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"Heads down, till dark!" the ol' man shouted, kicking in the spade. "Oh Hell! Give me that fork. Soil's like bloody iron," he said. And those were the last words we heard from him for the next few hours. "Well I don't know, Malc. He's bin at it a while and he don't seem to be..." "He's digging those 'double spittings' he was telling us about," interrupted Malc. "What fer? Strawberries?" "Don't be daft, and will you forget about strawberries. It's for them extra roots he was talking about." After a few hours, I picked my moment, stood near to him and said, "Dad, we're tired. Let's go, is it? It's nearly dark."
"Alright, cover
the tools "Look! Your mother's at our gate. Come on, she's waving us on," said Dad, staring nervously up the street. We put a spurt on, and were soon at her side. "Alf, that little-un's still out. It's almost dark. I've shouted for him everywhere. You'd better go an' look for him, Ronnie, across the fields. And Malcolm, you go the other way towards the shops," she ordered, looking and sounding anxious. When I did eventually find him, he was almost totally black. "Oh, Gwyn! Look at you. What a mess!" Deaf to my words, he looked up with a broad smile of satisfaction. I took him by the hand to take him home, but he started pulling at my arm, and did this all the way home. "Oh, Alf! Come and look! I've got nothing else to put on him. The lot's in the wash. And you, you can stop yer' bawling little-un. A scrub, nothin' to eat, and bed for you boyo, and as soon as I can get you there," Mam shouted, dragging him to the kitchen sink. Immediately on hearing the word 'bed', Gwyn went into a breath-holding tantrum. Alternating between sobbing and a struggle to hold his breath, he persisted until his obstinacy and self-will placed his little life in jeopardy. He placed himself completely at the mercy of outside intervention. On these fearful occasions, Dad probably felt that only severity would bring Gwyn out of these deathly journeys.
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