Question Author
paddywak...I am interested in your post of 23:38.
What mine were you working in, in October 1966.......I take it wasn't Merthyr Vale ?
When I met the sister of a little boy that was killed in the disaster, about 3-4 years ago, she told me the following tale.
In the summer 1966, she was 16 and went out to work, at a nearby clothing factory in Merthyr, about 3 miles away. The morning of the 21st was a real pea-souper.......the fog wallowed in the valley and made visibility very bad. The bus that took her work at 07:30 that morning could only proceed very slowly and they barely got to the factory in time to start work at 08:00.
About 09:30, the Supervisor came around to all the Aberfan girls and women, looking very worried. She told them to go straight home, as something had happened in Aberfan. The women were all married to colliers, or their fathers and uncles were colliers, so they expected another accident down the pit.
They tried to get a bus home but with in a little distance, the bus ground to a halt, as the road was completely blocked by other vehicles, amongst them Fire and Rescue. So they started to walk the rest of the way. They were still unaware of exactly what had occurred. ( the A470 that now by-passes the village had not been built then )
She met her Mum, standing with all the other women of the village, waiting for news, where the school had once stood. Of course, it then became obvious what had happened.
She always reckoned that her parents never really got over the loss of her little brother Peter. She showed me a school photo that was taken that summer. It was in B+W of course, and he looked just like every other 9 year old boy of the 60's......a side parting in his hair and he was wearing a hand-knitted school jumper, as we all did back then. I said that he looked lively and not a little cheeky, as he was trying not to grin too much when the photographer took his photo.
She replied that, yes, he was a little begger, and was always trying his older sisters patience !
She also told me a strange story about the tip that had slid down that day. Although she was now in work, she was still only 16, and every Saturday in the summer, she and her friends would go for a swim in what they called the Black Pool, up on the tip. This unofficial bathing spot had been there for many years, but about 2 weeks before the disaster, they couldn't find it again. It had disappeared and the very landscape where it had once been, looked different somehow.
Of course what had happened was that the underlying tip had changed....not much but enough to drain the pool water away.