MORNING SERIAL

AT the end of the street on our side of the road was the squat rectangular bulk of the Aberfan cinema, its art deco grandeur already fading fast, and opposite that, at the bottom of Bridge Street, was J&J’s Garage with its BP sign; yellow letters on a green shield. Next door to J&J’s stood the small, stonebuilt Zion Primitive Methodist chapel: our chapel.

This huddle of buildings, at the end of a nondescript terraced street, just like thousands of others in the South Wales Valleys, covered a patch of ground no more than perhaps a hundred yards by twenty; and it was my first entire world.

That first summertime I can remember, the summer of 1967, when I was three and a half years old, this small patch of the outside world was unveiled to me in fearful, fascinating glimpses as I took up station sitting on our front step, gawking nervously at the older kids as they filled the street with the speed and clamour of their games.

Outside school time on any fine day, the street was always filled with fun and fury. The boys barged and shouldercharged their way through games of football or of ‘touch’ with frequent stops for celebration, argument, and the loud mockery of losers. Or they would fire make-believe bullets at their enemies with two extended fingers to make a pistol: DATT-CHY! or wink down the barrel of an imaginary rifle whilst lying on the ground, sniper style: PAT-CHOWWW! or slaughter the opposition with an invisible Sten gun, shooting from the hip: DRRRRR-ATTTCHYY! The ricochet of bullets was a constant backdrop to our games, steeped, as we still were, in the stories of the war we read in the comics we avidly collected and swapped.

I was much too small to join in, and contented myself with my role as spectator. I did not see how I could ever match the size and strength of these boys with their scabbed, bony knees and breakneck turns of speed. Some even had daps to wear for playing outdoors, not just sandals like me. The girls’ games were much more sophisticated and elaborate.