A Singular Holiday

I suppose I should have started at the beginning: John Page, Castro & ap Siôn came to see me in Merthyr in the summer of 1979, we finished up in my flat with me sleeping on the floor, but just before then we'd been eating strong curries in Hal Al's Indian restaurant, we call them Indian because of the sub-continent but most of the owners and their staff are from Bangladesh, and the meals are named after the ports of call of the Bangladeshee sailors, however I digress, Gareth ap Siôn told me that he was leaving later that week for a fortnight's holiday in Brittany with two friends and that there was room for one more; I told him that I was beginning my holidays and I would love to go with them; after the meal they ran out without paying, I followed them, and for some inexplicable reason ap Siôn found my wallet in his pocket the following morning; they went home to Cardiff, I went back to the restaurant, where I was a regular, to pay and apologize. A few days later we were on our way to Plymouth, where they wouldn't allow me on the ferry; they spent the evening in Ty Coz, Morlaix whilst I watched a James Bond film alone in a local cinema. I got off the ferry the following morning where Gareth, Ian Perryman & their friend Stewart met me with a bottle of gin for my breakfast, we got in the car 'en route' for Louis l'Officiel's house in Poullaouen with a stop at 'The Embuscade' Berrien where to have a quick drink, we were meant to stop a while only a few hundred yards down the road at the 'Temps des Cerises' where Gareth had been the year before and was run by Jean-Louis Nano whom I'd met in a Cardiff pub 'The New Ely' a year or two previously when he told me that he had ambitions to open a bar in the Monts d'Arrée. (Gareth was famous for all the Bretons who used to stay at his flat). We got to the pub, it was a monday, it closed on mondays, we carried on to Louis's house where the door was and still is always open, he'd left a note saying that he couldn't meet us that afternoon because he was at work, but he gave us an address in Plouye for an evening rendezvous; as we were thirsty by this time we thought we'd get there early; we walked in, Elise was serving behind the bar, there was a huge chimney that Stewart & Perryman tried climbing, which led Elise to phone up the road asking if some of their mentally ill inmates had escaped. It was monday July 29; 5 days later I was celebrating my 28th birthday with Elise with whom I was to spend my second week while the others carried on driving around Brittany meeting up with old friends. After our holidays we were back in Cardiff waiting for Louis, Elise and a gang of Bretons who were coming for the Eisteddfod in Caernarfon. I had to ask my boss for an extra week because we were only allowed two weeks summer holidays, if he'd refused I wouldn't be writing this. There was one big tent, in the middle of the night Louis put up a smaller one just to accomodate Elise & me, we spent a week together, at the end of which the Bretons including Elise left for home and I went back to Merthyr. One morning a month later I was leaving my flat on the way to work, only when I opened the front door there was a girl sitting on the step who turned out to be Elise. This time there were no more holidays, so I installed her in the flat; we spent some more time together, she proposed, I came back to Brittany with her, we were married the following January, Morwen was born in August, Dewi two years later, and now Dewi is the same age as I was when the story began.