In retrospect, if only I had knowledge of the faith then, I should have known the right course to take. Jesus said: "Everyone that has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive many times more and will inherit everlasting life." (Matt 19:29). But did that mean I had left my family and land for his name's sake? In my case the answer was no. At the time, I had left my father, mother, brother and three sisters because life with my parents had become intolerable, not because I had wanted to serve The Christ, but simply for my peace of mind. Peace is one of The Christ's much desired qualities, so it could be said that only in that regard did I leave for his sake. It was much later that my family realized one of them had begun to walk in a newness of life for The Christ's sake.

Over the years, Ike and Millie made the necessary readjustment from life in the Welsh valleys to life in London. Ike, an ex-miner from Senghenydd (a small village near Caerphilly), had built a small building firm in the Brockley area (and which, I was reliably informed, stemmed from relieving the local fire service of their triple extension ladders while in the service during the end of the 1939  45 war).  He soon became known as the craftiest little builder in Brockley.

Very few homeowners in the Brockley area seriously considered attempting their own roof repairs, as most dwellings were three storey town houses and taller than most. But for the little Welshman, with his mop of thick jet-black hair and ready grin, it was a way into the building trade. It was far quicker and a more rewarding way to a better standard of living than shovelling coal.

His progress was further assisted by the high ceilings in the houses and flats of the area. Decorating them was financially more rewarding than other building works, and for which his clients paid heavily. Whatever he was called upon to carry out, he charmed his clients with little touches of personality. He could upgrade, say, laying a few bricks to rebuild a garden wall, to a couple of brick garages at the bottom of the client's garden. To those he employed he was miserly, a jack of all trades, and one who had 'urgent calls to make' whenever the work in hand required a higher level of skill.

His wife, my aunt Millie, still longed for Wales. Her visits to the village where her father lay beneath the coal at Senghenydd colliery increased in frequency and duration as each year came and went. All their new furniture, and alterations to their home, were no substitute for her longing to hear Welsh voices in the village where her four sisters still lived their dull and inconsequential lives. Millie and I would sit talking for hours in her small basement kitchen. Though I didn't realize it at the time, we were simply comforting each other. It made the cold indifference of the city more bearable.  But I decided to leave London for a while, to charge up my emotional batteries, as it were.

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