"He's Young..."

I eventually graduated from my little Tri-ang trike to this lusty beast. I went up and down our paths and (having been granted a greater degree of licence than before) up and down the pavements of the adjoining streets virtually every day on this.

The trike was a hand-me-down from one of my cousins if memory serves, and dad made a number of modifications to it, such as replacing the pneumatic tyres with solid ones and removing the rather nifty boot and mudguards you can see here.

Later still, I went on to drive a couple of home-made go-karts. Unfortunately, I don't have a single picture of either of them.

Me and dad on the steps of a caravan again. By this time, however, we had switched our allegiance from Towyn to...Tywyn. That's the small town on the Meirionnydd coast, and a place I'll always have fond memories of. In 1969 (which is when this picture was taken), 1970 and 1971, and then again in '74 and '75, we would take a caravan on the Neptune Hall Caravan Park right next to the sea for a week in late July during the steelworks' annual maintenance shutdown. This would be our base for bus journeys to Aberdyfi and train trips both on the main line to Barmouth and up the Talyllyn Railway as far as Dolgoch Falls.

When I was about ten or eleven, my uncle Philip Jones bought a Polaroid camera and went mad taking pictures of anything and everything. This is one of me standing at the top of The Rocks (or 'The Rocko', as we called it). Behind me, the landscape falls away to High Street, and the Miners Arms pub can be seen to the left of me, with the Conservative Club to the right. The Green and Clayton Road in Pentre Broughton lie beyond.

Having not had a 'proper' holiday in 1972 (just going for 'days out'), in July 1973 we found ourselves at 'Norwood' holiday flatlets on Bodhyfryd Road in Llandudno, which was run by the very nice Mrs. Williams. Here I am (and you can tell when it was by the tank-top I'm wearing) standing at the front door holding my hand-me-down VP Twin camera ("With bloomed Bolco® lens").

A family shot in the front garden of our home. I think this one was taken by Uncle Phil as well. I would have been eleven here.

I hadn't lost my car obsession (although, piquantly, I never did learn to drive). Here I am, at the side of a road somewhere in the Dolgellau area, at the wheel of my Uncle Albert's Vauxhall Viva HC.

This, I am relieved to say, is the only photograph I have of me in my secondary school. 'Relieved', because firstly I largely detested the place and a substantial proportion of those sequestered therein; and secondly, well, I don't want to be reminded of the fact that I looked so much like a gurlie (pace Molesworth).