This little feller has lived in Nain’s cabinet for as long as I can remember, when I was little I was fascinated because it was a toy I couldn’t play with! Dad said it's been around since the 70's, and used to belong to his 'Aunties Bangor', four Aunts who he talks about with much fondness.
There was Aunty Nel (a farmer); Aunty Sis (a teacher and Bard, we have various bits of Eisteddfod paraphernalia lying round after Sis, her real name was Christiana Mary); Aunty Annie (a headmistress, she owned the little dog); and Aunty Ginny (a district nurse who used to work in Penrhyndaedraeth - apparently she used to go to 'The Cookes' explosive works to attend to casualties when there were accidental explosions. She had a boyfriend during the War who wrote to her regularly, sending poems and love letters, but Nain burnt them after she died - I suppose she didn't see the value in them).
I like it when Dad talks about his old relatives as well - often an object like this little dog will trigger all sorts of memories. The Aunties Bangor are favourites of his, he say's that Ginny had "the shed to beat all sheds!" It was three times the size of a normal shed and piled high with stuff – they wouldn’t throw anything away. If the shed wasn’t big enough then stuff went into the air raid shelter. There was books, leftover bits and bobs from their careers; nursing equipment; gardening equipment; wartime bits; kitchenalia; farming equipment - you name it, it was in the shed. No wonder my dad enjoyed visiting them (he is the ultimate collector!).
They lived in an old farmhouse in their later years that Nel ran, it was next to the mine on Parys Mountain in Anglesey. They were very old fashioned religious Welsh ladies, spinsters who were single all their lives because there wasn't so many men around after the war. I'd like to have met the Misses Hughes of Catref, Bangor, but my Dad and Nain’s memories and this little Dog will have to do.
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