​I came across one of those surveys lately where they were asking people to name the first piece of music they ever bought.  I didn’t have to think for long.  I still have my first LP (long playing record for you young ones!). And it was released 50 years ago!

21 years ago this month (in Aug 2001), I accompanied my lovely mam, Peggy, back to Cardiff.  She lived and worked there for over 5 years from 1946 to 1951 starting at age 16.  She had come home to Ireland for good just after her 21st birthday, married my father, and started a family.  Despite numerous invitations from her sisters and brothers still living there to come back and visit, she had never returned.  I think that for Peggy those years of her carefree youth were so magical and so bright that she stored them away in her heart and didn’t want to risk tarnishing them in any way. 
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She often regaled me with stories of the mischief she got up to during those years.  And she often told me stories of where she worked (as a live-in housemaid looking after three children); for a lovely young couple called Cyril and Doreen.  Moreover, she remembered with fondness their kindness to her as a young Irish girl away from home for the first time.