I was born in Denbigh in 1944 and have spent most of my life here.
I attended the local primary school and Denbigh Grammar School. I then went on to the Welsh National School of Medicine in Cardiff. Our family lived just outside the town in a house surrounded by fields and farms, which were playgrounds for my friends and me. We built dens in the woods and inside haystacks, swam in the River Clwyd, collected conkers, and climbed the trees and the Castle walls. We went fishing, hung around the clay pigeon shoots, and collected the discarded cartridge cases. We collected birds’ eggs, collected frogspawn and newts in jam jars, and sometimes trespassed on private land and got chased off by angry farmers or gamekeepers. The railway line was only thirty yards from our back garden, and we played on it with no regard for danger. In hot weather, lizards sunned themselves on the tar-stained wooden sleepers, and if you tried to catch one, its tail would come away in your fingers.
My big brother was a beater for the shoot on a large estate owned by a millionaire landowner and would creep out of the bedroom we shared to go poaching pheasants at night. I was threatened with death if I told our father, who was a local magistrate. I didn’t know then that Dad had done a bit of salmon poaching in his day.
The fields were alive with rabbits in those days, and many poorer families ate rabbits they bought or had caught themselves. My brother owned a ferret (“Freda”), and I was his assistant on his ferreting expeditions. We would set out on our bikes and return with our catch, which he sold to local butchers’ shops. He got 2/6d (two shillings and sixpence) for each one, of which I got sixpence. This nice little earner suddenly came to an end when the rabbit population of Europe was decimated by an outbreak of an infectious disease called Myxomatosis, which left dying rabbits at the roadsides and across the fields.
A few years later, I read a book called Silent Spring by an American scientist called Rachel Carson, who showed how a widely used insecticide called DDT killed birds and was embedded in the food chain up to human level. The human race has always been vulnerable to infectious diseases, but now we are harming ourselves insidiously with chemicals and discarded plastics.
I found some of the issues in Social Medicine and Epidemiology quite thought-provoking. The department gave me a scholarship to spend one summer assisting in a research project in the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA. I learned the importance of careful collection and interpretation of data, and ever since then I have been sceptical of sensational claims of miracle cures. Social media, and even responsible newspapers, now promote unfounded stories of impending pandemics and irresponsible claims that childhood immunisations and safe medications are dangerous. Celebrity film stars preach that we should reject modern medicine and return to a golden age of herbalism and mumbo-jumbo. It was obvious early in the Covid pandemic that the government were being selective with the stats they released in order to shape the responses of a nervous public.
The truth is that the poorest families in the country today have access to more effective medical care than the Royal Family a century ago.
I can thank my father for my involvement with CPRW. He was a member, and that made an impression on me. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the back roads and remote beauty spots all over North and Mid Wales. He worked originally as a civil engineer for Denbighshire but left to become a self-employed dealer in scrap and second-hand quarry and mining machinery, which frequently took him off the beaten track.
In summer, my mother would prepare a picnic, and we would set off for Cyffyliog, Penmachno, Cwm Pennant, or the lead mines of the Conwy Valley. We seldom saw a tourist. One memorable trip was down a steep hill to the abandoned slate quarrying village of Nant Gwrtheyrn, where the Welsh language centre is now. It was unforgettable because our car could not make it back up the hill, and we needed a Land Rover to pull us out.
Dad was a sociable person and seemed to know people wherever he went and had a good ear for interesting tales, particularly ghost stories. Landscapes look different when you have some gossip and legends from past generations. Imagine listening to a voice from Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat. He tape-recorded old people’s reminiscences. Two of our favourite picnic destinations were the Gwynfynydd and Clogau gold mines near Dolgellau, long before “Clogau” became a famous brand.
I first joined CPRW to keep in touch with Wales when I was working in England, but was not an active member and eventually lost interest. I did not cancel the annual membership payment, and the CPRW treasurer eventually contacted me to say that they had not cancelled my Direct Debit and owed me several hundred pounds. They were willing to repay me or, generously, they could keep the money and make me a Life Member. I chose the latter. That rekindled my interest, and I started attending meetings.
I worked as a junior doctor in London in 1969. I wanted a taste of the Swinging Sixties before they were over! The A&E department dealt with minor injuries and was also like a general practice for the poorest and the homeless. I was shocked by the number of drug-related problems among young people. I found myself signing death certificates of people younger than me.
Until I left the UK to work as a junior hospital doctor in Bermuda, I had believed the NHS was the only way to provide health care. It isn’t. When I left Denbigh for Cardiff, there was no drug problem in rural Wales, but when I returned to work here, the drugs had got here before me. I am worried that drug-taking is now normal and fashionable. I have eight grandchildren between the ages of 2 and 16, and I think older people should be active in guarding them from exploitation.
Over the years I have supported lots of lost causes – the Liberals, CND, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the Alternative Technology Centre in Machynlleth. I have always been a great admirer of Médecins Sans Frontières and have a lot of respect for the work of the Red Cross and the Quakers in war zones.
I can’t walk far now, but I can drive close enough to reach many of my favourite places. I love gadgets, charity shops, second-hand bookshops, and old country churches. (Philip Larkin expressed my feelings in his poem Church Going about how he can’t pass an old church.) I write short stories for a medical writers’ group and draw “gag” cartoons. I wrote a book on local history called The Man On Top Of The Column. You won’t find it on Amazon or eBay because there were only 16 copies printed, and most have been recycled by now.
Chris
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