Chapter 4
After crying nonstop for twenty-four hours, there’s a knock on the door, ‘Can you judge the August bank holiday street party in Wimmerfield Crescent on Monday afternoon, Mr Davies?’ ‘Of course,’ replies Watkin. ‘Please come in and give me the details’, he struggles to reply.
‘Yes, Watkin, if I may call you that, there will be a street celebration, and a fancy dress competition for the kids. Are your kids coming?’ ‘Uh? Oh, no, Jason and Tracey are away on holiday,’ Watkin lies. ‘Thanks Watkin,’ the organiser says, and Wat promises to attend at 2.00 p.m. on the Monday afternoon. ‘This is going to be my salvation,’ thinks Watkin, who hasn’t slept for nights on end, and is suffering severe depression.
On the Monday, Wat is dressed and ready, his shoes shined and a last, fresh shirt put on with a neat tie. The judges assemble to view the fancy dress parade and there are a sailor boy, a policeman in a helmet, a Chinese so called ‘coolie’, a nurse in full uniform and headdress, an African warrior all blacked up with burnt cork and a spear, a Hawaiian hula dancer with grass skirt, a so called ‘Red Indian brave and squaw,’ a boy on roller skates dressed for baseball, an organ grinder with a monkey, and a girl in evening dress in a top hat and a moustache. After the fancy dress competition, the children sat in rows out in the street and are served with jelly, custard, cakes and lots of ‘pop’.
Giving his judgment, Watkin tells the children one of his favourite kids’ jokes. ‘Do you know the one about the man who was writing a letter to his gran? He said ‘I’m writing this letter slowly because I know you are a slow reader.’’ He continued. ‘Bill knocked on the door of his friend's house. When his friend's mother answered he asked, ‘Can Johnny come out to play?’ ‘No,’ said his mother, ‘it's too cold.’ ‘Well, then,’ said Bill, ‘can his football come out to play?’’ It got a good laugh from the older kids.
In the evening, at the ‘Black Boy’, Wat tries out a few tentative jokes as part of his rehabilitation from the depression. ‘When I was a baby, my mother tried to kill me. She denied it. She claimed she’d put on the plastic bag to keep me fresh.’ ‘My mother was a ventriloquist. She could throw her voice. As a matter of fact, for ages I thought it was the dog telling my dad to shut up.’ His next one was heartrendingly difficult to tell:
‘A young man agreed to baby-sit one night so a single mum could have an evening out. At bedtime he sent the kids upstairs to bed and settled down to watch football on the TV. One child kept creeping down the stairs, but the young man kept sending him back to bed. At 9pm somebody knocked at the door, it was the next-door neighbour, Mrs. Morgan, asking if her son was there. The young man roughly replied, ‘No.’ Just then a little head appeared over the stairs and shouted, ‘I'm here, Mum, but he won't let me go home.’’
Walking home from the pub after a long day out Watkin feels much better, and sleeps well at last. The following morning he pops up to Derlwyn, Killay to see Diane’s friend, Elsie. ‘Your wife has gone to stay in a boarding house in Gower with the kids. You need to go down to Oldwalls and you’ll find them there, if I‘m not mistaken,’ she kindly reports.’
Enquiring with a local solicitor for information, he asks Diane, when he’s made contact, ‘What’s going on Diane?’ ‘It’s no use Watkin. I’ve had enough of your drinking, late nights and incompetent, inefficient attempts at being a husband. I’m going to get my own place in Dunvant, and I’m moving there with the kids.’ ‘Oh no you’re not.’ Wat contradicts her, barely able to contain his anger. ‘I’m going to the High Court to get custody of Jason and hopefully Tracey, too.’ Their meeting finishes inconclusively with a tearful Jason begging his Dad to take him home. ’Not today, Jason, but you’ll be coming home very soon,’ Wat promises.
Now that Wat has more free time available to watch the cricket, he goes to Gnoll Road, Neath to watch Glamorgan v Gloucestershire. Glamorgan choose to field in the 40 overs match and Gloucester make 156 for 9 wickets with forty overs bowled, Don Shepherd from Shepherd’s the Parkmill store taking the Bissex wicket for 7. But Glamorgan can only manage 154 for the fall of ten wickets for forty overs. Wat Is disappointed and sees Gloucestershire walk away with the 4 points for the match.
The Swansea Sound lads accompany Wat back to the Castle hotel for a few consolatory pints of Double Dragon Felinfoel bitter, and Wat soon takes off on his usual routine to cover up his domestic misery, ‘I’ve got a pal who’s a long, tall blade of grass. He’s easily swayed.’ ‘I bet you can’t name a famous Egyptian landmark. That’s what you Sphinx.’
The next one is an Old Wild West joke Wat does in his fake cowboy accent, ‘A dog walks into a Texas saloon bar and says ’I want the man who shot my paw.’’
He follows up with ‘A boy and a girl walk past this restaurant. The girl says, ‘There’s a lovely smell, I’d like some of that.’ The boy goes ‘I’ll treat her tonight. We’ll go and walk past it again...’’
"Wat finishes with one of his all time favourites: ‘A woman goes to the doctor’s and says ‘Doctor, I can’t stop singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.’’ ‘You’ve got Tom Jones syndrome,’ the doctor points out. ‘Is that common?’, she asks. ‘It’s not unusual…’ Wat sings rendering the Tom Jones number.
‘It's not unusual to be loved by anyone
It's not unusual to have fun with anyone
But when I see you hanging about with anyone
It's not unusual to see me cry,
Oh I wanna' die
It's not unusual to go out at any time
But when I see you out and about it's such a crime
If you should ever want to be loved by anyone,
It's not unusual it happens every day no matter what you say
You find it happens all the time...’
Copyright: Valley Music Ltd.
Wat’s feelings are prescient, for it transpires Diane is seeing a carpenter from Dowlais who she’s met in work in Lewis Lewis’s. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘Tom Jones was born in the same hospital in Mountain Ash as my cousin, Geoffrey. It was on June 7 1940, exactly one year after Geoffrey. He’s always on about it every time Tom Jones is singing. Tom Woodward, as was, came from Treforest and always wanted to be a singer after his two years’ convalescence from T B as a young boy. What a voice, and no wonder they call him Jones the voice, round here’ Wat says, getting sloshed on the strong Felinfoel ale.
‘Not a lot of people know’ says Watkin ‘about Harry Secombe’s charitable giving and good works in the area.’ Wat is at a dinner in Morriston golf club thrown by Harry Secombe and hosted by his wife, Myra Atherton: ‘In our business, we do good deeds with an ear splitting stealth, folks,’ explains Harry. Wat has been invited as a member of the Honourable Order of Buffaloes, the Buffs, which he has joined to socialise more since Diane left. ‘The Secombes are a large, warm family. Harry's father had six brothers and sisters, ’Wat recalls.
Harry gets up: ‘They call me ‘Sir Cumference,’ he jokes about his enormous size, ‘I have more chins than the Hong Kong telephone directory.’ He does his famous patter, ‘I come from mixed parentage, one male, one female.’ Referring to his recent illness from a perforated colon, he goes, ‘I was suffering from punctuation.’ Laughing, he says, ‘I don't mind dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens. After five days in hospital, I took a turn for the nurse.’ Harry had shed about 5 stone and looked a new person. ‘I saw my knees again for the first time in years,’ he jokes.
His next one is for the Scots in the audience, ‘Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order.’ Then talking about different kinds of cigarettes he goes, ‘These gorillas are strong! Here, have one of my monkeys - they're milder.’
‘When I sing and have to do my top Cs’ says Harry, ‘we call them ‘the cruel seas.’’ ‘When I was a boy, I was told I should get my voice trained. So I got myself a chair and a whip ... and some newspaper.’ ‘When I was young, I did impressions of everybody, the milkman, the milkman’s horse...’ ‘I was playing cards on the liner to South America to find gold. I had a good hand...four fingers and a thumb.’
Reminiscing about his time in the army, Harry Secombe says, ‘The first time I was in action we fired at them. When they fired back, we had a bit of a shock. It was a different matter altogether, folks. We were five miles from Tripoli, and we had to get out a bit quick then. They were firing at us, and we had to get them out. We left chocolates out for them, but they wouldn’t come out. I was looking up in the dictionary ‘I’m on your side, mate.’ Then this bloke came up to us and said, ‘Anybody seen a gun?’ It was Spike Milligan.’
Then he starts his show business lines from the Goon Show. Acting as Neddie Seagoon, he came out with his hilarious lines, ‘He's fallen in the water!’ He includes his ‘Hello folks’, ‘Needle nardle noo’, ‘What,what,what,what,what’ and ‘I don't wish to know that,’ to rapturous applause from the Swansea diners.
***
‘Jason, I’m taking you down to Bill Edwards’ sports shop to buy you your cricket bat and your kit,’ Wat tells his son, of whom he now has custody from the High Court, after a tortuous time with legal arrangements, solicitors and court appearances in London. Bill is in fine form as usual and decks Jason out in his pads, gloves, trousers, support, wicket keeping gloves and a brand new red leather cricket ball made to MCC regulations. Bill, ever generous, goes ‘pay me later,’ as usual and just then who should walk in but Tony Lewis, the Glamorgan cricket captain and the only Glamorgan cricketer to captain England. He’d made 2,190 runs, including his only double-century. He’d scored 223 against Kent at Gravesend after Glamorgan had followed on. He captained them from 1967 to 1972, and with his help promoted the county to its second championship.
Tony, who became a sports commentator on the BBC, is rather dour and solemn as usual, but on Jason’s introduction to him he is warm and friendly, encouraging him to become a county cricketer. Just after Jason went outside to try out the bat and pads, he cracked one of his close friend Richie Benaud’s jokes, ‘He’s usually a good puller, but he couldn’t get it up that time,’ he laughs, repeating one of the best known lines from his BBC commentaries. Another one was, ‘Laird has been brought in to stand in the corner of the circle.’ ‘Incidentally,’ Watkin tells Jason ‘Tony Lewis commentated on the Garfield Sobers six sixes in the match with Glamorgan against the West Indies, and was the first captain of England to defeat India in more than twenty years.’
‘I was travelling up by train on the GWR to London, Paddington, to visit the High Court and, when I entered the buffet car, who should I meet,’ Watkin tells Jason, ‘but Cliff Morgan the Wales captain and BBC commentator.’ ‘Cliff was part of the Grand Slam team of Wales in 1952,’ Wat explains to his son, who has now inherited Watkin’s interest in sport. ‘The following year he played for Cardiff and Wales, helping them to famous victories over the All Blacks. He was part of the successful 1955 Lions’ tour of South Africa. The Test series was drawn 2–2, and Cliff Morgan outshone everyone when he eventually captained a skilful Lions backline that included Arthur Smith and Jeff Butterfield.’
Cliff, modest, unassuming and friendly as always, tells Watkin about his try in the first Test at Ellis Park, in front of a contemporary world record crowd of a hundred thousand, helping the Lions to make a fantastically close 23–22 score. ‘I made my move from a strike against the head by my fellow Welshman Bryn Meredith. I stuck my neck out and rocketed past the great Springbok wing forward Basie Van Wyk to level the match.’
‘You know, Jason, he was on TV in ‘A Question of Sport’ and on the wi’less, he benefitted from his knowledge of music because he presented the Radio 2 series ‘These You Have Loved’ from 1970.’
’We chatted on the train for about half an hour before Cliff departed to his duties in the BBC,’ he tells Jason, who cannot believe how much his Dad knows and who he has met in the world of sport.
‘But that’s nothing Dad, we had Gareth Edwards down our school and he is Wales's youngest ever captain, first becoming the captain at twenty in the Number 9 shirt. He led the Welsh side that dominated the Five Nations Championship, and they won the title seven times, including three grand slams,’ reports Jason. ‘He started with Cardiff.’ ‘And,’ Jason adds, ‘he had twelve seasons for Cardiff, scoring sixty nine tries in 195 games. He represented the British and Irish Lions ten times.’
He told us all about ‘that try,’ for the Barbarians. ‘It started with a penetrating kick from the New Zealand winger. The ball dropped towards Phil Bennett near his try line. Bennett sidestepped and
avoided three tackles, in turn passing the ball to JPR Williams.’
Gareth told us that he ‘was absolutely breathless and really needed a moment's rest. When the ball went deep and I saw Phil was running back, I thought, 'Thank God for that, Phil will know exactly what to do. He'll kick it to touch. But he didn’t, and he just stood there turning it over in his hands and I said ‘he’s going to run it.’’
‘Then Gareth Edwards told us, ‘All of a sudden I was thinking, 'If there is a breakdown, I’d better be there.' I was really just concentrating on getting to where the ball was going to be and trying to anticipate if there was going to be a tackle. So I turned around and started to run thinking to myself, 'Oh God, I’d better get going.'’
Jason said Gareth reported that he ‘was coming up from behind. I could see that the full-back, Joe Karam, had his eye on John. So by the time Derek had the ball, I shouted at him in Welsh, ‘Taflwch yma! Taflwch ef yma!’ (Throw it here! Throw it here!’)
The rest was history and I’m through the gap and it was then just a question of 'Can I get to the corner?' ‘I was mindful that out of my peripheral vision, their wing Grant Batty was coming over as cover. My old PE master always said to me: 'If you’re close to the line, dive in, because it makes it harder for them to tackle you,’ so I did and that was that. It was just a try,’ Gareth so modestly said.’
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2013/jan/27/barbarians-all-blacks-greatest-try
Watkin’s next job involved work at Newport stadium where the stand was rather primitive, with seating to the rear and terracing to the front. There were rows of thin supporting pillars running across the middle of the stand. It didn’t run the full length of the pitch and had a portion of open terracing on one side. Watkin, Cliff and the other men had to replace the planking and the runners with what they thought was new wood that they’d bought from Mervyn Jenkins. ‘I’m wondering about the safety of the spectators, though,’ Wat tells Cliff. Watkin, who has turned over a new leaf since Diane left and has given up the joking, decides to change the whole stand section with brand new decking obtained from Mon Timber in Newport.
In the clubhouse, Watkin tells everyone who wants to listen that he’s going to the Japan v Wales rugby match. The journey by air to Tokyo takes 18 hours and Watkin attends on 21 September 75 at the Kintetsu Hanazono rugby stadium, where Wales beats Japan 12 - 56. He returns to Tokyo for the match at the Olympic stadium on 24 September with the Japan national side, who were beaten 6 – 82. It wasn’t classed as a full international by Wales,’ Watkin recounts on his subsequent return to the club, ‘who fielded a Wales XV, not the 1st XV,’ he continues.