'Aberystwyth Mon Amour' was one novel in Malcolm Pryce's series of modern Chandler-type detective fictions about that town way out west, at the end of the line.

   Aber, for me, is the place where most things began. I was born there and first went to school at Penparcau Infants. I had my first accident, almost run over when a car clipped an ankle. I later died there for the first time.......well, it felt like it.......on my 21st after imbibing noxious home brew and realising the meaning of 'blind drunk'!

   I first spoke and wrote there and my first poem (owing much to R.L.Stevenson) was put on the classroom wall for display. I learnt to swim in the icy waters off Tanybwlch storm beach.

   Much later, I signed up to fight in my first war at Freshers' Fair. I very naively put my name to a spoof militia to go to Chile and take up arms against General Pinnochet.  It was there, near the police station I was arrested for the first and only time for drunken trespassing; released without charge, but not before my bootprints had been taken.

   In Aber, I had sex and smoked a joint for the first time (though not simultaneously), swallowed half the joint and brought it up half way down Bronglais hill. Most importantly, I read poetry in public at the Miners' Benefits organised to support the strike of the 70's. I attended my debut demo and occupation of the Education Offices in protest at Healey's cuts : a Labour administration controlled by the IMF.

   I made my first 'friends from the north' who shared many interests, music, football and a distinct aversion to Neil Hamilton (then editor of the Uni. magazine 'Courier'). Amazingly, some of us still meet in Aber to pursue our other mutual interest, alcohol.

   It's a place frothing with ghosts of myself and family. I can't pass Caradog Road without thinking of my grandparents' flat and down town the shop where my grandpa worked for years as a clerk, always greeting me with - 'Hello, young shaver!'

   The pier resonates with the occasions when, as mere 6 year-olds, we'd wander off into town and raid machines, sliding our small palms up openings to extract the chocolate bars for free. The small arched shelters under the castle summon up days of courting , when my wife and I were doing teacher-training. So many streets and buildings pull me back in time.

   I've written about Aber sporadically over the years, but more so in my last collection of poetry ' Walking On Waste', which featured a number of sonnets about both student and childhood days. Poets Paul Henry and Herbert Williams both hail from Aber and have conjured it in diverse ways.Herb has a fine poem about the distinctive memorial I mention below, a poem inspired by Thea Gilmore's song 'Inverigo' and a visit to Aber a few months ago.


                                     SEA    ROOM
                         ' There's the moon and the tide
                           And old songs not written yet' ('Inverigo')

I woke to find
that even with the windows shut
on drunken revellers,
the sea had found a way
into our bedroom.

'Beca, Beca!' a young man
called out to the moon
hidden behind cloud-cover.

Of a sudden, the years
slipped from me
like a seaweed cloak
and I was driftwood taken
in and out with the tide.

There had been fires
on the shingle, fed
with old fences and boards,
students close around barbeques
like families in hearth-huddles.

The naked woman
of the masthead memorial
on look-out for galleon or wreck.

And the years were ashes
and she did not move;
yet the sea filled our room,
my head and bones,
my jagged worries smoothed.