Coronation Day
by A Villager
As I recall it was a fine sunny day on 2 June 1953.
At the time, I was a Union-Castle Line deck officer studying for my Second Mate's Certificate in London, but I decided to return to the Mumbles and help my Mother settle in at 6 Queen's Road which she had just purchased. I spent most of the day making a garden gate, but my cousin Hilda's (Jenkins) husband Stan Watkins invited me to the Working Men's Club at the bottom of Western Lane, where we watched the Coronation on a black and white television set
By modern standards it was a poor fuzzy picture, viewed in a large room together with forty or fifty people and quite difficult to see, but at that time it was magic and deeply impressive. The young Queen was beautiful and regal, we really felt that there was to be a new Elizabethan Age. Later that evening, friends and I drove my Mother's Austin Seven around Swansea admiring the street parties, which seemed to be everywhere. Coronation medals and mugs for the children and flags and bunting everywhere. We acquired our own (rented) television later that year.
The great thing was that after the War, we all felt hopeful of the future, things would get better and they did. The threat of nuclear war with the Russians was a real and ever present menace, but things were improving and by the end of the decade the bomb-sites in Swansea were disappearing. I wish that young people today had such hopes for the future; perhaps in the context of the times they have, but it all looks rather different to my generation.
