Part 4: The 'Heads' and the head of the valley

I’ve had to reflect a bit on the 19-year-old me. While I was able to talk you down from an intense acid trip, tell stories from the Bhagavad Gita, recite poems from Kahlil Gibran, interpret your reading of the I Ching, or prescribe you the correct Bach flower remedy, I had only basic practical skills. I could wire up an amplifier, change a plug or replace a piece of fuse wire. We were jointly about 95% cerebral and looked at the cottage as place in another universe, on a parallel plane. Bleancwm (the house at the head of the valley) was going to present some challenges. Summer was magnificent. Nothing seemed a problem. We found a valley by a stream where we could walk and sunbathe naked, read uninterrupted, and indoors we could sit cross legged in silence for hours. We had the electricity connected, so we had light bulbs and plugs for a record player. We never had TV, and the nearest phone was in a box about 2 miles away. The local shop had a van which came round once a fortnight, there was a travelling library that called once a month. Nearby hippies would drop in and introduce themselves, invite us to visit, and offer help with tools and labour to get jobs done.

That first year in Bleancwm was, of course, wonderful. We had been given back that great gift, TIME. Days rolled into weeks and weeks into months. Friends from the city came to stay and wondered at the Yin Yang signs painted on the fireplace, the home-made bread, and the huge pot of never-ending vegetable stew that sat on the range for weeks just being added to as needed.

I became, almost overnight, a practical person. When we needed to put in a water supply from the nearby spring, I would order books from the library and read manuals and discuss the jobs with people who had recently done something similar. Same with replacing the old tin roof, putting a floor in the barn, or building a chicken house. When we decided to branch out from candle making, I got the plans to a Bernard Leach Kick-wheel, and scavenged the front wheel of a tractor as the flywheel, timber from the nearby landfill tip, and had the welding done by a neighbour, Hugh, down in the valley, who was building a geodesic dome from offcuts of box profile tin roofing. Almost everybody I met, all those we talked to and friends who visited, were genuinely concerned with the state of the world, the nature of human condition and were actively involved with creating, or at least living, change. Heady days of 1972.

On Saturdays we would drive down to the Market town of Carmarthen, rent a stall in the market and sell our wares, a few ‘bought in’ love beads, large Rizlas. and sometimes items made by friends. It was almost enough to live on, we had sworn not to live off the state that we so derided and wouldn’t apply for benefits, we would live off our wits. We were wholly vegetarian and would eat sparingly, whole food, brown rice, rolled oats, nuts and dried fruit, locally grown veg, and occasional home-grown stuff, though this had proved a bit of a steep learning curve for me.

A group of 'heads' over near Crymych had set up a wholefood co-op, buying bulk rice, beans, oats and the like, and we drove over a couple of times to stock up on stores, but it was a bit haphazard and unreliable. So, we decided to buy some bulk, do a 10% mark up and bag and sell some on our market stall. The market manager had taken a shine to us and let us have a stall with a storage box underneath so we didn’t have take everything backwards and forwards. The market stall was very popular. People would already travel into Carmarthen for the hustle and bustle of a market day and, once discovered, we became part of people’s regular weekly or monthly shopping trips. Some of the bigger 'communes' and ‘communities’ would pre-order items that I would source and bring in specifically for them. For a few weeks we gained some notoriety with the local population after it was revealed in the tabloid press that Elizabeth Taylor’s son had become a ‘long-haired hippy’ and was living somewhere in West Wales, looking not unlike me (or a dozen other brown haired 6ft hippy blokes). Local farmers wives would sidle over to the stall, buy a candle or necklace and ask me how my mother was, I never confirmed or denied it, it was after all, quite good for business.

Hillary (and Miriam visiting) while I was installing the bathroom

The plans for the Leach kick wheel