Welsh Country - Issue88 - May - Jun 19

welsh connections
“
In many ways the
Hickses family practised
subsistence farming,
a way of life just about
engaged in in the postwar
Angle I knew.
They were the last of a
hardy people, experts
at what they did.
”
Back in the day when the
weed gathering was more of a local
industry, it was dried in huts, one
of which has been restored and which is now a
well-known landmark overlooking the magnificent bay.
It was the Hickses who operated the last hut. There
were once as many as twenty from which the laver weed
was transported by horse and cart, and later by lorry, to
Pembroke station.
In many ways the Hickses family practised subsistence
farming, a way of life just about engaged in in the post-war
Angle I knew. They were the last of a hardy people, experts
at what they did.
But what a benefit to those of us who ate what they caught
and garnered, fresh food from out of the sea and rocks
surrounding us.
Years later, I wrote a poem about the Hickses, imagining
myself as Cecil in old age:
Old fisherman
Cecil Hicks
Too old now I sit in the evening sun
and watch the slow tide flooding in and out.
I mend the high draped nets when I can
though my joints won't stoop down to the lobster pots.
My son Billy takes all the boats out now;
I've told him where the fattest flatfish lie
and where the mackerel are and where to row.
He'll soon be home on the late evening tide.
The girls they work the rocks some miles away,
stripping the strewn black laver-weed,
a way of life that nowadays doesn't pay;
but I like it for supper, oatmealed, fried.
It's chilly here. When will the children come?
Ah, Billy's home: I hear his outboard's hum.
Words: Andrew Thomas
Audrey, Cecil, Alastair, Sidney
Angle Bay by Roger MacCallum
May - Jun 2019 13