MORNING SERIAL

DAVID and Mary Pierce were Welsh-speaking north Walians blown south by the winds of economic necessity sometime in the 1920s.

Like the seeds of two tough mountain plants, they clung to this southern hillside but, like their house, they were never quite comfortable with their location. They raised eight surviving children in that house at number 16, but spoke of this part of Wales, if they spoke of it at all, as if it were an accidental destination they had stumbled upon, finding it both an enigma and a disappointment.

Their thoughts and conversation always turned stubbornly northwards, drawn like a compass needle by the magnetism of their ever-present homesickness.

They talked of Snowdonia and Lleyn and of their youth, lived amongst the clean beauty of the mountains and seashore and holy villages of Merionethshire, far away from the coal slag and smoke of the South.

Like Bryn Teg itself, it was as if they had been placed here in error and they seemed to be anxious, always, for the error to be righted. They held their memories close, and doted on them.

Their use of Welsh they kept for themselves alone, and they never spoke the language in front of even their children let alone us grandchildren; it had travelled with them from home, and they kept it like a treasure in a box, locked inside with their memories, retrieving it only when they thought no-one else was in earshot.

On these Sunday visits we would sit gathered in their tiny middle room. Dad Pierce in his chair, always with a bottle of whisky discreetly near (though I never saw him in drink) and on the oilcloth-covered table the pools coupon for next week ready to be filled in.

Nan Pierce, with quiet gentle footsteps, shuttled her way between us and their lean-to kitchen. She served up her trademark rice pudding with a nutmeg-encrusted skin on top, so thick you might just bounce a penny off it, and which she broke with a spoon to reveal the creamy steaming pudding beneath.