With a Full Heart

It has taken me two weeks to get around to posting this memoir – you can imagine just how full my heart has been. I am ready to share my memories with you all now.

Wednesday 23^rd November 2005

A day full of deep emotions – not all of them expected, and not all of them turning up in the place where I did expect them. I went back to Wales yesterday - to Newport, to visit my old school, Brynglas Primary, for their 50^th Anniversary celebrations.

We arrived at about 2.45 – already the light was dropping, so I nipped out of the car to take some photographs, and was able to see that the school is virtually unchanged after 50 years.

There, still, is the sports field on which I ran the egg and spoon race – (no good for anything else – how I have always hated "sports" and "games"!) – there was the front entrance, with the steps leading into to the administration area, steps I was allowed to descend to wait for Miss Peacock to give me a lift home from school when both my legs were encased in plaster. (Did you ever discover, Miss Peacock, that it was me and not a mouse that had nibbled your loaf of bread, from the shopping in the back of your car, while I was waiting for you?)

There was the school gate, outside which I swore that my mother waited, from 9 am to lunchtime, and from afternoon return until "home time" – only changing my mind when I moved to a front-of-school classroom and could see the gate all day – with no waiting mother there?

  And there was the rank of garages alongside the school – behind which, at the gift of Susan Hughes I took my one and only puff of a cigarette, aged about ten, and at the same time learned the word F**k – though completely innocent of its meaning. (Returning home to Mam, I announced the word to her and came as close as I ever did to having my ears boxed, before she, too realised that I did not have a clue as to what it meant. She did not, at that moment, enlighten me!).

The years fell away – but the hour was still too soon – school was not open to visitors until 3.30 – so we drove away and did a lightning tour of the area. Down Brynglas Road, which was still as steep as I ever remember it to be, around left, past the house in which Gail Morgan lived, and opposite which the prefabs used to stand. Those post-war "temporary" structures, which lasted 50 years, are there no longer, razed to the ground now. Only rough ground left, which was once a little recreation ground – now barricaded off, derelict and unused, until, no doubt, some developer comes along to capitalise on the stunning views across the city. The little "rec". where I used to have "picnics" of a jam sandwich and pop in a bottle, with my friends Margaret or Kathryn, and very paradise it was indeed.

Descending by Brynglas Avenue, down Crindau Road, and down toward No.9 Spring Street, at the bottom – where I spent my first 24 years. The door has a little porch over it now, matching one at the other end of the street – apart from that, nothing much has changed. I could not bear to stop to photograph it. Perhaps another time.

Down Redland Street, to Malpas Road. Again, so much looks the same – until you look towards the town and spot the massive flyover to the dual carriageway that now runs along the old railway track towards Cwmbran. Immense, out of human scale, alien. Isolating the Old Rising Sun pub (where my Grandfather used to drink), which is now merely a cowering edifice rather than an imposing building. So sad.

Palmers the grocers (with the wonderful flying money containers) is now a Victoria Wine shop, dear little "Wendy’s" the gift (tat) shop is now the "Indian Cottage" Tandoori Takeaway. But the Post office where Douggie Barker the postmaster reigned is still there –and now it declares itself in both the Welsh and English language.

Still time to kill – so we found our way to Power Street – and that was where my heart really did crack in two. Firstly to Lower Power Street, where my great grandmother, Granny "Nankie" lived and died before I was born. So narrow it was almost impossible to turn around to find our way to Upper Power Street by way of Lambert Street. Upper Power Street, where my Nana raised seven children in a "two up, two down" terraced house. Where my darling mother was born and lived in the same sort of deprivation that still seems to abide there today. Run down, decrepit, the steeply plummeting "front" gardens now overgrown and derelict, the garden down which, Mam recounted, she had tumbled as they ran for the air raid shelters during a bombing raid in World War 2.

The back lane seems not to have changed since I was photographed there at 2 years old – apart from some modifications to the walls, extensions added on to the backs of some of the houses, and the ubiquitous plastic windows, nothing was very different. But oh, the air of poverty which hangs there, it’s tangible.

It’s what I give thanks for myself on this day before Thanksgiving day...that I, at least, managed to escape from that world of awful, soul grinding poverty, not the poverty of starvation, because I never starved, I never went without essentials. But the poverty of the mind – the chill wind that silently blows through the soul from earliest days, that kills off enterprise, and adventure and the desire to be the best that one can be.

The chill that nails lack of ambition to the heart and never sets it free – not unless you escape – and then...and then, what do you do with it? What have I done with that precious freedom myself? It’s a question that accompanied me all the way home, and a question I will carry with me for a long while yet.

In comparison, the visit to the school on our return there at 3.30 was pure delight. After forty-three years, I got to read the school logbooks and what the Head Mistress, Miss Peaker, had thought was important enough to be recorded. My beloved Pantomime, authored completely by myself and performed with much ceremony by the whole class was not recorded – but a visit to Newport, for which the whole school was closed, by the Princess Alexandra got a mention – the injustice of it rankles even now!

There was the Assembly Hall – the same climbing bars on the same walls. I got to walk each classroom again – alongside the ghosts of all the teachers that are no longer present there. Miss Jones, the dear tyrant, who ruled with a rod of iron and probably taught me most of what I knew.

Miss Peacock, Reception class teacher after Mrs Hayman (the first teacher to spank my bottom, for opening my locker when I should not have done!). Mr. Tyldesley, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Aston Morgan – all guides and sentinels on my pathway to the final trial by ordeal – the "Eleven Plus" examination, by which our future schools were allocated to us on the basis of our test results. I did well in the test I was selected to go on to the local Grammar school – and you can bet your life that those successes were recorded in the old school log – with an annotation that my year gave "a particularly pleasing result!"

I would be delighted to return to the school next year. I was greeted with such warmth and love, and an invitation has been issued to me to go back to talk to the children and answer questions about my time at the school "in the olden days". But for all my enthusiasm for telling and recording our own stories, it still feels very strange - I am not sure yet if I am altogether ready to become a piece of Living History!

Comments

[ardi]

Mornin' Roz,
This is a lovely piece of remembrance, letting your thoughts roll off your pen of that former time. I think you would enjoy being "living history". My sister and I were invited to speak to her granddaughter's Girl Scout group about scouting "in our day". It was delightful as they were genuinely interested in the differences AND the similarities of our time and their time. Your writing is so heartfelt and takes me away with you on your tour of your past. Thanks for sharing.

[Boyd]

Roz,

I so enjoy reading trips down "Memory Lane" and yours was particularly evocative and enjoyable. These trips back into time past can produce such a flurry of conflicting and indecipherable emotion, can't they? What a blessing, however, to be given the opportunity for such reflection and observation. Few people get - or take - such chances. Despite the "soul grinding poverty" you cite (and which I don't doubt), nevertheless the people and the place have given us one of the great souls of our time, because you were the magnificent product. For that, we can ALL be thankful. It's a moving testament to those who influenced who you became that you can write so movingly and eloquently about it all.

[Paula Hagar]

Oh Roz, this is one of the sweetest pieces of writing I've ever read by you - or by anyone, frankly. What a rare and wondrous opportunity you've had to revisit this school. My elementary school became a fundamentalist church 20 years ago, so I could never have such an experience. But seeing it and reliving it through you is the next best thing. Thanks soooooo much for sharing this!

[sheila]

Roz, this was lovely. I so enjoyed reading it. So bittersweet to be able to back to visit the old homeplaces. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[Fran]

Wasn't going to read blogs tonight (I'm pooped from working on the silent auction for a church event this weekend), but when Paula suggested we read you, I was so glad I did. What a wonderful trip in words and photos down your childhood lanes. I hope you show your sons this blog entry. And I'm glad that you have escaped the poverty. I am like you--grew up really poor, but never went without food or shelter, so compared to what we know as poverty today, it was just a simple country-type life right here in L.A. county. At least the weather was always pleasant--mostly, which yours probably wasn't. Little Roz, you are as cute as a kid as you are beautiful as a woman today.

[krisse]

Roz, I really enjoyed your trip down memory lane as I took one myself last night. I will email you privately about it.

Bitter sweet those memories...I am trying to cope with mine as best as I can so I know what you are going through.

[Alison]

Hi Roz - I have read with great delight your wonderful account of your visit to our school. I know it was a very emotional visit for you and I very much felt for you as you had to leave to go home as I know I will feel the same if some day I leave my job in the school. I have printed your memories and am going to circulate it to the other staff. Look forward to seeing you soon. Alison X

[Elaine]

Your school looks so similar to the first elementary school I attended, which was Rockinghorse Elementary in Rockville Maryland. How very odd.

[Lavinia]

Have just read about your visit to our old school Brynglas Primary and it brought back memories of nature walks in Brynglas woods and visits to Malpas Church in Wales school at Pillmawr for dancing! Also of walking to Caerleon, for some Roman research! I started at Brynglas Primary school when it was brand new! Thank you for the memories I am enjoying your website. My maiden name was Harvey.

[kaylene cawkwell]

Hi i use to go to beyn glas i loved it their that was my thirst school since reseption to year 5 i had to moove just befor year five i loved it their
im only 10 but i still love it please reply thank you.