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Born at Chatsworth House Nursing Home in Prestatyn, North Wales, on 26 October 1963, I was raised at Walden Cottage on Upper Foel Road, Dyserth – the highest of the roads traversing the lower flanks of Moel Hiraddug. Spectacular northerly views drew the gaze beyond rolling rural greenery towards patchwork coastal plains, out across the resorts of Rhyl and Prestatyn, then onwards to the grey-green Irish Sea. The outlook way off west featured Llandudno’s Ormes and the jagged heights of Snowdonia – two places where a large chunk of my future lay in wait.

Dyserth was a small village – but thriving. It had a large quarry with a quaint miniature train that took high-quality dynamited limestone via an iron bridge above the High Street to the crushers and kilns, there to be pulverised into gravel and baked into powdered lime to make cement products. Whilst I don’t recall the quarry employing too many men, it was (apart from farming) a major local employer.

We had our primary school – Ysgol Hiraddug, a draper, ironmonger, baker, greengrocer, butcher, post office, chemist, barber, fish and chip shop, doctors’ surgery and veterinary clinic. A library, police station, numerous pubs, a little cafe at the famous waterfall, two banks and an off-licence with a stainless-steel cigarette vending machine on the outside wall. Inside they sold tins of ale (all unrefrigerated of course), providing that your dad wanted either Guinness or Double Diamond, and wine for the ladies – two types, a red one and a white one, and Pomagne for special occasions. There was a petrol station, a few motor mechanics and a builder-cum-electrician/plumber, all dotted about amongst various little general stores, and – of course – the usual supply of churches and Welsh chapels.

The old piggery had been forced to close when foot-and-mouth-disease visited the district and all the animals had to be slaughtered and burned. Stank the village out for days, but before long the piggery was hosed out and back up and running – as afood depot! The proprietors were Jack ‘The Cake’ Dean and his business partner John Poole. Jack gave Justin Smart and me a few hours’ work in the evenings, reloading the vans when they returned from daily deliveries. Payment was some broken bickies, or an out-of-date cake to take home for our families, no matter whether we worked two hours or six.

Justin was my classmate who lived at Tirion Cottage, a house just along the road – almost identical to our Walden. His father, an architect, had designed us both similar cottage extensions, but along with his wife he lost his life in the Stockport air disaster of 1967, leaving Justin and his brother Simon and sister Susan orphaned; the entire village was seized with shock and grief.

When school broke up for summer holidays we both ended up on the daily runs around the seaside towns or inland countryside; payment for the entire summer was twenty pence a day – one pound per week. I asked Jack if he’d please save it up for me and give it to me at the end of the season – lest I fritter it away – and so finally he owed me a fiver. He gave me six pounds, rumpled my hair with that friendly – I don’t know what you call it – but that ‘thing’ where you open your hand and go ‘wiggle, wiggle, wiggle’ on a kid’s head (you know the one) and then said I could grab some chocolates from the ‘market shed’ as well. Three Milky Ways for little sister Lizzie