Marriage
My new boss was Mr. Edgar Soanes, the Principal Probation Officer, who took me immediately after the interview to another set of rooms in County Hall, where I met my new colleagues.
There were two Probation Officers, Rhys James, a Welsh-speaking Welshman from Pontardawe, and Miss Eileen Basson, daughter of a retired Police Chief Inspector, and the Senior Probation Officer, John Austin, who was our immediate boss. These, along with me, were the probation team covering the whole of Newport Borough.. Also in the office was another female officer, a Miss Davies, I think, who covered the surrounding area of Monmouthshire County. There were other offices in the County, but my little world was Newport itself. The town was roughly divided in half by the river. Everywhere North and East of the river was Rhys James’ area, and I was to be responsible for everywhere West of the river, including the town centre, the docks area, and two large council estates, one in Maesglas and one in an area known as The Gaer. This being Monmouthsire, Maesglas was pronounced “Mazeglass,” and the Gaer was pronounced rhyming with ‘where’. I took over from my predecessor, (whom I never met, or even knew his name as far as I recall,) some 34 cases, because those nearing the end of their orders, and who were deemed to be no longer in need of supervision, had had their Orders discharged by the court before my predecessor moved on. The normal caseload at that time would have been between 45 and 55. My case load included juveniles, (under 18s), and adults on Probation Orders, a few either in, or just discharged on Licence from Approved Schools, Borstal Institutions and some discharged from Prison on Licence or Parole. Some cases would have been made some considerable time before my arrival and a few would have been fairly new cases. I think Rhys James had taken over the supervision of some of the more difficult cases, to lighten the load for me, the new boy straight out of training. However, there were requests for Court Reports on kids waiting to come to Juvenile Court for various offences and the adult courts were adjourning cases for Social Enquiry Reports, where the Defendant had been found guilty and the Court had to decide on the sentence and wanted to know more of his circumstances, attitudes, problems, etc., before making up their minds.
It was not long before my caseload started to increase and reached what would have been considered an average caseload, and I was kept pretty busy. Not having a car, I had to rely on buses, or my legs, to make home visits to my clients and their families, but fortunately my patch did not cover a very large area, and it was possible to walk down through town to the Pill, or Docks area, and sometimes I could take a bus out to Maesglas and walk to visits on the way back to the office, and, whichever way I did it, claim the Expenses, quite legally. The Courts were in the Civic Centre, a few hundred yards from the office and easily reached on foot. It was a bit of a bind, however, if one arrived in court and found one had left a file, or a Report that had to be presented to the court, in the office and had to run all the way back to get it. The Clerk to the Justices was a Mr. Rowlands, a man of small stature but a huge reputation for not tolerating shoddy work or mistakes, like not getting a report prepared for when the Magistrates said they wanted it, or not covering issues that the Magistrates would be expected to want to know about. Not only I, as a new, inexperience Probation Officer, was anxious about how ‘Rowley’ would receive my functioning in court. Police Officers, constables and sergeants, and even Inspectors, as well as Solicitors and some Barristers, were known to be, if not terrified, at least apprehensive about appearing before his courts. The Deputy Magistrates’ Clerk was more laid back and tolerant, but I learned a lot about court procedures, the law and how to make sure anything I did for the court would ‘pass muster’ and not get me into trouble with the Clerk.
On the other hand, if one was uncertain about anything, whether it was how to proceed with a particular task, or the law relating to the circumstances of the case, one had only to go and knock on the Clerk’s office door, and ask his advice, and he would go to endless lengths to give the correct advice, and usually turn up the relevant Law books to back up what he said. If one went to him in advance, and ‘confessed’ to an oversight or shortcoming in one’s Court report, he would express his dissatisfaction in private, but in court would guide one and in his own way cover up one’s error. Socially, he was a charming man, and later married Eileen Basson, my female colleague. One of the remarkable things about him was that when large houses in the better areas of Newport were selling for £2,000 or £3,000, he liked telling people that he had bought his house in one of those ‘better’ areas for £150 many years previously. Today, they probably fetch hundreds of thousands. Rhys James and John Austin had arranged lodgings for me in 13, Bridge Street which was across the road from the side of County Hall, literally 100 yards from the office, with a Mr. and Mrs. Bridges. It was nothing special, just the end of a long street of terraced houses, but comfortable, the food was good and I had a nice little room. I had only been there a few months, when I was told before going home for the weekend, to pack everything up in a suitcase or boxes and leave them in my room, because they had bought a house at No.4, Gold Tops, the street in front of County Hall, and we would be moving while I was away. What no one thought of was that I would be back late on the Sunday night after travelling from Gowerton to Swansea by bus, Swansea to Cardiff (on the Namp;C coaches) and then by train to Newport. And no one thought of giving me a key to the new house or telling me which room would be mine. Consequently, I arrived back about 11.30 pm on the Sunday, and the house was in darkness, everyone in bed, and I could not get in. My solution was to go along Gold Tops to the Police Station in the top end of the Civic Centre and explain my position. They all knew me in the Police Station, of course, and the duty sergeant told me that, provided I could be out by 6.0.am next day, I could sleep in the Matron’s room, which had a bed in it. So, problem solved, and I walked back to No 4. Gold Tops, the next morning before Matron came on duty, and found my landlady and landlord up and able to let me in.
I stayed at 4, Gold Tops, until I got married in October, 1961. At first I was on a bed and breakfast basis, but later I was given a large room on the ground floor with a small conservatory type room alongside, which had a sink and a stove, and my own toilet and bathroom, and I moved in on a self-catering arrangement and did all my own cooking. My room was large, with a bed and several easy chairs, and I was able to entertain friends without disturbing the family. I was well settled in Newport, and could get home at weekends, usually on Friday after work, but once a month I had to work on Saturday morning, in case anyone wanted to come in and consult a Probation Officer, which only occasionally happened but it was a chance to review cases. My father was still ill, so it was important to get home at weekends. Being new to the stresses and strains of being a Probation Officer, albeit a fully trained one, initially I had little time for socialising, but there was always the pub occasionally and Rhys James already had a circle of friends to whom he introduced me, including the local Children’s Officer, whose name I have now forgotten, (I believe he was another John Thomas) but we used to go out together and so I met people from outside work.
In Newport docks, there was a ship-breaking yard, where quite large ships, including cruise ships, were brought for breaking up. Before the breaking up started, they usually held a sale of all the fittings, and I learned that Rhys James and John Austin usually spent at least half a day there when a sale was announced, going over the ship and seeing what was worth buying. They took me with them, and I watched in amazement a man and a young lad collecting the mahogany boards which fitted on the side of the cabin bunks to stop people falling out of bed in rough weather. The man, presumably the lad’s father, would rush off to the cabins and collect as many boards as he could carry, bring them back and stack them on deck where the lad saw that nobody else walked off with them. I bought a rather pretty wall light, which I had to unscrew from the cabin wall and a little bunk ladder, which I subsequently converted to a stepladder. I still have both these items; still use the stepladder in the garden, while the lamp is in the garage, still waiting to be thrown away. One day, over coffee in the office, we were talking about another sale opening that week in the docks, and somebody suggested that it might be an idea to buy one of the ship’s lifeboats between us, which we could use on the river. Miss Basson was completely taken with the idea, so we decided to go and look. Usually the lifeboats were sold before the ship arrived for breaking up, but the jaunt seemed a good laugh, so off we all went, including the very posh and lady-like Miss Basson. There were, of course no lifeboats on the ship, but she was so keen on the whole project that we went off looking at other boats in the harbour to see if any were for sale. The tide was out and there were quite a lot of small boats tied up resting on the mud. The mud, of course, was very wet, soft and slippery, and Miss Basson was covered in it by the time we admitted that it was all just a bit of fun to occupy an afternoon really. I don’t know if she ever really forgave us. She was a remarkable woman who supervised the women and the girls, and boys under the age of 12. Her usual method for the little boys was to ask each if he had behaved himself during the past week or fortnight, and if he had, she gave him 3d if he were only 10, and 6d if he were 11 years old. This I only discovered when a lad she had been supervising reached the age of 12, and was transferred to me. Throughout my first interview with him, when I was trying to get to know him, he kept interjecting with “I have been a good boy for two weeks, Sir.” Eventually I asked him why he kept telling me this, and he then told me that Miss Basson always gave him 6d if he had been good. I had to tell him that he was a “big boy” now that he was 12, and he should behave properly like all big boys.
The general routine of supervision was initially to see the client weekly and visit the home fortnightly for the first few months. When a working relationship was established with the client and the family, reporting became fortnightly and home visiting monthly, or when necessary. The initial contact with the family was in the preparation of the Social Enquiry Report, or SER, when one interviewed all the members of the family and wrote up details of their occupation, or schooling, relationships with each other, attitudes to crime, behaviour, and in particular, the details of the offence and the reactions of the family and offender to them. In the case of juveniles still in school there was always a report from the headmaster. The report always ended with a recommendation regarding what the offender’s likely response would be to the various sentences available to the court. The routine for reports on adults was basically the same, but without the school report. Every three months during supervision one had to do a summary of progress, or lack of it, and change, if necessary, one’s form of supervision, and whether to continue with supervision, or advise the court to revoke the order, and if necessary, impose some alternative punitive sentence. We were assessed by senior probation staff by the number of successful completions we had, and I was always in the 80 – 90% success rate bracket, as we all were. If an officer’s success rate were lower, questions would be asked about his continuing with this career. No one commented on the successes, only on the failures, which usually involved another offence committed by the client and another court appearance, another report, and an alternative punishment, with or without the continuation of the supervision. Somehow or other, I cannot remember how, I met a very attractive girl, Margaret Hopkins, who was a clerk in the County Hall, and we started going out from time to time. She lived in Rothsay Road, Maindee, in Newport, and was a devout Baptist. Her father had no time for the Church, but her brother was also a chapel-goer and also politically inclined and rather scatterbrained. Her mother had passed away some years earlier, and Margaret felt it her duty to take her mother’s place and look after the family. Any socialising she did was always secondary to that duty. But, we went out fairly regularly, but the only incident that has stayed in my memory occurred one Saturday night after we had been to the cinema. When we came out at the end of the show, we found a tremendous storm raging. Newport is noted for its thunderstorms, which seem to come up the Bristol Channel and move inland and up the river at Newport. So, I was walking her home under my umbrella crossing Newport Bridge, over the river, and she was holding my arm. Suddenly there was a violent flash of lightening, accompanied simultaneously by a very loud crash of thunder. The lightening hit and lit up the metal framework of the bridge and my umbrella, and I felt a great thump on my arm where Margaret was holding on to me. The only explanation I could think of, was that she was wearing high-heeled shoes with metal tips on her heels, and I was wearing rubber-soled shoes, and the lightening hit my umbrella, but earthed through her. We both ran across the rest of the bridge, and dived into a pub doorway. I was all for going in to wait for the storm to abate, but Margaret, being a good Baptist, considered drinking alcohol, or even going into public houses, as rather sinful. So we stayed in the porch until the rain abated, and then I escorted her home. I got on well with her father, and reasonably well with her brother, but she went on holiday with some girl friends for two weeks leading up to a Bank Holiday. I went home for the Bank Holiday weekend, and on my return went to see how the holiday had gone, and she announced that she had met a chap while on holiday and she was now undecided about me. She wanted a break in our relationship for her to clear her feelings. I was devastated, as I had not realised how much the relationship had meant to me at the time, even though we had not gone beyond the shy ‘good night kiss’ stage. Shortly afterwards, I was contacted by a chap I had come to know, I think through my friendship with Margaret, and he invited me to come for a drink in the King’s Head with other members of the M.E.B.Club. I went along and met a group of about 6 or 7 young men, who were obviously good friends, and it soon became clear what the M.E.B. club was. It was the Margaret’s Ex-Boyfriends’ Club. She apparently never stuck to a boyfriend for more than a few months, and then dumped him. Her devotion to her family was stronger than any need for a boyfriend, apparently. So I felt I had had a lucky escape.
I used to go home almost every weekend, although we were supposed to do office duty on Saturday mornings in turns. As Rhys James’ family lived in Pontardawe, and he had a Ford Anglia, he went home every weekend when not on duty and he used to give me a lift to Swansea. The drill was that we parked the car and went to a Reid’s bread shop in Oxford Street to buy cakes and fresh bread and then to the market to get York Ham, and then he went to his car and I went to the bus station to get out to Gowerton. Getting back after the weekend, involved either a South Wales Transport or a United Welsh bus into Swansea on Sunday evening to get the N&C (Neath and Cardiff) Coach to Cardiff, and then another bus to Newport. I was delighted to find that my old school friend, Gareth Williams, also used the same coach every Sunday, so we resumed our friendship. Oddly, although he was still at Swansea University when I went there after the army, and we met, he was very much involved with the Welsh speaking crowd, so we rarely socialised together. He was now lodging in Cardiff, having failed his medical for the Forces due to a dickie heart, had gone to University, got a good degree and a job teaching in a Welsh Language School in Treforest, near Pontypridd. This meant very enjoyable journeys and chats every Sunday night with a very close friend. Sadly, when I moved to Bridgend I no longer made this Sunday evening journey and we lost touch for many years. I did track him down by contacting his school from which he had, by then, retired, and they agreed to pass on a letter to him. He was now married with either two or three children and living in Cardiff. We arranged to meet at the Fairwater Con Club one night, and we had a long chat about our adventures in our schooldays, and he said that the best holiday he had ever had was the one camping in Three Cliffs Bay with Henry Wills and myself. Sadly, we have never been in contact since. Then, one day, I had a message to say Dad, who had been in pain for years, was now much worse, so I made the journey every weekend if I could manage it. Marion had been working in Wem, Shropshire, for a while, and then took a job with Carmarthenshire County Council, running two youth clubs, in Pwll and Burry Port, which between them occupied her five nights a week, but she was near to home and she had a car, and she could keep an eye on Mam and Dad. Later, when things seemed to be improved at home, and Dad seemed to be on the mend, she moved to Coventry for a better post. Her first job had been in the YWCA in Swansea, but then moved to the job in Wem, Shropshire. I remember when she first came home from Wem with her little black Ford Poplar, bringing Audrey’s stepmother with her, because they were now very close friends, although I had finished with Audrey shortly after leaving the Army. She gave me a ride down to the village for something or other, and on the way back asked me if I would like to try driving it, and put me in the driving seat in Sterry Road. I drove it up Cecil Road, as far as the bottom of Park Road, without incident. When it came to turning right into Park Road, they were both shouting at me to slow down, as I was going too fast to take the corner, but I did not think so, and proceeded to turn. There was an awful scream of tyres on the chippings at the side of the road, but I straightened up and proceeded up Park Road, and parked outside the house in Mount Pleasant. They were both white, and I was never allowed to drive the car again, for some reason! I knew more or less how to drive at that time, before I had had any lessons, because I had watched what the driver did when I was lucky enough to have a ride in a car, and I practised the moves in my imagination while walking home from school, pressing the clutch, moving the gear stick, releasing the clutch, turning the wheel, and pressing and releasing the break pedal. People must have thought I was crackers!
Dad, however, later got worse, and Dr. Morgan Owen arranged for him to go into Mount Pleasant Hospital in Swansea. This had been the old Work House, but was now a well-equipped modern hospital, for long term and terminally ill patients. I now had permission to go home every weekend because of his condition. Marion took leave and came home to be with Mam and take her to visit Dad and took me as well every weekend. For years, Dad had always said that his father had died at the age of 57, and that his grandfather and great grandfather had both died at the age of 57, and Dad was convinced that he would also die at the age of 57. When he reached 57, Marion and I, and I expect Mam, worked hard trying to convince him that he would not follow in the family tradition, and succeeded in getting him through that year.
Dad's Death
Finally, in October, 1959, we were told that the end was near, and I took leave to be at home with Mam, and then the call came for us to get to the hospital immediately. Mam would not come, but Marion and I went together. It was late evening and we sat with him all night, while he was virtually in a coma, propped up on pillows, having difficulty breathing, relying on an oxygen mask when his breathing became really laboured. As dawn approached, on 6th October, Marion suggested I went to have some breakfast, and she would go when I got back. When I got back after a cup of tea at a local café, she agreed to go for breakfast. She didn’t, however. She went to visit “Auntie” Ethel, an old school friend of Mam’s, who lived in the next street overlooking the hospital. I sat with Dad, giving him oxygen from time to time to ease his breathing, and thinking of all he had gone through, the pain and all the various treatments he had had, including several weeks in Droitwich where he was immersed in warm local mud for hours on end to ease, if not cure, the arthritis he was said to be suffering. Then the Ward Sister came to sit with me, watching Dad’s condition. We chatted for a little while, and then Dad’s breathing got bad, and I raised the mask to give him more oxygen, and the Sister, who had not taken her eyes off him, held my arm and said: “No! Leave it. It will be better.” It was the hardest thing I have ever been asked, or told, to do, but I realised the reason for it, and put the mask down. Within seconds, Dad gave a long sigh, and was gone. It was the morning of 6th October 1959, and he was 63 years old, six years past his dreaded 57 years, when he had expected to die. I went to find Marion in “Auntie” Ethel’s, and told her. We went to see Dad again together, and then went home to break the news to Mam. As usual, Mam already knew. Mam and Dad were always very close, loved each other dearly, and, of course, Mam was always a bit psychic. He had worked hard all his life in the Tinplate Works until he injured his foot in work. He did, when the doctor allowed him to, work in the Bryngwyn Tinplate Works in Kingsbridge for a while, also in the Velindre works, and finally in the 3Ms factory in Penllergaer, which gave him back some of his pride as an earner, but each time, he eventually had to give up because of the pain. Mam had offered to find a job, but he always threatened he would put his head in the gas oven if she did, because he was the man of the family and it was his, not his wife’s, duty to provide for the family. He never seemed to have recognised that Mam had been Dr. Owen’s house cleaner for a number of years, and had also taken in washing, and done all sorts of things to add to the family purse for years.
After the funeral, arranged by Gwylim Thomas, the local undertaker, a deacon in Tabernacle, and friend of Dad’s, Marion wanted Mam to go back with her to Coventry for a while, but Mam insisted on staying in her home until she got used to being on her own. She said she had to get used to taking the door key with her every time she went out, and to unlocking the door of an empty house when she returned. She did promise that when she had achieved that, she would go to visit Marion for a couple of weeks. I went back to work, visiting her every weekend, very worried about her, but she had adapted herself to her new situation – because she “did not want Dad to worry about her”! Slowly, things got back to a normal routine again and I had to catch up with my work. She remained in 74 Mount Pleasant, a four bedroomed Council house, alone, but with the support of marvellous neighbours and friends and Dad’s family, for several years.
Back in work, my attention was distracted when a new Educational Psychologist was appointed in Newport Borough, with whom I obviously had contact professionally, and we went out occasionally for a drink, etc. He then bought a car and started driving. How and when he had learned to drive and taken his Test, I do not know, but he was the worst driver I had ever, or since, known. He invited me to go with him to Cardiff to the cinema, and collected me in his little car. He drove all the way from Gold Tops in Newport to Cardiff in 2nd Gear. When I suggested he change up to third or fourth gear, he said that he could not be bothered with gears and things and had never understood them!
Diana
It must have been around that time that I decided to resume driving lessons and buy a car, but meanwhile, a Cardiff University student came to the office for two weeks on a Practical Placement with the lady Probation Officer for the county area, who had her office in County Hall with us. This student’s name was Diana Williams, and I was immediately smitten, and invited her out one evening. Unfortunately, when I went to meet her on our first date, she failed to turn up but her friend arrived instead to tell me Diana was ill and in hospital, so I went to see her there and our courtship started. It was then that I decided to revive my driving practice and apply for a Driving Test. As Diana lived in Cardiff, with her barrister brother, David, in a flat overlooking Roath Park Lake, and I lived in Newport, it was difficult to meet up after her placement at the office ended, except by train or bus, or if she borrowed her brother’s car for the evening.
My First Car
At this time, I used to have lunch in the Bridge Café at the top of, surprisingly, Bridge Street, not far from the Courts. At the same café the Deputy Magistrates Clerk also had his lunch and a small group of us used to eat and chat there every lunchtime. Occasionally we were joined by a man who was a Rep. for the Forward Trust finance company, so I asked him one day about getting a loan to buy a car. He advised me to get a loan from a bank, but told me he knew a man out in Maindee who bought old cars and did them up, put them in good order and sold them, as a hobby. He said he was a good mechanic and reliable and honest, and he agreed to talk to the man to see when he had a suitable car available. I said that I preferred a Ford Anglia, only because Rhys James drove a Ford Anglia and I knew nothing about cars. In due course, he advised me that this man had a Ford Prefect that was all done up ready for sale, and he wanted £200 for it. John Austin told me to go to Midland Bank because he had an account there I could use his name as a referee because he was well known there. I learned later he was well known in Midland Bank because of the size of his overdraft. However, I went to see the car, which looked good, and a bit bigger than Rhys James’ car, and I went to the Midland Bank to try for a loan. I was seen by some dignitary of the Bank, told him who I was and that I wanted a loan of £200 to buy a car. He took my name and address, occupation, etc., left the room and came back with £200 in notes, a form for me to sign, and a Paying In book.. And so I acquired a black Fort Prefect, registration No. RWX 495. Of course, I could not drive it unless Diana was with me, as she had a full licence, and I only had a Provision one. But it was mine. She used it to get from Cardiff to Newport. I applied for a driving test, swotted up on the Highway Code, and got in all the practice that I could.
Driving Test
About three weeks before I was due to take my test, I was sitting in the office early evening, waiting for Diana to come and pick me up to go out for the evening, when she telephoned to say the car had been towed in to a garage in Cardiff. While driving up the hill out of Cardiff, she overtook a bus and when she applied her brakes to slow down they did not work. She pulled in to the side of the road and telephoned the AA, who sent a man along. He jacked the car up to examine the brakes and one of the wheels fell off, so the car was towed to a garage and left there for repair. All phone calls asking for progress on the repairs were met with the same reply – they were working on it and it would soon be ready. Eventually I went there to see for myself and nothing was happening, so I explained that I was taking my driving test in it next week and I wanted it ready, as they had had it for several weeks by then. After repeated visits and threats, I eventually went to collect the car on the day of my test, and then had to wait for them to finish putting the wheels back on. I had taken the man from whom I had bought the car only a couple of months earlier, and he had agreed to pay for the repairs. When the car was ready, I just had enough time to drive from Cardiff to Newport Testing Station in time for my test, and on the way, a hubcap fell off and went spinning across the road. The man from whom I had bought the car picked it up and gave it back to me in Newport. On the Test, we set off around the Pill area of town, which was like a grid of roads, where he asked me to drive across a side turning and stop. I did this and then he asked me to reverse into the side turning, which I set out to do but went so wide into the middle of the road, I had trouble getting back close to the kerb to stop again. I was still not parallel to the kerb when he simply said, “All right, Mr. Davies, drive forward and turn left.” After that, I thought I had failed, so I relaxed and simply did as I was told. Then we went out onto Cardiff Road, where he told me to turn right to go up a very steep hill to the top of Stow Hill, and half way up he told me to stop. I did, and applied the hand brake, which did not hold the car on such a steep hill, so I had to keep my foot on the footbrake. When he told me to drive off again, I had to juggle my right foot from the brake pedal to the accelerator, but each time I tried to pull away, I stalled the car. After two attempts, I managed it, and arrived at the top, where he told me to turn right, and then right again to go back down to Cardiff Road. Going down the steep hill I took the precaution of changing down a gear. It was only a three gear car, but I put it into 2nd Gear, and a moment or so later the gear stick just fell out of gear and I was running free, so I cursed and slammed the gear stick back in, and told the tester that I had only just collected the car from a garage where it was supposed to have been repaired. I got no response from the tester, so I just carried on back to the Testing Station. There, we stopped at the kerb and he asked questions about the Highway Code. As the only bits of Motorway in the whole country were over the other side of England, I had not concentrated on Motorway Rules, and, of course, all the questions were about motorway driving. Fortunately, the Television had been blasting out the new Rules of Motorway driving for weeks and I had heard them all so often, that I answered all the questions satisfactorily, until he asked:
“What is the third lane on a motorway for?”
I said: “For fast moving traffic.”
He said: “I’ll ask you again, Mr. Davies. What is the third lane on a motorway for?”
I said again: “For fast moving traffic.”
He said: “If I were doing 90 miles an hour in the third lane, and you come up doing 100 mph, what would you do?”
I said: “I would have to slow down.”
He said: “Why should you? You can go as fast as you like on a motorway – that is what they are for.” (which was true at that time!)
I said: “Well, there must be a limit on the speed you can do, if only for safety reasons.”
He said: “No, there is no restriction on speed on a motorway. Now come on. Mr. Davies, what is the third lane for?”
I thought for a minute, and it suddenly struck me. “For over-taking.”
“Of course it is, Mr. Davies,” He said. “O.K. You’ve passed.” And he gave me my piece of paper to prove it.
Then I realised that not only was Diana still waiting patiently for me, but Rhys James, John Austin and Miss Basson, were all there cheering and yelling to me to take my “L” plates off.
One of the first incidents as a newly qualified driver happened when I was driving to pick up Diana from her flat in Cardiff, and I realised I was running short of petrol, so I pulled in to a garage to fill up. Buying petrol was new to me, and the row of pumps all with different names and prices was confusing to my inexperienced mind. The man came out to pour the petrol, as they did in those days, and asked me which petrol I wanted. I didn’t know. Petrol was petrol as far as I knew. The prices ranged from 3/8d (18p) to 3/4d (14p), but then I spotted one on the end, which was only 3/2d (11p) a gallon, so I said “I’ll have that one, that’s the cheapest.” He didn’t say a word, but proceeded to fill my tank. I paid him and drove off up North Road, and got to the traffic lights, where I had to stop. When the lights turned back to green, I tried to move forward, but the engine stalled, and a glance in the mirror told me there was a thick grey cloud behind me, and behind that a line of traffic wanting to move forward. I eventually had to push the car onto the wide pavement, where I was advised that I had put Diesel instead of petrol in the car, and it would have to be siphoned out. That was when I joined the AA, and was towed off to a garage, and had to wait about four hours to get my car back in a drivable condition!!
NAPO
One of the first things my two colleagues, John Austin and Rhys James, made sure I knew about was the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO). I was more or less obliged to join this Association, which was our Trade Union. I went along to my first meeting, and started making contact with all the other South Wales Officers. Each Local Authority had its own Probation Service, so there was one in Merthyr, consisting of two officers, the Rev. Gareth Daniels and Miss May Davies. Gareth had been the Baptist minister in Maesteg for several years, but gave up the ministry in favour of probation because he felt he would be doing more good in the community. Being a Merthyr boy, he joined the Merthyr Borough Service. May was a retired teacher who just wanted to do good. There was, in contrast, a Service in Cardiff, which was much larger, and one in the County of Glamorgan. Swansea Borough had its own service, and there were services in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. I think every Probation Officer, including Senior and Principal Probation Officers, belonged to NAPO, so I gradually got to meet them all. In particular, I met Albin Crook, PPO of Glamorgan and the two Senior Probation Officers. I also renewed my acquaintanceship with the SPO in charge of the Swansea Service, a lovely man who had been a prisoner of war with the Japanese for several years, and was treated very badly. He rarely talked about those days, but I had lunch with him in Swansea one day and waiter walked past the table taking dirty plates back to the kitchen. On one was a pile of un-eaten rice. My colleague turned to me and said: “I can remember fighting desperately with others to pick up a single grain of that stuff!”
Sometime later, the Merthyr office was absorbed into the Glamorgan Service, and eventually, following major changes in the Local Authority boundaries in Wales, the whole Probation structure followed suit. Glamorgan was split into three, Mid-. South- and West Glamorgan. Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire were absorbed into Dyfed, and Newport and Monmouthshire became Gwent. Since I have retired, the whole structure has changed again, and there is now a South Wales Probation Service. I was eventually persuaded to go to the Annual NAPO Conference which was held in a different town or city each year, and there I met up with colleagues from all over the country, including Scotland. In time, the South Wales, the Scottish, and, for some reason, the Lancashire contingents always arranged to be in the same hotel, and spent all the evenings in the bar together after the official sessions were over. Gareth Daniels would start telling jokes, and I would give a song or two, and with the crate of whiskey that the Scots always brought with them we had some great times and a lot of fun, as well as learning a lot about the latest thinking in the Service.
One year, it was decided by someone on the organising committee to hold a talent competition, and our crowd persuaded me to enter with my guitar, some folk songs and humour. The chairman of the adjudicating team was Lord Hunt of Everest, who announced at the end of the evening that the winner was – me! I was duly presented with a trophy in the form of a carved mahogany harp with glass strings. It had been carved by a Probation Officer from Northumberland, or somewhere, with whom I became very friendly. Because I would have to return the trophy the next year’s competition he promised me he would make another one for me to keep. Sure enough, the next year he brought along a copy about half the size of the original, which I still have – somewhere. I entered the competition the second year, and was placed last in the running order for the show. I went down well with the audience and all my mates assured me that I had won. When Lord Hunt got up to announce the winner, he prefaced his remarks by pointing out that last year’s winner, “the talented Ifor Davies”, had performed last in the show because he was not considered as a contestant this year and had been used to entertain the audience while the adjudicators made up their minds about this year’s winner, otherwise he would have won again.. I don’t think they held the competition in subsequent years. Each year the conference was organised by a committee from the area where it was to be held, and each had different ideas of what the programme should be. Many members of NAPO also belonged to The British Association of Social Workers, as I did myself, and one year Gareth and I were invited to come along on the Saturday evening to the Annual Conference in Birmingham to entertain as we did in NAPO conferences. We were asked to perform after dinner and carry on until about 2.0.am. We told them that was not acceptable, and we would start informally when we were ready, and stop when we thought we had done enough. This was accepted, and after dinner, we started about 9.30pm, with a small table and one chair as props, as one of us would be on his feet performing while the other was sitting down. We carried on, well received, and finished just after 2.0.am! The next year, this conference was held in Swansea University, and the local organiser, a Probation Officer in Neath, invited us to do it again. Gareth said he was not available, so I was asked to either do it on my own, or find other performers to come with me. I asked two friends from Porthcawl who sang Country and Western songs with guitars, and Terry Griffiths, a friend of mine from the choir and Show On A Shoe String, who did Al Jolson impersonations, and was very good at it. About a fortnight before we were due to do this gig, I realised that Terry always dressed up like Jolson and always blacked his face and whitened his eyes and lips in tradition Negro Minstrels style. I explained to him that I did not think this was a good idea in front of extreme Left Wing social workers, as they would probably lynch us. He was eventually persuaded to leave off the make up, and performed extremely well on the night and was well received by the audience of about 1000 social workers. The two country singers, whose names I have now forgotten except that one was called Caleb, were similarly applauded with vigour, because they always performed well. I too was gratified to get tremendous applause and response from the audience. When it was over, I asked the organiser, a friend and colleague of mine, how he thought it had gone, and he was slightly hesitant in replying that it had gone well, and he paid my our fee. I rang him from the office on the following Monday to ask him again, and he told me that three people (out of about a thousand in the audience) had walked out and complained to the committee about my being racist, sexist and every –ist going. They had tabled a motion for the Sunday morning, which was passed that I was never again to be invited to attend or entertain at an Annual Conferences, and that all future artists were to be asked to submit their scripts six months in advance, so that they could be screened by a Political Correctness Committee. This was all because I had told a joke about an Englishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman. I had deliberately refrained from using a very funny poem about a homosexual hairdresser!
When I became a Senior Probation Officer, NAPO had also begun to change, being taken over by young left-wingers who wanted to change the whole system, made it a much more political organisation and regarded SPOs as the enemy like all employers! Eventually the National Association of Senior Probation Officers was set up in which I played a more active organising role.
When Parliament decided that all the various social work agencies in the country aught to be combined into one local authority department, they experimented first in Scotland, and included the Probation Service in the re-arrangement. When they made the changes in England and Wales they had been persuaded, I think by Judges, Magistrates, and lawyers, that the Probation Service should remain independent and based firmly in the legal system and not the welfare system. But one effect of the changes was that the Scottish crowd no longer attended NAPO conferences. I continued to keep in touch with a lot of the “conference crowd” but since retiring, I have gradually lost contact with most of them except Les Harrison with whom I speak on the phone very occasionally, and Muriel Ashton, whom I had known since training days in Lansdowne House, and who kept in touch with everybody. She eventually married the Magistrates’ Clerk of her court when both had retired, but she still sends a Christmas Card every year.
Unity Youth Club
Something that brought about quite a change in my life while I was at Newport, was that I had noticed that many of my Juvenile clients, when asked what they did in their spare time, said they went to Unity Youth Club. This was held in Unity House, an Oddfellows property in a back street off Stow Hill, so one evening I went along to have a look at this great attraction. There, I found, on the first floor, a large number of youngsters running about, making a noise, and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Some were involved in some activity or other, but I cannot remember what they were. But I met the Club Leader, a short man with ginger hair, looking very harassed. He told me about the club, and his frustrations because: a) he could not run the club alone and needed help and b) he did not know what he was supposed to be doing anyway. I decided that I would go along and just help out. Quite a few of the members were, or had been, clients of mine. One of the Management Committee members was a police inspector, and another was a Magistrate, and when I met them at the club when they visited, they invited me to join the Management Committee. Through that, I met the General Secretary of The Welsh Association of Youth Clubs, Dennis Frost, who turned out to have been at University on the same course as Marion, whom he, of course, knew. In fact I had a photograph of the people on that course, with Marion and Dennis in it. The Club Committee decided that they wanted the Club Leader to be trained, and the WAYC offered courses. But the leader, who was a salesman by trade, I think, thought the course would be too academic for him, and he feared failing. He was persuaded to go for it only after I agreed to go on the same course with him. It was a very good part time course for part time leaders. We had a lecture one evening a week, and occasional weekend residential courses at Kilfrew Manor, in Parkmill, on the Gower, for practical sessions. Half way through the course, our boy stopped attending, but I continued and ended up with a Certificate in Youth Leadership.
Rhiwbina Youth Club
This led to an invitation to apply for a job as part time youth leader at the Rhiwbina Youth Club in Cardiff, one night a week, which brought in a little cash to supplement my £9 or £10 a week salary. I found it quite enjoyable, but when we moved to Bridgend, it was more of a nuisance travelling all the way to Rhiwbina every week. It also brought me in closer contact with Dennis Frost, and Lew Sladen, the field officer for South East Wales, who both became close friends of mine. On the training course, I met an elderly couple, man and wife, from Abergavenny, who had a strange history. Initially, he had been the Scout Master, and she the Guide Captain, in a group in Abergavenny, and each year had taken the Scouts, the Cubs, the Guides and the Brownies to camp together. They had done this for years, and then suddenly the Scout and Guide Commissioners objected and insisted they must stop taking the girls and the boys to camp together. After a long argument, they decided that rather than give up their habit, which was accepted and supported by the parents of their members, they would leave the Scout and Guide movements and start their own. Between them, they devised the equivalent badges of the Tenderfoot and Tenderpad badges, and the equivalent badges in the Guides and Brownies, as well as substitute badges for 2nd Class and 1st Class tests, and all the proficiency badges, and she set about making them herself embroidering appropriate emblems on them all. I forget what they called the club, but it continued to thrive for a long time, but they were very elderly for club leaders, and I do not know whether their new movement still exists. Probably not, because they were a unique couple.
The Welsh Association of Youth Clubs also devised a scheme, thought up by Dennis Frost I believe, which was that clubs which had a special activity which was very successful should form a Demonstration Team, and visit other clubs to encourage them to take up the activity also. There were numerous demonstration teams going around the clubs in South Wales, including one who not only demonstrated canoeing, but also the Club Leader designed a canoe made of wooden panels sewn together, and sealed. He also went so far as to cut out all the parts, and sell kits to other clubs who wished to take up the activity. All that the other club had to do was assemble them and paint them in colours of their own choosing. They were very popular. Lew Sladen once invited me to a round of golf in Tredegar Park, which I accepted with alacrity, before I discovered that he was born in a Golf Club, the son of the Professional, who cut down the broken clubs of members to make a full set of small clubs for Lew when he was a tiny lad. My only experience of golf was Pitch and Putt at the little municipal course between the Mumbles Train track and the beach opposite the University at Swansea, and the odd round on a municipal course in Southampton. Lew loaned me his wife’s clubs and we set out for the first tee, which was right alongside the river and the green less than 20 yards away on the other side. My first swing put the ball straight into the river. So did the second shot and then the third, after which Lew decided to play my first shot to get the game started and ensure that I didn’t lose him any more expensive golf balls. We then played on and got to, I think, the ninth tee, when the sky darkened and suddenly there was a great flash of lightening, a crash of thunder, and then a downpour of hailstones. We had just played our first shots, and as we picked up our clubs to go and find our respective balls, we realised that the whole area was now white with hailstones, and we had to find white golf balls. I found mine, and we were then searching for Lew’s in the rough, with the storm still raging around us, when he suddenly cried out: “What the hell am I doing waving a metal club about with all this lightening around us?” and he flung it from him and we dived into a corrugated iron shelter just off the fairway! We stood there until the storm abated, and the hailstones had melted and then we abandoned the game. It was great fun, - but we never played again! I was also invited to join the staff on courses run by the WAYC, some of which were residential in Kilvrough Manor in Parkmill, on the Gower. These were not only very instructive, but very enjoyable, and we had great times in Ilston Valley and Three Cliffs Bay, which I knew well after all the times I had camped there as a young lad. We did crazy things, like taking one half of the youngsters out in the dark after the evening meal and dropping them off about half a mile from the Manor, and telling them to get back in, through the other half who would be defending the place and trying to keep them out. On one occasion, one lad was creeping through a dark woods carpeted with wild garlic on the edge of the Manor grounds. He thought he had made it and got careless, and was suddenly pounced on by some defenders, and they rolled around trying to overcome him. By the time they got into the house, they, and the house was stinking of garlic, which lasted for days.
Diana and I continued to meet and I met her brother, David, who was a barrister in Cardiff, and her parents, Dr. Barry Williams and Gwyneth, who lived in Bristol.
Diana's family - Grampa Tom John, Dad Barry Williams, mother Gwyneth and, front row, Nanna John
The first time I met her parents was when they came over from Bristol to visit Diana while she was unwell, and I had gone down to see her for the same reason. While I was there, her mother and Diana went to the kitchen, leaving me with her father, and while we sat chatting, the phone rang. He answered it, and it was another relative ringing up to ask after Diana. Her father immediately turned to Welsh to continue the conversation, quite unaware that I, too, spoke some Welsh, and understood everything that he said. He told whoever had called about me, and was quite complimentary, so I was quite flattered and encouraged. After all, the doctor in Gowerton during my childhood was a god, one of the very few people in the village with a car, and here was I mixing socially with a doctor and a barrister who was an ex-public school boy and a family who went abroad on holidays regularly, and courting a girl who had been educated in a boarding school! Diana and I became, what is now called “an item” and saw a lot of each other.
Diana and me when we became engaged
Marriage
It seemed to be accepted and inevitable that we would get married, which we did on 7th October 1961. The marriage was to be held in Bristol, in Knowle church, because, although all her family were Welsh Congregationalists, the “Annibynnwyr”, she had been educated in a Church of England school, and was more at home in the Anglican tradition. And it was thought “proper” to be married in Church! So the date was fixed for 7th October 1961, preparations were afoot, and I carried on with the routine of being a Probation Officer, and extending my experience and techniques.
I asked Rhys James, my colleague and good friend, if he would be my Best Man, and he agreed. I had to go with Diana over to Bristol to see the Vicar of Knowle Church, to talk about the meaning of marriage etc., but all the arrangements were made by her parents; that is, by the Mother of the Bride. I worked until the Friday, 6th October, intending to leave about lunchtime to get over to Bristol, but I was also involved in moving stuff from my digs to a small furnished flat Diana and I had found in Victoria Place, just off Stow Hill. It consisted of two rooms and a kitchen and the rent was extortionate. Consequently, I did not get away from Newport until early evening, and had to drive all around Gloucester, because the tides were not right for the Beachly Ferry. It was during this journey that I realised that that day, 6th October, was the anniversary of my father’s death.
I finally arrived at Diana’s parents’ home in Wells Road about 10 o’clock, if I remember rightly, to be told that a Stag Party had been laid on for me, over the road in Uncle Erne’s house, but they had now all gone home. I went over and all that was left was about half a glass of sherry, so that was my Stag Night! I spent the night at Uncle Erne’s, and the next morning was taken up to Knowle church to be married. I was weighted down with two pockets full of pennies, thrupenny bits, sixpences, and the odd shilling. It was traditional in Gowerton, and, I thought, everywhere, for the children of the area to gather at a church where a wedding was being held, and as soon as everyone was in the church, they would tie the church gates together so that the Bride and Groom could not get out until the groom had thrown handfuls of coins for them to scramble after. When we came out of church, the gates were still wide open, and not a child in sight. They had never heard of this custom!
Diana & me, together at last
All Diana’s mother’s brothers and sisters were there, and I had asked the Vicar for permission for her Uncle Glyn, who was a Welsh Congregationalist Minister of international repute, to take part in the service so that he could introduce some Welsh into the proceedings. The Vicar had agreed willingly and was delighted that it would be a bi-lingual service. Uncle Glyn did take part, but spoke not a word of Welsh throughout the whole proceedings. It was a strange gathering of people, with so many of Diana’s family, mainly professional or business people, and so many of my family almost all working class Welsh villagers. Of the actual service, I remember very little, but I do remember the almost endless car journey from Knowle to the hotel on the top of Clevedon cliffs for the Reception. Oddly enough, the hotel where the Reception was held backed on to the school which Diana had attended. The Reception went off extremely well, except that quite a number of people got lost trying to get through the centre of Bristol, and never arrived.
Eventually, Diana and I set off for our honeymoon in the little grey Morris Mini Minor, which we had bought in exchange for the Ford Prefect that had caused so much trouble before my driving test. We did not have far to go, because we were booked in to Webbington Country Club near Axbridge, where we arrived with a broken exhaust pipe and sounding like a low-flying helicopter. Then we discovered that we had been allocated a room with two single beds, which we pushed together. Still, we were there for two weeks and we explored all the area and had a great time, before returning to Newport and our rented furnished flat. It was all so unlike David’s wedding and honeymoon abroad and return to his flat which covered the whole ground floor of a huge block overlooking the lake in Roath Park, Cardiff.
We settled down in our little furnished flat, which was OK, but not really very comfortable or satisfactory. Being on the top floor the chimney was not very long. The fireplace was very large, and one could put one’s head in and look up at the sky. One evening we got back in after being out all day, and found a big black bird in the middle of the carpet. It turned out to be a white pigeon, which had fallen down the chimney, and we had to force the window open to allow it to fly away, before we scrubbed the carpet. I went back to work, and started looking for an opportunity to move nearer to Mam’s place in Gowerton. She was now on her own, and although she had lots of friends, good neighbours and Dad’s relatives in Gowerton, she still felt very much alone in the four-bedroomed council house in Mount Pleasant, but she refused to move to live with or be nearer to us or to Marion, because she did not want to be a “burden” to us. Diana had completed her course at Cardiff University College, and had her Social Science qualification to be a Social Worker, but while waiting for something suitable, and to earn some money again, she returned to nursing and worked at the Lansdowne Hospital in Cardiff.
Diana’s father was still practising and he and Mother were still living in Bristol, which meant we went over there quite regularly to visit them. At that time the Severn Ferry was still running from Beachley, near Chepstow across to Aust on the Gloucestershsire side. There were three boats, The Severn King, the Severn Queen, and the Severn Princess. Beachley was to be found at the end of a long narrow road, winding from the A48 down to the coast. There was usually a queue of vehicles waiting to board, which was a hazardous adventure in itself. The rise and fall of the tide is quite high at this point, and the jetty sloped quite steeply and always wet, so it was quite tricky to turn left on a downward sloping jetty onto an upward sloping ramp to get up onto the deck. Here a man would direct one to the parking spot, which sometimes could only be reached by getting either the front or the back wheels of the car on a turn table, and being pulled around by a crewman and manoeuvred into its position. Once there, at busy times, one could not then get out of the car, because it was so close to the neighbouring cars. On arrival at the other side, the same procedure had to be endured in reverse to get ashore and start the long drive along the flats to the road to Bristol. It was always an exiting experience, and sometimes disappointing if one had sat in the queue for a long time, only to find that the ferry had left, full, and one had to wait for the other one to arrive from Aust, land all its vehicles, and then take ours on board. Sometimes, also, the tide would get too low for the ferry to operate, and everyone in the queue had to turn around in a narrow area, and drive all the way back to the A48, and then get to Bristol via Gloucester. This was, of course, before the motorways were built. They were to come later. From the queue and the boat, we several times sat watching the building of the pillars of the Severn Bridge. It was fascinating to watch the winding of the cables across the huge span thread by thread until the cable was big enough to bear the strain. When the bridge was finally finished and then officially opened, the three fascinating little boats had no function. Two were sold for scrap and the third, the little Severn Princess, has been preserved for posterity. This performance of getting to Bristol continued regularly until the bridge was opened and then we had the joy of driving across this magnificent new bridge. Eventually, the motorway network and the second, even more impressive bridge, was built over the site of the Severn Tunnel, which took the Great Western Railway from Wales into England. The journey that used to take two or three hours, and sometimes more, now takes less than an hour.
My work had increased tremendously since I had arrived as a new sprog in Newport. It was a varied case load that I had, ranging from juvenile boys from 13 years of age up to 17 years under supervision from the Juvenile Court, adults from 18 years of age and upwards, on Probation from the Adult Courts, Magistrates, Quarter Sessions or Assizes, boys on Licence from Approved Schools, or H.M. Borstal Institutions, and men on Licence or After Care from H.M. Prisons. Later, Detention Centres were set up and we supervised boys from them as well, but that was after we had left Newport and moved to Bridgend. A lot of our time was taken up interviewing defendants awaiting trial and preparing Social Enquiry Reports on them to help the Magistrates, or Judges, to decide on the appropriate sentence in the event of their being found Guilty. We reported on all Juveniles appearing in court and adults if requested by the Magistrates, and everyone committed to the Quarter Sessions or the Assizes for Criminal offences. So we were kept quite busy, and my case load of clients being supervised grew fairly rapidly from the 34 I took over on arrival to 60-odd by the time I left to join the Glamorgan Probation Service in 1961.
Mam moved to Heol-y-Gog
Around about this time, Mam announced that she had applied for a council flat. She had seen a family move in to a house just up the road in Mount Pleasant, a family with five children, and she suddenly realised that there were many families in desperate need of, and waiting for, council accommodation, and here she was, all alone in a four bed-roomed house. She had asked the Rent Man about it and had made an application for a council flat, and in due course moved in to 2, Heol y Gog, a new council estate filling up the sacred ground of The Cornfield. Mam’s flat was down the bottom, near the village and just around the corner from her old school friend, Vi, and her family. While I had been in the Army, Mrs. Lloyd, 73, Mount Pleasant, had died, and as a child I used to go in to visit her and Arthur Lloyd, her husband, regularly, because they always seemed to have the radio on, or wireless as we called it then, and there always seemed to be organ music playing on it. In their front room, or parlour, they also had a tall organ with two pedals to provide the wind, and about 14 stops to create magical sounds. It also had several shelves and places to stand candles, and a mirror on the front. Mr. Lloyd always used to say that after his days, the organ was to be mine. He had died a few years earlier, and the organ was duly delivered to Mam and Dad, who had it restored to working condition. I do not know how they managed to afford it, but when I went home on leave on one occasion, Dad told me to go into the parlour, there was something there for me, and there was my very own organ.
So, Marion, who was now living and working in Coventry, came home, and between us we moved Mam into her new first-floor, one bed-roomed flat, furnished it, and we had to dispose all the surplus furniture from the four-bedroomed house, as well as the organ. The organ was, of course a problem, so I fitted a little silver plate in memory of Dad, and presented it to Tabernacle Chapel to use when they held services in the vestry instead of the ‘Big Chapel’, and they were delighted. I used to call in to Tabernacle from time to time to have a little play on the organ. The back door of the vestry was always unlocked in those days. One day, some years later, I went in and the organ had been moved to the back of the room, and benches and chairs piled on top of it, and it was in ruins. I contacted the secretary of the chapel to complain, but got no explanation, but he did promise to get it repaired. When this was done, I had to hire a lorry and collect the organ and bring it back to Bridgend. It took up a lot of room, was rarely played and subsequently ended up in the garage where it got damaged and eventually I took it to an organ repairer in Newport and after removing the little silver plate, gave it to him for spares. He did not think it could be restored itself. The chapel eventually ran out of members and ceased to function, and is now a ruin. All the seats, the beautiful pulpit and the lovely organ which I had pumped for so long as a youngster were taken out, and disposed of.
Mam took to her new flat like a fish to water, and was very happy there for a number of years. She even had two of her sisters, Carrie and Rhoda down to stay with her for a holiday, and Winnie also came to spend time with her there. Mrs. Daniels, mother of an old schoolmate of mine, Brian Daniels, was already living in the ground floor flat below her, and she knew most of the people in the flats and houses around so she was very much at home and happy there.
