Small Man in a Book (2 page)

With Nan and Grandpa at Woodside.

If it seems as though I am painting a picture of a bucolic idyll, it is because that is how it now appears in my mind. The rhododendron bushes, perfect for small arms and legs to climb through, seemed identical to the surroundings that Hawkeye found himself in each week on the BBC’s
Last of the Mohicans
(which I would watch wide-eyed and then re-enact the following day). Even now, all these years later, if I see a rhododendron bush at close quarters, perhaps while walking through a park, I will have to suppress a strong urge to climb in and dangle from a branch.

My memories of those early years at Woodside (we lived here on and off for some time) are all late sixties film stock colour-soaked loveliness. Cosy winter evenings with hot buttered toast and Ivor the Engine parping away on the television as he puffed around his imaginary North Wales. Long summer days with the French windows open and the net curtains blowing in the breeze as Mum and Nan sat glued for interminable hours to the BBC’s coverage of Wimbledon and I’d wander in and out of the room wondering what all the fuss was about and when it would end.

A young Brando. (Marlon Brando.) (… the actor.)

The television was contained within its own lacquered wooden cabinet, the doors rolling back to reveal the screen, and it was here that I would sit and worship at the altar of entertainment.
Pinky and Perky
,
Bill and Ben
and
The Herbs
as a small child, before my tastes matured and I was able to appreciate the more complex plots of
Marine Boy
,
Champion the Wonder Horse
,
Robinson Crusoe
and
Skippy
. We were able, thanks to the house being high on a hill, to pick up the English local ITV provider Westward. The station had a fluffy puppet of a rabbit that would sit with the presenter as he read out the birthdays at teatime. When the age of the child was revealed, Gus Honeybun, for it was he, would perform the requisite number of bunny hops in celebration. Perhaps my earliest memory is of my second birthday party and the television being surrounded by aunts and mothers of friends, who all erupted in celebration as my name was read out and Gus began to bust some moves. A chorus of Welsh ladies’ voices rang out, a shrill clarion call of, ‘
It’s Robert!
’ They rose to their feet in collective triumph: ‘
It’s doing it, it’s doing it! The rabbit is hopping for Robert!
’ In the process, blocking my view of the screen and rather scaring me.

I wasn’t having much luck with birthdays. Twelve months earlier, on my very first one, I’m told I had been applauding myself for having blown out my solitary candle when the cat stepped up and quite deliberately scratched my face, as if to tell me off for attracting attention to myself.

If he was hoping to quell any ambitions in that area, he didn’t succeed.

Great swathes of my childhood come back to me in vivid colour, with a decidedly American flavour or tone. The Americanization of my memories may be attributed to several factors, in no particular order. My maternal grandfather was Canadian. Robert Arthur Brydon (I was named after him, Robert Brydon Jones) spoke with a Canadian accent, which to my young ears sounded American and therefore rather exotic and exciting. He came to Britain during the war and met my grandmother, Margaret Thomas, in London in 1942. They were at the United Services Library and were both writing letters home. Years later, once I was around and old enough to notice, I’d hear him call up the stairs to his wife, ‘
Maaarg!
’ I wonder if having this unusual accent in such close proximity contributed to my being able to mimic different voices. Probably not – I suspect it’s a lucky trick, more to do with the make-up of your ear and how it relates to your mouth. It must also tie in with an inbuilt desire to perform, something I certainly had from a young age and was never shy to express.

‘I declare this meeting of the Junior Book Club open.’

Riot!

Grandpa was a builder. He built houses. He built the one that frames my strongest memories of him, Hawthorn Cottage on the edge of Baglan as it becomes Briton Ferry. This was the house that we moved into in 1981 when Dad’s business became a victim of the recession, a year or so after Grandpa had passed away. He died not long after going into hospital with a complaint that the doctors failed to cure. I only have one fleeting memory of him in his final days, sitting at home on his reclining chair. This was perhaps the only time I saw him unshaven.

Dad, Grandpa, Nan, Just William, Mum, Cousin David, Aunty Ann, Uncle Peter.

The bulk of my memories are of a strong man, eating sausage and mash on a Saturday lunchtime with just one hand. I should make it clear that he held a fork in the one hand. He wasn’t an animal – nor, for that matter, an amputee – but he liked to cut up his meal first and then allow the knife to rest while he slowly and methodically picked out morsels of food one by one, like hostages being selected for death. These lunches would follow a Saturday morning when he’d take me, his first grandchild, to Swansea Bay Golf Club where he was twice champion. If you pop in while you’re passing on your way to Swansea, you’ll see his name,
R. Brydon
, still there on the champions’ board. Every Saturday we would drive over and stroll to a practice tee where we’d hit a bag of balls with a 7-iron. Let’s be clear about this: we would take the balls out of the bag first and hit them each individually. I wasn’t standing there hitting a cloth bag full of balls in a peculiarly Welsh and golf-centric premonition of
The Karate Kid
. Although we would go to the course once a week, I didn’t really develop a love of the game until many years later when I hit my forties and it seemed rude not to.

Memories of Grandpa also include trips to the timber merchant in Briton Ferry where selected the materials needed for his current projects, which at one point included a pair of semi-detached houses on Old Road in Baglan into which Mum, Dad and I were to move. Our house had a small spare room in which I one day became trapped when the door handle came off on the inside and I shouted and shouted until I lost my voice. It was also where we lived during my Basil Brush phase, a curious time of my life when I was equally drawn to and terrified of the cheeky little waistcoat-wearing fox. I clearly remember my father reassuring me that in the unlikely event of a visit from Basil, he would throw him over the garden wall. Given that we lived on the edge of a fairly high drop, this would surely act as a deterrent.

Many years later, while working as a radio presenter for the BBC in Cardiff, I would finally come face to face – or, at least, voice to voice – with Basil, now long past his heyday, in a phone interview. I was surprisingly nervous, but delighted, when he ended our exchange with one of his poems.

The girl stood on the burning bridge,

Her leg was all a-quiver.

She gave a cough,

Her leg fell off,

And floated down the river …

Boom, boom!

While this house was being built I would spend time with Grandpa ‘helping’ him. I was three years old at the time and I dare say my help was indispensable. After a suitable period of hard toil, we would break and Grandpa would take out a glass bottle of Corona lemonade, or ‘pop’ as we called it. I don’t recall how much he would drink but I would have mine served from the cap – he would fill the cap of the bottle with lemonade, and I would drink the contents.

Mum and Dad met in 1961. Mum had finished her O levels and was at the Corner House Café, opposite the Plaza cinema in Port Talbot with a friend. Dad worked at the Blue Star Garage, next to the café, fitting tyres and batteries. The owner of the café was a friend and would loan Dad his brand-new Ford Zephyr, with leopardskin seat covers, in which he would then try to impress the girls. Mum walked over to Dad on this fateful evening and asked if he’d take her friend out for a spin in his car. Dad declined the invitation but said that he’d gladly take Mum; he’s still driving her around today.

Mum and Dad in 1964, event unknown.

As a young boy, I would go with my family to church on a Sunday, to St Catharine’s in Baglan. It was where Mum and Dad were married and I had been christened. Our vicar was Islwyn Lewis, a lovely man who would encourage me to get up on the steps of the pulpit and perform to the congregation. My signature act was to hide deep inside Vicar Lewis’s flowing robes and then spring out with a song or a funny face. I dare say that nowadays encouraging young boys to hide in your ecclesiastical robes is frowned upon, but these were more innocent times and services at St Catharine’s were considered to have been something of a disappointment if I hadn’t popped in and out at least once. I took centre stage too when Vicar Lewis officiated at the wedding of Mum’s sister, my Aunty Ann. I was a pageboy and kept trying to pull focus by bowing at every opportunity during the service.