20 January - Dad's birthday

It has to be said that my father was outwardly not one for birthdays. After my mother died his default present was a cheque or cash (for varying amounts). Indeed, as he got older this amount tended to decrease for all of us (me, grandchildren and others) as his memory skipped the recent present and recalled an earlier time when five pounds was a lot of money. Chris, my mother, had always bought the presents that they would give together, a task she delighted in, and he was more than happy to go along with it.

"You mustn't get me anything" was his usual plea when it came to his own birthday; or "you shouldn't have" when he saw the present. Books, videos (latterly DVDs) and CDs were common, indulging his tastes for autobiographies, choral music and period dramas. His granddaughter Abigail recounts seeing 'Pride and Prejudice' on countless afternoons after he had picked her up from school; and also to being fed slices of apple dipped in sugar (about which her health concious parents would have been horrified!).

Of course, being the social animal that he was he hugely enjoyed being the centre of attention and sooner or later the storytelling would begin. This is the first time in 52 years that I won't be calling him or coming over to his house to celebrate with him; I will miss those moments as he would graciously accept the plaudits for passing yet another milestone.

Happy birthday Dad.

Love Lawrence x

Chronology and Category

Whilst my father's stories were told on an apparently random basis, triggered by circumstance, conversation topic or some other internal or external prompt, they do group into an obvious chronology and can also be categorised into themes.


He was born in Hirwaun in South Wales and lived there until he went to University in Birmingham. This represents a distinct 'era' in which his family, in particular his grandparents and his parents, feature large. There are local characters and places, exploits with friends, school and sport. It also encompasses the Depression, coal mining and farming. Rugby remained a constant theme, spanning all the years of his life, as did many of the interests he developed in those early years.


University in Birmingham and then his first job in Coventry are the second era. He was the first of his family to go to university where he read economics. He met my mother in Coventry and married her when he returned at the end of the Second world War. He didn't join up immediately because his job was considered important as a contribution to the war effort and he wasn't allowed to leave. Instead he became an ARP and endured the Blitz.


It is fair to say that he had a 'big' war. From the point that he joined up, his training, the war in Europe and his passage to Japan via India, Singapore and Hong Kong he endured (and in many cases enjoyed) a string of exploits and life shaping experiences. After Japan, where he saw Hiroshima first hand, he was offered a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a professional soldier.


He turned it down but it wasn't so long before he and my mother left for Africa to follow a career in the Colonial Service. Another era when he was again actively participating in a time when our modern history was being made. A time of political change and paradigm shift. This is where he defined his 'Welshness'; because one of the things that happens to a Welshman like my father, who has left his country never to live there again, is that they become passionate and self-appointed 'ambassadors' for everything Welsh. Such feelings were, in his case, driven on the one side by 'hwyl' (intense pride and passion) and on the other 'hiraeth' (longing - in this case for home). They left after the colonial sun had already dipped below the horizon. Rather than take another role abroad, which he had been offered, they decided to return to England and to start all over again.


The next phase, as I grew up and he and my mother grew old in the home counties, was when I listened to his stories and made the voyage around my father's previous life. In this part the stories are mine; stories about him and us, reflections on the man himself. 


And then there is the 'time before dad'. As I joked with my children: Before Dad (BD) and Anno Pater (AP); or for my children Before Grandad (BG) and Anno Pater Grandis (APG). Stories he told about his near and distant ancestors; the Celts and their history (an enduring interest); and the history of the Welsh Valleys.


I am not sure how I will recount his life and times. Maybe a level of randomness is required - to be ordered (and no doubt reordered) in due course as the pages grow.


Lawrence J-W

Starting Point

Born on 20 January 1917, my father Bryn Jones-Walters was 94 when he died at home in his own bed on 27 October 2011. He had an eventful and important life; from his time as a child growing up in the depression of the 1920s in Hirwaun, a coal mining village in the valleys of South Wales, to university in Birmingham, Europe and Asia during the Second World War and a career in the Colonial Service in Africa. Whilst there are no doubt many people who have enjoyed such a career and personal history, what marked him out was his ability as a storyteller and raconteur.


Indeed, I grew up listening to my father's stories about his life; the telling and re-telling of these stories has partly defined him for his friends and his family (and no doubt for himself); and subsequently for his grandchildren who 'sat at his feet' in eager expectation of new revelations that, in turn, provided a history that at least in some measure helped to define them. The tales seemed almost endless and even a few days before his death he was still able to recount his exploits in vivid colours; and if and when his memory began to fail him we were all, friends and family alike, able to prompt him into re-telling and re-living times past and fill in the parts where the stories had begun to unravel a little; (because by then we all knew the stories too).


And so here we are, without him. He is not here to tell his stories any more. However, those stories live on with us and can still be told; and they are not just any old stories. In this blog I will try to recount his exploits and observations as he told them to me and to others; (and I hope that some of those others may feel able to add their own comments and stories). As far as possible I will also add historical and geographical context and my own thoughts and reflections.


As for the name; some 40 or more years ago I was visiting a school friend with my parents. Whilst we were playing somewhere else in the house my father was regaling the tea party with a (another) war story. At some point my friend told me that his dad had told him that my dad could "talk the hind leg off a Donkey". Indeed he could! He was loved by so many people for his warmth, humour, wit and his stories.That delights me and I am so proud of him for it. Thanks for all of it Dad!


Now I have to sit down and write something more....