The Day I Buried My Shoes and Dug a Hole of Lies
Growing up in Port Tennant, Swansea in the late 1950s and early 1960s, we didn't have GPS, mobile phones, or anxious parents tracking our every move. We had the sun, our wits (questionable), and the occasional shouting match from Mam to remind us it was time to come home.
But the truth is, we often didn't come home. Not when we were supposed to.
Regularly Reported Missing
It got to the point where Mam had to call the police more than once to report us as missing. In reality, we were usually off having adventures,intensely local, scruffy-kneed adventures around Wern Fawr Road and beyond, and simply forgot what time it was.
Sometimes we ended up down at Swansea Bay, sometimes on the Bank behind our street, once even at the Carbon Black factory that loomed over our neighbourhood. One of us (either David or Peter, memory blurs here) came home covered in soot from head to toe, looking like something that had crawled out of a coal sack. I don't recall Mam finding it particularly amusing.
The Great Shoe Burial
One day, when I was about seven, a group of us wandered all the way to the Slip, a beach about three miles from our house on Wern Fawr Road. I decided to go paddling but had a dilemma: I had new shoes on. No way I was getting them wet.
So I did what seemed perfectly logical at the time: I buried them in the sand.
When I returned, freshly cooled and ready to go home, I discovered the obvious flaw in my plan. Every part of the beach looked exactly like every other part. I couldn't find them. They were just⌠gone.
Now I had to walk three miles home barefoot and somehow explain this to my father. I panicked and came up with a story: I told Dad the Fermandals, a family of outlaws who lived down our street, had stolen them.
Big mistake.
Dad, in full Welsh fury mode, dragged me down to their house, presumably ready to demand justice. Mercifully, no one answered the door, either they werenât in, or they took one look at my dadâs face and hid behind the settee.
The Lies Got Worse
Realising the Fermandal story wouldnât hold, I tried a second version: big boys stole them and threw them down a hole over the bank. So off we went again, Dad stomping beside me, and yes, he even climbed into the hole and looked around.
Still no shoes.
Out of ideas and flailing, I panicked one last time and concocted a story about âbottomless mud pitsâ that randomly opened up and swallowed shoes whole. I could see in his face that Dad had finally reached the limits of belief â and possibly patience.
I donât recall what happened next, but it probably involved a clipped ear or worse. What I understand now, of course, is that my father's fury wasn't just about my ridiculous lies; it was the terror of a man who knew he couldn't afford to buy his son a new pair of shoes.