Hell or the garden of eden

The carrier must have called in at “Brig y Don” for the trunk, and I was left with what I could carry. It was foolish and dangerous to entrust all my belongings to a carrier, if they had been lost, my undergraduate days would have been over. I hope that I was not as stupid as to ship off my notes, which I took back with me in a bus. I remember this time very well because it was not despoiled by drudgery. The bus stop was at the entrance of the railway station at Aberystwyth. By that time the rail link to Swansea had been destroyed and nearly all traces of the line had disappeared almost completely. The bus ran through Llanbedr Pont Steffan (Lampeter), the town nearest to the unknown birthplace of my great great grandfather Tomos Jones. It took a circuitous route towards Llandeilo, I doubt whether this was the road through Tal y Llychau (Talley), founded by my ancestral cousin the Prince Rhys ap Gruffudd.

The further from Aberystwyth the happier I felt. After Llandeilo the bus skirted the foothills of Mynydd Betws, then a place of great beauty and not ruined by turbines for the convenience of barbarians. It was making its way slowly towards Swansea. I got off in Clydach and appeared suddenly in this house on a cold grey morning. My grandmother was failing rapidly and my mother was here on one of many visits. Both were surprised and as it seemed to me, not altogether pleased, with an unannounced appearance. The trunk was supposed to follow a few days later but I had not realized it was to be picked up from a depot. I did not try this method again and for the rest of the first six terms at Aberystwyth drove back with my parents.

I was very thin but pleased to be back in one piece. The sheepdog that had been my constant friend of many years went wild with delight. Very soon, in a year or so, he too would be gone. For four weeks around Christmas there was no need to think of lectures and ambition that was there for no understood reason. Unknown to me at the time, the real goal of this ambition was original thought, and that was still distant by years. Things were not the same at Pant y Bedw, there was a reticence that had not been there when I left in September. Probably this is because the farm was to be sold and preparations were being made without my knowledge. This secretive sale happened during my first year as a graduate, in about 1972, and was the worst event in my life. This house had been sold off in 1969, another shattering blow. There was no report at the end of that first term, and nothing for my father to exhibit around the village. Very soon I set about the farm work again, cutting up bales on a frozen field. Memories of the cardboard box began to fade very quickly. There are photographs of that time now on www.aias.us, with the black and white dog sharply contrasted against the snow of Gelliwastad, then unspoiled by mindless vandals. There was, though, a gap in existence, a fault line in time of just over two months, but infinite in implication. This was the effect of an outside world that was worse than I could ever have imagined. It took many years to get rid of that world, so I am able to write about it back here in my grandmother’s house.

During that break from university I found myself much against my better judgment shaking hands with the headmaster at Pontardawe, the same Silwyn Lewis who had evicted me forcefully from his study a few years earlier. This was not a successful reunion, the school had become remote, I was not at Cambridge and of no interest. So I escaped as early as I could and drove home in the car borrowed from my father. I was learning the lesson that one can be forgotten instantly, that time can schism very suddenly and never be the same. If there was no glittering achievement one was an embarrassment to any over ambitious headmaster. I never saw Silwyn Lewis again or any of my teachers at Pontardawe. They disappeared as if they had never existed, and the school itself has been turned into a hideous development. The only things left are ideas and volume one of this autobiography: ancient Llan Giwg outlasted the school.

The Christmas of 1968 at Pant y Bedw must have been overshadowed by my grandmothers’ failing health, but must also have been one of the last true Christmases, with a thirty five pound turkey grown on the farm, so I ate as much as I could to rid myself of lingering memories of chips and peas. I had learnt that there was no need to buy the very expensive course books, and for four weeks I had food and shelter and must have rapidly regained weight. The enormous reserves of cash saved in this way meant that I could buy a pie or pastie as well as chips and peas. A reasonable sherry or two was consumed when my father made his annual visit to my Uncle Raymond. The Grithig children are all gone now, but were a close family. Recently I found that my grandfather William John Evans was a fluent Welsh speaker and hardly drank at all. That stands to reason because I come from four generations in the direct Evans line of hard working labourers: Edward Evans Llanigon, Edward Evans Cleirwy, William John Evans, and Edward Ivor Evans Y Grithig. For those four weeks there was freedom from study and note taking, and the sanity of the small farm compared with the craziness and instability of Aberystwyth. The idea of a University of Wales will work only if the staff and students are all fluent in Welsh, otherwise it will be anglicised very quickly with the familiar colonial mentality. The end result will be the opposite of that desired - hostility towards the language. In older times learning to a high level took place in farm houses, chapels and churches. Families held together for generations.

As the new year arrived, 1969, the last of a turbulent and very dangerous decade, the spectre appeared on the horizon of a return to the cardboard box of “Brig y Don”. This was even more difficult than the first term, but in the end, towards the middle of January, I drove my father up to Aberystwyth with some belongings meticulously prepared by my anxious mother, and the safely guarded notes. The trunk was left safely at home I think. I still have it here now. It was a gloomy mid winter journey and the doorway of “Brig y Don” eventually faced us. I was the first student to arrive, so I had one bar of electric fire all to myself. The landlady in a fit of generosity may even have let me switch on a second bar. My father caught the huddled gloom of the occasion, and mentioned suddenly that it might be better for me just to return home with him, and give up this strange insanity. It was very difficult not to comply with his wishes, but very soon he would be pushing me out again: down a coal mine or into a factory. So he disappeared back down south, and I was on my own. It was not an unpleasant feeling because there was no one to contend with. There was time to order my thoughts, look up the timetable and to find out with some relief that there would be no examinations at the end of the Easter term. At least I cannot remember any. There were problems and homework. The lecturing styles were getting more familiar, and the note taking skills were honed up a little.

The other students dribbled in, looking miserable, and the room settled down to some debate and discussion about all the topics under the moon. The novelty of drinking had worn off after that first term. I can remember virtually nothing about the lectures or practical classes, but recollect that the course of lectures by Mansel Davies lasted half a year, so stopped in the middle of Easter term. They must have been taken over by someone like Cadman, who was very difficult to follow, almost incomprehensible. Cadman had quite a pleasant character sometimes, but Mansel Davies was as remote as the moon. I don’t think I asked either any questions at all. Very soon it began to get cold, so gloves and coats were needed to supplement the one bar fire and to sit in the cold lecture theatres. The biro ink was in danger of freezing. The snow came down on Pen Dinas like a curtain of primordial lace, and the ice made patterns on the tiny window allowed us. The snow came down over all of Aberystwyth and over all of Wales, blanketing the pitiful and babbling wisdom of humankind in primordial silence. The sea looked green and black and menacing, and the snow mingled with the sand and pebbles on the beaches. The black castle stones were jigsawed with white.

So the students of “Brig y Don” took the back of an old chair up to Pen Dinas and used it as a bobsleigh. I captured them on camera just as they were beginning to realize that they were out of control. This was a lot more fun than practical classes under the glowering Heller, or exploding solvent bottles hitting the ceiling, or looking for crystals in the blackened remains of a flask. The chair hit a bank of snow at the foot of the iron age hill, and luckily enough, not a stone wall. Then it was back to the drudgery of lectures, practical classes, tutorials and frenzied note taking. The bitter cold howled through the windows of the long EDCL corridor. My very first memory of the EDCL was of trying to say hello to a lecturer as I walked along this corridor for the first time, and of being ignored and almost shoved aside. This may have been the half crazy A. J. S. Williams, who was completely bald, and known as “knobhead”. He always wore a white laboratory coat everywhere, even in tutorials. The earliest of these took place under his control in the small lecture theatre of the EDCL as it was called, with wooden seats as hard as iron. Of this first year I have very little memory, so the work must have been very hard and very monotonous. Only the unusual remain in the memory at this distance in time, and one of these events was a walk for charity from Aberystwyth to Llanbedr Pont Steffan.

This walk took place on a Saturday, so I missed my one and only lecture, tutorial, practical class and seminar of my entire undergraduate and post graduate time. It was a summer term lecture in organic chemistry by John Bowen in a wooden lecture theatre stuffed into a corner behind a storeroom. This was the main lecture theatre of the old EDCL building. I was persuaded into doing this walk against my better judgement, and half way through my feet blistered very badly. So I was left at the side of the road and hobbled my way into Llanbedr. It was a distance of about twenty five or thirty miles. It was very difficult to find anyone who would give me a good account of the missed lecture, so I never missed another one. There were examinations again at the end of the first year, I recall one physics examination taking place in the biology building, surrounded by pickled frogs and similar. Such was the chaos that substituted for organization.

At the end of the Easter term there was the usual delight for me of being able to get away from Aberystwyth and back to some decent living. During these Easter holidays I took some colour photographs which are posted as albums on www.aias.us. The aged black and white sheepdog appears in some of these, with greying muzzle and clouded eyes. These photographs record for example the unspoilt Mynydd y Gwair, soon to be obliterated now by monstrous wind turbines that remind everyone all the time of crushed democracy. It was still possible in the first year’s vacations to spend the time without study, but in the second year that ceased to be the case. The summer term was a very short one, and again I was almost caught by surprise by the examinations at the end of the first year. Only after some questioning was the examination system made clear to the students. For example were the examinations to cover the entire first year or only the second two terms? In any event the notes assumed great importance, they were the only record available. I was not told to make notes - I did so out of pure instinct. Effectively therefore I rewrote all the lecture courses in a much clearer way than any of the lecturers, doing all their work for them. I always thought that they had a very easy time compared with school teachers, and that it ws all a closed shop. Only in this way could such poor lectures pass as teaching.

Yet through all the hardship there was always the fierce determination to learn and do well, so solve the problems, and even to please the lecturers. I had always wanted to please my parents with good results and to minimize the financial burden on them to almost nothing. Otherwise there was always the danger of my father trying to pull me out of university. Obviously he never read any of my work and understood none of it. Doing very well was the only way to survive. In the vacations from university I was tolerated at Pant y Bedw provided that I kept to myself and did farm work, or found vacation work. After completing that set of summer term examinations in 1969 I found a job at B. P. Baglan Bay as a laboratory technician. That meant a thirteen mile journey by Honda 50 scooter to work and back. The pay was good and so I was able to build up reserves to stop me starving on chips and peas. The analytical laboratory at Baglan Bay was situated next to the chlorine plant, and was well equipped with a range of apparatus for routine analysis of fractions of oil from Llandarcy. Sometimes there was some experimental work. There was infra red, gas chromatography, and specialized equipment. It was tolerable work but in the long term it would become repetitive and tedious. The unusual again stands out, for example a major fire, a leak of chlorine gas, and a bad wound to my finger caused by cutting it with a low temperature thermometer. On the way home one day I crashed the scooter into a roundabout but was unharmed.

My grandmother Martha Jane Jones, born Newlands, died in July 1969, after a long illness. She had been devastated and paralyzed by unhappiness since her husband Thomas Elim Jones died in the early sixties and for her death was a good companion. In her last days she was brought down to the music room of this house and the doctor was called in repeatedly He could do nothing and she slowly departed this world, my anxious mother and other relatives remaining with her all the time. She could not talk at the end but grasped my hand with her remaining strength. There was nothing I could do and in a wooden minded condition drove in to work. She died during the day in this house where she had been born. That evening I went in to see her - a small, ashen grey figure whose agonized breathing had silenced. A coin had been put in her mouth as was the ancient custom. This house became cold and silent, and I retreated to Pant y Bedw. There was nothing for it but to prepare for the second year at Aberystwyth, my early life at Craig Cefn Parc was drawing quickly to its end.

Almost as an irrelevance, I remember the letter informing me that I had won something called a Mathews Prize. I opened it outside the small whitewashed shed at Pant y Bedw and showed it to my parents. It did not have much effect - it did not solve the mystery of why a good life is followed by a painful death. Many years later I found that the Mathews Prize is for the best first year results in chemistry. How I managed to do that is unknown. It must have been those notes. So the lecturers were not so remote after all, they could recognize merit and reward it. There was no time to reflect on the Mathews Prize because a violent quarrel broke out between my uncle and mother resulting in this house being sold for divided cash and divided belongings. Even at the age of nineteen I had the sense to realize that they could have done anything rather than sell it. The last I saw of this house in 1969 it was cold and empty. Many years later I found that someone had stolen all the fine oak doors. I stood for a few minutes before the empty cold hearth, and left. It was many years before I could buy it back again and put it in Trust. I think that all houses of historical value should be put in Trust. This house, Bryn Awel House, was sliced into two and a wall put between. My uncle and mother never talked to each other again.

Even these disasters did not make me want to go back to Aberystwyth to begin the second part of the physical sciences tripos. On another dismal day filled with grey mist my parents and I arrived at 8 Powell Street, a new digs found by accident and for no reason. Atkinson, one other student and myself moved there from “Brig y Don”. The house was run by a small, defeated woman and her husband, whom I later caught stealing money from the students. They asked me to talk over the matter with him. We did not do anything about it so as not to upset his wife. These digs were opposite a finely built chapel, which has been demolished now by people interested in selling its stone and fine oak, in selling civilization to the highest bidder. Recently I saw a levelled weed ridden square where the chapel had been. There was no sermon, no singing, no congregation, only the ghosts of culture and language. I wonder what they did with the Bible, it could have had little second hand value to the illiterate. Perhaps like the Vikings they threw it into the sea.

CHAPTER TWO
In early October 1969 I began the second year of my undergraduate days. The course was split into part one, the first year, and part two, the second and third years. In the second year I took chemistry and mathematics, majoring in chemistry. So physics had been dropped. The classes in the second year were smaller and I even began to recognize a few faces. There was a greater range of courses in chemistry and a very intense year in mathematics, with homework problems and work set for vacation time. The same note taking method was used in both subjects and chemistry was divided once more into physical , inorganic and organic with about twenty hours a week of practical classes. Having got through part one of the tripos I sensed that there was a chance of getting a good degree, and getting rid of physics made life easier. I worked with great intensity during that second year, which was the most difficult of the three years. I must have taken care to eat enough, either from a fish and chip shop or from the student union in Laura Place. The usual breakfast and meals on Sunday were provided by the landlady. There was almost no interaction with the other students of the digs because of the intense work schedule. There were about six students again in 8 Powell Street, one of whom, Roger Goodger, came from Kent and was a first year student. Another called Henrik was from Yorkshire and originally from Poland, and a third came from Crewe, I forget his name. There was also Atkinson and one other from “Brig y Don”.

The chemistry courses were a little more technically advanced and diverse than in the first year, and one or two of the lecturers sparked some interest. The practical courses were a matter of following written instructions and by this time I had realized that writing up the experiment was of basic importance. Some of the mathematics reached quite a high standard and there were examinations and set problems in both subjects. I do not remember practical examinations, which to me were the worst kind of all. This second year was tiring because of the combination of lecture and practical class. For me, time always had to be found for writing up the lecture, and making sense out of it with books from the library. If an experiment went well I took great care to present it accurately, using logarithms. The problem was that I could afford only two meals a day, a breakfast and an evening meal, so a day lasting from 9.00 a. m. to 6.00 p.m. in the laboratory would leave me very hungry and tired. The laboratory work had to be finished promptly and lectures written up on days free from the laboratory. There was no point in asking any lecturer or tutor for help, it was not forthcoming.

I have a vague memory of lectures by Dr. Graham Williams and Dr. Alun Price which were quite clearly presented, and there may have been a course by Dr. Sam Graham in organic chemistry and by Dr. Cecil Monk. In that year a new head of department was appointed, Prof. J. M. Thomas, along with Dr. J. O. Williams and Dr. Eurwyn Evans, but there were no lectures from them in the second year. It was a matter of rewriting the lectures via my notes. Mathematics could get difficult, and the department had a habit of giving examinations after vacations, thus ruining the vacation with study. I cannot remember whether chemistry adopted the same method. The worst thing about the second year was the fact that there was no clear idea of when and if examinations would occur, and over what time span. For example, would they be confined to term by term examinations or one examination at the end of the second year, and how much would the second year count towards the final class of degree? By that time nothing less than a first class degree would do for me. Mathematics was the support subject, and I had no clear idea of how much it would count towards the class of the final degree, and no clear idea of the percentage needed for a first class degree, whether one had to attain that percentage only in the final examinations, or throughout the whole three years.

In view of this intense ambition of mine to get a first class degree, I hoped that my fellow lodgers at 8 Powell Street would turn out to be likeable or failing that, would not drink too much and lose control over themselves. If they lived on their own it would have been fine for them to drink any amount, but if they lived in close proximity with others there could be trouble. I also had to share a room again, this time with Roger Goodger, who turned out to be stable, intelligent, witty and likeable, and remained a life long friend. Henryk (I think his last name was spelled Kolodzie or similar) died some years ago of alcoholism, and was probably alcoholic already in 8 Powell Street. He was a brilliant chess player and apparently a good student. I lost touch with all of them at the end of 1969, when I moved to another digs in which I had a room of my own. This was another attic room in which I studied very intensely and in the needed solitude in my third year. It is again difficult for me to understand at this distance in time how I coped with the digs at 8 Powell Street, because my method of preparation required long and careful memorization. Perhaps the onset of examinations made them concentrate on work. The digs system at Aberystwyth was in general a disaster, by now they may have had the sense to build accommodation with individual rooms for serious minded students. That is the least they could do in return for the very large student fees. There might be treatment centres for alcoholism now. Roger wrote to me some years ago that Henryk had died after years of neglect and self neglect, and that it was profoundly depressing. Someone had stolen his money and he died in destitution. I think that his family were refugees from the old Russian Polish border, and he had a broad Yorkshire accent, probably Halifax.

Unfortunately there was a cult of alcohol at Aberystwyth and many pubs into which the unwary could find themselves embroiled. There was one just a few yards from Powell Street overlooking the harbour. I suppose that it sold the traditional rum of sailors. One evening the student from Crewe must have drunk rum and black (maybe blackcurrent) in this awful dive and staggered his way back. In the middle of the night he vomited vast quantities of purple and violet and in this way probably saved himself from ethanol poisoning or asphyxiation. The noise woke up the whole establishment. He had no respect for the landlady or for responsible students, often myself in a minority of one, or myself and Roger. The landlady might have kicked him out but she needed the money. This was the worst aspect of these digs, being trapped with people with whom one would never associate voluntarily. There could be some very weird goings on in the digs, like a seance organized by Atkinson. He was prone to such rubbishy beliefs and was easily frightened. I think his friend was called Tony McGuinness, also from Bolton. I had to be very careful to keep away from these two when they had drink inside them, they were hypersensitive to any perceived criticism and could take offence at the drop of a hat. One evening, in a drunken frenzy, they smashed open the lock on the door leading in to the room occupied by Goodger and myself, and were with difficulty led back to their rooms to sleep it off. I could have done without all of that in that very tough second year.