MORNING SERIAL

GRIEF had taken up permanent residence in many hearts. Grief might ebb and flow and change its shape and appearance as the years come and go, but it never really leaves; never calls it quits.

Only the realisation that love is just as permanent, just as bloody- minded, can balance out grief’s corrosion of the human spirit. The outside world came to Aberfan in force in those months after The Disaster, as the events of 21st October came to be known.

As children we were sheltered from the bulk of it, and thankfully it meant little to us. Royalty, politicians, journalists and writers, churchmen and photographers, all came to the village. Some came to see and console. Some had wisdom enough to simply witness, and respect enough to simply show the world the reality of what had happened. Some tried to understand, to properly ask the question: ‘how was this allowed to happen?’.

But there were others with much lower motivations; knowing that tragedy sold newspapers, and caring for nothing else. Allyson while out playing was asked by a reporter to ‘think about her dead friends’ while a photograph of her was taken, so that she would have a suitably sad expression on her face.

The reporter did not know that Allyson was in that particular part of the village where he had met her, away from our street, only because she had wandered far in search of someone her own age to play with, and that she had failed to find anyone. No doubt if he had known, he would have sold that fact too, along with her image.

And so interpretations of Aberfan’s tragedy were printed in newspapers around the world and reports were made for broadcast. People of consequence, people with voices that would be listened to, visited, and their words recorded. In far greater numbers though, came people from other Valley communities. They dressed in their best out of respect and walked slowly around the area of Pantglas School and the demolished houses of Moy Road. They trod carefully and kept a discreet distance.