A trip down Memory Road

One old image: so many memories. Here's a photograph that came my way recently of Newport Road, Trethomas, dated 1960. That's my home village and the photograph shows the main row of shops always referred to as 'down the road'. It really was 'down the road' as we lived a couple of hundred yards 'up the road'. Thinking about the shops and what they sold is going back into another era and a time completely alien even to our children. If you have the inclination, come with me on a shopping expedition 'down the road' to the shops in Trethomas. I'm sure all those of a certain age would be able to so something similar.

 

1. Davies the Meirig (more formally E.C.Davies Ltd): where we bought a lot of our groceries. What do I remember? Cheese cut from a large round with a wire, butter from a large yellow cube and patted into shape, bacon sliced to the thickness of your choice directly from the side on a hand operated slicer, ham carved off the bone and biscuits picked from large tins - with a separate one for the broken remnants. There were lots of dry goods and things in tins but nothing frozen. And not a plastic bag or shrink wrap in sight. Eco-friendly shopping at its best. 
 

2. Bulgen's: for vegetables and fish. Can't remember that much about them other than the fact that they sold, mmm, vegetables and fish.
 

3. Luis' Cafe: it seemed as if every Welsh Valley village had its own Italian cafe. Many had Bernis, some Servinis: we had Luis Rabiotti. Luis came over from Northern Italy before WWII, had married a local girl and spoke with an interesting Welsh/Italian accent. His cafe was the place to get frothy coffee, hot blackcurrant squash and steamed meat pies. Steamed meat pies? In the absence of an electric heating oven, a meat pie (Thomas of Merthyr Tydfil - accept no alternatives) was put into a paper bag which was then pierced with a nozzle of the coffee machine and given a blast of steam. The result was a watery hot pie with very soggy pastry but a great taste. Before I'd really figured out what was happening, for years I thought the process actually involved injecting the pies with hot gravy - which tells you something about their meat content and how dumb I was.
 

4. Morgan's the Butcher: the only 'out-of-town' branch of Lewis the Butcher from Bedwas (not to be confused with Morgan the Butcher of the same place). Run by Mervyn Morgan (who was a different Morgan the Butcher than the Morgan the Butcher from Bedwas), it mostly supplied meat raised on the farm of the eponymous owner and that of his brother, Lewis the Milk. Food miles? About two! Sausages, faggots, black pudding etc were all made either on the premises or up the road in Bedwas. Mervyn and Luis were great friends and had worked next to each other for many years. As I got older and got to know them better through a weekend job I had with Lewis the Milk (yes, I was known as Deri the Milk for four or five years but I don't put that on my CV. I was also known as Deadly Deri to some of my early friends, but that's another, not particularly edifying, story.), they recounted their adventures during WWII when Luis was briefly interned as an alien and then released to join the local Home Guard. Thank goodness, Hitler never invaded Trethomas as I don't think Luis, Mervyn and their colleagues would have been a match for the Third Reich. Or perhaps I'm doing them a disservice? "Here, take this Thomas of Merthyr gravy pie in the face, Fritz". "And see how you like the feel of a well-aimed faggot, Helmut". "Gott in himmel: ze trackz of mein panzer ist clogged mitt ze string of Welsh sausages". "Donner und blitzen, attacked mit low flying schwartz puddings"....and on and on and on........
 

5. Wolfson's drapery and haberdashery: Mr Wolfson's stock was never ever going to rival Carnaby Street for its up-to-date fashions but it did supply a whole range of 'sensible' items for the working man and his family. I remember buying some Welsh flannel shirts there (collarless, made of thick itchy wool but very hippyish), a supply of collar stiffeners for my school shirts and, on the morning of my wedding, a white shirt to go with my suit (it's a long story but my original choice got the thumbs down from everyone who saw it).
 

6: Worthington's the ironmonger: Glynn Worthington supplied all sorts of nails, screws, wood, paint, spades, shovels etc. Nothing pre-packaged and you could buy exactly the number you required for any particular job - our Trewortha's in nearby Callington reminds me a lot of Worthington's. You could also get paraffin for those heaters that everyone seemed to have around that time: Worthington's sold Esso Blue. Does anyone else remember the Blee Dooler ad?

7. The telephone box: ah, the telephone box. Worthy of a Blue Plaque. This featured prominently in the early days of my courtship of Miss L, later Mrs P. We didn't have a 'phone at home, like the majority of the people in the village, and this was my hotline to the younger daughter of the posh family living in the distant land of Risca. I spent a lot - and I do mean a lot - of time down there and often had to run the gauntlet of good humoured but risqué comments from Luis and Mervyn. I became very adept at dialling Risca 227 for free (and illegally. So arrest me!) using a trick passed down to me by older boys and which could only be done on the old-fashioned analogue contact equipment.

L.P Hartley wrote, in The Go Between, that "the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there". It certainly seems that way but I'm ever so glad that I had the right passport. As I've said before "you can take the boy out of the valleys but you can't take the valleys out of the boy". Happy days.