Dilys Paes

Teaching Training College

The time came to leave the grammar school and I applied to three teaching colleges, two in Bangor, Bangor Normal local College, which was the University College, and St. Mary's College in Bangor. I think I applied to one down in Southwest Wales as well. Our school certificates board was a separate one from England and the standard was always considered to be very, very high. I was fortunate enough to be accepted to go to the Bangor Normal college, and I was there for two years. It was quite a wonderful experience because it was the first time I'd been on my own away from home. The other two occasions I had been away from home was with Gwyn when I was 14. I think I've mentioned that we visited Aberdare when I was seven and I had my seventh birthday there. I think it was the first-time Mum had visited her sister since leaving Aberdare, and we had our photographs taken because it was my seventh birthday.

On my 14th birthday Gwyn, Selwyn and I went there and spent two weeks there again and had a lovely time with all and aunts and cousins. There are only two cousins our age. All the others, like I said before, were older than us and we did enjoy it.  This was now the first time going to college that I was entirely on my own.

I had a place in Bangor Normal College as I wanted to become a teacher and I had passed the necessary at my interview. I was very thrilled to have been offered a place, and so pleased that about 5 or 6 of us from Holywell Grammar School had also been accepted. The next thing that I needed was some form of storage that I could use to put all my books in to travel to and from Bangor and Holywell. The first thing we did was to buy this trunk. It wasn't heavyweight one and I think it was made from varnished compressed cardboard with a wooden beam over the top. It was extremely useful at college and, in fact, I had that trunk up to the time when I moved into Edge Lane and it was used as storage place for my extra blankets.

Finance was always a problem in our family and although I had been awarded a grant, I don't know how much it was because Mum was in charge of that, but it wasn't going to be enough for all the books and all the accessories that I needed. The only person I thought could help me was Bill, as he was always available for other problems that arose in the family. Not so much as far as we were concerned but if Mum had a problem she turned to Bill. I asked him if he would lend me the money to buy my books and all my extra things that I needed and I would pay him back. I would never have asked if I hadn't intended paying him back and he knew this. He was at university himself at Edinburgh studying medicine. He was going to fulfil his lifelong ambition to become a doctor, which he did and he was a very good doctor. He was willing to lend me the money and he accepted that I would pay him back, but obviously he would need money to study.

The next thing was to study the lists of books I needed for the subjects and order them. Then I had to take clothes to wear. In those days, clothes were on coupons so you just couldn't go out and buy what you want, it depended on how many coupons you had. Mum was very good at knitting, and wool didn't need coupons, although here was a limit to how much you could buy all in one go. Mum bought some wool from the knitting wool shop and she knitted me two twin sets. I can't remember the colours, but they came in very useful because my friends at college were in the same situation as I was. You couldn’t just go and buy clothes. My twin sets were very popular as we used to borrow each other’s clothes.

Teaching infants you had to wear a special gymslip and a blouse, in fact you had to wear them every day, because if you had PE you had to wear bottle green gym slip with bottle green knickers underneath and a cream square neck blouse. The hem of the slip had to be so many inches above your knee. I complied with all the necessary bits and pieces.

The day came to get on the train from Holywell junction. The trunk was sent off in advance which was a great help, but then of course there was still a big suitcase because we needed to take of all sorts of things with us apart from clothes and shoes. A group of us arrived at Holywell Junction and Dad saw me off and we arrived in Bangor.