Grahame's Tale
Grahame Perry was born in the Rhondda and worked as a bus driver, a railwayman and a coal miner. He's been a volunteer driver for the disabled. He's still a keen photographer and a tireless fundraiser for the Afon Lido Dragons Special Needs Football Club. Here he tells us about his days on the buses.
I was working on the old Rhondda Transport buses and every so often, we used to play in a match and after the game, we'd take the visiting team back to the club and put a night on for them. "I tell you what," I said, "I heard a bloke in Pontypridd, last Saturday, who'd go down a bomb in the club."
Of course, rock and roll was all the rage then, so on the following Saturday I goes down to The Wheatsheaf pub again and I says to him, "Do you take bookings in the clubs, mate? Are you interested in coming to the Rhondda Transport Club, Friday night?" "Yeah, no problem," he says. I says, "We pay thirty bob," which was the going rate for artistes in clubs in those days. And pay your own expenses, too, to get to the club. "Great," he says, "I'll be there."
So, on the night, he turned up, he brought the house down! Brilliant, he was! And he said to me, "I'm on telly in a fortnight's time. I'm on a talent show." I was working day-shift on the buses and I was up at five o'clock in the mornings, so we only used to go out one night in the week and that was a Wednesday night and then perhaps we'd go to the pictures or something. And I said to my wife, "Next time I'm on days," I said, "we won't be going out. There's a programme on TV I want to see, the Brian Mickey show. The fellow who sang in our club tonight, he's on it. He's brilliant."
So, we're in the house on the Wednesday night and on he comes. He was terrible! Sang a song that didn't suit him and he was absolute rubbish. They used to have three or four people at the end of the show and they'd give a summary of what they thought of each act. And every one of them wiped the floor with him.
My missus looked at me, "D'you mean to tell me we stayed in all night, just to watch that! Rubbish." I thought, he's blown it now, he'll never get anywhere. And I was in the house and on he comes, singing 'It's Not Unusual,' the first song he recorded and I said to my missus, "That's Tommy Scott," I said, "the bloke who was in our club." "That's not him," she said. "I'm telling you, woman," I said, "they can call him what they like, now, but that's Tommy Scott." And, of course, it was.
Ivy's Memories
Ivy Powell moved to the docks from Welsh-speaking Llandovery as a child. "I was the dunce of the class. The war years were on, so there were no doctors so you couldn't have glasses." She trained and worked as a nurse before she married. Now she tells us about her childhood, including wash day, porridge and gathering coal .
My father used to drive the Royal Scot engine. When I'd see him coming home on the bike I used to have a lift on the cross-bar. He gave me a ride, one time, on the train - only a little way. I think it was into the sheds and he cooked me bacon and egg on a shovel, in the fire.
My mother used to wash on Mondays. And one day, they'd put the coal through the trip and put it on the boat, you know. And my mother had washed! And she went to them, "Look at my clothes! I've got to do them all over again! All the whites!" Frantic! He said "All right, Mrs Lewis! Calm down. We'll sort it out." "You get them to tell me when they're dumping the coal," she said. "I'm not doing this every week! I've got seven kids to look after." He got a flea in his ear! "Mrs Lewis. They're loading tomorrow." "All right, I'll go up my mother's or clean the bedrooms, anything. Thank you for telling me."
The coal trips were round the back and once we didn't have any coal, so my little sister went onto the train and she was getting a bucket of coal out and the train was pulling off! And we had to run up to the police station at the top by the bridge and tell them, "Stop the train! Doreen's on the train, getting coal!"
In the morning, it was porridge, usually, and we used to have condensed milk then. So, condensed milk would go a tin a day, 'cos there were seven of us. And God help you if you got up last in the morning, cos you'd have to wash the tin out with hot water to make the milk to go on your porridge!
I've got four older than me and two younger. I was the eldest girl so I always had the new clothes, 'cos my brothers didn't wear frocks! If ever I went shopping for clothes, my mother would take me to Port Talbot. I'd say, "I like that but I want to look somewhere else," and I'd drag her to Neath or Swansea and I'd come back and have the first one I picked.
These are extracts from John Bilsborough's book 'Changing Times - Stories from Sandfields and Aberavon', published in December 2006.
Changing Times - Part 1
