father. A pair of old white trousers raggedly cut short half-way between knee and ankle; an old shirt with a maroon waistcoat over it, unbuttoned of course; and a scarf tied around his head with the fringed edges at one side running down to his shoulder, provided the costume, but he was not any old pirate – HE was a mulatto pirate (notreally PC these days) with the appropriate greasepaint to provide the colouring and a single large gold hoop earring.

Mum said she was cleaning the greasepaint off his pillow case for weeks.

Another time he chose to dress as an absent-minded professor. A smart suit and tie plus briefcase gave the professorial image but the absent-mindedness was indicated by cobwebs hanging off his hat and his shoulders, and he wore a pyjama jacket in place of his shirt.

Unfortunately another club member, Phil Davis, outdid him with the same theme except his absent-mindedness was portrayed by a lack of trousers.

My early fancy dress was much more simplified. At six or seven I eschewed the cowboy outfits to dress as an Indian chief. My costume was trousers with fringed seams, a tabard top with painted “Indian symbols” and a chieftain’s feathered head-dress with feathers trailing down my back. I think my grandfather bought the outfit for me.

Later the theatre satisfied my needs for dressing up until the time I decided to try and outdo my father for an OTT outfit at the annual RYC fancy dress party.

My first effort was Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame. My model for this was the Charles Laughton version of the 1930s.

I had made a long sleeveless surcoat out of an old flannel sheet. I buried it in the garden for two weeks and then gave it a light rinse and squeezed it dry so that it had that dirty, mottled grey appearance. An old grey shirt and brown trousers, cut ragged as my father’s pirate outfit had been, provided the clothing. An old Mae West lifejacket strapped to my back, under the shirt, provided the hump.

Then I needed to do the makeup which in my version included the dropping of one bloodshot eye lower down the cheek.

Nose putty and a white marble with a red streak in it achieved the right effect and appropriate greasepaint made my skin more sallow. Acting had taught me how to adjust my mouth to give that drooling look.

It must have been 1967 or 68 because Roger had one of his “old bangers” by this time and drove us down to the club – I would have scared any passersby if I had tried making my way through the backstreets and alleys of Rhyl.

At the club we made sure we arrived after most people had arrived. The reaction to my entrance, shambling along with one arm hanging down and mumbling “The bells – the bells” as I made my entrance was as satisfying as a standing ovation at the theatre.

The following year I chose The Mummy a la Boris Karloff as my theme and the bandages were suitably greyed in the same way as Quasimodo’s jerkin.

After that I thought I had reached the peak at fancy dress parties and put my “Hammer Horror” efforts behind me.

It was fun while it lasted.

I did make an effort many years later when I dressed as Che Guevara, complete with beret, beard and a fine Cuban cigar.

Their Lonely Betters

by WH Auden

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade

To all the noises that my garden made,

It seemed to me only proper that words

Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through

The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,

And rustling flowers for dome third party waited

To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,

There was not one which knew that it was dying

Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme

Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters

Who count for days and long for certain letters;

We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep;

Words are for those with promises to keep.

A final fling

The summer of ’66 was over and I had finished my work experience at the Rhyl and Prestatyn Gazette and was preparing to return to the world of education.

The difference between my time at Rhyl Grammar School and the year I spent at Flintshire College of Technology was that at one I was treated as a child and at the other as an adult.

There was another difference.

At school the class had consisted of about 30 split roughly half and half between male and female.

At college there were 17 people in the group and I was the only one who used the male toilets.

Imagine it – a 16-year-old boy spending most of his time at college with a group of girls aged between 16 and 18.

The college was a train ride away from Rhyl, getting off at Flint and then catching the college bus. You knew you were approaching Kelsterton (as the college was always known) when you saw the cooling towers at the Shotton works (since demolished).

The old cooling towers opposite the college.

As I said the course was labelled as a commercial course and it went beyond secretarial subjects, shorthand and typing, to include commerce (invoicing, bills of lading, discounting); office practice (including rotas); general mathematics; and English Speaking.

The idea was not to turn out secretaries but to turn out office staff with the capability of becoming office managers. Although that might sound sexist now at that time it was a massive leap forward in the feminist stakes.

At this time one of my cousins, of the same age group as my classmates, was taking an actual secretarial course at an Essex college which really was churning out secretaries. Clearly we in Wales were more enlightened.

There I was – a lone male in a class with 16 women (I certainly wasn’t going to describe them as schoolgirls), the envy of all my male friends; and I spent the first week thinking about every word before I spoke in case it could be taken the wrong way.

In fact I needn’t have worried. In the main we all became good friends, although I must admit two or three did try to mother me. The real problem was that if I had met any of them at a disco I would have happily danced with them and asked them out on a date.

Not so easy when you meet them all together and don’t know if any are already dating and who might feel offended if I did not ask for a date.

As it happened I doubt if many were bothered. I know a couple were interested in taking things further because they made it abundantly clear. The situation was not that easy for an adolescent boy making his first real forays into the swinging sixties scene.

Meanwhile we all settled in to our classes. The mathematics were tailored to suit the business world and did not involve working out how quickly you could fill a 50-gallon bath if the taps filled it at 10 gallons a minute while the plughole released it at five gallons a minute.

To solve that you buy a plug. That’s business.

This was, of course, a time of new fashion and even in North Wales we had adopted much of the style of Carnaby Street.

Far from having only one tie – a school tie – I already had five, including a yellow floral kipper tie; a slim Jim in black and silver; a Paisley pattern kipper tie and two more simple ones.

The presence of so many young ladies around me tended to bring out the peacock in me and my shirts had floral patterns or collar and cuffs in darker material than the body and sleeves.

My pride and joy was a double-breasted Regency-style jacket in wide brown stripes – light and not so light. Flared hipster trousers with a wide black belt completed a very elegant ensemble which would have done Beau Brummel proud.

The Regency cut which was all the rage at the time.

Not that my flamboyant style left my classmates in the shade. They seemed to try and outdo each other in their choice of colours, materials, hem length and various patterned tights.

My male friends were surprised that at coffee breaks or lunch breaks I was perfectly happy hanging around with them rather than the ladies. Maybe some of them hoped for an introduction.

The year at college flew by and during that time my friendship with my classmates boosted my confidence when it came to dating. Not with “Robin’s Angels”, as some of the other students had started to call them, but with local girls I met at discos in Rhyl.

More about my boogy disco nights another time.

At the same time my friendship with my classmates made me more aware of the right ways and the wrong ways to treat potential dates.

College gave me an interesting break before I needed to really get down to settling my future. It also gave me a stack of certificates from WJEC, RSA, and Pitman’s many of which were counted as equivalent to GCEs.

That was basically what my parents and I had agreed I needed.

When college ended it was not a summer holiday that loomed – I needed to find a job.

Business Girls

by John Betjeman

From the geyser ventilators

Autumn winds are blowing down

On a thousand business women

Having baths in Camden Town.

Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,

Steam’s escaping here and there,

Morning trains through Camden cutting

Shake the Crescent and the Square.

Early nip of changeful autumn,

Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,

At the back precarious bathrooms

Jutting out from upper floors.

And behind their frail partitions

Business women lie and soak,

Seeing through the draughty skylight

Flying clouds and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbelov’d ones,

Lap your loneliness in heat,

All too soon the tiny breakfast,

Trolley-bus and windy street!

A final summer

Studying at home and spending more time, whenever possible, at the newspaper office strengthened my interest in becoming a reporter day by day.

More than anything I developed a love for the structure and development of language and the written word.

I know my photographer colleagues believe their pictures are worth a thousand words but a good journalist can tell the story of that picture in 100 words and that would save space.

I followed the timetable of my correspondence course to the letter and the closer it came to the GCE examinations the less concern I felt.

Without the rigid schooling I had been subjected to in my four years at grammar school I had been able to get my studies done and also take them above and beyond what my friends were doing.

My reading took in many writers new to me and often unknown to even my more literary-inclined schoolfriends.

I am not suggesting I was better than them, just that I had greater freedom to explore.

By the time it came to sit the examinations I felt cool, calm and collected. Even more so that I did not have to stifle my body in a school uniform and was free to wear the 60s fashions that had slowly arrived in North Wales.

The greatest pleasure at that time was after each examination I could join my friends and discuss what we had just been through and compare notes.

That was what I had missed most. The companionship of my friends.

By now, of course, I had turned 16 and was legally permitted to smoke, although I had been introduced to cigarettes well before this by my brother.

Strolling down the school drive with friends and casually lighting up while still on school premises foolishly made me feel more grown up.

It would be many years before I realised how foolish I was but at that time smoking and drinking were considered to be perfectly normal. I was 38 when I finally stubbed out my last cigarette. That DID make me feel like a grownup.

There was a long wait for the results but during that time my parents and I discussed the best way forward.

We still worked on the basis that I must have some worthwhile qualifications before taking my first strides into the world of adults.

We finally agreed that I should enrol at Kelsterton College of Technology on a commercial course. This involved maths as it applied to the commercial world as well as shorthand, typing, office practice and English yet again.

Meanwhile I had a summer of freedom ahead of me before I re-entered an educational institution. This time, however, I would be treated as an adult and not as a child.

That summer was one of the best I had ever had.

Along with varied companions Roger and I saw Rhyl as our world and that world as our oyster.

At times we strolled the length of the promenade and back eying up the girls and debating on which ones were worth our attention (teenage boys can be so cocky at times).

Sometimes we did pluck up the courage to approach them and now and again we had the pleasure of their company acting like holidaymakers, eating ice cream, trying the penny arcades and enjoying rides on some of the better fairground attractions.

At other times we would leave Rhyl behind us, get on our bikes with suitable provisions to see us through the day, and head out into the Clwydian countryside.

We were still young enough to enjoy the idea of adventure.

I also had the companionship of my friends at the theatre, a world which Roger did not feel at ease with.

He and I did have the yacht club to fall back on and the joys of sailing beyond the crowded beaches with the full freedom of the sea around us.

There was also the pleasure of a pint at the yacht club bar on Sunday lunchtimes or Friday evenings. It was too soon to try our luck in the pubs.

All in all that summer provided many happy memories. Happy days that were soon to be curtailed as further education loomed.

For me that was going to provide a somewhat pleasant surprise.