See also water activities.
Meccano
Meccano was a toy that enabled models to be built out of metal pieces.
I enjoyed making things and sometimes followed the instruction booklets
which gave sample projects. Before I learnt to read, my mother would
read out the instructions: she did not know what a right-angled
trunnion was - but I did.
One of the chores I was asked to do was
to hold a hank of wool in my two outstretched hands, so that my mother
could coil it into a ball. I managed to make a meccano device to
perform this task...
Clockwork trains
I had a basic clockwork train set (O-gauge post war train with 2 carriages and a circle of track) when I was five or six. With rationing still in place, there was not much choice in new Hornby kit. So my parents bought a second-hand (pre-war) train set - which included my prized possession: "Caerphily Castle", an O-gauge model of a GWR Castle class steam train. My uncle also had an pre-war O-gauge train set which I was given later on. Altogether, I had about 11 points so could design complicated layouts.
I had a small model yacht which had a collapsible mast system but which was not very efficient. I then inherited a model yacht from my uncle - which was a much better performer. I took it on holidays to sail on boating lakes and also used it (with a line attached) on Roath Park Lake near where my grandparents lived. I experimented with a rudder attached to the sail sheet but never succeeded in making it into a useful self steering system. Pool Yacht
For several years, I built aeroplane models that could (in principle) fly. The main constructional technique was a balsa wood frame with a thin paper covering that was doped to give to strength. The dope and balsa wood glue both had a characteristic smell - maybe I was an early glue sniffer. I designed my own glider - launched by pulling a long thread with a paper clip at the end which could be slipped off when height was gained. I also had rubber band powered models. More fun was had in building than success in flying.... I made a model of a Folland Midge jet with a Jetex engine: it was too heavy to fly properly. I did buy a small internal combustion engine - but never really got it to work reliably.
I was taught woodwork at school - with traditional tools. I enjoyed
making things and my parents indulged me by buying me some of these tools -
which I still have and still use. In those days there was a shop in Cardiff
selling woodworking tools. Nothing electrical - all hand tools.
One of my bigger projects was a table -- a coffee table with a modern
(when made in 1956) look. This is still in use.
My first step in electronics was to build a crystal set (circa 1955). This had a germanium diode - so no "cat's whiskers" needed. I had a long aerial (25metres or so) which gave a good signal - especially from the Welsh Region BBC medium wave transmitter in Cardiff (about 3 miles away). Headphones were needed to hear the signal.
My first valve set-up was a 2 valve TRF radio (with an adjustable feedback to get a high Q). At this time there was an electronics components shop in Cardiff (Marks in the Wyndham Arcade), so parts could be sourced. The radio needed both a low voltage (for valve heaters) and high voltage (for amplification) battery supply.
I remember that there was a small metal working business near Cardiff General railway station that would cut and rivet aluminium to make a chassis and cut holes for the valves.
By rebuilding this set with a frame aerial and smaller batteries, I managed to make it reasonably portable -- and even took it to school occasionally.
When transistors became available (I remember paying about £1 for a sub-standard one -- equivalent to £20-40 in 2012), I put a 1 transistor amplifier in the crystal set with battery power.
I experimented with a radio-powered radio. With two aerials, one tuned to the nearby transmitter and then rectified and smoothed to provide power to the transistor amplifier of the radio proper (which used the other aerial). This did work - but using a battery was simpler and more practical.
Several people gave me old radios (no longer working) for spare parts and I bought ex-government kit via Marks. I bought an R1155 (war-time communications receiver) as ex-gov stock and modified it with a home-built power supply. It covered most wave-bands and could receive distant radio amateur transmissions.
This tempted me into the radio "ham" world. I had a 19 set (ex-gov, designed for tanks) which gave access to the 40 metre amateur band with RT (ie speech not Morse).
I also had another war surplus transmitter: type 53 (see also here). This had a temperature controlled oscillator and twin 807 RF output.
I taught myself enough to sit the "Radio Amateurs Exam" and passed. Although my Morse was never fast enough to use.
I built an AVO meter in a wooden box which I used for testing. I remember borrowing a precision resistor from the school physics lab to calibrate it. I still have this AVO - but a modern multimeter costs £4, is more accurate and more comprehensive.
Following the pioneering path of a school colleague (Malcolm Ryall) I decided to build my own television. My parents had bought a TV in 1953 (for the coronation) but they would not let me watch everything that I wanted to (maybe because it was on too late). At that time there only was 1 channel (BBC). My mother said "when you have your own television, you can watch when you like". So I built one. The basis was an ex-gov radar set with a VCR97 electrostatic CRT (also here)(6 inch diameter with green phosphor). Since there was only 1 channel, I used a TRF circuit with a line of EF50's as RF amplifiers and, aided by the proximity of the Wenvoe transmitter, I tuned the video signal using headphones (listening to the intensity of the noise) until it was strong enough to give a picture. The sound was from just a single valve and needed headphones. For info on a kit that does something similar, see here.
I remember reading the Radio Designer's Handbook - a thick book that was quite technical. The symbol "j" occurred in many equations - I had not met complex numbers in school, so just carried on with "j=1". This usually gave values in a usable range...
When I left home to go to university, I no longer had time to spend on electronics and, to my later regret, my kit was given away to the nearby school (where my father was head).
I do remember one bonus of my amateur interest: the practical exam in physics at the end of the first university year (Honours Moderations by name) presented each candidate with a box with 3 connections... I guessed it was a transistor and I was quite familiar with what would result...
Another bonus is that I am prepared to try to mend electrical and electronic devices. I have my trusty old soldering iron and a multimeter. Usually the fault is a blown valve filament, a short-circuited capacitor, a blown power supply diode or a mechanical failure (switch, tuning knob, meter, erratic variable resistor,..). I have managed to repair items with small scale integrated circuits (74xx series chips) but in more modern equipment can only tackle the power supply.
Music has been a rather small part of my life. I claim that I heard no music until I went to school. My parents had no gramophone and did not listen to music on the radio. My mother did not sing and my father was away at the war.
I can't sing in tune - I can hear that I am doing it wrongly, but have no way to improve myself. I was discouraged from joining in singing at school.
In the late 50's, pop music took root. My parents bought a "Dansette" - a primitive record player. The first (and practically the only) record I bought was "Swinging shepherd blues" by Ted Heath's dance orchestra.
I did enjoy jazz and attended jazz concerts in Cardiff: Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, Humphrey Lyttleton, Count Basie and Duke Ellington. There was a jazz club in a basement in St Mary's street at that time.
At University I was in the same college year as Paul Pond (Paul Jones of Manfred Mann, etc). He used to perform in the jazz club at Oxford at that time. I remember going (in 1962 I think) to a Rolling Stones concert in Cardiff. The screaming audience meant one heard little and was partially deaf afterwards...
One recollection: I used to listen to Radio Luxembourg on the radio while revising. One night they were playing classical music - this was unprecedented. It was the night the assassination of John F Kennedy was reported.
My other significant pop concert was to see the Beach Boys in Madison, Wisconsin (around 1977).
During that trip to Madison, we rented a house belonging to Stephen J Butts: which had a gold disk on the wall. He had been a member of the Highwaymen, a college group who sold many records of "Michael rowed the boat ashore".
My current favourite record track is "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits.
I went to a mixed school from age 11 and was used to girls. Before the Christmas parties, the gym teacher would teach us some dances - Gay Gordons and Military Twostep: not much chance for romance there.
As I got older I wanted to go to public dances - as that was the main route to meet girls in those days. This required some minimum level of expertise.
My father advised: being able to dance well was not a desirable attribute in a man; keep going backward, then you won't tread on your partner's toes.
I went to dancing lessons in a nearby church hall - run by the local dance school. I stuck through the introductory course, which has been sufficient ever since.
When my parents moved to Newport (while I was at university) I did not know anyone in Newport. I went to the local dance hall (the Majestic) to meet people my age. It worked: I met Marilyn there.
My father, Parry Michael, was a keen crossword solver. He also set crosswords, especially for the Listener, as "Egma".
On a Sunday, his priority was to complete the "hard" crosswords in the Observer (Ximenes) and the Sunday Times (Mephisto). He usually finished those quite quickly - having time during the sermon in the morning church service (he read the lesson) to make progress.
Ximenes had a tie-breaking requirement. Solvers had to compose their own clue to a given word. Priority was given to a "clever" clue.
So my father would spend the day trying out various possibilities on my mother (and myself). We were not so interested in getting the ultimate clue - and would chorus "Send it in" - to indicate that we did not really want to hear more....
As an aid to crossword solving (and setting), he realised that a "crossword dictionary" which just listed all available words of each length in alphabetical order would speed up things. He persuaded my grandfather (D. F. A. Michael - known as Bert) to complete such a dictionary - in longhand and based on Chambers Dictionary which was specified for the "hard" crosswords.
Finding such a list useful, he persuaded Chambers to publish it as "Chamber's Crossword Aid" in 1956. We always called it "cheats dictionary", since it was only of use to find a word - and had no definitions.
With the advent of digital storage, this Aid became superseded by "Chamber's Words for crosswords and wordgames" published first in 1976. Smartphone apps now do the job too.
My father would try to interest me in crossword setting and solving: creating unusual grids for example. Also some "hard" crosswords involved using a "Playfair" 5 by 5 grid to pair-wise encode answers and I could be persuaded to help find the code-word. Playfair Cipher
One period I remember is that we received a monthly newsletter from a local (Cardiff) motor dealer. It contained a crossword with quite sizeable prizes (in cash as I remember). The crossword was intended to be easy but the setter often got stuck in the bottom right corner and put in some curious words (ToddAO for example). Most months nearly all prizes were scooped: in order to generate a plausible supply of winning names, entries were put in under names of family members, dogs (A Rusty), and a certain D. C. Rockett (king of the wild frontier).
As well as amassing a huge variety of dictionaries and art books (as prizes), one prize had quite a big impact. A motor dealer (Glam-Mon Motors in Ystrad Mynach) had a crossword in some circular that my father won. The prize was £20 off the price of any vehicle that they had for sale. At this date (circa 1959) cars were still in short supply so this appeared tempting. I was encouraged to go up to look at what they had available. The cheapest option was a motorbike at £90. I returned with some colleagues who had motorbikes and they pronounced the bike as a reasonable purchase. So for £70 it was mine - and it was duly delivered to our house.
It was a 250cc two-stroke Francis Barnett. This was quite speedy but left a trail of blue smoke behind. I taught myself to ride it (it had no instruction manual and I had no helmet for a while) and since I had passed the car test I could ride legally with L plates. The plan was to sell it for more than £70 and pocket the difference. Guess what: we had an offer of £70 for it and eventually sold it for a bit less than that. The irony was that Glam-Mon Motors was set up by Bert Smith - who was my future wife's uncle.
After observing the amount of time my father spent on crosswords (daily Times, Sunday papers as above and periodicals like the Spectator, Listener, New Statesman and many more obscure ones), I resolved to limit my interest. Starting from the "easy" cryptic crosswords (Observer Everyman, Guardian on Saturday, ...), a few winning entries helped to encourage me. I (with help from Marilyn) have even been known to complete Mephisto and regularly do the Saga Magazine crossword which is quite hard.
My favourite clue (from Araucaria) "Shy, shy (4,6)"
My father taught me to play chess. He always claimed "he beat a man who beat a man who beat the German champion". Although I am not too sure if this was folk-lore or not. He used to play another member of staff in school at lunchtime almost every day - so had plenty of practice.
Because of my home tuition, I was usually able to beat my fellow pupils in school. I was a member, latterly captain, of the school chess team. We were not very successful - often losing heavily - although I usually managed a draw.
The Welsh Chess Congress took place over several days, hosted by St. Illtyd's, a catholic boys grammar school in Splott in Cardiff. There was a junior section (under 18 I think) with not too many contestants (a dozen or two). From my parents' house it was a five mile cycle ride to St. Illtyd's - so I was pretty tired after a few days. The Welsh team for the Glorney Cup was selected from the positions in this congress. This cup was played between schoolboy(under 18) teams from Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland. Teams of 5 contest the cup.
In 1959 I had come joint third (out of 24) in the Easter Congress and, after some play-offs, was selected for the Welsh team (bottom board). The matches were to be in Dublin. The team was assembled in Cardiff by Brother Cyril (St. Illtyd's teacher who was the chess enthusiast) who led us by train, ferry (out Holyhead; back Fishguard) and train to Dublin. The journey was overnight and we got almost no sleep. My first match was against the Irish and, after a long game, I managed to press home a small advantage and win. The next game was against England and I lost rather swiftly. Scotland did not participate that year. Wales came second overall that year. The prizes were awarded by Mr. Glorney (after whom the Glorney Cup was named).
After this fortuitous start, I took stock of my chess prospects: I would need to spend a lot of time studying openings and classic games to keep up with the top players. I decided not to go that way - and remain at the level, or below, that I reached as a junior international long ago.
I played in Oxford for my college (Jesus College), mainly on board 4 since we had several really good players. The opposition could be unsettled by remarking that Jesus had a junior international player on board 4. We did really well against other colleges and won Cuppers (knock out), so getting a celebratory dinner from the college.
I taught my sons to play chess. Nick won the Wirral Schools Chess Congress and was part of a very successful team from Calday Grange Grammar School that came third in the Sunday Times competition in 1980 (knock-out between schools).
I have a mathematical and logical aptitude, so enjoy brain teasers. One early success was in some obscure magazine that my father had received. I found the problem fairly easy and was urged by a visiting relative to "send it in". I did and subsequently won both prizes (as myself and as Marilyn) -- presumably nobody else had entered. We spent the winnings on a good meal in Cardiff as I recall.
While working for STC in Newport, I had access to their demo computer and programmed a Sunday Times brain teaser successfully.
It is only really since I retired, that I have returned to brain teasers. Also one can now submit the answer by e-mail which avoids expenditure on stamps. I do the Sunday Times one most weeks (writing a short computer program in FORTRAN if that helps), usually get it right, and have won a prize once or twice a year.
Dover Patrol. This is a board game combining skill (in setting up the initial position) and memory (remembering where your opponent's pieces are once they have captured one of yours). The game is based on 1920s naval warfare: battleships, submarines and a seaplane. I inherited the game from my uncle - and enjoyed playing it. I rarely lost - so found it difficult to lure people to play against me....
Another board game I remember fondly was "Touring England". This involved visiting a number of towns (choosing the order) by throwing a dice to move along roads. It was good for teaching some geography. I remember even then being fascinated by the Wirral - sticking out and connected by tunnel to Liverpool.
I also played many different board games as a child: nine mens morris, monopoly, dominoes,... and well as quite a few card games: rummy, whist, nap, canasta, cribbage, pontoon,...
Castles
South Wales is prime castle country and I have always been interested in looking at ruined castles and imagining the past. As described elsewhere, I visited Castell Coch with my friends to "play" in. My parents often took my grandparents out for a car trip (from Cardiff on a Saturday or Newport on a Sunday). I would spot some castle marked on the Ordnance Survey map and we would use it as a destination. Not many of these lived up to the romance of Castell Coch or the size of Caerphily or Raglan.
Sea Charts
I have always been fascinated by maps and we had old maps on the wall at home. My father actively collected antique maps (of Monmouthshire). My interests were more nautical, so I started to collect sea charts of the West of Britain. The big names here are Captain Grenville Collins (set of sea charts commissioned by Samuel Pepys and published in 1694) and Lewis Morris (self taught surveyor of Welsh harbours, 1748). See Lewis Morris info
Pets
Until the early 1950s, food was rationed so meat-eating pets were
not easy to maintain, unless they were working animals. When my mother
lived alone (with me, but with my father away at the war) in an
isolated cottage, she had a bulldog (Susie) for company and safety.
Our rabbit farm was for meat not cuddles.
When my father returned, we had no family pets. I had a goldfish for a while. Almost none of my school friends had dogs either. My aunt (whose husband was at sea for long periods) did have a dog: a boxer, called Rusty, for security.
When we moved to Whitchurch, our neighbour had a cat which she spent a long time each evening calling in. The cry was "nin, nin, nin" to call Ginger in. Cats will often try to find their own food: rodents and birds.
Later, when our children were older, we did have some pets. In
Geneva, we had two small terrapins. I remember Marilyn going to the
butchers to ask for 10g of meat (for them) -- the butcher took pity on
her and gave her the meat without charge.
On Wirral, an elderly stray cat (Pookie) adopted us and liked to
lie on top of the warmest place - preferably someone's lap. Nick had
an aquarium and David had some rats for a while.
