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A NEWPORT CHILDHOOD I don’t know if there was a lot going on in the wider world on 15 May 1947, but there was a lot going on in mine because it was the day I was born. I was the fifth child of Kathleen and Charlie, two more were to follow. In later years I found out that there’d been one major event earlier that winter – the unmerciful cold that had gripped the country for months. It was the Year of the Big Snow. My mother would have been pregnant during that frightful season of Arctic weather. I was told that the river in Newport was frozen solid for weeks on end and people went skating on it for fun. Every house got through a lot of turf that winter to keep the home fires burning. My father was a postman and I’d say it was fairly testing trying to navigate the roads on your bicycle in those conditions. The same man could turn his hand to a lot of things. He was also a part-time insurance agent and factory clerk. He was a hunter, a fisherman, a gardener, a builder, a handyman, a sportsman and a volunteer in the community.
