Remembering the 'good old days'

IT WAS while at senior school in Cardiff that Diana Caryl first got to hear of the island that within a decade was to become her new home.

As an 11-plus scholar she attended Howell's School, Llandaff. The girls' direct grant school in Cardiff was coincidentally the sister school of Howell's, Denbigh, North Wales, which a quarter of a century earlier had housed evacuated Ladies' College girls.

The two Howell's establishments competed on the sports fields and it was through this that Diana first got to hear of Guernsey.

'In the mid-60s I remember seeing a photograph in the hallway of the Denbigh school of the girls from Guernsey and learning that they had been there during the war.

'At the time I didn't even know where Guernsey was.'

Childhood for the younger of two sisters was normal and unspectacular. Penarth in the 1950s was a very different place from today, but its passion for rugby was even stronger than it is now. Her family home backed onto the Recreation Ground where the famous Barbarians rugby team played every Easter.

'I remember when I was little there were fields across the road. But in my teens housing developments ate into those fields and our area of Penarth became increasingly urbanised.'

The capital of Wales was also an altogether different city back then. 'I used to love travelling through Cardiff docks and seeing the ocean-going boats and cranes.

'I also recall the big Geest dock in nearby Barry and the unloading of the bananas. I found the thought that they had come all the way from the West Indies fascinating.'

But although she was very much a Welsh girl, there was no question of her speaking the national language.

'I did no more than the compulsory learning. Our mother was determined we did not speak with Welsh accents. But east Glamorgan was considered a very English part of Wales.'

Penarth was a safe place to grow up and young Diana cycled everywhere. There was swimming in the Victorian Baths or off the pebble beach in the muddy Bristol Channel, full of suspended coal dust – we didn't know anything different.

'At high tide we used to jump off Penarth Pier.

'From there a paddle steamer ran to Weston-super-Mare, where my grandparents Caryl had retired.

'It was very sad to see the Weston pier going up in flames in July.'

Diana spent a lot of time at the tennis club and played with no great success at the Welsh Junior Championships. She also loved horse riding at Dinas Powis, a little village inland from Penarth.

'I'd muck out, clean tack, groom and lead ponies and horses in exchange for riding lessons and rides.

'They also let me use a pony in the local gymkhanas and I rode occasionally in the New Forest while at Southampton University.'

There were also visits to Penarth Promenade to meet friends at Rabiaotti's cafe and ice cream parlour where there was a jukebox, and the yacht club at the end of the prom where she learned to crew a dinghy.

Her schooldays at Howell's were, in the main, a joy – even the 40 minutes ride each way on the bus.

'I enjoyed school, apart from the year we had double Latin on a Friday afternoon. The teacher, Miss Tickner, was incredibly ancient, very strict and scary.

'I loved sciences, especially biology and dissecting things such as earthworms, dogfish and eyeballs.

'My grandfather Hopkins had a microscope which I loved to use with him from an early age. He gave me my own when I was about 10 and it was my most treasured possession.

What else does she remember about her schooldays?

'There was no running or talking in corridors, no sitting on radiators – no matter how cold or wet you were – and you had to clear your plate at lunchtimes.

'We always had fish on Fridays. I still dislike hard peas, broad beans and solid rice pudding, but I love spotted dick.'

It was at the 400-pupil day and boarding establishment that she learned to endure cringing embarrassment. 'I remember having to walk through Cardiff to the railway and bus station late on Saturday afternoons in a gymslip and carrying a lacrosse stick, having to pass Cardiff Arms Park and all the rugby fans.

Church was compulsory for the young Caryl girls.

'We used to cycle to Crusaders Sunday School after lunch every week. I obviously wasn't ill much as I have a Bible and a hymn book, each awarded for separate sets of 50 consecutive attendances.'

'When I was junior school age, we used to go to church nearly every Sunday morning but we alternated – one week with my mother to the local C of E parish church and the other week with my father to the Congregational Church.'

They never argued about religion and I think their idea was to educate us to different approaches.'