I was among family relatives at Willie's funeral. I was about eight years old when we attended their comfortable Welsh home. It was situated among many such pit houses, built in rows on a steep hill at the end of the valley. I remember Willie only vaguely. When he was around thirty, I spent some days with Grandma Griffiths, her daughter Maggie and Willie, and remember being told to go down to their garden allotment to be with him. He had two Alsatian dogs. He looked very happy that day.

It was probably because in later years I looked the image of Willie that his sisters foolishly thought I might come to a similar end. In fact, when I was around twenty-eight years old, I mentioned to my aunt Millie that I had begun to study the Scriptures. She looked at me apprehensively, then said:

"Studying the Bible has been known to affect people's minds. You be careful."

She went on to tell me how Willie had begun to do strange things because of an on-off relationship he had been having with a married woman over the years, one that was never resolved.

From time to time despondency crept into my childhood, dark clouds that are sometimes experienced during one's early years through the usual social inferiorities:  In my case it was poor health, psoriasis always exposed, parental tyranny that dispirited, backwardness at school which humiliated;  all resulting in a nervous disposition and a lack of confidence. On the plus side:  I had a precious friend, two brothers and four sisters, girlfriends, a love of the surrounding countryside, good food, sports of all kinds, film stars, sketching, and listening to adult conversation.

It is strange how some painful things can have a beneficial side. For instance, being a slow learner, and the accompanying humiliation, only spurred me on to try harder, if only to minimize a feeling of inferiority. Occasional pleasures gave much-needed consolation and certainly helped to balance the account.

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