From modern life to domestic bliss (From Tivyside Advertiser)

From modern life to domestic bliss

10:07am Tuesday 10th March 2009 in News

No electricity, no television, no telephone, no computer, no washing machine, not even a toilet in the house! This would be some people’s idea of a nightmare. But, for the Griffiths family from Cardigan, these were all part of one of the best experiences of their lives, and now the whole story is told in a new book published by the Lolfa as part of the Stori Sydyn / Quick Reads series.

Bywyd yn y Coalhouse: y teulu Griffiths (which translates as ‘Life in Coalhouse: the Griffiths family’) follows Cerdin, Debra and their three children – Steffan, Angharad and Gethin – as they swap modern 2007 life for a more uncomplicated, sparse and simple life in 1927 as part of the popular BBC Cymru Wales series, Coal House.

After Steffan, the eldest son, saw an advert on the television looking for families to take part in the series, he begged and begged his mother to pick up the phone.

"‘No way good boy’ – that was my first response!" Debra laughs. But after weeks and weeks of hearing nothing else, she decided to make the call to silence Steffan and the rest of the family, who had by then also become curious about the series. This call changed the life of the Griffiths family and sent them back in time to the mining community of the 1920s.

In this book, we follow the family through the selection process – from the ‘boot camp’ to the moment they were told they had been selected to take part in the series. Then we follow the family into No. 6, Stack Square, to the beginning of the last century, as they experience almost four weeks of living, working and surviving during a period of hardship, before stepping back again into 2007.

"Before going into the house, I thought I’d miss the washing machine terribly, but, once we were there, the first thing I was looking for was the sink!" says Debra, who also had trouble feeding the whole family on a miner’s salary. "Getting the fire going was a task in itself, and then you had to work out how to cook on it!" she adds.

With all the difficulties and hardship that lay ahead of them, why then did the family decide to go ahead with the challenge?

"After a while you found your feet and then it was just fantastic. At the end of the day, I think it was our sense of humour as a family which got us through," explains Debra.

This humour is to be found throughout the book as the family relates many funny stories. From locking Cerdin in the hen house, to turning over the chamber pot until its contents ran through the floor onto the lodger in the room below, and from the next-door neighbour hurting his finger to the nation seeing Cerdin’s bottom after a bath on Debra’s birthday, the funny memories flow.

"The best memory I have from the experience is the time we spent together as a family. The children never once complained that they were bored even though they didn’t have their computer or a television. What you don’t have, you don’t feel the need for! I think the experience changed us all and it’s definitely made us more thankful for what we have," says Debra. The Stori Sydyn / Quick Reads series in Wales is a joint venture between Basic Skills Cymru and the Welsh Books Council and is funded through the National Basic Skills Strategy for Wales on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government.