Nick Evans’ father, a Methodist Minister in Otley, West Yorkshire, died in a motorcycle accident in November 1960. Nick was 10 years old and he and his mother moved to Newport where her family still lived.
Now, he has released a book about his experiences. An extract is below.
The impact of my father’s death was devastating.
The fork in the road was not just a slight diversion – it was a massive U-turn, taking my mother back to her childhood home town and me to a culture that was far removed from the back streets of West Yorkshire.
I have no recollection of that Christmas, nor of my birthday (New Year’s Eve).
Everything went by in a daze. My life was about to take a radical turn.
We had originally been due to leave Otley the following September for my Dad to take up a new church in Headingley. I was to start secondary school there and life would have been very different.
In fact, in fairly short order, we packed up and left the Manse – I am unclear exactly when – and travelled to South Wales where my grandparents had purchased a house directly opposite theirs at 51 Richmond Road, Newport and so we moved into 54 Richmond Road and I began my new junior school in the January of 1961: the first of two terms at Durham Road Junior School in the hands of Mervyn Griffiths, the former World Cup football referee. (See his autobiography “The Man in the Middle”.)
The house was in relatively familiar territory for me.
I knew the street, I knew the church at the bottom of it – St Julian’s Methodist – and, of course, I knew my grandparents and various of their friends, mostly from the church.
The house at 54 was largely empty. We had beds and a couple of wardrobes and we had a table and chairs with a settee and armchair in the back living/dining room. The front room was totally empty and became my area to play and experiment.
(Image: Nick Evans)
(Image: Nick Evans)
I had a lot of time on my own, because my mother needed to go to work, so I would let myself in and watch television until she returned to make dinner.
We lived simply and we had brought one thing that was a link to our previous life: Patch, our tabby cat.
The transition from the north to south-west was generally straightforward for me, although one episode will always remain with me.
The Methodist Church at St Julian’s was a busy venue for worshippers and its Sunday morning services were popular.
I had been enrolled, along with all other children of my age, in the Sunday School and it was incumbent on us to perform some sort of religious play at least once or twice a quarter.
My first experience of this was when we retold the story of the Good Samaritan.
I was cast in the role of the Levite and it was pretty easy – all I had to do was to walk past the poor man who had been travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho but had been set upon by robbers.
As I walked past, I was to utter the immortal phrase, “I can’t stand the sight of blood.” Try it in a broad Yorkshire accent.
“Ah caan’t stand the sart of blud.”
The congregation burst into laughter. And my accent almost immediately changed to a gentle blend of South Wales and an anonymous mid-country twang that would cause offence to no one.
Fitting in. That was what you had to do and, for me that was difficult.
I was different from the other kids – not radically so, but there was something about me that made them wary, almost as if I was an adult in disguise.
Consequently, although I had friends, they were never close nor long-lasting.
At home, we settled into a routine that seemed to work and my mother seemed relatively relaxed; and the house provided us the security we both needed.
I enjoyed my new school and Griffiths was a loving teacher who was worshipped by the boys in his class.
He had a handy punishment – a ‘dapper’ or gym shoe, which he wielded for any offence.
At one point during a particular day, he looked at me and said across the classroom (I sat at the back), “Have I dappered you yet, Evans?”
“Er, no sir,” I replied, “but I haven’t done anything sir.”
“Just in case, boy. Bend over!”
(Image: Nick Evans)
(Image: Nick Evans)
And so for the one and only time in my life I received corporal punishment from a teacher.
And I still thought he was wonderful, mainly because the ‘dappering’ was just a tap, symbolic to keep a gang of potentially unruly lads in order.
There was an innocence about Durham Road Junior School and its pupils.
It was a single sex school, at least, the boys were in the classrooms upstairs and the girls were downstairs and never the twain should meet.
We were happy lads generally, no one was particularly cruel or unpleasant and we rubbed along well together.
The classes were a mix of basics being taught such as writing and arithmetic, with a good salting of handicrafts and a little bit of science.
One of the more unusual lessons was Singing Together – a radio programme that encouraged children to sing traditional and less traditional songs.
The lads in the class were less than enthusiastic about singing some of the soppier folk songs, but when we sang ‘Wi’ a hundred pipers, an aw an aw’ we raised the roof, much to Mr Griffiths’ pleasure.
Each day, we trooped in a crocodile at lunchtime from the school to a prefabricated hut a few hundred yards away where our lunch was served out of large aluminium heat-retaining containers.
It was usually pretty good and saved my mum cooking in the evening as she usually had a meal at work too.
The local police organised cycle training on a Saturday in the playground – what a strange feeling, going to school on a weekend! – and I quickly passed my Cycling Proficiency Test and sported a rather nice triangular badge that bore witness to the fact.
Further to my acting ability at the Church service that was mentioned earlier, I was also picked out to take the starring role in a school play: the story of Bishop Hatto, who died a horrible death being eaten by rats as a punishment for his evil ways.
The poem by Robert Southey was the basis for the play and although my part only demanded some grand gesturing and a fair bit of screaming, it was a juicy part for an aspiring actor.
As the other lads who were the avenging rats and a cat leapt all around the stage in threatening prances, I wailed my way to the floor for them to ‘pick the Bishop’s bones’.
Quite traumatic and I’m sure we were all deeply scarred by the story. Thereafter, and all through secondary school, I was known as ‘Bish’.
A Glass Darkly is available digitally and will be available in paperback form on Amazon by the end of May