by Rob Brydon
I loved Lawrenny. It’s surrounded by trees, and that’s where you would find me when I wasn’t on the water. I was in den-building heaven, scampering out to the woods from the moment I woke up in the little bedroom at the back of the caravan, where Pete and I had bunk beds with me in the Ronnie Barker spot on the top bunk and Pete taking the Richard Beckinsale role on the bottom. I’d head out and into the woods, ideally before Pete could claim to have heard me calling out girls’ names in my sleep, and joyfully take to the trees. There was a spot a few minutes’ walk into the woods, near the banks of the estuary, at the remains of some old brick cottage, where a few friends and I had built a tree house of sorts with a ropeway connecting two trees on which I’d walk back and forth, imagining I was Tarzan.
Further inland, away from the water, past the ditch we’d covered with thin sticks and leaves, creating a primitive yet successful mantrap where we once disabled a fully grown man and his dog, was a slope with a large tree from which we’d hung a swing. There were two options with the swing: the straightforward back and forth approach that, depending on the speed of trajectory, could take you out over the nearby barbed-wire fence, high into the air; or the more ambitious sweeping sideways motion that would take you round the tree and dangerously closer to the barbed wire. Far more kudos was at stake with this method, especially if your dirty Adidas or Puma trainers could be seen to have only just cleared the barbed wire.
I was happiest, though, back at the tree house and would often spend time there on my own, once climbing to the very top of the tree on an especially windy day. From here I could see the peaks of the neighbouring trees, and also the estuary as it headed off in both directions. When the wind picked up, I was at first scared, but then began to relish holding onto the tree as it swayed, gently at first, with each new gust. The wind became stronger and the tree began to move a few feet each way. I closed my eyes and hung on tightly, breathing the fresh salty air through my nose and hearing the angry rush of the wind as it chased itself through the leaves and branches all around me. This most singular experience has stayed with me and is one of the most evocative of my childhood. It is responsible for my continued love of the sound trees make as they’re buffeted by the wind.
It was on the water that we spent most of our time at Lawrenny; we had the little speedboat in which we would buzz around here, there and everywhere. Then after a while, Dad wanted something bigger and was tempted to buy a little cruiser. The Prophet was a 24-foot-long Cleopatra 700 with a 140-horsepower inboard engine; she was canary yellow with a bench seat at the back, two raised seats at the cockpit and a spacious cabin inside. We’ve often wondered since if the name was incomplete. Had the words of Doom been washed away by the corrosive salty water as it slammed the hull on previous misadventures? Dad’s friends, who knew more than a thing or two about boats and boating, had advised – warned, even – against buying it, but Dad didn’t listen and coughed up regardless. He was keen to see his family take to the high seas in a larger, more impressive vessel than the faithful little Picton that never let us down.
Before the inferno. Pete and I on The Prophet in 1977. In an unrelated incident, Elvis would soon be dead.
Me and David in Lawrenny. Insert your own crab joke:
For our first outing, we filled her up to her full 55-gallon capacity and set off inland to Cresswell Quay and a lovely little pub, the Cresselly Arms, run in those days by a Mrs Davies. Indeed, you wouldn’t say you were going to the Cresselly Arms, you’d say you were going to Mrs Davies’s. It was, and still is, one of the few pubs in Wales where the beer is served from jugs. It was only possible to reach Cresswell Quay by water when the tide allowed. Once there, departure was again dictated by the tide; leave it too long and you’d be stuck, waiting for the tide with only the pub for company. Maybe that was the appeal. On arrival, boats would tie up to the quay wall (and here also it was wise to exercise caution, as the wall contained a sewage outlet under which many unlucky novice sailors had left their vessels only to return an hour or so later to a nasty shock). On arrival, Mum and Dad would head inside with their friends, while Pete and I would stay outside with our friends and provisions in the form of Coke and crisps.
We made many trips here over the years, but the one that stands out for me is the time we were standing on the grass by the wall and I was challenged to a race by former Wales and British Lions scrum-half Rex Willis. I suspect he had been put up to it by Dad, and my suspicions were confirmed when I won. I say my suspicions were confirmed, but it’s only now, looking back, that I realize he let me win. At the time I was convinced that I’d somehow, through sheer bloody-mindedness, got the better of this world-class athlete.
To return, though, to our first visit to Mrs Davies’s in The Prophet …
We had filled her up, and then pootled along the river in a small flotilla until reaching our destination, tying up well away from any falling unpleasantness, and enjoying the delights of the pub. Then, and still in good time, we returned with the tide to Lawrenny. It was at this point, the completion of our maiden voyage, that Dad noticed that The Prophet was a little thirsty when it came to fuel; almost half the tank had been consumed. After some investigation it was discovered that The Prophet – or should that have been The Loss? – had a corroded and leaking fuel tank. Lovely. Given the number of cigarettes Mum and Dad smoked in those days, it’s a wonder we didn’t explode.
At no small expense, a new tank was built and fitted. We returned to the water, confident that a new era in luxury water-based fun was just beginning. By his own admission Dad was no expert on matters nautical; this, coupled with a fear of the water and his lack of ability when it came to swimming, made him far from the most inspiring captain.
One of our first trips in the newly refurbished Prophet was to Dale, a lovely beach beyond Milford Haven where the estuary meets the sea. The anchor was dropped, and a picnic enjoyed. After a couple of hours it was time to return, and so Dad attempted to lower the propeller. He pressed the appropriate button but it wouldn’t budge, and so he did what all fearless captains would do in such circumstances – he put on a life jacket, attached a rope round his waist and ventured out over the back of the boat, where he stood on the shaft of the propeller and attempted to force it down. It still wouldn’t budge. Mum held onto Dad with one hand (she knew how nervous he was of falling into the deep water), and he continued to perform little jerky jumps on the shaft, trying to get it to go down. Again, nothing shifted.
We were beginning to wonder if we’d have to call for help when Mum noticed a man, about ten feet from the boat, enjoying a paddle with his trousers rolled up, Blackpool fashion, around his knees. The tide had gone out during our picnic and the propeller was refusing to budge for the simple reason that it couldn’t – it was resting on the sea bed. To regain his authority, Dad had to execute an Inspector Clouseau-like, ‘Ah, yes, of course! The sea bed, yes …’ as he reached for an oar to push us off.
There was worse to come. On another trip, the boat full of family and friends, we were heading once again to Dale and had got as far as the suspension bridge near Pembroke Dock when I came out of the cabin, where I had been playing cards with Pete and a few friends, to tell Dad that I thought there was smoke appearing. Not unlike Basil Fawlty when he sent Manuel back into the burning kitchen in Fawlty Towers, Dad assured me that I was imagining things and ushered me back into the cabin. A few minutes later I came out again, this time coughing a little.
‘Dad! Dad! I really [cough] think there’s smoke in there [cough]!’
Just as he had when discovering my lifeless body under the trees in Baglan, Dad let out a plaintive, ‘Oh my good God!’
The smoke was pouring out of the cabin. Dad switched off the engine, and a huddle of watery-eyed children was ushered out and into the open air. Friends who had been travelling with us drew up in their boat and everyone hopped and clambered over into the safety of the reassuringly non-burning craft, which was sitting lower in the water with each new r
efugee that joined it. With the survivors being ferried back to civilization, another friend came and towed The Prophet back to its mooring, where it stayed for a while before leaving the water and heading in disgrace to dry dock at Pembroke to be fixed. I never saw it again.
In the meantime, on returning to dry land, Mum and Dad discovered a few friends from back home had arrived unannounced and were keen to get out on the water. With Dad having repaired to the pub for a calming pint or three, it was left to Mum to take the friends out in the Picton. She got as far as the bridge – the scene, just hours earlier, of the evacuation – when she ran out of petrol. The two male friends (who shall remain nameless, as they don’t come out of this story very well) stayed in the boat, not wanting to spoil their suits, while Mum hopped over the side and swam to shore with the petrol can, filling up just enough to get home.
On many levels, you could argue that we weren’t cut out for boats.
We had wonderful times at Lawrenny. The pub, the Lawrenny Arms, had a pool table, a dartboard and a jukebox. It’s hard for children now to imagine the excitement of a jukebox, harder still for them to imagine paying to hear a song in a pub. But that’s what we did – again, and again. The jukebox at the Lawrenny Arms was very much of its time, a mid- to late-seventies squat little oblong metal and glass affair that pumped out the hits of the day: Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’, Abba’s ‘The Name of the Game’ and Elvis Costello’s ‘Oliver’s Army’.
In the process it provided the soundtrack to our years in this lovely countryside idyll. In my memories the jukebox is always playing Justin Hayward singing ‘Forever Autumn’ – quite fitting, perhaps, as those youthful days in Lawrenny shift further and further away in my mind. ‘The summer sun is fading as the year grows old, And darker days are drawing near.’
5
In 1979 we left Baglan and moved ten miles or so east, to the seaside town of Porthcawl. I had spent some time there already through my couple of years at St John’s, and we had friends there; a few families from Port Talbot had already made the move. With my brother’s asthma being a growing concern, it was felt that the sea air at Porthcawl might be a help, away from the steelworks of Port Talbot and, closer to home, the huge BP chemical plant at Baglan Bay. Mum had been very involved in an action group campaigning against the plant, their objections based largely on grounds of health. We moved into a very nice house in Nottage, a brisk walk over fields and golf links to the sea, and I was assured of a pleasant cycle ride from the school.
Isn’t it odd which peculiar moments stand out when looking back into the past? I have very strong memories of lemonade and other fizzy drinks being delivered by the milkman on a Thursday, and of steak being a regular mealtime treat that evening. When it came to food, we were – in keeping with the times – far from adventurous: meat, fish, stew, sausages, potatoes, that kind of thing. Only recently, when talking about our diet in those days, Mum remarked, ‘I remember in the seventies when spag bol and lasagne came in, thinking, Well, this is madness!’
For the first few months in Porthcawl I continued to commute to school in Swansea, but after a while it was decided that I would change. The daily commute was a long one and so, in the Easter term of 1980, I began at Porthcawl Comprehensive. The thought of moving from the fantastically small, polite niceness of the fee-paying, well-to-do Dumbarton to the savage inner-city urban decay of life at a comprehensive school was rather unsettling to a well-mannered young chap like me. My only glimpse of a comprehensive education had come via the BBC children’s television programme Grange Hill, which I loved but at the same time found to be a bit harsh with its themes of bullying and general pupil-based misery.
My first year at Porthcawl Comprehensive.
I was to start in the Easter term of the fourth form and went along prior to this with Mum to meet the headmaster in his office. We sat opposite him, and Mum told him all about me and my interests. Coming so soon after the triumph of the world’s first stage production of Star Wars (attended by the future wife of the son of Kirk Douglas), these interests consisted of one thing: acting.
‘Ah well,’ began Mr Ebsworth, ‘we have a wonderful drama department here. We put on a musical every year – this year it’s going to be West Side Story. You could go along and audition for that …’
This was exciting; maybe I’d get to be in a show. I didn’t know that going along and auditioning would have such a massive influence on the rest of my life and the path I would follow. We left the meeting, encouraged by the thought of being able to get involved with the school show. This, to some extent, allayed my fears surrounding the move.
The day arrived and I set off for school. I remember standing near the language labs when the bell went for lunch and staring wide-eyed at what appeared to be thousands upon thousands of children pouring out of the surrounding buildings and onto the playground. Like a computer-enhanced battle scene from The Lord of the Rings they spilled ever forward as I stood rooted to the spot, just trying to take in the enormity of it. It was so different from what I was used to; I really was overwhelmed by the size and scale of it all.
For the first week or so I kept myself to myself, rather like Sylvester Stallone beginning a jail term for a crime he didn’t commit. I wasn’t looking for trouble. I faced the right direction in class, and when lunchtime came made my escape to the nearby town centre where I would walk up John Street, buy a Daily Mirror at the newsagent and then sit in Sidoli’s Café and have lunch. This consisted of sausage and chips followed by a glass of milk and a Kit Kat, my confectionery safety blanket. I would arrive home at the end of the school day and look forward to night-time and the warm secure feeling of lying in my bed, watching the numbers on the Groundhog Day-style digital alarm clock flap over to ten o’clock and the sound of John Peel lulling me off to sleep by the time his third record had begun.
I like Elvis.
After this first week spent not knowing a soul, and struggling to take in the scale of my new environment, I trudged home one day to find Mum in the garden.
She asked me how it was going.
I replied, a tad overdramatically it now seems, ‘I’m the loneliest boy in the world …’ I might even have allowed my lower lip to tremble.
This must have been heartbreaking for Mum, but she didn’t let it show, instead promising that if I felt the same way at the end of the term I could return to Swansea.
The lessons at Porthcawl were more difficult than they’d been at Dumbarton, where the classes were smaller and the teachers were able – in theory, at least (and often in practice) – to give more attention to individuals. It was annoying that the O level curriculum in several of my subjects was different to what I’d been studying at Dumbarton. This meant being handed piles of work to catch up with, and so it was decided that I would be given the work of Marie Claire Pearman, a model pupil. She kindly handed over her files and I took them home, the idea being that I would copy them and soon be up to speed with the rest of the school. It didn’t quite work like that, although the fact that I had been given the books of a girl with as dreamily romantic a name as Marie Claire was a great source of amusement to Mum, Dad and Pete, who delighted in imagining the romantic possibilities in such an arrangement.
I can’t pretend that Porthcawl Comprehensive was in any way a rough school, although compared to the vaguely gentleman’s club atmosphere of Dumbarton it was certainly a little edgier. The pupils seemed more worldly-wise and, in the absence of fees, inevitably came from a greater variety of backgrounds. The banter in the playground had a harsher edge to it. There was a very kind boy named Michael Jenkins. (This is not of course his real name; I’m sure the last thing he needs is someone accosting him in the street and telling him how much they enjoyed hearing about his childhood afflictions.) Michael was one of the first to befriend me, but unfortunately he suffered from eczema, giving his face, hands and I dare say other more delicate areas of his body a rather florid appearance and forcing him to rub himself frequently for relief
. This would be met with cries of, ‘Itch! Itch! Itch!’ from his friends and classmates, which I thought was pretty unfair and couldn’t imagine happening back in Swansea. They of course didn’t limit this cry to the times poor Michael was mid-scratch. He would often be met by a cheerily sadistic chorus on entering a room, or simply as he passed by in the playground.
There were many playgrounds or open areas where the children congregated at break times, far more than at Swansea. They would always be buzzing with activity and, from my slightly nervous perspective, potential danger. I had arrived at the school in the middle of a new and very popular craze, which involved boys approaching each other and asking, ‘Can you cope?’ This related to a television documentary, unseen by myself, involving a boy with some kind of mental disorder who apparently at a given point in the programme had indicated that he could/couldn’t cope. It had caught the imaginations of my new classmates and they took great pleasure in roaming the school, uttering this peculiarly cruel enquiry with broad smiles on their faces. Like friendly Nazis.
I was never picked on, although some time later – once I had settled into the school and found my own friends – I had the pleasure of being headbutted, from behind, by a lovely chap called Fat Ed. I was walking through an underpass one day, minding my own business when he popped up from behind and, quite without provocation, headbutted me. It was a shock, and it hurt a bit. But, more than that, I was perplexed as to why he would do it. I suppose it can’t have been easy, being known as Fat Ed. (Although, if truth be told, his name was Ed and he was a little portly.) Perhaps he was just lashing out at an unjust world. Then again, perhaps he just liked hitting people. I’ve never been a big fan of violence, especially when it’s directed at me; unless there’s a reason, something to explain it, I just don’t understand it at all.