Page 3.

That was in the April of '59. And joining the Navy was the first happy thing that had happened since Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in February of that year, and rock and roll so young, the music lifting us war babies away from our misery, the endless ballads and hymns in the Chapel on Sundays. I sometimes thought I knew every hymn that had ever been written, what with two visits every Sunday, one for the service, the other for Sunday School. Just think, in the Royal Navy I wouldn't have to do things like that. I would be free to listen to any kind of music I liked, rock and roll was a bit of a problem with most parents, and I wouldn't have to go to Chapel on Sundays.

But Buddy's death had affected us all. He was so good, a real hero, an ordinary looking guy who could do the most extraordinary things. He was idolised by many of us, and we thought if he could do it, then so could we. Many did, of course, The Beatles and Stones to name just two. Buddy didn't die alone, though. The crash also took away the Big Bopper and Richie Valens and we shouldn't forget them because they were the people who were re-shaping us, though what that shape would eventually be was a bit of mystery.

I rushed home from school on that day in April of '59, burst through the back door of my home, a nice council house on an unfinished estate in a village on a mountain in North Wales, the front door was only ever used for very posh occasions or funerals, and I exclaimed to my startled Mam, "I'm joining the Royal Navy!"

She stared at me in silence for a moment or two, as if she were staring at an alien spaceman, then she smiled, patted me on the head and said, "Eat your tea. Haven't you got swimming tonight?"

I'd been so excited about joining the Navy that I had almost forgotten that I was an ace swimmer. Backstroke, of course, none of that face down in the water rubbish for me, none of that breathing at intervals stuff. with backstroke you never got your face wet and breathed whenever you wanted to. At least, I did. I swam the stroke all wrong, stiff-armed, head back, no class whatsoever, but because I was reasonably fast and won things, no-one ever bothered to tell me. Instead of growing tall and thin, like all backstrokers, I grew wide, then wider still.

I was lucky enough to be born in a town that had the only public swimming baths in North Wales, if you didn't count the Lido at Rhyl, which only opened during the summer. Our baths were built with money donated by miners who worked in the area and on the day it was completed it was handed over to the Council for the use of the townfolk. When I was growing up I have no idea what I would have done without it. I didn't know anyone who couldn't swim, except Mam, who I tried to teach once but I couldn't get her into the water and it's damned hard to teach someone to swim without the additon of water. We all swam, all my cousins, my little brother, all my friends, all my schoolmates, all the girls I adored. Everyone. And mostly we were good competent swimmers and members of the local Swimming Club.

The Club was run single-handedly by the man who managed the Baths, who sold the tickets, who kept order in the pool, who cleaned the water and the changing rooms, who did the books, who looked after our safety and who would shrug his shoulders with helplessness when Mam called in to get me out of the water.

"I've been trying to get him out, Mrs," he would say, "but every time I turn my back, he's back in."

During school holidays Mam and Dad never had to worry about where I was during the day. I was always in water. Not always in the baths so, sometimes I would sneak off and swim in the quarries, until I was shopped by some old guy on a bike.