I can think of no better way to start a new year than with a good fry up. I am halfway to Paradise. This year, I have had my family at my table in fragments, by accident rather than design. One day they will all be here together. I am so lucky. So very very lucky that my children have grown safely to be such lovely young people now embarked on their own lives but still coming back to me. My little family is growing.
Christmas came and went: five rare and precious days with my beloved, funny, clever and complex firstborn. Don't let it go to your head Tom, but when you came into my life everything changed. I toned down my Bohemian lifestyle and worked hard to become a respectable, responsible parent. I would like to say I stopped driving as fast - but really that is just wishful thinking.
Much of that serious parenting time was spent in Northumberland, as a teacher. I am back here today in the December rain, drinking my breakfast coffee and reflecting on my two-day visit to the very special friends who have kept in touch and will be my friends now for life. But my thoughts keep drifting across the Atlantic Ocean where hearts are heavy.
I keep thinking of my Canadian friend Beth, my sister Barbara's teenage penfriend. Her beautiful 89 year-old mother Sylvia died at 3am on Christmas Day in hospital in Ottawa. Today Beth is travelling from Toronto to say her goodbyes and with her brother to make arrangements to celebrate the life of a strong and remarkable woman whom I had the privilege to meet. And I am thinking of Sylvia's lovely older sister Do who will now be alone, with a great emptiness in her life.
I wanted to try and piece together snippets of information and understand more about my Dad's school days in Swansea. Originally I thought he must have gone to the elite Swansea Grammar but then I came upon this photo and a reference on his CV to two years spent at Glanmore Grammar. According to the internet this had been a girls school. I had to read through the school log book to fully understand what a unique and character building experience it must have been to have been a pupil here. The headmaster's entry captured the excitement and above all the weather: snow on the opening day in January 1920 and thereafter much torrential rain. The school buildings were not the grand institution on the hill but the WW1 army huts that had been transported from Salisbury Plain as temporary accommodation for an experimental school for "bright children" set up on the site of a farm. Admission was dependent on passing an entrance exam and even then fees were payable unless a scholarship could be won.. One of the main preoccupations for the head master was trying to improve facilities for drying out the soaking wet clothes of the boys as there was only a small boiler room. The other was the battle to stop the boys' daredevil bike rides down the steep hills, sometimes with pillion passengers aboard. The log book refers to a stream of visiting educationalists coming to observe art, science and maths. Pupils had the opportunity to stay until they applied for university although many left to take up a place at technical college or to go to sea. After the second world war it became a girls school and amazingly the army huts were still in use after the school closed fifty years years later. My Dad left after just two years when the family moved back to Lambeth. What memories of that city by the sparkling sea he must have taken with him. 
Once the Mumbles Train and later the Tram would have chugged to a halt at the pier head. On one occasion over a thousand people travelled on a single train. A picture shows them sitting on the top and hanging on the sides, even the ladies with their long frocks and parasols. For a sense of accomplishment they would wander up the road and climb the hill at Mumbles Head and gaze out over to Devon. One hopes there was a tea shop on this side of the water. The pretty little station built in 1926 for the trams is now an amusement arcade, colourful, noisy and packed. A fish and chip parlour adds tone with glass, brass and chandeliers. The pier itself is being renovated so is locked off leaving a large mechanical red dragon looking forlorn and lonely on the board walk. 
And what about those determined Edwardian daytrippers picking their way up and over Mumbles Head? A hundred years later their pathway leads into a car park with a tomato shaped burger bar and a lot less grass. At the top, a line of railings with a "danger" sign beside a sheer drop makes a gesture to health and safety. But even today the sense of adventure is still real and much more exciting than the arcade. 
Just as in the best stories, a friendly train chugged into view and I paid my £2 fare and jumped on board. We were soon rocking rolling riding out along the bay with all the little and big boys and girls snug inside as the rain came down. When the sun came out and dried up all the rain, the smiling, waving people appeared again. We were overtaken by two boys on skateboards and bicyles sped by. 
