‘Come on. You’re driving like a bleedin’ granny!’
Out of the corner of his eye, the boy saw a woman crossing the road ahead with a pram. They were going too fast. She tried to run to get across but there wasn’t enough time.
The boy spun the steering wheel left as hard as he could.
‘Mind out!’ Shaun said.
‘Fuckin’ hell!’ the boy shouted, hitting the brake and feeling the tyres skid on the hot tarmac road.
The car slid sideways towards the curb.
We’re gonna flip this on its bloody roof, the boy thought. We’re gonna end up dead.
The tyres hit the curb and the car mounted the pavement. Another woman screamed as her husband pulled her out of the way.
The air was full of the smell of burning rubber as the car smashed two dustbins into the air and then hit a tree with a bump.
For fuck’s sake!
For a moment, they looked at each other, wide eyed and breathing hard.
With the music still blaring, Shaun grinned at his brother. ‘What did you swerve for, you soft twat? You should have run that bitch over!’
‘Oh yeah. And end up getting ten years...’ the boy said, his heart still hammering in his chest.
What a buzz, though! He felt alive – more than alive. He thought about all those mugs who were suffocating at school in double Geography. I don’t feckin care what the capital of Nigeria is, do I?
Trying to open the passenger door, Shaun looked over, ‘It’s jammed. I’ll have to get out your side.’
The boy took a breath as he reached for the door lever. A face came to the window – it was a uniformed police officer. He looked at them both for a moment.
‘Don’t know how you morons didn’t kill someone!’ he growled. ‘I thought you were packing all this shit in, Shaun?’
Shaun knew a lot of the bizzies in the area. He was always getting nicked for something. And most of their family had served time at one point or another. It was just a normal part of life.
Shaun shrugged. ‘I was trying to teach my brother to drive.’
The officer shook his head and looked at the boy, ‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Curtis,’ the boy replied.
‘Curtis Blake,’ the officer said nodding. ‘And how old are you Curtis?’
‘Twelve,’ the boy said.
‘Yeah, but he’s nearly thirteen,’ Shaun said as though that made all the difference.
‘Don’t be a dickhead, Shaun. It’s illegal to drive until you’re seventeen. Get out, the pair of you. You’re coming down the station.’
The story of Dewi Evans
Dinas Padog was a small rural town on the eastern edges of Snowdonia in North Wales. It’s economy had been largely agricultural from the time the Romans left in 400AD for the next fifteen hundred years. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that any great change came to Snowdonia, when recession and the Industrial Revolution triggered massive shifts in population. Thousands moved away from the area, heading east in search of a better life. Some only went as far as the newly expanding coal mines in places such as Gresford. Others headed to the rapidly developing industrial cities of Liverpool and Manchester. And some went even further. Welsh families headed across the Atlantic, making the arduous journey from Liverpool to Quebec to settle in Canada.
In the summer of 1860, a young carpenter, Dewi Evans, left the small family run farm in Dinas Padog and travelled to Liverpool where he joined his cousin Morgan. Dewi immediately found work with a Welsh construction company, building homes for migrant Welsh labourers in Everton. It was here that Dewi met and struck up a friendship with a young architect, Richard Owens, who originally came from Pwllheli. Over the next three decades, Dewi worked with Owens and a team of Welsh builders to transform the Toxteth area of the city. Over ten thousand workers cottages were built along roads that were given Welsh names – Wynnstay, Barmouth and Gwydir. They are still known today as the Welsh Streets. The crowning glory was the construction of the Welsh Presbyterian Church on Princes Road, which soon became known as Toxteth’s Welsh Cathedral.
Dewi Evans returned to Dinas Padog in 1903 with his family, buying land and buildings where his sons began a furniture and carpentry business. Dewi used local tradesmen to transform and expand the site of the town’s school, Ysgol Dinas Padog. The new buildings, including a large main school hall that bore his name, were opened a year before Dewi’s death in 1911.
Ysgol Dinas Padog
June 1994
It was so hot on the playground that the boy’s shirt was sticking to his back. Wiping his sweaty forehead with his palm, the boy controlled the football, looked up and passed it to his mate Owen. The warm air was filled with the shouts of a boisterous lunchtime football match. It had grown to about twenty-a-side as it was nearly time to go in for afternoon lessons.
Jesus! English next. Poetry is enough to make me gouge my own eyes out, he thought. The day before, they had read a poem about slavery that was full of weird words that no one knew. It was called Patois apparently. Mrs Roberts had clapped her hands to show them the rhythm as they chanted the poem as a class. The boy wasn’t really concentrating. He was too busy looking at Mrs Robert’s arse. She might have been in her thirties but she was tidy.
Even though the boy had passed the ball at least two seconds earlier, Steven Mallory came clattering in for a tackle and knocked him flying onto the hot concrete of the playground. The boy landed on his back which took the wind out of him for a few seconds. Getting up and rubbing the grazed palms of his hands, the boy glared at Mallory who grinned back with bits of Prawn Cocktail crisps stuck in his braces. He could smell Mallory’s fishy breath from where he was standing.
‘Oh, sorry, bender,’ Mallory said with a
