Family homeland revisited

Yesterday was unremarkably routine, except that I walked into town in the afternoon to buy a new summer jacket. It's nearly time to switch to a warmer one and my existing jacket is worn out. Sure enough, as it's the end of the season, I found just was I was looking for at a forty percent discount. It'll keep now until next spring, unless there's extra warm weather and a special occasion. There was nothing of interest on telly so I spent evening working on the script I'm writing for the play abut St German. I'm quite pleased at the way it's working out so far.

This morning began with out late Saturday pancake breakfast, and by midday we set out to drive up the A470 to visit Parc Penallta on the mountain above the village where I was born. A large area of the former spoil heap (or coal tip as the locals call it) of Penallta Colliery was stabilized, given a forest makeover and landscaped with two big outdoor installations to mark the arrival of the Millennium. I've never been there before, and thought it was about time we did.

After twenty years the woodland has developed nicely not only with vegetation but birds and insects. We saw buzzards circulating, a greenfinch (I think) a big flock of sparrows, and a red bodied dragonfly - there are several ponds and a wetland area. In one open area there's a huge earth sculpture, best viewed from the air commemorating Sultan one of the Penallta pit ponies. There were dozens of dog walkers up there, and the majority of them seemed to be dachshund owners. I wondered if this was their club rally. There's also a large metal sculpture, a dome shaped frame with cast iron sheet panels at ground level, each one with a set of symbolic images representing valleys life, landscape and history cut out of them. Very effective.

The views from the top up and down the Rhymney Valley, east and west, from Maesycwmer to Treharris are lovely, even on an overcast day like today. I was struck by the black outline on the mountain ridge to the south west of the Llanbradach Colliery tip which grew like a scar on the landscape as I grew up. It was a sight I hated because it made a beautiful mountain look so ugly. Nothing has been done to remove it or clothe it with vegetation. I wonder if it ever will?

After walking up to the pit pony site, had lunch in the Rowan Tree pub on the road between Nelson and Ystrad Mynach close to the site entrance. It has a lovely view across farmland in the valley below and we were able to sit at a table in a conservatory on the terrace. Next to the pub is a butchers shop. Much of the pub grub makes use of fresh meat from the shop, supplied by local farms I imagine. I had faggots, mushy peas and pork chippolates with mashed potatoes, generous helpings of delicious traditional fare washed down with a pint of Stella Artois. The we drove to Penallta hill at the other end of the site, and climbed up to the highest point where the Observatory sculpture is located. On the way down we picked a kilo of blackberries and another kilo of crab apples, to turn into a delicious jelly in the next few days.

After supper, I completed next week's Thursday prayer video, and started watching a 'Walter Presents' crimmie called 'Floodlands' set on the section of Dutch Belgian border along the river Meuse. It's about people trafficking and features a black female detective, so it observes issues of institutional racism and sexism in the police and border forces. I find it interesting to watch partly because it is set on a border, since we lived altogether nine years in border territories in Geneva and Monaco.

Homeland revisited

This afternoon I drove up to my home town of Ystrad Mynach to visit Michelle and her baby daughter Millie, who are both to be baptized Sunday next. They live in a new house in Cwm Calon, Penallta, the new private housing estate built on the site of Penallta Colliery where my faith spent much of his working life. Michelle and Andy's home is so new, the street doesn't yet appear on Google Maps. My phone's geo-location device showed me to be in the correct area, but in between streets, rather than in a street. I stopped to ask a couple of people, outside washing their cars, but nobody had heard of the street name, and reached for their phones, equipped with the same street map app, and came to the same conclusion. I drove around the block a second time and spotted the street name plate, partly obscured by an ornamental bush. The house I was looking for was opposite.

Michelle and I chatted for an hour, and before setting out for home, I stopped to take some photographs of the new housing estate, complete with its own new Welsh language Primary School, and the industrial remains of the colliery, majestic Edwardian brick and stone buildings, due for eventual conservation, if ever the funding can be found. Some buildings have already been converted into small business premises and offices, but progress has been slow in the years of recession during which the new housing has been built. The Cylla brook, running down this side valley into the river Rhymney in Ystrad Mynach, is now accompanied by a cycle and footpath. Since the removal of mining spoil heaps, native woodland has re-grown beautifully. Such a difference from when I was a child. You can find the photos here.

At the bottom end of the estate, where once spoil heaps and railway sidings gave way to several green paddocks, two streets of well appointed terraced houses, were built for pit officials. Here my grand parents, aunt, uncle and cousins lived. Pit ponies grazed during the miners' annual fortnight holiday in the paddocks. Nowadays these fields are built over with houses, and the grassy open space in front of the terrace back entrances is a drab tarmac'd play area enclosed by a chain link fence. Do any local children ever play there? I wondered, given the proximity of woodland and a cycle trail. 

On the drive up there was a serious car crash in the southbound lane of the A470 north of Pontypridd, and the tail back of traffic an hour and a half later stretched up the highway beyond the next junction and roundabout, so the half hour journey took me forty five minutes. On the return trip, I took the A469 road straight down the Rhymney Valley, but this was congested all the way, especially around Caerphilly. Only on the approach to Nantgarw did traffic began to flow freely again. It took me an hour and a half to get home, and as a result I was too late to go to my Tai Chi class. 

I've heard from others whose regular commute takes them through Caerphilly, that it's like this every day, since the town's population expanded with new houses into outlying areas in the past fifteen years. With so many driving from the Valleys to work in Cardiff, traffic growth has impacted life significantly. It used to be pollution from mining that ruined the environment and quality of life in the South Wales coalfield. The Valleys are beautifully green again, and much better cared for, offering attractive places to live at lower house prices than Cardiff, but vehicle emissions here as in Cardiff are damaging to health and frustrating to lifestyle, when people have to spend so much time in cars for shopping and leisure as well as work. 

I fear that the revitalisation of a still extensive Valleys rail network will come too little and too late. I often think about us moving out of Cardiff, because of the health impact of pollution locally. But where to? Anywhere near the sea is going to be too expensive, anywhere too far inland has disadvantages associated with being too remote from social, cultural and medical resources necessary for life in old age. Probably too late for us to move anyway, until we get really decrepit and need looking after.

How green is my Valley now!

Yesterday's carol service for the whole of Tredegarville school was the last occasion of this term for children to worship in St German's. There'll be no more 'class Masses' until mid January when Spring term gets under way. Eight of the regulars were there for the  midweek celebration of the Eucharist this morning, eastward facing in the Lady Chapel. Afterwards I chatted with people in the day centre for a while before heading back home for lunch. 

The rest of the day was uneventful and pretty inactive, apart from a brisk walk to Tesco's after preparing supper. Clare was out rehearsing for her Sunday concert until after eight. After eating together, I watched the first of a documentary series being re-run on BBC Four, about the river Taff and its post industrial regeneration. It's a superb series, part of which I have seen before. It was lovely to hear people being interviewed who spoke with the unique local accent in the area where I grew up. The 21st century story of the river's revival as a natural habitat, after half a century of ecological death by industrial pollution, is such a positive story for our time.

As I was growing up the state of the river, with its banks of alien silt from deep underground, brought to the surface and distributed throughout river systems due to ubiquitous coal mining washeries, was part of my earliest memories of outdoor play. I remember my mother's anxious warning, not to go near 'that black brook' which flowed off the mountainside through Ystrad Mynach, down to the river Rhymney on the floor of our valley. Coal dust, however you acquired it, made your clothes very dirty, so heaven help you if you fell into the river. Now the tributaries and the main valley rivers are alive again with healthy vegetation, birds and fish. The grief of elders who lived through the heyday of mining regretting the environmental cost has been turned to joy and pride.

At the end of my first year in University, I had a summer internship in the local National Coal Board science lab on the edge of our village. One of my tasks was to accompany a member of staff who toured streams and rivers in the area collecting water samples. These were then subjected to routine tests for toxins from coal tips, to monitor the impact of coal waste dumping. I think this was where my interest in the environment really began. In those days, when the pits were still producing coal and dumping waste incessantly, the valleys were bleak places, made ugly by industry. 

I went off to University in Bristol, and found an urban environment with clean countryside not too far away much more appealing. So, I grew in determination not to return to the valleys of my birth. Even so, I did return to Cardiff to train for ministry, and served my first curacy in Caerphilly, in a mining housing estate, though, mercifully in a setting where hillsides were green and free of coal tips. Then, ministry took me to one urban area after another for thirty years. Only in the past fourteen years since returning to serve in Britain, has the transformation of the environment after the closure of the pits made a strong impression on me. I watched this evening's programme with great pride and joy, as so much of the landscape it portrayed is now familiar.

It leaves me wondering. Natural beauty was such an important element of my experience of young life, despite the industrialisation of the valleys. Had the landscape not been despoiled when I was growing up, would I have been less tempted to escape and seek a new way of life and new experiences elsewhere?

      

Faith and reservations

I attended the monthly RadioNet User Group meeting yesterday morning for the first time in months. I was amused in a discussion about beggars, that a police officer stated it was harder to deal with this problem in public places since bobbies on the beat were obliged to wear hi-viz jackets over their uniforms, as they could now be seen approaching, so offenders ran off before they could be confronted and reminded of the law. So many people wear hi-viz jackets in public these days. All kind of workers, security officials, groups of school children out and about. I've even seen street people in hi-viz jackets - a way of not standing out from the crowd? There wasn't much that required me to remain in the office after the meeting, so I returned and worked at home instead for the rest of the day. 

This morning I had an interesting exchange of emails with my cousin Dianne reflecting on the time in our youth when she, her brother and mother lived with my Grandfather. She shared her recollection of being around when I told my parents I was starting to explore my vocation to ordained ministry, and the domestic uproar this caused, as it went against all their expectations and ambition that I should become a scientist, as that was what I was studying in University. She'd have been 13-14 at the time. Her mum, my godmother, approved, so did her sisters. Their brothers were not so forthcoming, and later in life both were churchgoers. 

The family were nominal, irregularly attending members of the 'Church of England in Wales' as it would sometimes be referred to in those days. The women in our family were more devout than the men, and attended church more reguarly, as did my mother. The men were taken up with the glamour of modern Science and Progress, and didn't so easily find the time to take church seriously. After their initial disappointment, my father and grandfather came to terms with the change of direction in my life. Dad would occasionally come and hear me preach. After a series of life threatening heart incidents in later life, he began to rethink things and attended church services independently of hearing me preach. Grandpa retained his skepticism and kept church at a distance to the end, enamoured of the wonder and mystery of life, but distrustful of dogma. 

I recall him telling me when I was young that he'd locked horns with a Rector of Gelligaer and seen him off after an argument about religion. He didn't approve of my vocation, and tried passionately to dissuade me, but without rejecting me personally, despite early threats to do so. Maybe the fact that I stood my ground and didn't become too eccentric or overly pious as a result of my change of role played a part in this. At least this is what I'd like to think. The important thing for Dad and Grandpa seemed to be that I didn't become an otherworldly bible toting dogmatic fundamentalist. There were plenty around in Ystrad Mynach as I was growing up. I hope they were satisfied in the end.

     

Remembering Penallta and Dyffryn Street

This morning I celebrated the eight o'clock for four faithful people at St Catherine's, picked up some croissants for breakfast from the Co-op, then returned to church later to celebrate the Sung Eucharist with two dozen others. That's half the regular congregation, but then it is August, and most of those with families are away on holiday at the moment. I was warned that on my last appearance at St Catherine's this month, Bank Holiday weekend, in two weeks time, numbers could be even smaller. Never mind, I thought, like swallows, the faithful will return. The regular pattern of attendance is now spread out over a year, more than a month or a quarter, as a result of what increased mobility makes freely possible for people, whether as single youngsters, young families, grandparents or fit and healthy ancients. Such a different world from the one in which we grew up.

My cousin Ros with whom I grew up, sent me via Facebook, a photo of Dyffryn Street, Ystrad Mynach, with Penallta Colliery buildings in the background. This photo was taken so early in the 20th century, (possibly 1905-10), that the house she grew up in, next door to our grandfather Kimber, had not yet been built. Absent from the photo also was a terrace in Penybryn, Gelligaer, up beyond the pit, known as the Forty Houses built, as was my childhood home in Glen View further down Penallta Road, by the Powell Dyffryn coal mining company for the families of coal miners.

 Also absent from the photo are spoil heaps along the hillside above the Cylla Brook, which ran down the valley into the Rhymney river, just below Ystrad Mynach town centre. Spoil heaps is what they are called in modern parlance. Mounds of rock and unusable coal shale, dumped in any available open space. To our generation they were 'coal tips' on whose lower slopes us kids would play on swings hung from big trees not yet overwhelmed by the assaults of dumping which today would be deemed illegal on environmental grounds. Cylla Brook, running past the end of my street, my mum called "The Black Brook", its natural sandstone silt overwhelmed by coal dust. 

After playing on the end of a swing, my favourite occupation was getting dirty, climbing the coal tip and hunting for carboniferous fossils in shale, every bit as wondrous as hunting for marine life in a seaside rock pool, thanks to Grandpa Kimber's knowledge of the ground from which he'd earned his living for decades. John Kimber Senior was a mine Under-Manager. It was the climax of his forty years as an engineering team leader, sinking mine shafts in dozens of locations across South Wales after his return from America, where he learned to be a steel erector, making structures go up in the sky not down into the ground. My love of landscape later in life developed out of that fascination he shared with me for that only ever partly visible underside of mother earth. 

This love grew only as I travelled beyond the Valleys of my childhood, and learned to connect above and below. I was drawn by the nature of my schooling to the investigative art of science, in Physics and Chemistry, rather than Geology, yet I recall, when asked in the sixth form how I envisaged my future, it was as being an explorer of lands unknown that caught my imagination. I was not keen on Geography, uninspired by the Geography teacher. In those days this was the sole gateway to studying earth sciences, but Chemistry just grabbed me - thanks to great inspiring teachers - albeit just for a few years.

Grandpa Kimber was most put out when I was drawn from the path of pure science by the discovery of Psychology, Philosophy and Theology, in that order, interestingly enough from my present viewpoint. He was mildly horrified by my embrace of something more than token erastian Anglicanism, and threatened to disown me. My father too was disconcerted and tried to dissuade me without success. I just didn't fit in with family expectations, but eventually they got used to it and were grudgingly proud of me being different, standing up and being counted. They were both distinctive individualists.

That photo of Penallta and Dyffryn Street predates all my childhood place memories. It prompted me to 'look to the rock from which you were hewn' as the prophet Isaiah puts it. Growing up in the valley below Penallta colliery is an experience that sowed many seeds within me, that have taken generations to come to fruit as part of the richness of the life I have enjoyed. Great cause for thanksgiving.

On quite a different domestic note, yesterday's mission to buy a new mechanical lawnmower was unsuccessful, so this afternoon, after a paella lunch, prepared by me while Clare was at Riverside Market, including beans from St Catherine's churchyard garden, bought after the service, we went to B'nQ, and acquired a replacement machine for mowing the back lawn. It's actually identical to the one that didn't survive an encounter with the metal tube for mounting the washing line. Not very robust, but what you pay is what you get, unfortunately.

       

Family deaths

The news media has been full this past few days of tributes to David Bowie and Alan Rickman after the announcement of their deaths. This morning I received an email to say that Archbishop Barry's wife Hilary had died after a two year struggle against cancer, and then this afternoon, another email from my cousin Dianne to tell me that another cousin, Thelma, had died. 

We all grew up together in the fifties, at a time when Dianne's mother, my godmother Celandine, was living in her parents' home, and the family home of cousins Thelma and Ros was next door. I lived a mile down the hill on the edge of Ystrad Mynach, and used to go to the grandparents' house to play. Of all the extended family members born and raised in the area, Thelma and Ros were the two who married and stayed settled in the Rhymney Valley. Since the death of their parents, they've been the only remaining personal link to the place of our childhood.

After a brief spell in the CBS office this afternoon, I had a bereavement visit to make, in relation to the funeral I've been asked to take at St German's next Friday. Sadly, this will clash with Hilary Morgan's funeral, so I won't be able to attend and pay my respects to an able and courageous woman who had her own career as a lawyer as being Archbishop Barry's mainstay. 

I spent an hour with three sisters of the six surviving children of an eighty year old widow who had two dozen grandchildren and at least as many great grandchildren, getting them to tell me things about her life which I could weave into a tribute at the service, as it seems no family member was inclined to do this on their behalf. Without the story told, a funeral would be very impersonal. The absence of a tribute would be noticed by mourners after the event, even if they hadn't thought of this in advance. So, I patiently press on until I have enough information to make a recognisable sketch to value a life. Could I do the same for my cousin Thelma? I hope I don't have to, as there are too many gaps to fill in since childhood days. When it comes to family I'd rather hear someone else tell their story.

  

Ystrad Mynach chapelry

Confirmation has arrived of the acquisition of all our new Welsh domain names for CBS and the Crime Reduction Partnership. Heaven knows when I'll have time to work out how to get them redirecting to the actual websites. The past couple of days have been busy at work, preparing new publications and dealing with difficulties that arise - and there's always something, whether new or recurring to deal with that knocks the routine sideways.

A visit to Currys PC World on the way to work today led to the purchase of a couple of re-chargeable PNY power supplies small enough to be used for topping up a mobile phone on the move. Ashley relies heavily on his mobile phone, fielding many service calls during the day and may not have time to re-charge before the evening. Keeping a device in another pocket which delivers three full phone charges before it needs charging itself is well worth having, in fact he needs several - one for home, and one each for day and night work stations.

An email from sister June asking me about chapels in our home town of Ystrad Mynach set me thinking, and then searching on the web. She remembered the names of three, and I recalled another four, plus an historic Baptist church in Cefn Hengoed, on the ridge above and outside the village. I missed one entirely, the Gospel Hall, as it wasn't marked on Google maps. I remember there being one, but not where it was, and assumed it had disappeared. Remarkably, all of these buildings, which were active in our youth sixty-seventy years ago, along with Holy Trinity Parish Church, are still open for worship.

This is in stark contrast to many other Valleys towns of similar size, with many more chapels built in the era when coal was king. Where there might once have been a dozen, there's now but a half or a third still in use. I don't think Ystrad Mynach has any history of being extra devout. Perhaps it didn't have as many people with spare wealth to invest in religious status symbols that reinforced divisions and disputes in the local company - part of the sad history of Christianity in modern Wales.

I was delighted this evening to have a catch up Skype conversation with Claudine in Yangon, and hear about the scratch choir singing Welsh songs at the Myanmar British Embassy last Sunday. Such a small world.