I didn't really rest much yesterday as Gabs and I doing probate work and wallpapering. Today I checked the auction lots again and decided not to bother as only a couple of items I was interested in and they wouldn't necessarily go at the price I wanted to pay.
I stretched my legs having a wander round Brecon, into the charity shops, and stopping at WH Smith where I found a magazine, The English Cottage Garden handbook which just had to come home with me and will be kept forever. A little treat for me for having gotten up around 5 a.m. on Saturday. I also popped into the bookshop to see the proprietor Paul (we always went and bought books there when we had a day out in Brecon) and I got upset telling him about Keith. He was very kind, bless him. I found a travel guide to New Zealand though, and D Parry-Jones' 1952 book "Welsh Country Characters" which also came home with me. Parry-Jones died aged 90 in 1981, and had gathered much history and information from his father who died aged 85 in 1951 and quite probably his grandfathers before that. I was delighted to find it was a signed copy too, which makes it more intimate. Interestingly his description of the old type of stocky, tall, broad faced, square chinned people in Wales in the Iron Age (don't ask me how he could date them so precisely) sounded remarkably like Tam's partner Jon (whose antecedents in Ceredigion go back to the year dot).
"But then, along this western seaboard there dwell the remnants of a race, 'a deposit left by some ancient movement . . . of the early days of metal in the third or second millennium before Christ' - a people of very stalwart build, strong, large frame, a broad head, a wide face, square chin, strong jaws and dark hair. They are supposed to have been the men who came to these parts in search of lead, tin and gold, but what is of interest in this connexion is that where you find them you find also the great megalithic monuments - the long stones (Meini hirion), the cromlech, the dolmen, the cist and the stone circles. Buried underneath these gigantic memorials we find the bones of these people. And though it cannot be said with certainty that this "stalwart", "broad headed" race built threse monuments, nevertheless these facts are significant. I am particularly interested in them, for my mother hailed from those parts and bor all the physical characteristics of the type. "
The pair cost me £5.
Anyway, got back and needed a Time Team nap again...
Fresh, more interesting post tomorrow, about the Textile Mill in Newtown.
This wonderful Welsh quilt was part of the museum exhibits. Love that Pineapple Log Cabin centre.
