Author Topic: Family tales in Llandudno  (Read 2049 times)

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Offline Pendragon

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Family tales in Llandudno
« on: March 29, 2011, 10:11:54 pm »
A place where we can write about everything to do with our families.  Past and present stories about the characters, personalities and the eccentricity that make up our family history.

Great Aunt Liz

I will begin with the story of my Great great Aunt Liz "Fach Hendre" a slight old lady who smoked tobacco from a clay pipe.  She lived in a little cottage in Conwy.  A very frugal woman who washed all her clothes in a stream which flowed down the bottom of her garden and according to my Aunty Hilary "her whites were always gleaming" she had no electricity supply to her little house and at night could see only by the glow of her oil lamp. 

Her house was very sparse.  She had a pump in the garden where she collected her water.  Her toilet was a bucket at the bottom of the garden which she emptied into the river.  In her kitchen there was a table she covered in newspaper as she had no cloth a small fireplace which she used for both cooking and heat, an old dresser where she kept some oddments of dishes and a few bits of cutlery most of which had never seen the light of day and were tarnished green, one of the reasons my Aunty Hilary would never eat there another was the fact Great Aunt Liz was always cooking fish head stew which Aunty Hilary quite frankly found revolting.

Aunty Hilary was about 11 and used to love going up to Great Aunt Liz’s’ house she said it was like a different world.  My Nain ( Hilary’s Mother) didn’t really like Aunty Hilary going up to Great Aunt Liz’s house as she was by all accounts a bit of a rum one  “Well if you must go up there take these cigarettes up for her” my Nain would say.   As soon as Aunty Hilary arrived Great Aunt Liz would ask “have you got any fags?”  “Yes“Aunty Hilary would reply pulling the 10 Woodbine my Nain had given her from her coat pocket. 

Sometimes Great Aunt Liz would take Hilary down to the shops in Conwy.  On entering the grocers Great Aunt Liz would ask Mr Roberts the shopkeeper for an item from the back of the shop making some excuse or other; as soon as he turned his back Great Aunt Liz would fill her bag with sweets and various items to hand.  Aunty Hilary would stand petrified, rooted to the spot in horror hoping her Aunt Liz wouldn’t be caught.  When they returned home Aunty Hilary said “she would have half a slab of Bara Brith that I knew full well she hadn’t bought in the shops”

It would appear that not only was Great Aunt Liz a shop lifter she also entertained numerous men some of which Aunty Hilary would meet when she arrived unannounced.  She would cycle up to Aunt Liz house and as she dismounted her bike could hear laughing and giggling coming from inside, as she opened the door, there by the fire in the parlour a strange man would be sat with a bottle of stout.

When it was time for Aunty Hilary to leave, Great Aunt Liz would start saying things like “Ooh your not going to cycle over the pass home are you, someone was murdered there only last week, terrible place very dangerous”  Spooked Hilary would cycle for her life all the way home, then later look forward to her next visit with her rather eccentric Great Aunty Liz.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2017, 02:37:58 pm by Ian »
Only hindsight has 20/20 vision
Angiegram - A romantic notion derived from the more mundane truth.

Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for." -Bob Marley

Offline Micox

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Re: Family tales
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2011, 11:41:39 pm »
Tilly Hughes - Auntie Tilly  :o 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).

 
Micox


Offline Pendragon

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Re: Family tales
« Reply #2 on: May 18, 2011, 12:56:11 am »
I love stories like that Micox  $good$
Only hindsight has 20/20 vision
Angiegram - A romantic notion derived from the more mundane truth.

Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for." -Bob Marley

Offline Trojan

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Re: Family tales
« Reply #3 on: May 18, 2011, 02:47:12 am »
Yes, including wet behind the ear members like myself.  $happy$