Bad Boys!

 

I promised you some more tales of my Brothers.  Before I do so here is a picutre that I was lucky enough to find on the web of Crickhowell taken around 1890. So, the property where I was born had quite a bit of history to it:

On the left, the property with the two big windows is the place of my birth.  You can see Table Mountain in the background and the Bear Hotel at the top of the street.  Here is how it looks today:

Basically it has not changed. The shop front under the two windows has been replaced but apart from that it is only the cars that make the difference.

Well, now some more stories of my brothers.

During the war, troops from many nations were stationed in and around Crickhowell as the Brecon Beacons or Black Mountains were considered an ideal training ground, rough terrain, weather changing in the blink of an eye and out of the public gaze so they could keep their secrets. Many of these troops would march through Crickhowell itself usually during the evenings and mostly after dark. As you can see from the above pictures, the home my family were living in was directly onto the street. Well, my brothers (and I think it was Geoff’s idea as always) decided to attach a weight to a piece of fishing line and hang it out of the window as the troops marched by and try to knock off a soldier’s hat! They would then duck quickly back inside, pulling the fishing wire up so that when the particular soldier look upwards, nothing was to be seen. They did this “trick” many times. Now and again my Mother would get an officer knocking on her door to complain but of course, she knew nothing about it and the whole thing seemed a mystery. Well, one evening they were up to their old antics yet again but this time my Mother heard loud giggling going on. She went into the room to find them crouched down before the open window, the fishing line hanging out. They had just achieved their objective when she entered. She flew to the window pulled them back and stuck her head out to see what they had been doing. Yes, the soldiers thought it was my Mother that had been knocking the hats off! She had some hasty explaining to do.

On another occasion my Mother had a visitor to tea. A very genteel old lady that she had come to know. During the visit, this old lady had to make a trip to the toilet. Geoff came home from being with a friend and immediately thought he would find Buddy. Assuming it was Buddy that was in the toilet, he flung wide the door and shouted a loud “Boo”. The elderly lady, who had just risen to arrange her clothes, immediately fell back into the toilet, shrieking like a Banshee, and got firmly stuck!!!! I think my Mother had to call for assistance to get her out.

After the boys were in bed at night my Mother used to love to sit and read and she was a great one for murder and ghost stories. On night she had read a particularly scary story. She was a little nervous when she turned out the downstairs lights because the place was very large, the wooden floors creaked and my brothers assured me it could be quite eerie. Geoff had decided to play another one of his jokes. He had taken a bolster from the bed, dressed it in male clothes, taken a ladder and climbed up to the landing skylight where he had suspended this dummy by a rope from the skylight. Can you imagine my poor Mother. Already uneasy she had turned the corner to see this “body” swinging in the moonlight!!!! She told me that Geoff could not sit down for a week.

Here they are, they look like a couple of tearaways don’t they - the dead end kids.

Geoffrey on the left and Buddy (Keith) on the right.

The boys went to school in Llangattock

 which is a village on the other side of the Crickhowell bridge. As they got older they attended school in Brecon.

They were sorry to return to England after the war and they made a solemn pledge to re-visit Crickhowell together one day to relive old memories.  Alas,it was not to be.  We missBuddy and always will.

Do not forget to see today's prior entry for the update on the "baby" gallery.