It’s quarter to five, it’s Saturday, 3 February 2024, and I have just watched the kick-off in the third Six Nations championship of the weekend as my beloved Wales host my second favourite XV, Scotland.
I have supported Wales as far back as I can remember and often sat with my father in our lounge at 14 Water Street, Rhyl urging on Barry and JPR, JJ and Gareth, heroes every one.
I am not going to kid you and claim I remember those early matches, and even the scorers. I do know now that the last match of the 1955 season, the year we moved to Rhyl from Chesham was on 26 March and it was between Wales and France.
By the time of that final match of the season France was unbeaten and the game was in Paris. France were expected to win both game and Grand Slam. Wales had other ideas and won the match making them equal champions with France.
I would have loved to have been at that game.
As it happens the first half of today’s match has just ended.
It hurts me to say that it is 0 -20 to Scotland.
I am not going to make excuses and say they are a young team who have much to learn. This is the team Warren Gatland has chosen and they are from the squad he has selected for this season
I am sure Warren will have words in the dressing room but I think those words will be inspiring. I can only hope they will come out for the second half and catch their opponents out.
Meanwhile, back in my past, when I got to Rhyl Grammar School rugby was one of the main sports and I threw myself into it. I also had hockey to enjoy, another game in which I was inspired by my father.
He used to play hockey during the 39-45 war when he was posted in the Middle East. I remember him telling me that the old hands, he had been out there from 1941 to 1945, had soon got acclimatised and they felt cold when the weather turned.
He loved to see the faces of the newly-arrived troops when they went to see a hockey match attired in shorts and vests only to see the players arrive in greatcoats and even when they took those off they still had long-sleeved khaki shirts and long shorts.
One sport that was my own choice for participation was the javelin. I might not have been a county champion but I could have done well as a Roman soldier, When I threw my javelin in my mind’s eye I saw the enemy.
In later years I dropped from javelin to darts.
Rugby has been my passion for nearly 70 years.
It has been a while since I have watched my beloved Wales live but I have many happy memories of games in Cardiff against Scotland, England, Ireland and even the All Blacks.
At times I travelled to South Wales with my good friend Roger Steele and I can remember games against Scotland and Wales when after, on the streets of Cardiff, all rivalry was forgotten as fans mingled and drank together having watched a good game.
My son David and I have been to Cardiff together as well and enjoyed being there, even if at times the view was blocked.
Well, now the game is over.
Warren had new young blood in the side and in the first half it looked bad. Scotland was taking full advantage of their experience against a raw side leaving us 20-0 down at the half. A score which initially went to 27-0.
Gatland must have had some good words for them (not necessarily nice ones) because after the half they came storming back.
We may have lost, 27-26 but we got a bonus point for the four tries and as second bonus for being within seven points of the winner at the whistle.
For a young team I reckon earning two bonus points is good going.
Long ago, I was wounded. I lived to revenge myself against my father, not for what he was - for what I was from the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. I was loved.
Precisely four weeks after calling Tom Roberts, a director with newspaper publishers NWN, based at Oswestry but covering border counties and North Wales, I was sitting in a room which had a cupboard, desk and chair and on the desk was a typewriter, a telephone, – I could have been back in the Holywell office, a teenage reporter.
This time, however, I had a new family to go home to at lunchtime and in the evening.
HAPPY FAMILIES: me, carrying Sarah, and Marion with Jacqueline outside our bungalow in Valley.
The bungalow was in Valley, on the mainland of Anglesey, and I had to cross the causeway to reach the town of Holyhead itself.
At this point I was carless again so on the first few days I would walk to the end of our road to catch a bus which would drop me off almost right outside my office.
On that first morning I felt immediately at home and my first action was to make a mug of tea before sitting at my desk and going through the previous week’s newspaper.
After that I called the Chronicle main office in Bangor and spoke to my latest editor, Ray Bower.
He told me the editorial diary was in one of the desk drawers and it alco contained a list of all the major contacts in Holyhead.
The best comment he made to me was: “I know you’ll quickly find your way round. Peter and Brian both give you excellent references.”
He wanted me to go down to the Bangor office that afternoon and told me to catch the 2pm bus. In the meantime he suggested I check last week’s paper (already done) and maybe have a walk round town to find out where everything was and then have an early lunch.
If your boss tells you to take an early break you take it and after a good lunch I caught the bus to Bangor and met my new boss.
After a general chat, a bit like inductions I had had at other offices, Ray told me that copy was to be left in the basket in reception and the admin staff would add it to the noon package or the 5pm package, both of which were then taken to the local bus depot for onward transmission.
The only other thing he had to tell me was that I would find all the stationery I needed at reception, including expense forms, which had to be at the Bangor office by Friday lunchtime.
The bus back to Holyhead would get there by 5pm but as that was my time to knock off, unless there was a meeting, I hopped off the bus just before the causeway at Valley and went home for a well-earned rest.
A good end to the day, and far better than getting home after midnight having done an afternoon/evening shift at the cinema.
Hear, ye ladies that despise What the mighty Love has done; Fear examples and be wise: Fair Callisto was a nun; Leda, sailing on the stream To deceive the hopes of man, Love accounting but a dream, Doted on a silver swan; Danae, in a brazen tower, Where no love was, loved a shower.
Hear, ye ladies that are coy, What the mighty Love can do; Fear the fierceness of the boy: The chaste Moon he makes to woo; Vesta, kindling holy fires, Circling round about with spies, Never dreaming loose desires, Doting at the altar dies; Ilion, in a short hour, higher He can build and once more fire.
If you sit down at set of sun And count the acts that you have done, And counting, find One self-denying deed, one word That eased the heart of him who heard, One glance most kind That felt like sunshine where it went Then you may count that day well spent.
But if, through all the livelong day, You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay - If, through it all You've nothing done that you can trace That brought the sunshine to one face - No act most small That helped some soul and nothing cost - Then count that day as worse than lost.
As I left for work the morning after Marion and I had made the decision that I would give up the cinema life and return to the one job that I had always been proud of – that of a journalist – I felt a new spring in my step.
The previous day I could have told Tom Roberts that I would take the reporter’s job on Anglesey but that was not the way Marion and I operated. Big decisions affecting the family, which moving from Basildon to Anglesey certainly was, had to be considered together.
When I got to my office that morning I called Tom and said I would be delighted to accept the job as district reporter for the Chronicle, based in Holyhead. He took details of my address, and the telephone number at the cinema, and said he would send written details of the job but as far as he was concerned, and myself of course, it was all signed, sealed and dusted.
My next job was to call my area manager and give in my notice,
From then on everything was like a whirlwind,
I was still working but at the same time the house had to go on the market; we had to find a place to rent so we had somewhere to live initially before we found a house to buy; most of our furniture would have to be stored because our first accommodation would be furnished; and all the other things that needed to be done before our little family of four could head up to North Wales.
As it happened Marion’s parents and other relatives found room to take our furniture until we could arrange our permanent reaidence.
The next four weeks, well slightly less as I had leave owing from Rank, quickly passed and our departure from Basildon dawned and we headed to North Wales and a bungalow we had rented in Valley. The house had been sold but there was still all the legal niceties to be sorted out.
It was spring, 1977, and it was the start of a brand new life, home in my beloved Wales with my beloved Marion and our girls.
On the Monday I would be in the Holyhead office at a desk with a notebook, pencils, a typewriter and a phone – plus a stack of copy paper.
Can I explain this to you? Your eyes are entrances the mouths of caves I issue from wonderful interiors upon a blessed sea and a fine day, from inside these caves I look and dream.
Your hair as explicable as a waterfall in some black liquid cooled by legend fell across my thought in a moment became a garment I am naked without lines drawn across through morning and evening.
And in your body each minute I died moving your thigh could disinter me from a grave in a distant city: your breasts deserted by cloth, clothed in twilight filled me with tears, sweet cups of flesh.
Yes, to touch two fingers made us worlds stars, waters, promontories, chaos swooning in elements without form or time come down through long seas among sea marvels embracing like survivors in our islands.
This I think happened to us together though now no shadow of it flickers in your hands your eyes look down on ordinary streets If I talk to you I might be a bird with a message, a dead man, a photograph.
Robin's Nest 