Driving on the Gower Peninsula
@tatjana knows that I mentioned, on another thread, the experience of driving on a very wet night and suddenly realising that the wet, black road ahead was not empty, but held a very large wet, black cow!
This set me thinking and remembering.
It is all a matter of expectation, really. Cefn Bryn, the hill in the middle of Gower, is common land and folk whose farms join it have grazing rights. This means we quite expected to meet ponies and/or cattle and/or sheep on the hill. The only time it was really a problem was in high summer when a lot of tourists came. Quite often, at least two or three times a year, I would come across a traffic jam and have to get out, walk up to the front and tell whichever animals were in the road to, “Get over! Get on with you! Off!” (Animals on Gower spoke English, not Welsh!).
Usually, when I did this, the tourists asked, not without a certain crossness, “Are they yours?” When I explained that, no, they were not mine, I didn’t know whose they were, the attitude changed to a sort of awe! I am convinced a lot of city folk saw any animal as much like those encountered in the African savanna!
Other animals causing problems were two dogs, both owned by people I knew. My friend John’s young border collie crouched by the road - body language, “I am herding you and you must stop!” I didn’t believe he would charge my car, but I slowed right down. He proceeded to charge at full tilt. By then I had stopped, but his head got a terrible whack on my wing and he fled, howling. I hurriedly got out and went to report to my friend. I felt terrible, but it turned out the dog had bitten his tongue but was otherwise unhurt and John said he hoped the experience would have taught the dog that driving sheep at the behest and with instructions from John was fine, trying it with traffic was painful and to be avoided!
The other dog looked like a springer spaniel, a breed known for being a bit nuts! So when this dog, who lived next door to another friend, went into the ‘stop or I charge’ posture, I believed him and stopped! I then got out and told him to go home. I waited for him to disappear into his yard before driving into my friend’s drive. We reported to the deluded springer’s owner, who explained that he was in fact half springer-half border collie and promised to keep him in. They were not very successful in this, and while I was still in the area, I often had to send that dog home!
Now I shall stop this and add to it when I have time.
There are a lot a animals on Gower and other hazards too!
My first Christmas
Yes this is an old topic, but it’s for story telling one’s memories and one hit me last night. On BBC TV there was, I think, a repeat of “Back in Time for Christmas”. I wasn’t really watching it, but I saw Dad and lad ‘making a tree’ and … well. It reminded me of the repeated tale, told every year, of my first Christmas.
You see, I can vouch for the fact that in 1941, the 3rd Christmas of the War (2nd World), at least some Christmas trees were available. In fact, I suspect more available than the brand new tidy pieces of wood shown last night used to make a ‘tree’! Wood was in short supply. Anyone wanting some would probably have been obliged to visit a bomb site and see what bits and pieces they could find!
My mother went to the local shops and, at the Greengrocer’s, bought the tree. As she did not take me in my pram (perambulator)
https://www.google.co.uk/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=AfE8WpSEB-eBgAaF0JfYAg&q=1930s+UK+baby’s+pram+pictures&oq=1930s+UK+baby’s+pram+pictures&gs_l=psy-ab.12...12092.27312.0.31630.9.7.2.0.0.0.123.567.6j1.7.0…0…1c.1.64.psy-ab…0.0.0…0.MKZxuHw1mXE#imgdii=SVHhLcitDcBsEM:&imgrc=ZS5Uq04Q_K6COM:
I think she had seen it earlier! She knew Christmas Trees are for children and now she was a Mother and had a child, to be kept safe until her husband got back from the War. Her child must have a tree!
There were just two problems. I was born exactly two months before Christmas Eve. I remember a lot from when I was very small, but not my first Christmas. this story is entirely remembered from The Family Tale.
Which brings us to the other problem. My mother was 5ft 0ins (152 cm). I am not sure of the size of the tree, but when crossing the widest road, the one where buses went in both directions, the top of the tree was over one pavement and the back end over the kerb on the other side of the road! How she got it home mystified everyone. My grandfather had to cut a lot off the bottom to get it in the house! (I believe a number of neighbours gained little trees which were branches of ours!)
So don’t believe all historical re-enactments you see on TV!
ps I believe the tree was decorated by my mother using recycled milk bottle tops!
I love your stories 
thank you for sharing them
My mum used to save the milk bottle tops for weeks before Christmas so we could press them into bell shapes using a lemon juicer then thread them onto wool to hang on the tree. We always begged her to buy little bottles of cream at the time because they came with different colour tops, whereas the milk ones were all silver, but cream was expensive so it didn’t happen very often!
I have a vague memory of milk bottle tops coming decorated with little pictures of holly round about Christmas time. (Or is this just false memory syndrome??? Does anyone else remember this?).
(We still have milk from the milkman, and it still comes in bottles with foil tops. Years ago, we used to save them for Guide Dogs for the Blind, but I don’t think they take them any more. I just put them in the recycling, and hope that the recyclers get something out of them).
I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen in New Zealand or we would have definitely used them to make our decorations!
I remember the holly on the bottle tops! Not sure where. Possibly York, Middlsex, Harrogate, Hereford…
F[quote=“mikeellwood, post:45, topic:3876”]
I have a vague memory of milk bottle tops coming decorated with little pictures of holly round about Christmas time. (Or is this just false memory syndrome??? Does anyone else remember this?).
[/quote]
Yes, this happened in N Wales, & we used them & the saved silver ones as decorations.
Edit: & the birds used to peck at the foil!
And, I always presumed, drink the milk! Unless they did it to let the mice get at the latter!!! 
I presumed the same…but can they really apply sufficient suction, I wonder?
If not, maybe they were just attracted to the shiny tops.
Magpies and other corvids are associated with collection of shiny things, although now, apparently some evidence refutes that. I have not heard of small birds being attracted. I should be sad if jackdaws don’t collect as that would destroy my theory as to how ‘presents’ first dropped down chimneys at this time of year!
Small birds peck the foil tops open and drink the milk.
The colour of the top doesn’t seem to matter.
I can’t remember their pecking through the old cardboard tops.
Thinking about this later, they drink water out of bird baths don’t they, so they must be able to drink milk out of bottles once open.
[quote=“mikeellwood, post:53, topic:3876”]
Thinking about this later, they drink water out of bird baths don’t they, so they must be able to drink milk out of bottles once open.[/quote]
I believe the liquid (water or milk or whatever) has to be sort of ‘scooped up’ with the beak, not just sucked up. (I could be wrong about that, but that was what I understood at some point.)
Exactly right.
They scoop a beakful then point their beaks up to swallow (no pun intended).
It was just an experiment you understand…
If you can remember foil milk bottle tops with holly, how about shilling-in-the-slot gas and electrcity meters?
Being a poor engineering student amongst a whole class of the same, some bright spark—an ingenious sort sure to go places we figured, set about creating a metal (or was it wooden?) mold that when filled with water could create ice-shillings. Talk about paying with cold cash! Having inserted these in the meters (so I heard), hey presto, in the kitchen it was a case of ‘lights, action!’ The meter-reader would scratch his head, but clearly there had been no tampering with the lock or money-box which only contained a few coins, but soon started to rust out. I wonder where that genius ended up? Maybe he has spent quite a few ‘quiet nights in’ by now, if you take my meaning.
So about those coin-in-the-slot meters… ours was under the stairs and took a contortionist equipped with headlamp to read it. And yours? And where did you keep your ready supply of shillings—in a tobacco tin like us?
Happy memories!
Hwyl,
Marilyn
My gran’s was in the cupboard under the stairs and when the meter man came, he gave her back a load of coins in exchange for, I suspect 10 shilling notes. She put them in an empty jam jar by the meter handy! My first digs, a furnished ‘flat’ shared with a friend from Uni, over a paper shop and next to the Police Station must have had a meter, but I can’t recall where! Or maybe we paid our landlord a sum towards electricity? We shared their bathroom and toilet, a floor down. We had a room with a table on which was a sort of electric stove cum oven, very small. We fetched water from the bathroom and must have washed-up there, I think. Sorry. we weren’t there long and it’s about 56 years ago! The meter I remember was in a flat we shared with 2 other girls in Camden. in a road famous for Dr. Crippen (different house!). We had a door to our flat and, inside that, there was a corridor with an arch and the meter was on the arch, so we needed to stand on something to feed it. It never occurred to us or any of our various male visitors to put in anything but money, although the odd Irish coin crept in! Mind, in our day, we all had grants and so were not that short of money as our expectations were not high! No foreign holidays, no TV! One friend had a car and I bought one for £5 in the pub one evening from a chap who had finished his degree and was going back to India! As I had no licence, a friend drove it. Nobody had invented MOTs in those days!! One traffic cop beside whom we stopped one day, glanced down at it and said, “If I had time, I’d throw the book at you!” It was taxed, but that was about all you could say for it!! After that flat, I joined the ranks of the plutocrats who rented unfurnished and paid quarterly for gas and electricity!..Mmm thinking about it, I think my gran’s meter under the stairs was gas and maybe she paid the electric bill quarterly, but I can’t be sure! Last time I was there when the meter man came was probably before I started school in September 1945 when I was still 4!
ps I could only rent unfurnished because my Dad’s dad died and I got such furniture as I wanted and would fit in hired walk-through van
As a student nurse in the early eighties I rented a bedsit in Streatham in South London for about 18 months. Post decimalisation it was 50 pence pieces that went into the electricity meter, which was in the wardrobe. Skip 10 years to the early 90s and we’re living in Scotland and buy a flat which we lived in for a while and then rented out when my husband was in the army. By then things had progressed and we had a couple of cards which we took to the Scottish Power shop and paid them to put credit on the card. The card was linked to our address so there was no value in them being stolen. In these days of smart meters I suppose it could all be done on line.
Ha ha.
When we were first married, we moved to a rural village in the North East of Cambridgeshire. Our house was immediately next to the shopping street and we had credit utilities accounts. However, it took my wife a while to stop saving up 50ps and tins (cans) of beans, etc.
On Gower, my problem was a very sensitive trip. I used to say one flash of lightening over Llanelli set it off. Most annoying effect was loss of freezer full of food while I was at wprk in London Next door either side didn’t trip so didn’t think to check my house! I tnought of that when our power went off at 1.45 this afternoon until 4.00 pm! Some sort of loud bang in road between us and canal, explosion! Not sure what exploded!