Ten minutes set in the 1960’s

DAILY PROMPT

Ready, Set, Done

Today, write about anything — but you must write for exactly ten minutes, no more, no less.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/ready-set-done/

image my own

I have decided to write about the thoughts I have been having today and that’s about earliest memory.

So here I go 10 minutes of writing…tick tock

My earliest memory is not in HDTV but very much in an ethereal grey tone.

I must have been about 4 years old, maybe even three, I was.very young and I know it was about 1968 because the memory is set in my grandparents pub in Tiger Bay Cardiff in the sixties, so I guess its around 1967/1968 ..(my grandfather passed away towards the end of 1968 at only 49 years old and my grandmother gave up the tenancy of the pub not long afterwards.

I digress

I am walking down a long dimly lit corridor with my grandmother, it must be early morning, because when we reach a dark wooden front door, my grandmother opens it and there stands the milkman with several bottle of milk in a crate and a small glass childsize bottled one for me, I remember being thrilled when he put a straw through the silver top lid for me and off I toddle back down the hallway clutching my bottle of milk, I know this hallway leads into the bar and there was the cleaner who is called ‘Kitty’ and she is sat at the old piano playing some rag time music and singing away to herself..as my grandmother herself wipes down the bartop.and polishes the brass beer pumps with Brasso.

 

There is a man in the corner of the room and he is renewing the vinyl 45 singles in the jukebox, the ones he removes he hands to my grandmother who then gives them to my mother who went on to play them at home on the radiogram ( she still has them) these jukebox records differ in that they do not have a middle plastic piece like shop bought records..the jukebox records have a large open hole in the middle of the disc, I can clearly see that on the ones he holds out to her with the ”Decca’ Label on the front.

We are then upstairs in a small room, there is a kitchen sink against a large window which over looks a corrugated roof which I presume was on the ‘lean- to’ building underneath.

The Radiogram is on tuned into some station and Engelbert Humperdinck is singing the Last Waltz in the background.

My Grandfather Jack is home from sea ( he is a Captain in the Merchant Navy) Jack is a tough cookie but when it comes to me he is a pussycat and he keeps my pictures on the bridge of his ship.

My grandparents and I in the back room of the North and South

Jack is sat at the old wooden table the long sleeves of his shirt rolled up and a Senior Service cigarette between his lips..he is surrounded by smoke and he is counting out what I presume to be the takings from the night before.

He is stacking the coins into high piles..the old British coinage before decimal came in, he is stacking them into hundreds, tens and units. He hands me a few of those coins with a smile.

I watch him fascinated and to this day when I cash up I do it like my grandfather, coins into piles…the habits we learn when very young and just observing.

 

It is raining outside and the rain is falling onto that outside corrugated roof with a clatter adding to the greyness of my memory.

There is no colour in my mind only misty grey but it is a nice first memory.

 

My grandparents being given a present by the staff and Customers in North and South

 

There my ten writing minutes are now up with 50 seconds to spare!

By the way the photo’s are of the original North and South, Louisa Street…here is The Last Waltz to complete my memory and my ten minutes of writing.

xoxo

Images of The North and South courtesy of the Welsh online media,