DISASTER

It is the anniversary today of the Aberfan disaster,its 50 years,somebody, Ruth has put a picture of facebook so people can remember...Ben's dad Jon was born there,after the disaster Sheila his Mum waved at her friend the day before and said 'i will visit you tomorrow', she was pregnant and her friend had just had a new baby,the next day her friends house was buried, she and her baby both gone....it was very overwhelming as a young mum myself to sit with His family during the 30 year anniversary, watching a t.v program about the disaster, with Ben and Joe's great Granddad, Grandpa George, sitting in the corner, not wanting to see, the people on t.v were all known to Jon's parents, whose family was on of the only ones who ever left Aberfan.
I knew nothing about the disaster, except for the name,because my Mum shielded it from me,i was eight at the time, the age of a lot of the children who died,and i was just thinking about where i was living when it happened,we were living in Belfast, northern Ireland,my sister had been born in august,i remember coming back from the hospital with her in the carrycot on the back seat of the blue Cortina estate car we had until we came to live here in Shrewsbury. We moved to Dublin soon afterwards, and that's where my Mum started to learn to drive, i remember being left in charge of Mike on a huge long beach, and the amazing novelty of my Mum driving the car to pick us up!
My Mum used to go for lessons with a driving instructor in Whitchurch which isn't far from here, in fact very close to where Lynn's Cafe is,we lived in Chester then...we cant have stayed very long anywhere because I remember Nicky going to playgroup/ nursery just down the road from out house, she can only have been four at the most, and that was a fourth house since she was born in Belfast...