Comfort and joy... memories of magical Christmases in Wales
Today, broadcaster Roy Noble’s dulcet tones will ring out over the airwaves as he compères the BBC Cymru Wales Carol Service at the capital’s St David’s Hall. Here, with warmth and nostalgia, he relives Christmas past...
‘‘ DAI the Gate lived in number nine Chapel Street. He was a poet on the long-armed shovel... in digging graves and throwing in the load of concessionary coal, for widows and for miners struck breathless by silicosis.
He also had rampant imagination. He told us on Bonfire Night: “In December, look out for the Christmas Star in the east, Boys, it’s regular every year, without fail.”
We believed him, until Rhys Price, Number 10, put the kibosh on it.
“Dai’s talking rubbish,” he hissed through the glow and smoke of his pipe.
“Dai’s star in the east... is in the south... and it’s not even a star, it’s a planet... it’s Venus.”
Now, Rhys had an anchor tattooed on his arm... he’d been in the navy in the war, and he had a small telescope. He knew his navigation all right.
October was the doorway to Christmas. In school, we began painting doilies, made trimmings and took cotton lumps from Miss Llewelyn, the Head’s, medical box, for big snowflakes on the class windows.
The infant class orchestra practised with Miss Griffiths. I always got the one triangle we had, but we had four tambourines, wooden clappers, a squadron of gazootes, and one drum... that drum always played by Huw Jenkins.
His father was a chapel minister, so he had pull.
The shops were grottos of excitement. Pen y Cae shop had sweets to the right, toys to the left.
In the window was a Meccano set, army lorries, an Eagle comic annual and a small, but magical, electric train set.
For years I was told that Santa thought I was too young for a train set, then suddenly, one year, I was too old.
Griff the fruit had two things in his window that proved Christmas was nearing... pomegranates and dates.
You could only get them at Christmas.
The pomegranates were fiddly, but the dates were exotic.
The long box had two Bedouins on camels, painted on the lid, at an oasis. Inside there were tokens you could collect and send off.
In return they made you an Honorary Member of the French Foreign Legion.
They sent a badge, certificate and a plastic kepi, with a flap at the back to shade your neck against the fierce Brynaman sun in the last week of July and the first week of August... Miners’ Fortnight.
The best-looking shepherd in our Nativity was Arwyn Davies.
He had a real dressing-gown and a teacloth on his head.
His grandmother ran the Grattan mail order catalogue club, so he could wear the dressing-gown for a week and then she’d send it back as being too small.
Rhys, his tadcu, also had a dressing-gown... the only one in the street, but fair play, if anyone went to hospital, they could borrow it. That dressing-gown was well known in Morriston and Swansea hospitals... it was a regular.
Mr Bevan taught us all the carols, and when we were off-key his face went red and two veins would throb in the space between his eyes and his ears.
You could see them from the back of the class. You could rely on our Nativity, mind... not like a school down the valley who, once, had their Nativity in February because measles broke out in December.
Christmas was a tableau of regular events and scenes.
Our big black-leaded grate, with a metal blower, covered by a newspaper, to get the fire to draw... when the newspaper started turning brown, the fire was ready.
The queues at the bakehouse, which had the only ovens big enough for the turkeys.
We had our turkey from Uncle James, from over the Black Mountain. Uncle James had one leg but managed three wives.
His one blot was the year he forgot to tell Mam he hadn’t taken the giblets out of the turkey – that was a bother.
Ah, and that Christmas morning I managed to stick a dried pea up my nose.
Dai Jones, Number Four, qualified in first aid, turned me upside down and thumped my back, with Catura Price, in excitement, rushing into our house and cutting her head on our en-suite bath, which was hanging on a nail by the back door.
Dai was handy – first-aider, barber, cobbler, and a sometime medium – speciality, getting small tables to rise up on their own.
Best house-hopping carol singer was Jeffrey Lloyd, Number Eight.
And on New Year’s Eve, no-one beat him to the door of the Derlwyn Arms at midnight.
They gave half a crown for the first singer, just tuppence for all the rest. As the first bong of St Catherine’s church bells peeled out at 12, Mike was there. Perhaps the rest of us were entranced by the chorus of coal-mine hooters that blasted across the valley from the East and Steer Pits... their mournful cry almost respecting the Old Year going out, as much as welcoming the New Year coming in.
Either way, the sound went straight into my soul... deep-rooted... as an ever memory... of my home and hinterland... of where I’m from... and who I am.”
■ To hear the service, tune in at 5pm today or 8am tomorrow, Christmas Day.