My First Sight of Mumbles
by Tony Cook
Mumbles is one of the prettiest villages with the loveliest people and the warmest of welcomes you could find in the UK. In Mumbles you have a community spirit I have yet to encounter in any other village. I still miss the walks to the shops to buy something to go with meals Linda was cooking and it would take me an hour to do the 100 yards there and back, because I kept bumping into people and stopping for a chat. I arrived in Mumbles from Hampshire and was scathing about people blocking up the pavements when I had errands to run; and yet within a fortnight I, too was blocking the pavement as I stopped to talk to neighbours and friends. It is no wonder that Mumbles people move back to Mumbles from all over when the opportunity presents itself.
Mumbles from the Castle battlements
The Land Train at Oystermouth Square
I am an itinerant but for me Mumbles fits the word 'home'. Our time in Sally Jones's house in Mumbles Road, was a super episode in our lives. All of us and I think my daughter, Astrid in particular, hold onto magical memories—Grange School, Lifeboat Station, Lewis News, Covelli's fish and chips and the castle grounds.
We moved to South Wales to walk in the Brecon Beacons, and in five years,
whenever we donned hairy socks and boots, we never felt the need to go anywhere other than around the village or on Gower.
I was born wearing a beautiful anorak. Geography was but one of its many colours. I loved our Philips Atlas; full of adventure puzzles, pictures with clues, and packed with evidence of a real world and information given by people you could trust.
My earliest memories include sitting, hunched up spell bound, and pouring over the shape of Britain's coastline. Britain was a sweet man, looking lovingly over his shoulder to old Europe, and a pig whose soul was blessed by Luther, Fox and Wesley. Pig and Man were bounding across the shallows. The pig was steely, brave and resolute and in her mind she had already crossed the ocean. The man hid from his fear of the immeasurable journey ahead by concentrating all his efforts on a last look at the Continent.
The Man's head was Central Scotland and the Highlands. His mouth was the
Forth of Tay and he was eating a Scone. His lower jaw was the Kingdom of Fife and the land of Pop Potter, my Mum's Dad, matelot and warrior.
The Pig was Wales, the Midlands and the South of England. Her mouth was
Swansea Bay. This was jewelled with a weather station, a lifeboat station, a pier, a castle, and a heart racing curve in the coast line that had a pointy end with the entrancing name of Mumbles Head. In 1955, seven years old and living on the Continent I was destined to ‘adventure in Mumbles’.