Dinas Studios!

 

After bidding farewell to Jimmy and the bowlers of Maindy I saw an advertisment from a gentleman who was selling the lease and goodwill on a business in the Royal Stuart Workshops, James Street, Cardiff. I was 22 years of age and ready to become a self employed businessman after failing my exams and being sacked twice (Did I mention that before?) Unit 4 Dinas Studios. I started walking down here from the Canton Flat before moving down to my present abode in Grungetown, Cardiff.  So September 1988 I looked out of the back window and saw the fading picture of Lynette White on an A4 Poster on a lampost by ironically enough the old Butetown Police Station.
I have alluded to Mental Health earlier but what I omitted to say was that before coming down to Cardiff from North Wales, I spent two weeks under observation at the North Wales Medical Centre under Dr Dafydd Alun Jones after suffering a breakdown.
"Its got nothing to do with Kairdiff, he brought his misery with him".
 My life, not for the first time imploded after being stopped for drinking and driving on the Denbigh by Pass(Shame)and after losing my licence for eighteen months. I was living in Colwyn Bay and travelling every day to Kinmel Bay to work in a.....Printers(Aaaaaaaaagghhh!) It was the Curse of the Conservative Party again because if the shame of drinking and driving wasn't enough, the drink had been imbibed in the Conservative Club in Ruthin where I knew there was a female I might impress by getting very drunk. I was completely unconscious and depressed and fundamentally unhappy but had no insight whatsover. I thought this was what everybody's life was like. I started cycling a bike and then catching a bus and then as the Crossville was trundling up the hill to Colwyn Bay, I thought I'll return to the land of my birth, South Wales. I wouldn't need a car in Kairdiff. The diagnosis I had been given by Dr Dafydd Alun was 'Extreme Sensitivity' what perhaps might now be classified as 'Hypersensitive'. A 'Bipolar' Label at that age might not have been helpful as I would have started on a medicine regime that would have resulted by now in side affects I'm sure.  I left the Medical Centre and North Wales in denial. I returned to the South Wales of my birth in denial. Not knowing that I had a serious Mental Health Condition, I spent every day with mood swings that might have floored many but which I dealt with by drinking and smoking (Cigarettes) in copious amounts.
Two events stand out in my mind from Dinas Studios.
One early morning I turned on the radio and heard the following.

"Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flightfrom London Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. On Wednesday, 21 December 1988, the aircraft flying this route — a Boeing 747–121 registered N739PA and named “Clipper Maid of the Seas” — was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Eleven people in Lockerbie, in southern Scotland, were also killed as large sections of the plane fell in the town and destroyed several houses, bringing total fatalities to 270. As a result, the event is also known as the Lockerbie bombing. During the 2011 Libyan civil war a former government official claimed that Muammar Gaddafi had personally ordered the attack".


A Global Tragedy that like Lynette White's murder has had reverbrations throughout the following decades. What I couldn't understand was that I started sobbing. I didn't know the victims, it had no personal relevance to me but I locked the Unit's door, sat down in the seat behind the counter and sobbed. Another event related to the radio was hearing on the Welsh News that an elderly lady in Old Colwyn had been attacked in her own home by two intruders. She was my landlady in York Street, Colwyn Bay, after I was released from the Medical Centre. She was a dear, sweet old lady who had moved up to North Wales to be near her sister. She gave me a book as I left 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam' and wrote to Dafydd with kind thoughts in the front cover. I knew immediately from the news flash that this was Mrs Bailey. Like ET, I phoned home to have this news confirmed and went to visit her in hospital. She was black and blue around the head and was 92 at the time.
Dinas Studios was not going well. I was getting phonecalls asking about rehearsal times for the Soap Opera 'Dinas' which was showing on S4C. I was having problems with the machinery, an old Gestetner machine which had been left was now misbehaving and I made a mistake by purchasing a Multilith sheet fed from the Exchange and Mart. I spent hours shouting and kicking this machine much to the mirth and amusement of the stained glass workshop next door. Another neighbour was a very miserable man who fixed fruit machines. He was forever scowling and complaining about me cleaning my ink rollers in the communal sink. Across the corridor, the musician Dave Burns from the Hennesseys had a unit and upstairs was an independent Film Company called Gaucho run by the Musician and Film Director Endaf Emlyn. Ironically years later I sent a Film Script in to them which was accepted as a work in progress. It was called 'After The Asylum'. After closing the doors after each day's disappointments I would meet up with my friend from 'The Printers' and we would waste my money and time in the old Cardiff Pubs.
It wasn't going well. I had to wear many hats and coping with my high and low moods and hangovers proved too much. A kind man from Williamstown in the Rhondda, Bill Cheal, was a typesetter in the Castle Arcade. He offered a partnership and with that brought new machines and more business. I was getting disillusioned. I was thinking about life outside of Printing and in August of 1989 I sold what was left of the goodwill to Bill and wished him well. A couple of years afterwards I was watching the underwhelming Wales Today and was amazed to see the buildings above shown in a news report regarding forged American Express cheques. Apparently a Police Sting had lured Bill's son into a forging scam. The case collapsed but all Bill's hard work after taking over was for nothing. The case collapsed after another example of Police Corruption. Hey Ho! Happy Days!