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  Contributor: David John WilliamsView/Add comments



My name is David John Williams. I was born on 1st March 1933 and my home then was 41 Eleanor Street. I was educated at the Infant School Twthill, Boys School South Penrallt, and Ysgol Higher Grade Llanberis Road. I left school when I was 14 and started full-time employment as a Telegram Boy in Caernarfon Post Office, Castle Square and I was there until my transfer to Newport, South Wales in 1957 with a promotion to Postman Higher Grade.

I finished my career in the Post Office as Assistant Head Postmaster. After 41 years I had to finish early when I had a slight heart attack. This was in 1988 and since then I have enjoyed life playing golf, drawing and now playing about with the computer.I first started part time work when I was nine years old. It was as a budding shoe-repairer with a chap called Fred Thompson. His shop was in South Penrallt.

I used to go there before going to school, lunch time and then after school until about 9pm. All day Saturday and sometimes on a Sunday. This was all right when I attended Boys School in South Penrallt but it was very difficult when I went to Ysgol Higher Grade. I did this from 1942 until I started in the post office in 1947.

It was a great experience. I was paid 10/6d a week, which was a lot of money for my mother then. One of job was to do clogs for the boys who came out of the army. I would take the uppers off their army boots and fix them to the wooden bottom and cut old cycle wheel tyres into strips and nail them underneath.

It was also my job to go and get supplies for the shop. I would get them from either Hugheston Roberts at the bottom of Wynne Street or the Shop in Skinner Street. We lived just below South Penrallt in Pool Side Square. I believe it a car park now. The Neccaco club was opposite our house and I use to sit on the steps and ask the Yanks ' Any gum chum ' when they came there to the dances.

After the war, Nelson the drapers took it over. There was also the Air Raid Shelter near us and this was our playing ground. It was in this house when early one morning in 1947 there was a loud banging on our front door and it was only when I started going down stairs, two steps from the top, that I realized that the house was flooded. There were two men outside in a boat checking to see if were all right.

I will never forget my mothers' scream when she saw what had happened. I got up and waded through the water to check on an old woman that lived around the corner in Pool Side. When we burst her front door open all the furniture that were in the passageway came gushing out into the street. There was no disaster fund in those days. My mother was given one sack of coal. We moved, soon after, to Cae Carreg.

Most of my playing days was spent in Pen Llyn. My immediate friends were Brian Orritt who lived in Pool Hill. He became a professional footballer and played for Birmingham. Arfon Thomas who lived opposite me was my best mate. He moved to Derby. There was Tommy Jones who also became a postman. Another who was my brother's mate was Roy Bohanna who lived in the Boys Schoolhouse. That is if his mother would let him come out. He had to stay in most of the time practicing to play the piano.



At the YMCA: Peter Evan, David Williams, Watkin Roberts and Arfen Jones.

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