A
Happy Valley
By
Dominic Horton
My
friend Fran said to me that taking a holiday is essential, even if it
is at the expense of paying the bills. This is the way artistic
people like Fran carry on in life and rightly so I say. So to that
end I am going against the grain and planning a little break, only
for two days and the destination is barely outside of my home county
of the West Midlands, but nonetheless it qualifies as a bona fida
holiday and I am very much looking forward to it. I use the phrase
'going against the grain' as in my adult life holidays have been few
and far between due to a variety of reasons including being skint,
having no-one to go with and having mental illness difficulties. My
main summer holiday in recent years has been a night of camping in
the Shire with the likes of Sleepy Tom, Fudgkins, the Abdul and other
assorted waifs to enjoy the beer festival at The Bell at Pensax and
as my faithful readers know, I do regularly visit my holiday home of
the Flagon & Gorses, which always proves to be restorative
despite me never returning homeward with a sun tan or a stick of
rock.
 |
| The late Alex Munro. |
I
did have regular holidays as a child, including an annual visit to
Llandudno with my elder brother The Albino under the stewardship of
my Grandad Tom and Nanny Edna. The coach, run by Evergreens, used to
set out from around the corner from my grandparents' house
on Shell Corner and proceed forthwith to our destination in North
Wales, stopping just the once on the long journey, at a café
near Chester. It makes you wonder how we managed in the days before
there were toilets on coaches but looking back people were not as big
on hydration in the 1970's as they are now so it was not as much of
an issue. A cup
of tea with breakfast would see you through to another one at lunch
time, or elevenses if you were lucky. Boys drank pop or milk but men
only drank tea and beer, never water, and even coffee was a rarity
mainly because it was generally disgusting. Grandad and Nan drank
Camp coffee, which wasn't granulated but in liquid form – I rest my
case. Camp coffee was even a bit racist as its label depicted a
British army officer in India being served coffee by his Sikh orderly
(but not as racist as Hitler Ice Cream, which was controversially
unearthed in India [ironically] this week by The
Daily Mail.)
Back
then there were no flashy electronic devices such as Ipads, DS's or
DVD players to keep children entertained so the Albino and I used to
mainly spend the coach journey by feeling sick because of all
the cigarette smoke generated
by the adults. It was always a relief to get to the half way house
café
to get a breathe of fresh air before the renewed onslaught of
nicotine on the second half of the journey. By the time we reached
Llandudno my lungs felt like I'd spend hours in a smoking towering
inferno but unfortunately Steve McQueen failed to rescue me.
 |
The Albino, Nanny Edna & the Author at St Helier guest
house, Llandudno, late 1970's.
|
We
always stayed at the same guest house, St Helier, which was run by
friendly Liverpudlians Betty and Eddie. The other guests at Betty and
Eddie's were always familiar to us as we used to go the same week
every year, so we knew everyone and in the dining room the guests
would annually chart the growth and progress of the Albino and I. One
guest in particular, old Mr Bray, sticks in my mind. Bray, a shortish
stout man of a kindly disposition, was a war hero and he had injured
his neck in conflict so it was permanently crooked at an angle, so it
often took him a great deal of maneuvering to
turn around to speak to other diners behind him.
Despite
the weather being hot (it was always sunny and warm when we went to
Llandudno) Mr Bray used to wear a shirt with a detachable collar
over a vest, a tie and a three piece suit and highly polished
brogues. When Mr Bray walked down the beach
side promenade with
his wife he would additionally have a rain coat over his arm and
a trilby on his head. When Bray ate his hot soup at the evening meal
his fleshy, thick neck used to bulge out over his starched, tight
collar and it used to make me sweat just watching him. When the main
meal was served Mrs Bray could be seen surreptitiously wrapping off
cuts of chicken or beef in a serviette and slyly putting the package
into her handbag – apparently the Brays used to use the meat for
the following day's luncheon sandwiches, as the guest house only
provided breakfast and evening meals.
 |
| Camp Coffee |
The
Albino and I used to share a family room with Nan and Grandad, with
them sleeping in a double bed and us two boys occupying a bunk bed,
which seemed exotic to us. There was a wash basin in the room but the
shared bathroom was down the hallway as en suite rooms were not known
in working class circles in those days. If I didn't get to sleep
before Grandad Tom then I would be in all sorts of bother as he was a
dreadful snorer (or a good one more like) and his bellowing fog horn
noises would keep me up all night. How Nanny Edna put up with
Grandad's cacophonous snoring gawd only knows.
Regardless
of how well we had slept the Albino and I were ushered out of bed
early in the morning as we had our routines to go through before we
settled down to breakfast in the dining room. Grandad Tom would wash
in the basin and with the aid of a fully equipped and maintained
leather-bound shaving kit he would meticulously guide
his razor over his whiskers. We used to then leave Nan to it, to get
ready, and we walked down the town to get the papers for Grandad and
comics for us children and we would sit in the sunshine on
a promenade bench reading
our respective publications. As the Albino and I got older we would
want to read the newspapers ourselves to see if we could find any
football news in the sports pages but we would be lucky to find a
treasured snippet of transfer news as it was close season and unlike
today there was no saturation coverage of football.
A
comprehensive breakfast of cereals, toast and marmalade and an
English breakfast set us up for the day and off we all went to the
Great Orme, Happy Valley or the beach. One time when on the beach I
had to dart away from a pursuing crab for fear of feeling the wrath
of its claws and in the process I fell and cut my knee on a rock. Nan
wrapped my knee in her handkerchief and kissed me better. I still
have the scar to this day, though it has become faint over time.
 |
| Hitler ice cream, by request of Toby In-Tents. |
The
Happy Valley is a garden and lawns in a sheltered hollow on the East
side of the Great Orme, a large rocky out crop. The Happy Valley was
a pleasant venue for holiday makers to relax but I remember it being
a bit of a frustrating place as the lawns were sloped so it was
difficult to play football. There was an open air theatre and an old
Scottish music hall comedian and singer named Alex Munro seemed to
have a monopoly there and the sounds of his shows could be heard
resonating out over Happy Valley at intervals all day long.
Thrillingly cable cars travelled from Happy Valley up to the top of
the Great Orme and it was beyond exciting getting to travel in them,
the highlight of the year, let alone the holiday. A café
at the top of the Orme housed old fruit machines and amusements.
 |
| The Author & Grandad Tom at Conway Castle. |
In
the evening we repaired to The Golden Goose amusement arcade, which
was one of the highlights of the day. Grandad would give The Albino
and I a set amount of money to fritter away, which we did with
glee, occasionally winning
on the one arm bandits but losing more often than not. One year The
Goose introduced a two person boxing amusement with small figures of
Muhammad Ali and Joe Bugner and the players controlled the figures in
knocking lumps out of each other, which was great fun.
I
think of Llandudno periodically and sometimes consider returning
there with my dear son Kenteke to visit the old holiday haunts of my
childhood. In fact until only a few years ago Betty still ran St
Helier guest house, well into her dotage. But Llandudno will have
moved on, as have I as a person, so some happy places from one's
childhood are probably best left well alone to remain fondly resting
in the memory.
©
Dominic Horton, May 2015.
*
Lowlife is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall
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