by Terry Walton
The first kind we tried were sweet Williams, a semi-early flower ready for cutting in May and June, and lasting for ages in water. My father already knew a lot about them and had grown several long rows the year before. As they are biennials, sown in May for planting out in summer to bloom the following year, I could fit them in as I cleared the rows of early potatoes. I put masses in that first year.
They’re an extremely colourful and highly scented flower with instant impact. They have a large, sturdy head of multi-coloured blooms, some, like the fabulous auricula-eyed kinds, with concentric circles of contrasting colours. Not surprisingly, there was a tremendous and immediate demand for them. I sold them around the streets, and on a Sunday afternoon I used to go and stand outside Llwynypia Hospital selling them from buckets.
That was so easy. The hospital is about 300 yards from the allotment gate, so all I had to do was cut and bunch the flowers, take six or seven buckets down there with me, and then wait for the people coming to visit. In those days hospital visiting was restricted to Sunday afternoons between two and three o’clock. During the rest of the week matrons used to stop anyone other than close relatives from going to a bedside, and then only one, occasionally two people were admitted at a time.
On a Sunday, however, whole families could go, together with children or grandchildren. So there were always plenty of people wanting to take a gift into the wards, and as this was before chocolates or grapes became so popular they would buy a bunch of flowers. With visiting limited to just one hour, people tended to arrive on time or early, so as long as I was there and set up by one thirty I could reckon to be sold out and gone by a quarter past two.
That was the start, and a very successful one. Those long rows of plants neatly followed the potato crop, transplanted straight into the fertile, well-broken-up soil, and then cropped heavily the following spring over two or three weeks at their peak. I’d keep them for a second year and then scrap them after cutting all the blooms. Each year I sowed more to keep a steady annual supply, collecting some of the seed myself – sweet William seed is extremely plentiful – and also buying in some fresh annually.
Next we saw the potential for summer flowers, and started growing dahlias in large quantities. They are another wonderful cut flower and did very well. Then we got in touch with a florist in Tonypandy who had a steady demand for sweet peas and roses, and eventually two plots were put down just to roses. My father knew of a big rose grower in Norfolk, close to where his sister lived on the farm, and we bought our rose bushes from there wholesale.
The florist used to come in and pick what I always thought were rubbish, the short-stemmed blooms that were in fact ideal for working into bouquets or wreaths. She wanted tight buds and only certain colours, the reds, pinks and whites, and would come up to cut them herself and then tell me how many she’d taken if I wasn’t there. She had her own key and used to come on a Friday or Saturday morning, or any other time in the week if she had a special order, and then go and snip all she wanted, whether it was two dozen or fifty or more buds.
I grew sweet peas, too, going up the mountainside and cutting twiggy branches from the willows to support the climbing plants. Some of these summer flowers I sold to people who came into the allotments looking to buy a bouquet or make one up for a birthday or some other special occasion. I became quite adept at making bouquets myself, and I’d use the maidenhair fern that grew around the waterholes on the allotments and the gypsophila (‘gyp’ to florists) which we grew in cut-off empty oil drums to make the finished bouquet look big and impressive.
But the surplus I gave to my customers, adding them to the top of the pile of vegetables I was delivering, as a sweetener. Most people were still thrifty in the early sixties and didn’t like paying good money for a bunch of flowers to put in the best front room, however much they wanted them. So I’d just slip these flowers in with the order.
‘We didn’t ask for any flowers,’ they would say.
‘No,’ I’d agree, ‘but you’re a very good customer and as a token of my appreciation I’ve cut these just for you.’
And then I’d get a healthy tip, often more than the value of the flowers themselves.
* * *
Terry’s Tip for April
Starting runner beans
THIS IS THE MONTH when allotment gardeners make their first runner bean sowings, in pots indoors for an early start and to avoid the common problems with sowing direct into the soil. Most of us have difficulty at some time or other with germination, especially in a cold season, or from marauding slugs, particularly on wet ground. The result is gaps in the rows, always an irritation as well as a waste of space.
But even sowing in pots isn’t 100 per cent successful, and you can find several are left empty by seeds that do not germinate.
The best way to ensure a full batch and no waste is to fill a strong, clear plastic bag with moist, fresh seed compost. Open the seed packet and tip all the beans into the compost, stir well and then tie the top of the bag to keep the moisture in. Put the bag somewhere warm and keep a careful eye on the contents.
As soon as you see the small white taproots emerging from the beans, tip them out and plant each bean gently in an individual small pot – about 3 in (8 cm) diameter is ideal. Any that have not yet germinated can be reburied in the bag of compost and left in the warmth for a little longer. You can use this method with any other large seeds, like peas and French beans.
When you come to transplant the beans outdoors, position one plant at the base of each cane, and another between every pair of canes. These intermediate plants can be left to make their way to one side or the other, to climb whichever cane they choose. (The canes should be about 9 in (23 cm) apart.) The extra plants thicken up the rows and boost the overall crop, but you do need rich fertile soil to sustain all this extra growth.
* * *
Anthea’s Recipe for April
Rhubarb and Ginger Jam
(900w microwave recipe)
NEXT MONTH IS the start of the real fruit season, with green gooseberries ready to thin for cooking and the first strawberries coming on stream. Until then there’s only rhubarb available, but what a valuable crop, one you can force really early indoors, cover outside to follow on and then leave to grow in the open for the rest of the season. Before you’re seduced by the strawberries, pull some extra rhubarb for making this simple but succulent microwave jam.
2 lb (900 g) fresh rhubarb
2 tbsp of water
grated zest and juice of 1 orange
grated zest of 1 lemon
2 lb (900 g) sugar
1 oz (25 g) fresh root ginger
Wash and trim the rhubarb, and cut into 1 in (2.5 cm) lengths. Place in a 5-pint (2.8-litre) bowl with the water, citrus zest and juice. Cover and microwave on high for 10–12 mins or until soft, stirring at least once.
Microwave the sugar on low to warm for 6 mins, and then stir into the rhubarb until dissolved.
Beat the ginger with a rolling pin to break down the fibres and release the flavour. Tie in a muslin bag and add to the rhubarb.
Microwave uncovered at high for 35–38 mins or until the setting point is reached, stirring three times. Remove the muslin bag.
Cool for 5 mins, then ladle into sterilized jars, seal and label.
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CHAPTER FIVE
The Pencil Factory
LIFE DURING MY teens was full to overflowing. I was tall and thin, six foot two with more bones than a kipper, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on me because I never stopped burning energy, from the early hours of the morning until sometimes eleven o’clock at night.
I was at the grammar school then, so I had to plan everything around my homework. There was no chance to waste time, never an opportunity just to sit and do nothing, unlike these days when we might relax in front of the television. We didn’t have that, and the day was filled instead with physical activities or homework or going out enjoying myself. Somehow it all fitted
quite compactly into my life.
We were fitter in those days, I’m certain. No one ever seemed to get a cold, perhaps because the house was not centrally heated and so we were never exposed to a vast range of temperatures. And we ate plenty of good food. Dieticians go on now about the need to eat five daily portions of fruit and vegetables – well, we might not have had the range of fruit but we certainly had many portions of vegetables each day as a matter of course.
We all tended to eat fatty food as well. The meat was generally red and not lean at all, and we ate the crackling and the juicy bits off the beef and all the rest of it: everyone ate everything, in fact. And I distinctly remember having pork or beef dripping sandwiches – ‘bread and scrape’, as it was known – with a little salt for extra flavour.
So we were getting a high fat and carbohydrate content as well as plenty of protein and vegetables. But the diet did us no harm because everyone was always on the go, and all our activity simply burned it off again. We didn’t eat snacks between meals, like people do now, and we had very few sweets or biscuits. Cakes came out only when there were special visitors, which was all to the good.
Gardening was my number one activity, and if I had to choose between that and anything else it would always take first place, although at the time it was the end result – the money – that really appealed to me. I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, but it was never an all-year-round occupation: from October through to the end of March I was at school during the hours of daylight, so there was almost half the year to do other things.
In the summer it was different and there was plenty to do on the plot, but even on a Friday evening I could get my allotment jobs done and still be out by about nine o’clock to enjoy myself. I’d do the paper round first, and then go up to the allotment to dig the potatoes and pick the beans. I was very serious about earning money. When you came from a background where you had little and had to work hard to get anything, you appreciated it when you got it and didn’t mind the hard graft it involved.
Even though I was busy, I made sure there was always time to go out, especially in the winter when the evenings were too dark to work outside. You had to be eighteen to belong to a club, so almost until the time I left school pubs and working men’s clubs were not a part of my world, although my mother actually worked as a cleaner in one of the clubs and my father was a member.
* * *
Our Welsh coffee bars
THE MAIN GATHERING PLACE for youngsters in the sixties was the bracchi, the name given in Wales to the Italian cafés that sprang up everywhere early in the twentieth century as immigrant families came and settled here. The Contis, Sedolis, Franchis, Strinatis and the Bracchi brothers, who gave the cafés their generic name, made them popular meeting places well before the war years, when many Italians were persecuted or interned as aliens and possible collaborators (Churchill had famously said ‘Collar the lot!’ after Mussolini entered the war), even though lots of Italians in the valleys were first-or second-generation Welsh by then.
There must have been six or seven bracchis in Tonypandy alone. There would be a shop at the front selling sweets loose from tall jars, and cooked meats and bread to take out, but they were mainly rooms where people went to eat and drink – no alcohol, only coffee or tea.
Older people would call in there on a shopping day for an inexpensive lunch, all home-cooked, but they didn’t tend to go there in the evenings. On Sunday evenings especially the bracchis became meeting places for us youngsters, somewhere warm and dry that wasn’t expensive for a cup of coffee or a soggy pie heated up under the steam. And you could make a coffee last several hours while you talked.
* * *
On a Friday and Saturday night we generally went dancing in Tonypandy. There were two main places, Judge’s Hall and the Library Dance Hall, which were both alcohol-free and just served soft drinks and crisps while we danced to live groups. The Library was at the Miners’ Welfare, where they had snooker tables and a good library on the lower level, and then upstairs a huge sprung dance floor and a big stage where they would generally have a seven-or eight-piece band. The Judge’s Hall tended to have smaller four-piece groups rather than a large outfit.
Tonyrefail, where I now live, was the place to be in the sixties, once I was eighteen and allowed to drink alcohol, because it had a nightclub called Meadowvale, where they used to bring up-and-coming groups or bands from outside the area. You’d read about them in the paper, and then they would actually appear here in the early part of their career or when they were on the way down again.
Even the various boys’ clubs used to run dances regularly, although they tended to have records rather than live music. The working men’s clubs would usually have a drummer and organist up the front for ‘proper’ dancing – foxtrots, waltzes and quicksteps. Every club had its own dance hall built on, each with a bar, lounge and a ‘Big Room’, as they called it, where they would have bingo first and then a session of dancing. On Saturdays they didn’t generally have much dancing, and they would put in more tables to pack the members in, but in the week and on Sunday nights there’d be ballroom dancing.
As a teenager I was naturally more interested in rock and roll. I went through the teddy boy stage, complete with drainpipe trousers, sneakers and long jacket (although I never had the string tie), and fluorescent socks too: red, yellow, pink and I don’t know what. And there was the obligatory curl in the middle of your forehead. Later I got caught up in the Beatles era, when I had long straight hair. You just get drawn into it all, don’t you?
Round the valleys the big name in the mid-sixties was Tommy Scott and the Senators, the group everybody wanted to see. They were wild, and I was in Llwynypia one Saturday night when they were paid off because they were too noisy, interfering with the men sitting quietly and playing cards. That was before Tommy Scott had his big break and became known to everyone as Tom Jones.
So there was quite a lively social scene in the valleys and, despite the long hours of hard work, I went out regularly to enjoy myself with my mates. That was when my income from the allotment came in handy. I’d put a lot of hours in, but then I didn’t have to worry where the money was coming from to buy the coffee or milk shakes, a bottle of pop or a bag of crisps.
As my teenage years passed, I was working harder and harder at school. I had sat my Eleven Plus exam at Pontrhondda Primary, which was about three-quarters of a mile from where I lived and so within easy walking distance, and passed that to go on to the local grammar school when I was eleven years old. In the two Rhondda valleys there were four grammar schools and the same number of secondary modern schools, where you went to do practical subjects if you didn’t pass the Eleven Plus, so there were eight senior schools in the area, all within the space of four or five miles.
Schools weren’t very large in those days and simply served the immediate locality, and the biggest senior school would have about 300 students, perhaps a maximum of 400. Primary or junior schools weren’t as big, because they were really local, and the nursery schools were smaller still – even now the one I went to when I was two and a half is just one building, no more than it was in 1949. They were all council schools and you just went along to the nearest.
There was a kind of pecking order among the grammar schools, even though they were in different locations. Porth was considered the highest, Tonypandy (where I went) the second best, Treorchy third and Ferndale fourth, but they were all good in those days and would attract the brightest graduates as teachers.
I remember there was a strong bias towards rugby at all of them, and this was compulsory unless you were actually in a plaster cast: a cold or anything else like that didn’t excuse you from turning out on the wet rugby pitches on PE days, in hail, snow or sleet. Football was unheard of at the grammar schools; it was all ‘oval ball’ stuff in the winter and then cricket and athletics in the summer.
I really liked school. It was not a place I dreaded going to, and I think I enjoyed learning. I suppose I
must have been reasonably bright academically, too, because I was in the ‘A’ stream and went on to pass nine GCE ‘O’ levels (you either passed or failed each exam then, and didn’t have grades). I did all the usual academic subjects – including sciences and Latin – and then went on to the sixth form to work for chemistry, physics and maths at ‘A’ level.
My aim was to go to university to do chemistry, the other love in my life, although I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do with it: teaching probably, because my brother was a teacher and I never really thought about other options. A large number of grammar school students from the valley seemed inevitably to land up in teaching, and the area was recognized as a big exporter of teachers.
At school there was never any career instruction, nobody ever gave you choices, and so you drifted along in the academic stream almost unconsciously, through ‘O’ levels and ‘A’ levels and university, and then finally you got a degree and you had to decide what you were going to do with it. You just cruised down the same old path as everyone else, never dreaming you might hit a brick wall.
In 1964, when my ‘A’ level results came through and I hadn’t passed chemistry, I was devastated. It had always been my best subject, and in my mock exams and everything before that I had done extremely well. My father put in for a re-mark, but that didn’t change anything, so I must have had a complete mental blank on the day.