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One day we went to school to see that our favourite "playground", the area we called "the Orchard" had an assortment of vehicles on it. These vehicles heralded major changes in the area. The ground was levelled, the trees that had stood around the space, as well as the hedgerows were destroyed and over the following months the foundations were laid for new houses. Gil and I were able to watch the progress of this through our back windows. One morning we awoke to see that the ground was covered in snow and the building had stopped. This led to all the kids in the area invading the building site after school and playing on a frozen "pond" in the middle of the site. We were happily sliding about on the ice and throwing snowballs, then the lights went out. Someone pushed me from behind, and I crashed to the ice bumping my forehead. I was out cold in more ways than one. I awoke some time later with my grandmother looking down and shouting my name. She played "merry hell" with everyone and tried without success to find out who had pushed me. It was something I never really found out, but I had my suspicions.

Work progressed on this site until Nash Grove was finally finished. Not long afterwards we made friends with a lad named John Lomas who had moved up from Llanelli. He lived in one of the houses opposite the back of our houses. These houses had long suffered from Gil's attentions with his home made cannon. This was a crude but effective device, which consisted of a piece of steel tube, flattened at one end, with a hole drilled in one side. He would get a quantity of the old "penny bangers", empty the contents into the tube, and drop in a wad of cotton wool, and a ball bearing. A small primer of the fuse material was poured into the hole, and a length of "Jetex" fuse (a handy little device made of a piece of wire covered in some brown slow-burning combustible material, - it was withdrawn in the fifties) attached and the contraption placed behind the coal shed. The "Jetex" was lit and we retreated behind the wall. After a moment or so there was a loud bang and then we heard a crash as the ball bearing shattered a tile or two on a house opposite. Gil made several versions of this "cannon" even to the extent of making one that was a scaled down replica of a real cannon.

Gil used to like making model airplanes. These were the wood and tissue Keil Kraft types. He started on the elastic band driven types and then progressed to those that used a small two-stroke engine. He used to drive the neighbourhood mad with these engines. They are only small, but they make one hell of a noise. On one occasion we went around to Thompsons Avenue and set one up in one of Gil's friend's back yard. The engine was started up, and after a minute or two, the propeller shattered and bits flew off in all directions, some embedding themselves in a wooden garden shed. We were lucky that none of these pieces hit any of us.

Following the completion of the building of Nash Grove, the second phase of the building work was started, with the completion of Mulcaster Avenue, and then the rest of the Pont Faen Estate later on. Work was to begin later on more building further to the east, culminating in the completion of Moorland Park, which is where my parents eventually lived. Moorland Park is on the site of the original access road to the Llanwern Steelworks, which we had seen built earlier. What was once open space and true moorland, was now covered in heavy industry and housing to accommodate the workforce. The area has now been further developed with a large retail park on what was once the entrance (after Ringland Way and the bridge over the railway had been built in about 1961) to the Steelworks. There was a large pub at the roundabout by this entrance called, I am reliably reminded (thanks to Jennifer), "The Roundabout" (so obvious really) I remember drinking Watneys Red Barrel in there, but I note that it is now no longer a pub. Jennifer also tells me that it was later called "The Pullman" but was subsequently pulled down.

In it's place stands another of those dreadful KFC places where they serve up that awful American idea of 'food' and lack of good taste. I do miss Selwoods Hake and Chips and deep fried pies. At least back then it was "hake and three-penn'orth wrapped to take home please", not "quarter pounder and fries to go". The wrapping has changed too, at least at Selwoods you had something to read with your meal, even if the news was a few days late. Now what have you got from these tacky American outfits? Cardboard cartons, full of advertising, and more of their rubbishy and unappetising cardboard 'food'.

Nash Grove was on my paper round, and I used to do this on my bike. One evening I was accosted by one nutter who lived there. He claimed that I was "driving dangerously" (his words) and threatened to beat me up. I had a job getting to the bottom of this, but it transpired that he was ranting about the fact that I rode into the area he was living via a footpath, and he was "concerned" that I would knock down one of his kids. I was very puzzled by this as I had never seen any little children playing in that area, and would not expect them to in the winter months between 5pm and 6pm when it would be dark!! Following this encounter, I would sound my bell every time I came along this stretch, but then he would charge out saying that either I was waking the kids up, or that I was disturbing him watching telly. Well, I did say he was a nutter.

My evenings and weekends were mostly dominated by going to Alway, to a cousin of a cousin, Bernard Morse's house in Parry Drive. We used to play on the "golf-links" overlooking the "quarry" (Lliswerry Pond) or we would fish in the quarry (never caught a thing). We would sometimes be joined by Mike Johnson who lived up the top of Vaughan Williams Drive. We would go down to Goldcliff to try our luck, but then we discovered a stream which we found held innumerable eels. There were, I think, river trout in that stream, but we couldn't catch them. One day, Mikey and I went down there, Bernard couldn't come with us for reasons long forgotten, and Mike and I settled in for an afternoon's fishing in our favourite spot on a small bridge. We lit up a fag each and soon the rods were rattling. We caught quite a few eels, then Mike got a bit excited and grabbed my rod, yanked a bit too hard on it, it hit the tree behind us, and broke in two. The air was blue, I smacked him over the head with the two bits, and we both rode home in a fury. I got the usual from my Granny about disposing of the eels, which I then deposited as usual in the "ditch" at the back of the house.

On the subject of Goldcliff, I watched a programme on Channel 4 in the spring of 2004 featuring the "Time Team" doing an 'archaelogical dig' in the mud at this 'resort'. Interesting stuff it was too, showing megalithic flint tools, footprints and loads of - mud!! Nice to know it hasn't changed in all these years!!

One day whilst I was visiting Bernard's house, I made a chance remark about the girlfriend I had last seen about five years earlier. When I mentioned her name, he said "yes, I know her, she lives just around the corner in number eleven, and we're in the same year in Hartridge School". I asked him to re-introduce us, and this he agreed to do. Weeks passed and I kept asking him if there had been any luck. He kept forgetting, but eventually he did manage to remember, and asked her if she remembered me. She did, and the formalities were set in motion for the meeting......................

© Len Jones 2004