The glories and angel delights of Pontypridd
MATTHEW FITT is a writer, poet and teacher.
An expert in the field of Scots language education, he’s written numerous children’s books and has translated a number of titles into Scots.
He is co-founder of the Itchy Coo children’s imprint (itchy-coo.com) and his latest Scots translation book is Roald Dahl’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, titled Chairlie And The Chocolate Works, it’s out now.
MY favourite ever holiday was my first one.
Dundee to Wales with my family in my dad’s massive Moskvitch which, in motoring terms, can be most kindly described as “sturdy”.
It’s the type of car the Top Gear boys would probably drive into a Ferrari, just to see what happened.
My money would be on the Moskvitch coming out without a scratch.
So we all loaded into the family tank and we were off.
I remember my wee brother asking, over and over: “When are we going to get to Wales?” And that was at Perth.
Pontypridd, south Wales. I’ve not been there since I was a bairn and I’m sure it’s lovely.
But my lasting impression is of a town in the hills surrounded by enormous mounds of black. I learned these were slag heaps or bings, debris from the coal howked from the ground by local hands.
A scenic spot for a holiday, right enough, but I didnae care.
This was 1976, the summer of the great heat-wave, during which the UK all but melted.
I had plenty of tall, kaleidoscope-coloured glasses of the king of ice cream sundaes, the knickerbocker glory. Well, I was seven.
And there was my sister saying that she was too hot with her skin on.
We were there ostensibly for a church convention.
Our kirk in Dundee seemed to be twinned with the whole of Wales, our ministers being former miners, the well-regarded Carr family from the Full Gospel in Constitution Street.
But I always managed to duck out of the endless happy-clappy church gatherings and go roaming the streets and parks of Pontypridd with Welsh lads from the convention similarly negligent in their worship of the lord.
With a crazily long drive there and back, a B&B in Wolverhampton on the way, sleeping in our digs with the windaes open, a diet of angel delight and diluting orange, and a day at the sea near Port Talbot steelworks, we went to Wales in ’76.
And it was brilliant.