Dolly Littlejohn
The day we met…
It was our 60th anniversary on 20th August, he died the week before. Yes, that was sad, but there we are.
When he started coming in he was paying for a nine-pence seat, I think. We sold one and nine penny seats and nine pence seats, the Gaiety cinema it was then, in Cardiff. It's a bingo hall now.
I was an usherette, I used to show them all to their seats. The one day these two boys came in, a nice boy and his little mate. They had two nine penny tickets and I said you will have to wait a bit, there aren't any nine-penny seats left, and he said aren't there any of the others? I could pay the difference. I said Oh no no, you can have them this time but don't you go telling anyone else! So I let them have the seats, that’s how it started.
Connie
They came across the fields…
They would turn up some time around the middle of August, I would see them all walking across the stubble fields towards our farm. In a gang, the gypsies came.
I would shout to my father they’re here, they’re here!
I don’t know where they came from but it was so exciting.
They worked all day long, cutting back the hedges; they were hard men. My father would give them the barn to sleep in and my mother would make them a pot of stew. I remember sitting down with them, there with my sister. Their stories were so wild.
Sheila
They said I was a witch…
Father was a very nice, quiet man. He never hit me once… but he did call me a little bugger when I was just gone four and a half. At half past nine that night I went into the shed where he made the cider. I had forgotten what he had said that morning, never turn that bloody tap on! I remember how lovely it tasted. He would give me and my sister half a cup every year.
In the June before he died I was in the garden of our neighbour, they had a lovely everlasting moss rose tree. When I picked a flower from the tree the breeze changed direction and a loud wind arose for twenty three minutes, the voice said YOUR FATHER WILL DIE, NOVEMBER THE 7TH, 3PM and that’s when he died. I didn’t tell anyone else but my blind sister, my brothers hated my fortune telling.
They said I was a witch but I don't mind that.
