Tilly Hughes - Auntie Tilly
Really coarse and very funny. Wonderful woman. Those who remember her will remember her last times as managing the toilets at the end of the pier. With much affection and warmth. Her family: Bill Conk, Jack, Norah, Josie, my very good childhood and later friend and cousin Davy (the liar/Pedro). I don't care how he bent reality, he was a soulmate. Felled by a heart attack outside the General Post Office. Legend has it he sired many - of which I have no knowledge but would welcome it.
Mellie Edwards. I'm told she was an early girlfriend of Heinie, the John Brights' senior geography master of my era. Older contributors - not these wet-behind-the-ears fellows such as Trojan and Bellringer - might remember him. Auntie Mellie was married to Harry Edwards, staunch brass band Bandmaster I'm told. Mellie lived in Dyffryn Road. She owned her own house, a wonder in those days of us having cold water only, poes under the beds, council rented ground floor one bedroom flat with an outside toilet, right opposite the boys gate to the school. Autie Mellie always welcomed me when I would walk, just after the war, around there to see her. I would be allowed to sit in the chair on the right hand sided of the fireplace and root through the deep drawer which held amazing treasures such as the joints of an ancient 'simple' system clarinet (the origins of a lifelong love), science fiction magazines and Captain Marvel comics. Mellie's sons and my older cousins deserve paragraphs to themselves.
Cheese, Alan Edwards was a couple of years older than me. I was first of all privileged to have private short recitals of Alan embracing a piano when I regularly visited Aunt Mellie. He was a natural genius on piano, as all who heard him much later when he would play for small appreciative round-the-piano-groups in Llandudno Youth Club will testify (are there any left?). I as recently reminded of Alan's feel for boogie when I heard Hugh Laurie play - organic music contrasting with the rigid, more formally influenced attempts, of Jules Holland. Alan, living alone in Arfryn, Deganwy and working almost secretively as some sort of civil servant behind Llandrillo, became more and more of a recluse in later life. Incredibly, and with a grating sadness for those who knew his talent, he gave up playing music altogether shortly after the Youth Club era. He died too young and too lonely.
My mentor, John. Her was away in Celon (In the navy I seem to recall) for my early visits to his mother. But when he returned in the later forties, the fascination!!!!!!!!! John had a large shed hidden away in the bushes on the right hand side of the back garden. Oh the cornucopia in that shed. He had started, before the war, collecting HAM. This abiding interest in amateur radio became totally fascinating for a youngster like me, although I was never allowed anywhere near the gear and never got near enough to be captured. No, my apprenticeship under John's wing was in music and the performance of music (the two are separate skills). John, once settled back, deeply married, and in work as a social security officer, played part time organ for entertainment regularly all around Llandudno - British Legion, Navy Club, TAs, West shore Club, you name it, he'd played there. And when I could, he encouraged me to play with him. He gifted me that exposure to an audience that is essential to be able to relax and play as you please (attribute to Humph). My love for John still remains. I can see him at will and I can never repay the debt. John died of bowel cancer (from which I'm a survivor, and feel some guilt).