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#223 Kath Yscol Pantglas Aberfan

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I didn’t understand why the tears Were pouring down the reporter’s my mam’s and my gran’s faces,

Kath

I wasn’t quite four


When the BBC showed

Gritty, grey images, of stark faced men,

Digging through the floodlit night

Of apron clad women being led from school gates.

I didn’t understand why the tears

Were pouring down the reporter’s my mam’s and my gran’s faces,

Or how the black mountain flooded the school

Wiping out a village generation

I don’t remember telling my mam

They need Thunderbirds there

Or her response

I understand fifty years on

How five fateful minutes

Made Ysgol Pantglas Aberfan

The three saddest words to a Welshman

Precis

The beauty of being in a company of older performers is the kaleidoscopic range of real-life experiences that they bring to the table. These experiences cover everything from the vivid and strange world of childhood, to the unexpected late awakenings of old age. Take our newest batch of anecdotes, for example. These new stories are delightfully diverse: from the earthly, sensual joy of baking bread, to the cosmic dreams of outer space; from an unnerving encounter with a poltergeist, to the risqué glories of adult pleasure products and burlesque. Running as a rich theme throughout, is the possibility of love, and the simple wonder of human connection. As one writer tells us, in her story of funeral rites and flirting, “Amidst death, life goes on”, and indeed it does, delightfully so.

Edited by Barney Bardsley