Holidays 16.1

The Boy Roberts and the Groupie are at the country estate for a long break. No foreign holiday this year what with us being poor and all.

First built by the Welsh, captured by the English and  recaptured by the Welsh

We sat together in the grounds of Criccieth Castle yesterday afternoon and beheld a perfect sun flecked sea. As Joe Walsh correctly said (and as I've oft quoted before) 'life's been good to me so far'. Criccieth is genteel, yes that's the word, genteel. No, bonheddig, which my dictionary tells me is the welsh descriptor. There is a pleasing plenitude of civic grass and an absence of seaside tat.

Criccieth took me back to 1968 when the Roberts family took its annual North Walian holiday in the town. I recall it vividly because it coincided with the final Ashes test at the Oval, a game most remembered for its denouement when Derek Underwood felled the Australian batting to deliver an unlikely victory for England. But my memory of the match (which I followed in the newspapers, there being no television in the rented house) was the batting of Edrich and D'Oliveira, their scores still burned in my mind - 164 and 158 respectively. Edrich (like me left-handed) was a particular hero.

I have it in my mind that something earth-shattering also happened during that late August week to burn itself on my eight year old consciousness. False remebrance has always told me that it was the shooting of Robert Kennedy but that in fact occurred in June of 68. Checking back I note that our holiday in fact coincided with the rolling of Soviet tanks into Prague and the end of the Prague Spring. Cursed to live in interesting times.