A visit to west Wales is always a return to the past, though not always nostalgic.
Memories can be fruitful, funny and puzzling, but also disturbing.
Some ( like the one in the poem below) followed me constantly for the first time, asking to make sense of them, never finally answering.
The simple sight of Penparcau - the village near Aberystwyth where I spent my first seven years - inevitably conjures many.
There's the road through it where I had a minor accident when a car clipped my ankle ; my fault for not looking both ways.
The school I attended is still standing and my last recollection is the teacher taking out a large map and asking me to trace the journey from Aber to Cambridge my family would soon make.
I think I fell for maps at that very moment and later, in another Junior school, my favourite project was creating my own island and mapping out all the features on it.
(Eventually, I wrote a book for young people called 'Question Island' which features an island which could be real or imaginery).
Also, there is still the small, white village hall which was the hub of our annual carnival ; my favourite fancy dress being an American Indian and my worst a Pixie!
Thinking about leaving Penparcau for a very different life in an English city I'm reminded of our grey tabby Zeebee, who'd never been further than the vets down town.
Travelling across country , the cat became very agitated and, when we stopped for lunch in Banbury, was allowed out of the basket. As I tucked into chips and sausages, he proceeded to do one on the cafe floor!
Seeing the council estate on Pen Dinas hill where we lived, brings back conflicting emotions.
I belonged outside its walls on the hillside, fields ,dens and tunnels made by generations of kids in the gorse country ; on the storm beach at Tanybwlch with its spent cartridges and terraces of thrown boulders.
Now there are too many walls and fences and few children are allowed to wander anywhere.
Inside our house were troubles and worries ; many barely heard, yet rising like damp and seeping into bones.
They were games, but our shed was more of a home, with its dark safety.
I recall my father, during one of his 'episodes', ripping off his clothes and standing on the kitchen table in his pants yelling and screaming.
Yet it was him, not my mother, who came when I cried at night, too early to bed with the voices of our newly-purchased tv rumbling and straining up the stairs.
Wind off the sea invariably takes me back to my own bed and how, aged five, I'd imagine sailing through the air over the Bay towards Consti Hill, over the caravans of Clarach towards the long strip of Borth beach full of jelly-fish and on to the dunes of Ynyslas and games of leap and roll.
There are so many memories in Aber itself they come at me like tributaries in flood moving towards an estuary, carrying the debris of child- and studenthood.
I can't look at the curious half-pier without thinking of the Ceilidh there where I actually danced ( normally I needed a bottle of Dom Cortez...... and then fell over! ) with a certain young Irish woman who I'd marry.
I was clumsy as someone with two left shoes.
(She probably wishes she'd assessed me on my dancing skills !).
By the Great Hall in Aber Uni the many concerts come back to me.
David Bowie himself ,on his Ziggy Stardust tour, appeared there and seemed to change costume with every song. Though I liked his singles I never became an avid follower, as I did lesser-knowns like Derby bluesy singer-songwriter Kevin Coyne.
But, with Bowie gone last year, it just seems amazing I was able to witness the magnificence of his performance and, a few years later, again at Cardiff Uni.
Going down Llanbadarn Road I can't help think about my grandparents who'd made Aber their home after my grandad lost his shop due to financial difficulties.
They were a gentle, caring couple who loved children ( particularly my Nan) ; the very antithesis of their daughter, my mother, to whom we were seen as 'responsibilities'.
My Nan would spoil me with sweets and I spent for too long in the dentist's.....the same building which features as the police station in 'Y Gwyll/ Hinterland'.
Memories can creep up on you, catch you unawares and then, refuse to let go.
As I walked the beaches of nearby Aberaeron over Christmas, I kept pondering about my ankle problems when I was about 3 years old.
Now my parents have died there's no-one left to tell me the truth and , anyway, it was hardly a serious complaint.
Yet it still insists.
Aber : the mouth, constantly reminding.
Aber : the confluence, rivers of past and present converging.
CRUEL STONES
On the storm beach at Tanybwlch
leaping from rock to rock
like a mountain goat ;
over pebbles which hurt soles
and shifted constantly underfoot.
Learning to swim in the freezing Bay,
the breakers knocking me over,
shingle's undertow pulling
the ground from under me,
a brother and sister's hands supporting.
Then the clinic on the hill,
my mother explaining 'Orthopaedic',
I repeated it, at first proudly,
but afraid when she explained
about the small bone in my foot.
Back to a push-chair like a baby
I felt humiliated, leg in plaster ;
a wild child, mountain roamer
suddenly strapped and leaden-legged,
friends at the door turned away.
Learning to walk all over again
as if my brain had clocked back ;
I blamed those beach stones
smoothly bone-like but untrustworthy,
cruel as the word's sharp end.
Memories can be fruitful, funny and puzzling, but also disturbing.
Some ( like the one in the poem below) followed me constantly for the first time, asking to make sense of them, never finally answering.
The simple sight of Penparcau - the village near Aberystwyth where I spent my first seven years - inevitably conjures many.
There's the road through it where I had a minor accident when a car clipped my ankle ; my fault for not looking both ways.
The school I attended is still standing and my last recollection is the teacher taking out a large map and asking me to trace the journey from Aber to Cambridge my family would soon make.
I think I fell for maps at that very moment and later, in another Junior school, my favourite project was creating my own island and mapping out all the features on it.
(Eventually, I wrote a book for young people called 'Question Island' which features an island which could be real or imaginery).
Also, there is still the small, white village hall which was the hub of our annual carnival ; my favourite fancy dress being an American Indian and my worst a Pixie!
Thinking about leaving Penparcau for a very different life in an English city I'm reminded of our grey tabby Zeebee, who'd never been further than the vets down town.
Travelling across country , the cat became very agitated and, when we stopped for lunch in Banbury, was allowed out of the basket. As I tucked into chips and sausages, he proceeded to do one on the cafe floor!
Seeing the council estate on Pen Dinas hill where we lived, brings back conflicting emotions.
I belonged outside its walls on the hillside, fields ,dens and tunnels made by generations of kids in the gorse country ; on the storm beach at Tanybwlch with its spent cartridges and terraces of thrown boulders.
Now there are too many walls and fences and few children are allowed to wander anywhere.
Inside our house were troubles and worries ; many barely heard, yet rising like damp and seeping into bones.
They were games, but our shed was more of a home, with its dark safety.
I recall my father, during one of his 'episodes', ripping off his clothes and standing on the kitchen table in his pants yelling and screaming.
Yet it was him, not my mother, who came when I cried at night, too early to bed with the voices of our newly-purchased tv rumbling and straining up the stairs.
Wind off the sea invariably takes me back to my own bed and how, aged five, I'd imagine sailing through the air over the Bay towards Consti Hill, over the caravans of Clarach towards the long strip of Borth beach full of jelly-fish and on to the dunes of Ynyslas and games of leap and roll.
There are so many memories in Aber itself they come at me like tributaries in flood moving towards an estuary, carrying the debris of child- and studenthood.
I can't look at the curious half-pier without thinking of the Ceilidh there where I actually danced ( normally I needed a bottle of Dom Cortez...... and then fell over! ) with a certain young Irish woman who I'd marry.
I was clumsy as someone with two left shoes.
(She probably wishes she'd assessed me on my dancing skills !).
By the Great Hall in Aber Uni the many concerts come back to me.
David Bowie himself ,on his Ziggy Stardust tour, appeared there and seemed to change costume with every song. Though I liked his singles I never became an avid follower, as I did lesser-knowns like Derby bluesy singer-songwriter Kevin Coyne.
But, with Bowie gone last year, it just seems amazing I was able to witness the magnificence of his performance and, a few years later, again at Cardiff Uni.
Going down Llanbadarn Road I can't help think about my grandparents who'd made Aber their home after my grandad lost his shop due to financial difficulties.
They were a gentle, caring couple who loved children ( particularly my Nan) ; the very antithesis of their daughter, my mother, to whom we were seen as 'responsibilities'.
My Nan would spoil me with sweets and I spent for too long in the dentist's.....the same building which features as the police station in 'Y Gwyll/ Hinterland'.
Memories can creep up on you, catch you unawares and then, refuse to let go.
As I walked the beaches of nearby Aberaeron over Christmas, I kept pondering about my ankle problems when I was about 3 years old.
Now my parents have died there's no-one left to tell me the truth and , anyway, it was hardly a serious complaint.
Yet it still insists.
Aber : the mouth, constantly reminding.
Aber : the confluence, rivers of past and present converging.
CRUEL STONES
On the storm beach at Tanybwlch
leaping from rock to rock
like a mountain goat ;
over pebbles which hurt soles
and shifted constantly underfoot.
Learning to swim in the freezing Bay,
the breakers knocking me over,
shingle's undertow pulling
the ground from under me,
a brother and sister's hands supporting.
Then the clinic on the hill,
my mother explaining 'Orthopaedic',
I repeated it, at first proudly,
but afraid when she explained
about the small bone in my foot.
Back to a push-chair like a baby
I felt humiliated, leg in plaster ;
a wild child, mountain roamer
suddenly strapped and leaden-legged,
friends at the door turned away.
Learning to walk all over again
as if my brain had clocked back ;
I blamed those beach stones
smoothly bone-like but untrustworthy,
cruel as the word's sharp end.
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