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    Island in the City - A Post-war Childhood in a Community Defined by its Boundaries: Wordcatcher History
    Unavailable
    Island in the City - A Post-war Childhood in a Community Defined by its Boundaries: Wordcatcher History
    Unavailable
    Island in the City - A Post-war Childhood in a Community Defined by its Boundaries: Wordcatcher History
    Ebook320 pages4 hours

    Island in the City - A Post-war Childhood in a Community Defined by its Boundaries: Wordcatcher History

    By RAY NOYES

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A working-class district of Cardiff, the area where the author lived as a child was experienced as an island in the 1940s and 50s; a world surrounded by the noise and clamour of industry. Docks, railways, canals, foundries, gasworks, steam engines and ships all called siren-like to children eager to explore the world outside it. Cowboys fought Indians; heroes fought dragons and inventors made cars out of planks of wood and pram wheels.

    School continued to have many echoes of the Victorian era and the school on the island, in particular, even looked like one. Its soaring ceilings, stone archways and hard plank desks were the same as when it was first built in the 1880s. Discipline was still achieved with the use of the cane. Duty and good citizenship were inherently part of the values of such establishments.
    Exploration and inventiveness ensured the summer holidays were ones of excitement and occasionally danger. The clanking of engines and the flames of industry were a constant background to a childhood full of wonder, yet one that was still grounded in echoes of Edwardian values. How these mutated as society changed under the pressure of inventions and innovations provide a fascinating insight into a changing Britain.

    In a couple of decades, the country moved from being powered by horses and steam, to nuclear power and oil. Homes that knew only coal and gas were transformed by electricity as were the new inventions within them. Television arrived, as did the transistor and eventually the microchip.

    Gradually, the foundries, docks, railways and canals closed. Gone was the noise and the constant glow of industry. The island became transformed, but becoming less exciting than it once was.
    This is a gentle, anecdotal walk through two decades of a changing world seen through the eyes of a child.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWordcatcher Publishing
    Release dateJan 4, 2019
    ISBN9781789421026
    Unavailable
    Island in the City - A Post-war Childhood in a Community Defined by its Boundaries: Wordcatcher History
    Author

    RAY NOYES

    They say that to be a good scientist one has to have a good imagination. I would like to think that my time spent at CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Collider, and at other research sites, so exercised my imagination as to prepare it for its most unexpected task, that of writing satirical books about a certain Horatio Evans. The real Horatio was actually an uncle of mine, the memory of whose peculiar, somewhat quixotic, antics in a small town in the Swansea Valley remains with me and the family to this day. An amateur communist, his confidence, unfortunately, knew no bounds so that the political and material collateral damage he caused was sometimes stunning and always amusing. But Horatio’s stories were not my first entry into writing. As a scientist I was used to, and actually enjoyed, writing reports and papers; it was only when I retired that I realised just how enjoyable the very act of writing could be. At first, I stuck to non-fiction and produced a number of books on management and leadership. These were based on the many lectures I gave on what I termed Slow Leadership, taking the name from Slow Food. The theme of the talks was the application of Zen discipline to management, leadership and one’s personal life. I studied under a Zen master for some twenty years or so and eventually was given permission to teach basic Zen, which I did at our Buddhist retreat centre in the hills of mid-Wales, near Llandovery. Those of us who have lived in a Welsh community know that in spite of the hardship that the Industrial Revolution brought to the country, people not only survived but thrived by developing a secret weapon - humour. Humour is, and was, a shared culture that encircled communities like a protective cloak, keeping out the dirt, the exploitation and the sickness that the coal industry brought with it. I therefore count myself privileged to have married a Swansea Valley girl who introduced me not only to Horatio but also to his colleagues and neighbours, all of whom could cock a snoot at life with a humour that is unique to Wales. 

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