seen and not heard. Like a subject people, boyhood must be content to endure and bide its time. Boyhood dreams. It bears witness. It stares. It is capable of murderous brutality, with its airgun in the killing fields, its snares and hooks. (Or so it was all that time ago.) It is an eye. It is a soul and soul is never more fierce and beautiful than in its first encounters with the world.
Ifor and I had another thing in common. We had both passed the eleven-plus. That was one of the first things people would tell you about him, in some wonder. He had gone to the grammar school at Abergele. Would you believe that when you met him? The wives of the village would tell you, Ifor was a truant dreamer and a wastrel. There were those who claimed he wasnât all that bright. His eleven-year-old success must have been a mistake on the part of the examiners. Did they make the same mistake with me? (Donât ask.)
Sometimes at home things turned bad for Ifor now and then. Too many pints at the Sun, too many games of bowls or too much fishing. On these occasions he sometimes slept the night on a bench in the village hall. We seemed to know when he was in the dog-house and waited for him there. The prison-house of the grammar school had done little for him, perhaps, unless it inspired him to dream, as it surely did for me. You took him on to paint your house and one moment he was up the ladder and the next moment nowhere to be seen. It was as if the ladder gave him a leg-up away somewhere into the mountains (perhaps to Llyn Anafon, one of his other favourite haunts, haunted, as haunted me, by the story they used to tell of a fisherman who drowned there).
He knew the lakes at first hand, and he knew them from a classic book, a fishermanâs Bible, that one day heâd give my father, The Lakes of Wales (1931) by Frank Ward. But he never talked to me about the book and nor did my father. Iâd set eyes on it but I only discovered it to read after they were all dead, Trefor, Ifor, and John.
Who has not complained at not asking enough questions when young while the dead were living? The explanation is simple: we donât know what the questions are until too late. Here for whom I do not know, I am writing down my answers. So it goes round. And the truth is even harder, for hindsightâs no more 20:20 than first sight.... Memoryâs selective, and writing must be more so, being founded in omission, where at best less might mean more.
We went to the Black Lake to fish and not to reflect on folklore and myth. The only myths we had time for concerned 6lb fantasy trout that no one ever caught. Though who never saw such a one, rising with a swirl like an oarâs puddle? My father saw them all the time.
But here is what Wardâs book had to say (his spellings preserved):
âThe Black Lakeâ is about half a mile in length and lies in a remarkable rock basin at the foot of the precipices of Craig-y-Dulyn between Y Foel Fras and Carnedd Lâywelyn. Bare rock walls from 150 to 600 feet in height practically enclose it, descending steeply into the water. The outlet is very narrow, just wide enough for the small stream flowing from the lake, and the general aspect is decidedly sinister, suggesting a deep flooded crater. Dulyn may be reached in about three hours from Bedol Inn on the road from Trefriw to Tal-y-cafn. The trout here are shy but there are some good fish. Average weight is 1 / 2 lb., with a chance of anything up to 1 lb. or more. The water is very deep (it has been sounded up to 189 feet), black and cold, and contains many rocks and stones. It is a late lake and fishes best at dawn and sundown in June, July and August, but owing to its remote situation, and the fatiguing walk to and fro, is not often visited by anglers. It is one of the impounding reservoirs belonging to the Llandudno Town Council. Permits are issued at a charge of 5s per day by the Waterworks Engineer, Town Hall, Llandudno. There is no
Ifor and I had another thing in common. We had both passed the eleven-plus. That was one of the first things people would tell you about him, in some wonder. He had gone to the grammar school at Abergele. Would you believe that when you met him? The wives of the village would tell you, Ifor was a truant dreamer and a wastrel. There were those who claimed he wasnât all that bright. His eleven-year-old success must have been a mistake on the part of the examiners. Did they make the same mistake with me? (Donât ask.)
Sometimes at home things turned bad for Ifor now and then. Too many pints at the Sun, too many games of bowls or too much fishing. On these occasions he sometimes slept the night on a bench in the village hall. We seemed to know when he was in the dog-house and waited for him there. The prison-house of the grammar school had done little for him, perhaps, unless it inspired him to dream, as it surely did for me. You took him on to paint your house and one moment he was up the ladder and the next moment nowhere to be seen. It was as if the ladder gave him a leg-up away somewhere into the mountains (perhaps to Llyn Anafon, one of his other favourite haunts, haunted, as haunted me, by the story they used to tell of a fisherman who drowned there).
He knew the lakes at first hand, and he knew them from a classic book, a fishermanâs Bible, that one day heâd give my father, The Lakes of Wales (1931) by Frank Ward. But he never talked to me about the book and nor did my father. Iâd set eyes on it but I only discovered it to read after they were all dead, Trefor, Ifor, and John.
Who has not complained at not asking enough questions when young while the dead were living? The explanation is simple: we donât know what the questions are until too late. Here for whom I do not know, I am writing down my answers. So it goes round. And the truth is even harder, for hindsightâs no more 20:20 than first sight.... Memoryâs selective, and writing must be more so, being founded in omission, where at best less might mean more.
We went to the Black Lake to fish and not to reflect on folklore and myth. The only myths we had time for concerned 6lb fantasy trout that no one ever caught. Though who never saw such a one, rising with a swirl like an oarâs puddle? My father saw them all the time.
But here is what Wardâs book had to say (his spellings preserved):
âThe Black Lakeâ is about half a mile in length and lies in a remarkable rock basin at the foot of the precipices of Craig-y-Dulyn between Y Foel Fras and Carnedd Lâywelyn. Bare rock walls from 150 to 600 feet in height practically enclose it, descending steeply into the water. The outlet is very narrow, just wide enough for the small stream flowing from the lake, and the general aspect is decidedly sinister, suggesting a deep flooded crater. Dulyn may be reached in about three hours from Bedol Inn on the road from Trefriw to Tal-y-cafn. The trout here are shy but there are some good fish. Average weight is 1 / 2 lb., with a chance of anything up to 1 lb. or more. The water is very deep (it has been sounded up to 189 feet), black and cold, and contains many rocks and stones. It is a late lake and fishes best at dawn and sundown in June, July and August, but owing to its remote situation, and the fatiguing walk to and fro, is not often visited by anglers. It is one of the impounding reservoirs belonging to the Llandudno Town Council. Permits are issued at a charge of 5s per day by the Waterworks Engineer, Town Hall, Llandudno. There is no
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