Your story – Heather Scott

Did you go to any youth groups or summer camps?

When I was in the Brownies I went on pack holiday weekend, I was too young really as iIhad only just joimed the Brownies but because my sister Sue was going they allowed me to go as well. We stayed in a sort of large wooden hut in a place calles Ogmore. We had to take a doll of some sort with us to dress up for a competition, as I didn’t like dolls I played with cars and toy soldiers and didn’t have any dolls so I took my teddy bear, called Sooty, along instead. Unfortunately my Brown Owl had taken her dog along for the weekend, her husband was also there to help out and that left no one at home to look after the dog,  the dog took a liking to my teddy we managed to keep it out of his way most of the time but he did manage to get it once and we caught him with its leg in his mouth shaking it to bits when they managed to get the teddy out of the dogs mouth its leg was half hanging off and although they sewed it back on it was never the same, I still have it. Apparently while I was there I would often be found singing songs in my sleep to my teddy bear or telling him stories, whether I did that at home or not I don’t know.  The person who came along to do the cooking had her daughter with her, Janet, she was a couple of years younger than me so we became friends while we were there. That lady and her daughter were the aunt and cousin of Peter the person my sister eventually married.

There was a youth club held in the War Memorial Hall for children in secondary education, it wasn’t anything formal really and was run by the local postman who lived in the chapel house. I went when I was old enough as Sue was going, being the youngest they all looked after me. We had a table tennis table and a billiards table, and had talks. One year we put on a show with different sketches, I don’t remember much about the show other than, as the youngest, I along with one of the boys had to run on stage and scribble over what we thought was a statue but was meant to be someone pretending to be one.  At Christmas we used to go around the parish singing carols for charity. It was a large parish, not just the village that I grew up in, it also had a couple of very small hamlets, the mental hospital at Hensol and several farms including my grandfathere’s and the, one belonging to the hospital, we evetually moved to where my dad worked. I remember one farm, just up the road from the memorial hall, where we used to go, Mrs Wride would always have refreshments for us and would give all the older members a glass of sherry but wouldn’t give me one as she thought I was too young, I was always annoyed at that. But carol singing was good fun and always a highlight of the year