Home and Family
Anne Lord
Growing up in the tiny village of Stanleytown, in the Rhondda Fach I was surrounded by family, aunties and cousins by the dozen. Family legend tells of how my great grandparents, Evan and Catherine Evans and their young family, were the first to come to live in Stanleytown, though a newspaper cutting of Evan’s obituary says that a Mr Davies lived at Number 3 before the Evans chose to live in Number 12 Middle Terrace. My grandmother, Vello, told me that she rode on her father’s shoulders, while he and her older sister Annie walked from Ferndale, alongside the horse and cart which carried all of their belongings, her mother with the baby, Norah, in her arms sat next to the driver. Vello would have been two or three years old, Annie was about six, and Norah just a few months. The keys of all the other houses in the village were left in the safekeeping of Evan and Catherine, and, because she could read and write, the job of allocating homes and collecting rent fell to Catherine. When the Williams family arrived a few days later, they chose to live ten doors away at Number 22. They had also moved from Ferndale. Almost twenty years later Vello Evans married Idris Williams and they lived at Number 9, Middle Terrace, where they brought up their own family of four boys, Spencer, Handel, John, and Hywel, and a girl, Eirwen. They also lost two children, a boy and a girl, in infancy, and they are buried in the churchyard at Llanwonnno. The graves have no markers, but my father recalled visiting them when he was a small boy.
I have two sons, Paul Simon Lord, born Thursday 13 August 1970. His father wasn’t present at his birth, no relatives allowed in the labour room in those days. He takes after his mother, that’s me, both in looks and ways, short and stocky, easy going, though like me, he has a fierce temper when aroused. Nose always buried in a book. When he was knocked over, aged 12, everyone asked, ‘was he reading?’ He loved school and hardly ever missed a day, never suffered from any childhood illnesses, until he caught chicken-pox from his brother when he was 18. Middle aged now, overweight and grey-haired. A staunch Liverpool supporter and lover of heavy metal music (if you can call it that). Father of two, though since Paul’s divorce and re-marriage, we’ve sadly lost touch with his son Rhys Hywel, now aged 31. He also has a daughter Taryn Jade, aged 21. Her mother, Debbie, says she looks like me and Paul, but I think she looks like Debbie. Step-father to Alesha and Callum, all grown up, working, single and living at home, though I believe Alesha is engaged for the second time. Paul works in a factory, Debbie is a nurse. They’re all very busy, so busy they can’t find time to visit me. Enough said.
My younger son is named Matthew James, born Wednesday 29 August 1970, his father wasn’t present at his birth either, he was on holiday in Spain with his girlfriend. Matt hated school and caught every bug known to man, except Covid, and still lives at home with me; he knows which side his bread is buttered. He spends most of his time in front of a computer screen, he likes to read too, and he drinks an awful lot of tea! I think I spoilt my boys! I was divorced from their father when Paul was nine and I was pregnant with Matthew. My Auntie Eiry once said, “Don’t get pregnant again Anne, it’s too much trouble. Trouble getting you married the first time, getting you unmarried the second time! Goodness knows what would happen next time.”
I grew up in a reasonably happy household, my parents, Hywel Myrddin Williams, Rhondda-born and bred, and Margie (Marjorie), had their ups and downs, and were divorced just before their 25th wedding anniversary. My father never married again, my mother was married for almost 40 years to her second husband, John Fred Sales, the love of her life. I have one brother, four years younger than me, Gareth Wynn Williams, born 2 October 1957 in The Miners Hospital, Caerphilly. We were living in Taffs Well at the time. I remember waving to my mother through the hospital window, no visiting allowed for children. My father took me to the circus afterwards. I remember watching the elephants crossing the road! We never had much money, but we never starved and were reasonably dressed. We never went without anything, though I do remember complaining bitterly when my mother refused to spend £5 on the pair of Levi jeans I craved. We went on caravan holidays to West Wales, and spent many a Sunday at Aberavon, where there was nowhere to squander money. I’ve always loved my brother, I was never jealous of him, even though he was so obviously my mother’s favourite. My father used to call him ‘his mother’s little blue-eyed boy’. He was, and he has the biggest, bluest eyes you can imagine. ‘Don’t sit so close to the television, it will make your eyes bad,’ my mother used to say. Little knowing that it was because his beautiful blue eyes were so bad he had to sit close to be able to see the images on screen. At his first ever eye test in the infants’ school they picked up his short-sightedness, follow-ups revealed that his lenses were concave rather than convex. He’s worn glasses ever since.
I was, am, his big sister, so it was my job to look after him. He’s been married three times. The first time was to Julie; that didn’t last long. The second time to Maria, the mother of his three daughters, lovely girls. Gemma Louise, mother of Steel and Mackenzie, sorry, Kenzie; Leah Anne, mother of Chloe and Brodie, a boy and a half, very much like his grandfather; and Jadene who declared she was never going to have children, and is now mother to 10 months old, wait for it, Odin! Can you believe that? Who would call a child Odin? My mad niece, that’s who!
For the third, and hopefully the last time, I can’t afford the hats, he married Sarah, an American he met online in the chat room they frequented, and decided to meet up. Gareth was the only non-American in the group, so Sarah offered him a place to stay if he wanted to attend. He went to Ohio, for two weeks, and when he returned he told me, ‘I’m going back to stay next year’. And he did, despite many protests. ‘How can you leave your girls?’ my mother wailed, when really she meant ‘How can you leave me?’ She was heartbroken. My father wasn’t pleased about it either. That was over twenty years ago, and he’s still there, still married. Sarah’s children, twins, from a previous relationship, Hannah and Jeremiah, call him Dad. Our family hasn’t been the same since my father died, and Gareth went to America, in June and September 2003. It seems the heart went out of the family when they left; we all miss them both. My mother passed away in August 2020, she was 90; I miss her too, there’s always something I want to tell her.