Chapter 2.
After the stadium seating at Maesteg rugby ground collapses, fortunately without any injuries, Mervyn insists that Watkin has to rush over to Maesteg to attend to the planking and the hardboard runways to replace them with a better quality of woodwork to meet the specifications that the Health and Safety officer had laid down. Later on at the clubhouse Watkin continues with his usual patter:
'What do they do with teetotallers in Glasgow on Saturday night? They throw them in to the pubs.
‘You know the crachach in Wales, they have their second holiday home in a council house in Cardiff Bay.’
‘That’s the crachach for you! They have low alcohol lager louts!’ Watkin ploughed on, a fag in the corner of his mouth:
You know, that’s the crachach. They even have a campaign for real champagne,’ Watkin jokes.
‘My father was a late developer. I watched him grow up. I learned to walk before he did, and I could smoke before he knew how to…’
‘I just bought a new convertible. Well, I converted it myself – from a Ford Anglia,’ he laughs clutching his beer in case of spilling it.
‘This motorist was explaining to the judge:’
‘The pedestrian was running all over the place. He had no way to go. He wasn’t looking. So I run him over.’
'The motorist told the judge, 'I knocked a man down. He admitted to me that it was his fault. He'd been knocked down before.' People laugh quite well at that one, too.
‘Let’s go down the Tivoli Ballroom, Mumbles, and on the way we can call in at the High Street casino for the roulette,’ laughs Watkin. ‘You know, the one that Ron McKay and Don Bateman have opened with the proceeds from their demob money.’ So, the Friday evening Watkin escorts Diane to the casino and, with a glass of Double Diamond for him and a Dubonnet for her, Watkin starts on the tables. ‘I’ll go for red,’ Watkin smiles, sipping his drink.
‘No, black!’ Diane cries, her mouth full of Dubonnet.
Watkin still puts all the chips on the red and wins.
‘I’ll go again,’ and he wins again.
This time the ball can’t possibly fall on red. But, after a few agonizing clicks and clunks, it does, and Watkin collects a hundred pounds. ‘Third time lucky, Diane, and I’ll put the money with my savings of four hundred pounds as a deposit on that flat above Dick Barton’s fish and shop in West Cross.’
‘Mr Brownleigh, can you arrange a mortgage on a flat in Mumbles?’ Watkin enquires at the Provincial Building Society in the Kingsway.
‘Well, as you’ve got some regular savings with us, we could use your deposit of five hundred pounds and give you a twenty-five year loan at twelve percent,' he explains carefully looking at Watkin. 'You can borrow three thousand pounds, but don’t forget, Mr Davies, you’ll end up repaying over double what you borrow in interest on the capital, and your home can be repossessed if you default on the repayments. If you did discharge the mortgage in the first few years, there would be serious financial penalties for doing so.’
‘Ok, I’ll go ahead,’ agrees Watkin, with a big lump in his throat and, after the paperwork and formalities are completed, he goes out to a red public telephone box in the street to relay the news to Diane, at Lewis Lewis’s.
‘Try to put more paint on them rollers, Di’ Watkin calls out from the top of his ladder where he is maintenance the frieze and fixing a picture rail on the newly plastered wall of their new flat in West Cross. Alright, they have to enter by the fish and chip shop, but once inside they are in the cocoon of a loving home, newly set up for the young couple who want to make their way in life.
‘Wat, I’m doing my best’ calls up Diane, whose top and jeans are all smeared in paint from her exertions with the roller. She’s even got the lilac coloured emulsion on her red gym shoes and the smell of the Dulux gloss and emulsion paints is overpowering. Watkin’s Dad, who has also offered to help with the maintenance, is finding the fumes from the paint distressing and decides to return home, not feeling well.
Although he’s worried about his Dad, Watkin keeps on joking.
‘Knock, knock.’
‘Who’s there?’ replies Di wiping some more paint from her cheek.
Honey
bee.
Honey bee who?
Honey bee a luv and get me a coffee.’
‘O K. Let’s stop for a cup of coffee, then Wat’ Diane offers, and they pass into the back kitchen where a strong pot of steaming coffee is soon bubbling away on the stove.
‘Knock, Knock!’ repeats Watkin.
‘Who's
there?’ Diane kids on.
‘Yacht!’
‘Yacht who?’ asks Diane still rubbing paint from her face.
‘Yacht a know me by now!’ They fall about laughing, but Wat is too worried about his Dad to go any further with Diane, as he was feeling like before Mr Davies had arrived. ‘Right, let’s tidy up now and finish the work, and we can go out for a meal somewhere,’ he says drawing Diane closer towards him and touching her paint covered face with his fingers in order to bring home the point.
Watkin struggles to get to his next job which is at Stradey Park, Llanelli, the famous home of the Scarlets. ‘Llanelli have played in red since 1884 when they played a game against a touring side from Ireland,’ Watkin informs Cliff. After assembling the new sound system quite quickly now that the speakers are getting smaller, Watkin settles down in the bar room of the club where he starts his usual jokes routine:
‘Ianto,
a furniture dealer from Pontypridd, decided to expand the range of furniture in
his store. So he decided to travel to
Paris to see what he could buy.
After arriving in Paris, he visited some furniture makers and bought a range of
furniture he thought would sell well back home in Wales. To celebrate the
newly acquired line, he decided to visit a bar and have a glass of wine.
As he sat sipping his wine, he noticed that the small place was
quite crowded. He also noticed that the other chair at his table was the
only available seat in the café bar.’
‘Before long, a beautiful, young Parisienne came to his table, and asked him something in French (which Ianto couldn’t understand). So he pointed to the empty chair and invited her to sit down. He tried to speak to her in English, but she didn’t speak his language. After a couple of minutes of trying to communicate with her, he took a paper serviette, drew a picture of a wine glass, and showed it to her. She nodded, so he ordered a glass of wine for her. After sitting together at the table for a while, he took another serviette, and drew a picture of a plate with food on it, and she nodded.’
‘They left the cafe bar and found a quiet restaurant that featured a small band playing romantic French music. They ordered dinner, and after that he took another paper napkin and drew a picture of a couple dancing. She nodded, and they got up to dance. They danced until the restaurant closed and the band was packing up. Back at their table, the young woman took another serviette and drew a picture of a four-poster bed on it.’
And now Watkin delivers his punch line:
’To this day, Ianto has no idea how she worked out he was in the furniture business.’ It got quite a good laugh.
His next, Essex blonde, joke come riddle required a bit of imagination and guesswork to work it out:
‘A few days ago Dave was having some work done at his local garage. An Essex blonde came in and asked for a ‘seven-hundred and ten’. They all looked at each other and another customer asked, 'What’s a seven-hundred and ten?’
She answered ‘You know, the little piece in the middle of the engine, I have lost it and need a new one.'
‘She continued that she didn’t know exactly what it was, but this piece had always been there. The mechanic gave her a piece of paper and a pencil and asked her to draw what the part looked like. She drew a circle and in the middle of it wrote the figures 710. He then took her over to a car just like hers which had its bonnet up and asked, 'Is there a 710 on this car?'’
‘She pointed and said, 'Of course, it’s right there.’ The mechanic nearly died.’
Watkin helped a few of the slower boys and said ’It was upside down, right?’ That got a good chuckle as well.
Watkin travels in to Mervyn Jenkins’ office in the former warehouse of T. T. Thomas’s lemonade and pickled onions in Union Street, where a faint aroma of lemons and onions still lingered. Tommy Farr, the boxer, also maintained an office there. Watkin had a job on the ‘pop’ lorry of Thomas Thomas when he was a teenager; and he used to have a Saturday job cleaning T. T. Thomas’s Jaguar. He would wash it down and leather it carefully and meticulously with a chamois until the bonnet was gleaming enough to see his own face in it.
Watkin recalled: ‘Tommy Farr was the Welsh heavyweight champion who’d challenged for the world title against the American fighter Joe Louis in 1937 and had given Louis one of the toughest fights of his whole career. He’d lost the fight after fifteen rounds but the referee’s decision was loudly booed by the crowd, who’d regarded Tommy as the winner. My Mum has always been an admirer of Tommy Farr and remembered him from her days when nursing in the Rhondda Valley.’
‘There are five birds sitting on a fence. The farmer shoots one. How many birds are left’ goes Watkin off on his jokes again.
‘A red house is red, a blue house is blue. What colour is a greenhouse?’
‘How many eggs does a cockerel lay?’
This time, no one is laughing and Watkin’s jokes are getting tamer and tamer. He’s not on form and worrying about his Dad, who's in hospital, his mortgage and, most of all, whether Diane is going to remain faithful to him.
‘Is there any chance of more overtime?’ Watkin asks Vernon.
‘Not at the moment, son. Things are pretty quiet now that the price of fuel has increased with the Arabs quadrupling the oil price.’
I could set up my own business in sound systems, buy a van, and try to earn more money that way.’ Wat explains to Diane. ‘I’ll subcontract to Mervyn Jenkins and get the jobs he doesn’t want to do up the valleys and around Carmarthen,’ says Watkin.
Mervyn agrees to sub contract out a job in the Ammanford Town football stadium at the West Wales club which plays in the Welsh League. Mervyn sells him a new sound system that he gets cheap from another club and Watkin puts it in and repairs some of the planking at the ground. After a hard couple of weeks at Ammanford, Watkin declares to Diane ‘I’m making good money now and we should be able to afford that house in Wimmerfield Avenue before long.’
Watkin takes his van up to Glynneath, Hirwaun and Merthyr looking for clubs to sell sound systems. He calls in to the Merthyr football club which was based at the Pennydarren Park ground in Merthyr Tydfil playing in the Welsh League.
‘This English guy says ‘I had a go at playing rugby the other day.’’
‘Everyone kept on saying ‘nice try.’’
‘Snooty bastards…’ Watkin is back in form at the Merthyr football clubhouse, where he is ensconced in the bar, a half pint of Guinness in his hand and a roll up fag, to save money, in the corner of his mouth.
‘The wife had a go at me yesterday, saying that I needed to learn my boundaries. I already knew that if it bounces before it crosses the rope it's a Four, and if it doesn't it's a Six. Simple,’ Watkin goes, sipping his Guinness.
‘Did you know that a man’s ‘I’ll be home in five minutes’ and a woman’s ‘I’ll be ready in five minutes’ are exactly the same thing?’ Watkin laughs out loud, thinking of Diane as he spoke.
Watkin lands a big contract at Dowlais rugby club on the A465 to Merthyr. He gets Cliff to come over to work for him and they set out up the Neath valley to Dowlais. They spend a week there assembling stand flooring and they put in a sound system that Watkin has bought from Marconi systems in London.
'The Marconi Company' Watkin tells Cliff, 'was a British telecommunications and engineering company that went under that name from 1897 until the present day,’ Watkin informs the entire bar room at Dowlais, 'The company was founded by the Italian Guglielmo Marconi.'
‘And their equipment is very good' he assures the rugby club committee assembled to listen to Watkin talking. The committee endorses Watkin's contract and the chairman asks him 'Can you install further sound equipment in the clubhouse and entertainment areas?' Watkin replies that he would be delighted to do that, and arranges with Cliff for him to bring up a couple of his mates to work for Watkin in Dowlais. He only manages a couple of jokes that evening, as the pressure of work and business is getting to him. 'What do you call a man with a car on his head?' 'Dunno,' the crowd replies. 'Jack,' Wat explains, laughing a little distractedly and taking a puff on his roll up.
‘There was a local derby and the kicker was Morgan, the full back,’ Wat goes. There was a pelanty and he took the kick with great care, but struck the upright and the ball bounced back. ‘Jesu! Dieu Yunol’ he cried, swearing in Welsh. The referee, the Reverend Eli Jenkins, says ’Look you, there’s no need for profanity. Just say ’Help me Lord.’’
Watkin continues, ‘Then there’s another pelanty right in front of the posts, and Morgan takes it again with even greater care. He marks his spot, he makes a place with a divot and he takes great deliberation over the delivery of his kick. He strikes the ball, but he slices it and it goes careering away towards the corner flag about a yard off the ground and he says ‘Ohf…’ and just remembers in time to say. ‘Help me Lord.’ Then the skies darken, and there is a crack of thunder, and the ball shudders and swerves and changes direction and climbs towards the posts and goes over. And the Rev Eli Jenkins says ‘Bleeding Hell’’.
'Hello, again, Mr Brownleigh, can you arrange a mortgage on a semi in Killay?’ Watkin enquires again at the Provincial Building Society. ‘Well, Mr Davies as you’re in business yourself now and you can raise capital on the flat in West Cross, we can lend you, including your current mortgage, seven thousand pounds but you’ll need a bridging loan to bridge the gap on the debt coming due on the flat before you exchange contracts, but it is considerably more expensive than a normal loan. So at twelve percent APR your repayments will be two hundred and eighty-four pounds ten shillings and sixpence a month over five years.
‘Alright, Mr Brownleigh, I’ll take it for the house in Wimmerfield Avenue that I have located and I’d like to take out some insurance in the event of my business going down at any future point.’
Coming out into the Kingsway, Wat meets up with Cliff and they pop into the Top Rank for half a pint of bottled IPA. ‘Wat, you know when you’re out all these late evenings in Merthyr, well, I hear that Diane’s been slipping out to the West Cross hotel for a Dubonnet with ice and lemon, and is quite friendly with a couple of the locals.’
‘Not to worry, eh, Cliff?’
Together Cliff and Wakin take off in the van for Dowlais to carry on the installation of the sound system.
Stopping off for a swift half at ‘the Greyhound’ in Glynneath, (it was before drink and drive) they settle down in one of the booths. Cliff cannot help overhearing a young couple in the next cubicle talking sweet nothings.
‘But Dai, does you really love me?’
‘A’course luv.’
‘No, but Dai, does you really, really love me.’
‘Sure I do, love’
‘But how does I know you loves me?’
Dai thinks for a minute: ‘Shags you and buys you chips don’I?’
Before long, Watkin bumps into Max Boyce at the bar. ‘How’re you, Max’, he goes.
‘Fine thanks, I’m working the clubs, now’.
‘Oh, aye?’
‘Didn’t I work with you and Mervyn Jenkins at the Metal Box factory in the Melyn, Neath?’ Max enquires, with his usual twinkle.
‘Aye Aye, and you were a joker even then, Max.’
‘Is it alright if I use some of your material in my jokes, Max?’
‘Aye, Aye wus,’ Max laughs. ‘I pinch a lot of my material as well, Wat,’ he goes, laughing his head off. The whole place was caught up in Max’s infectious laughs. Even the greyhound was laughing.
‘D’ye know, Rob,’ he tells a Max Boyce joke at the Dowlais venue, ‘It’s gone I can’t remember anything. I can’t remember where my car keys are, I can’t find my glasses, I don’t even remember where we went on holiday last year.’
‘Wat’, he says ‘what’s the name of that leafy green stuff that grows around the walls on those big, old houses?’
‘Ivy, Rob.’ ‘That’s right,’ I said.’ ‘Ivy… Where did we go on holidays last year?’
‘Can you imagine,’ he continues ‘If Wales won the international. If Jenkins won a drop pelanty in the dying seconds and won the game for them, they’d make a sixty foot bronze statue of him. His mother’s home help would get the OBE’ he laughs.
Laughing on: ‘Children would have a year off school, the ‘Evening Post’ would bring out a free three hundred and sixty five page supplement, the Ospreys would become a protected species and the Pope would visit Cwm Rhondda.’
Rubbing his ear while thinking, he reminisces: ‘We were so poor in them days, there were no inside toilets. It would be terrible of a night, when cold in bed, and wanting to go for a pee, you'd have to climb downstairs and go out into the back garden in all kinds of weather. You had to hold the toilet door closed, in case anybody came, with your foot. Trouble was the door opened outwards.’
‘We were so poor we couldn’t afford name tags – you know, those printed names at the back of your coat collar, so your stuff could be identified in school - I used to tell people my name was ‘St. Michael,’’ he jokes, pint in hand and taking another sup.
After a few moments while the laughter dies down, he continues: ‘On my first day in school my Mum took me down the school and left me at the school gates. ‘Mum. Where’re you goin?’ ‘I looked through the school fence and said to her: How long do I have to stay in school, Mum? ‘Till you’re fifteen’, she said. ‘Till I’m fifteen? Oh, my God’, I said. ‘You won’t forget to come and fetch me will you, Mum?’
‘We had the scholarship exam and I couldn’t answer the questions. They asked me: ‘What is ‘the station fly?’’ ‘I knew what a fly was. So I answered – an insect on the railway,’ he goes, baffled at the muted response.
Not worrying too much at the reception of that one, he continues: ‘Another question was ‘’Where is Hadrian’s Wall?’’ I answered ‘In Adrian’s garden’. ‘Well I knew my friend, Adrian, had a wall in his back garden,’ he chuckles, his infectious laugh causing him to knock over his glass.
‘I’ll get Mike Henwood to move us up to Killay, and Col from the Langland Court has promised to use his Jeep to move some of our stuff.’ ‘O K’ says Diane, ‘but don’t forget I’m working on Saturday.’
‘That’s alright. I’ll move the main furniture on Saturday morning, and maybe we can go back for any of your bits and pieces on Saturday night, because the other people are moving in.’
Now, at last, Wat and Di have a semi in a posh part of town, a car and two vans in the drive and a good neighbourhood in which to plan a family. ‘Are you ready to think about starting a family, Di?’
’Well you’re away so much and so tired every evening, I’m not sure we can manage it,’ Diane retorts, rather suspiciously, Watkin feels in his bones.
‘You haven’t touched me for weeks, and you know how lonely I get in the house on my own all the time… ’
‘All the time? That’s not what I’ve heard.’ Wat complains, his arms around her and an affectionate tone still in his voice.
‘Being Welsh’ Watkin goes, back at the Dowlais clubhouse, ‘It’s so wet. I was eight before I realised you could take your anorak off,’ he jokes to some amusement.
‘In the bible it says ‘God made it rain for forty days and forty nights.’ ‘It was still the best Summer on record,‘ he chuckles.
Drawing on his fag, he continues ‘Good God, ‘That year was