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.

The Flea

by John Donne

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which deniest me is;

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

Thou knows’t that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoys before it woo

And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are,

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that, self murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou trumph’st, and say’st that thou

Findst not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

‘Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,

Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

Playing our part

We all know Shakespeare described the world as a stage which makes us all actors whether or not we have learned the lines.

How many of us see ourselves in that way and if we do are we a spear bearer, the star or Dandini to someone else’s Prince Charming?

If we merely stick to the Bard’s script will we go through the seven ages from “mewling, puking infant” to the second childhood and oblivion “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Professional actors seek to win the starring role and some will even become directors as well as actors to ensure that they choose the path their fellow actors must take.

That does not mean you need to be a professional actor to choose your roles and direct your path through life.

Every town has its amateur dramatic group or amateur operatic society but that does not mean they know how to act or direct.

Those of us who were or are members of the Rhyl Children’s Theatre Club were taught far more about the ways of theatre and how to adapt many of those skills to help them find their way in life.

Joe Holroyd and Angela Day – an inspirational pair.

For me it took many years to realise that the decade I spent learning from Joe Holroyd and Angela Day, which saw me play many parts from a fish to a psychotic killer (not that the actual roles were lessons in life).

The greater lessons were those which taught us when to make an entrance; how to project ourselves to ensure the back row heard us without deafening those in the front seats; how not to upstage your fellow thespians but still prevent others upstaging you.

These were the onstage skills but we learned far more as Joe and Angela demonstrated the offstage workings which were as important as appearing before the audience.

Stage lighting is as nuch an art as acting. A bare stage sans scenery, sans tabs, sans backcloth can be transformed by a skilled lighting expert (John Gilbert was an artist in that field).

There are often more people offstage as on, ensuring everything runs smoothly ranging from director to stage manager; props controller to wardrobe mistress (or just as likely master); box office ticket sellers to ushers and ice-cream sales attendants.

I know that what I learned there was a major help in my life.

The art of projection can be used in real life when you need people to pay attention. This proved invaluable in my future roles in my union and later when addressing political meetings.

At the same time it helped me through two father-of-the-bride speeches when I had to draw attention to myself yet also ensure the bride and groom remained the stars of the show.

It taught me how to control my emotions and make my point without shouting.

That decade taught me that in life, as in a theatrical company, everyone has a role to play and we must consider the value of the walk-on role without a line as highly as we appreciate the star.

I may have gone a little bit off-piste today but there are times when something inside of you must be brought to the surface.

The author as psychotic killer Danny in Emlyn Williams’ Night Must Fall. You will have to imagine the fish.

Mid-Term Break

by Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close

At two o’clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying –

He had always taken funerals in his stride –

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake me by the hand

And tell me they were “sorry for my loss.”

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs

At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room.

Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

A Daughter of Eve

by Christina Rossetti

A fool I was to sleep at noon,

And wake when night is chilly

Beneath the comfortless cold moon;

A fool to pluck my rose too soon,

A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;

Faded and all-forsaken,

I weep as I have never wept:

Oh it was summer when I slept,

It’s winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring,

And sun warm’d sweet to-morrow;–

Stripp’d bare of hope and everything,

No more to laugh, no more to sing,

I sit alone with sorrow.

A voyage of discovery

As the old year ended and the New Year of 1966 began I made the most of the last week or so of my holidays before getting my head down for studies in my home classroom.

Naturally I was enjoying the English studies, especially the literature. I have read, seen or appeared in a number of Shakespeare’s masterpieces and no longer have a clear memory of which one I studied that year.

I do remember the major work of fiction I studied, however. It was William Golding’s brilliant vision of how the thin veneer of civilisation that coats us all can be so easily stripped away: Lord of the Flies.

The iconic image of the pig’s head from Lord of the Flies

Young people who grew up in the 60s are sure to remember this book and the film released in 1964 which brought to life the schoolboys stranded on a Pacific island with no adults to guide them.

It was a well-made film but the book was far better because more was left to the reader’s imagination. After all it was the imagination of those boys that created real monsters from their own minds.

I was used to creating my own visions from the books I had read. Those of my childhood had been left behind and for almost five years I had been browsing my parents’ bookcases as well as the packed shelves of the municipal library.

At home I could choose from classics such as Alexander Dumas or the more recent tales of Maigret by Simenon, or fall in between with Conan Doyle’s Baker Street detective or Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

Now I had a new author to discover. If an author wrote more than one book then it was down to me to see if all the books were the same story or whether they varied.

There appeared to be one theme running through Golding’s first three books – survival; but the means of survival or lack thereof, were treated in differing ways.

If a book is written in isolation then it can only be read that way; but if there is more than one (and I don’t mean a series) then they all need to be considered when making a judgment on any.

It sounds like some form of philosophical meandering but at the time it was an early entry into literary review.

Of the three books I still think the first was the best but maybe that is because it was a plot that I was closest to in that I was a boy and could imagine what boys might do on a deserted island with no adult supervision.

I could not yet turn my imagination to existence in prehistoric terms, even when that is the direction the boys had been heading.

Harder still was to see myself as Pincher Martin, surviving alone on an island when he had already died before being washed up on the island’s shore.

Many years later I read all three again and now found myself feeling a greater affinity with Lok than with Ralph and Jack but still failing to find that empathy with Pincher Martin.

We all take something from every book we read and it helps us to grow. Not necessarily physical growth but certainly a growth in understanding.

Tomorrow: the exams loom and another decision on my future must be taken.

You’re

by Sylvia Plath

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,   
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,   
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense   
Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.   
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,   
Trawling your dark as owls do.   
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth   
Of July to All Fools’ Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.   
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.   
Snug as a bud and at home   
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.   
A creel of eels, all ripples.   
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.   
Right, like a well-done sum.   
A clean slate, with your own face on.

Making my name

Studying at home while getting work experience with a recently-launched local newspaper was working well in the run-up to Christmas 1965.

Naturally I took a break from studying over what would have been a school holiday and spent a little bit longer at the Gazette offices while also having time to spend at the Little Theatre as panto time approached.

This led to me getting my first ever byline in a real newspaper while helping to publicise the theatre group which meant so much to me.

The editor asked me to write a feature about the pantomime, Mother Goose, which I turned into a potted history of panto and the Little Theatre.

Naturally a main picture for the spread had to include theatre director Joe Holroyd as the Dame

The feature included a number of pictures of main characters and the chorus but it also showed the start of my feature-writing style which set a standard for me for decades to come.

The pictures illustrating this piece are somewhat discoloured as they are almost 55 years old and were brought into the daylight when I found the scrap book they were in up in the loft.

Whether written about a drama group, or a school group ski-ing in Austria I would ensure there was some background, even historical at times.

In this case I brought in the history of pantomime, the history of the Little Theatre and even a reference to the local Conservative MP Nigel Birch in six paragraphs.

The rest of the article was mainly details of the main players and of the chorus members, local names for local people in a local paper.

For this I was granted my first ever byline at the age of 15. In the 60s and 70s bylines were rare occurences and not dished out like lollipops to well-behaved children at a party as they seem to be nowadays.

For a new newspaper the feature was worthwhile because it was the first time such a piece had appeared in the Gazette. For a long-running newspaper it would just have been dragging out the same old story as the previous year.

The Foresters who would also have been villagers and the fairyland chorus, Karen Lees, Freda Turner, Pamela Jeffries, Elaine Davies, Kay Parry, Valerie Owen, Linda Hughes and Lilian Diparno.

That first byline was very important to me. I achieved many more before I moved from reporting to production – and even a couple afterwards, but that’s another story.

I actually helped out backstage at the panto as well, but on the night the pages were being made up for an overnight print run I was allowed to stay on and lend a hand.

Luckily I wasn’t in the union at that time, not being a “proper reporter” or even old enough to join the NUJ (National Union of Journalists) because things I did to help out that night would have brought the unions out at most newspaper offices.

All that was still to come.

I was just happy to get a byline.

PS: Memories can be rusty especially when harking back over 50 years.

In the same scrapbook I found the picture of Monica Rose on the elephant. That was when I discovered we did not use the picture with Hughie Green. Hannibal the baby elephant was well-behaved without his touch.

The Thought Fox

by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock’s loneliness

And this blank page where ny fingers move.

Through this window I see no star

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow

A fox’s nose touches twigs, leaf;

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye

A widening deepening greenness

Brilliantly, concentratedly

Coming about its own business

Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.