The beginning and the end of a book are crucial. They are like the first few minutes of a film and its final scene; the exhilaration at your first taste of food you’ve never tried before and the warm satisfaction as you finish the last morsel in front of you. They can make the lasting of impressions. They pull you in and leave you caught in their spell. So why did I choose to place references to two pieces of poetry as the bookends to my Dad’s life story?
The first, and truthful answer, is that it was the choice of a writing novice who did not really trust his own prose. What better way to lift the quality of your own work by associating it with the work of those much more talented. I was taking a short cut to poignancy and deeper meaning. By using extracts from Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fern-hill/ and R.S. Thomas’ ‘A Peasant’ https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-peasant/ I wanted the reader to believe that what was coming and what had gone before was something more than just the story of an ordinary county cricketer.
But there was a little more to it than that. It is no coincidence that they are both Welsh poets known for their deep and complex relationship with Wales. At times, both were dismissive of their country’s heritage and inheritance yet their life’s work is remembered as something that speaks to us of Wales and the Welsh. The pride they had in being Welsh was sometimes hidden behind their words. There are many in todays World who experience a complexity when it comes to their sense of National Identity. Sportsmen and women especially. I wanted Dad’s story to be clearly, solidly, a Welsh one. And what better way than to bookend it with the words of two of our most illustrious poets.
Dad’s story mirrored what happened to Wales during the twentieth century. His life weaved its way through the years of depression, the challenge of war, the relief of the post war era and the modernisation of Britain. Born to a miner in a miner’s cottage, his early life was tough, as was the place he grew up in. Pontypridd was a mining market town. A hub for the Rhondda; a place that teemed with life that moved to the rhythms of industry. His escape from that hardship came through the cricket pitch at Ynysangharad Park. His second career, after finishing with Glamorgan, took him straight from the past to the future. He was one of the first salesman for a brand new idea, the credit card. He ended up the retired manager of the company that had given him a chance largely because of his sporting career. He ended his life living in a private mews. Wales had changed. The mines, the place most fathers wanted their sons to escape from, were now gone. Service industries and out of town shopping centres had transformed the urban geography of the country. But social geography often lags behind. Despite my Dad living a fairly middle-class life he retained the values and outlook of his working-class origins.
Those values, whilst not Welsh, spoke to me as something distinctive about sport in Wales. Always the sportsman, always the team man, his attitudes matched what many believe represent the best in Welsh sport. A closeness to the community, a recognition of how important being a role model is and a kindness and generosity to friends and supporters alike.
I, too, was a part of the story of what happened to Wales. I left Wales when I was eight years old. I lived, first, in Somerset and then, in Surrey before college in York and life in Manchester, Middlesbrough and, finally, in Birmingham where I settled and helped raise a family. I have always felt Welsh but my life experiences, first in a more affluent area of Swansea (Killay) and then in exile for the past 46 years have distanced me, geographically and culturally, from my homeland. But something has always burned inside me, a patriotism that not only made me proud of what my father had achieved but a pride in my country and what its people are still achieving. I am prepared to accept that this burning sensation was built on little more than sporting success and a naivety about my home country. I still find it hard to find fault in my country and am constantly dismayed when I discover that not all the Welsh agree about what is best for Wales. I have searched for a way to express my Welshness in a more profound way than simply cheering on the latest Welsh sporting success story. And so we come back to poetry.
A Welsh story deserved some Welsh literary flourish to lift it above its ordinariness. In writing the book, I wanted to come closer to the Welshness in me. Part of that, I now believe, is a love of language. Words are also able to convey meaning beyond the immediate. Poetry does this best; it is syntax clothed in a philosopher’s cloak. I am no poetry expert but I love what poetry can do. It can sum up ideas and lift you up from where you are to see things from a different plane.
Before Dad died, I wrote a poem about him. Its quality was doubtful but its message was heartfelt. Titled ‘Don’t Grow Old’ it used his often spoken words to me and my children as a refrain that would remind us to make best use of our time before age limits and shackles us in its practicalities.
The last stanza talked of the benches that are to be found on the cliff walk between Caswell and Langland Bays on the Gower, a path that dad loved to walk in his later years. Many of those benches carry plaques remembering other loved ones who used to walk that path but are no longer with us. The engraved words, forever facing seawards, reminded me of the power and permanence that words possess. A book - my book - is a small plaque that will sit, for as long as its pages allow, in the British library and elsewhere. A small message of remembrance in the sea of Welsh sporting history . . . now there’s poetry for you.