Winter Blog Part 10: After India, Returning to the Welsh mountains.

 When I got back from India, I weighed 7 stone, the jaundice and occasional Delhi Belly had taken their toll. Because of the jaundice I was referred to the hospital for tropical diseases in Paddington and they did blood tests and gave me a prescription for vitamin supplements. 

However, I felt great, I’d had 'hepatitis A' which is the least problematic, no major damage to my liver (slight scaring). I hadn’t ever felt so alive, coming back to the UK, I felt quite enlightened, could appreciate the fabulous privilege of the West, universal health service, the cleanliness of the environment, the comparative wealth and apparent lack of extreme poverty, the ease of communication that a common language brought. I had a clarity of thinking I probably haven’t experienced as vividly since. I was acutely aware of the natural word and my place within it, I could see clearly the way that governments and hierarchies worked and realised that the open corruption and black markets operating in the East were pretty much the same as what had been legalised and hidden in the West. I felt an overwhelming sense of love and compassion for all sentient beings. I was genuinely high on life.

I spent some time at my girlfriend’s parents and we hatched a plan to open an alternative food store, based on our experience of selling some wholefoods on the stall in Carmarthen. It seemed a logical progression, I still refused to take any kind of state benefits. My sister Liz had recently separated from her husband and was in possession of a large flat over her little hairdressers shop in Sutton, there was a small shop window to the right of the entrance that was unused, so we moved in with her, rent free and explored all the food wholesalers and importers around the derelict areas of London’s Docklands.

I revisited “Community Supplies” in an old warehouse building. It was run by a quasi-Christian cooperative and imported container loads of almost everything we would need. They taught me about cooperative values and how business could be conducted in a people led, responsible way, with minimum impact on the environment and at low costs to the consumer. That took the whole process out of the specialist/expensive/ delicatessen style of unusual foodstuffs and placed it back into a community service. There were some good models in cities around the country but nothing much in the rural area that would serve the alternative Welsh communities in South Wales. So 45 years ago at the time of writing we were looking at “unwrapped”, “organic”, "meat free", “low carbon”, “recyclable” “fair trade”. We doubted it would ever catch on, but were driven by like-minded people who wanted it to work. However, it was currently just a plan.

I got some labels printed, some brown paper bags, a sack each of brown Rice, Rolled oats, aduki beans and some boxes of dates, apricots and raisins. For about a week we used my sisters spare shop window to work out some ways to display stuff (we even sold a few bags….) and then packed everything into a van and headed back to Wales.

Rik and Tina had looked after the market stall, but were happy to have us back, the people staying in the cottage moved out and we got back to almost normal. It was odd, we had, prior to India, separated and gone our own ways, now we moved back and were making plans to work jointly at a project. We never really formally discussed it; we just did what felt right. The market stall was a bit difficult to manage with foodstuffs, the storage and moving things back and forth proved a bit of a pain.

Around the outside wall of the covered market were half a dozen derelict 'lock ups' with a door, a four-foot window and a floor space of about 10ft by 4ft, they were antique in appearance but the one on the corner had a sink and running cold water, it had once been a little butcher’s shop, back when the covered market had been a livestock auction. I talked the market manager onto letting us have it for the same price a market table and put in shelves and a small counter, it enabled me to store all the food throughout the week and Rik and Tina could send anyone who wanted food stuffs over to it.  It was a great stop gap, allowing me time to look for a permanent shop premises in the town. I remember locking the door occasionally, almost formed a new romantic alliance.

I got quite involved with Giles’ band, renamed ‘Chaos’ and started playing some gigs around the area. At the same time, I did some deputising with the local blues band run by “Smudger”. I had already been playing hand drums a little and now desired a full kit of my own. I was spending more time out and about with music and other interests, it was also a time that I would visit Thomas as he built his “Mountain Studios”. I found a corner shop, in Mansell Street, just along from the Market entrance, it had been an electrical store and had a large flat, a huge shop space, some back rooms, a side conservatory and a garage. I fell in love with it, and all I needed was a guarantor for the mortgage.

We went to Croydon to talk to Hillary’s parents about the plan and they were much more interested than I would have expected. Her dad thought that it was only a few years before these Welsh towns and rural properties started to be sought after and said the if we sold the cottage for over £5,000 he would put up the rest and guarantee any repayments, he had just one condition. We had to be legally married. We booked a slot at the local registry office and signed the papers within a month.

Hillary sewed me a nice pair of velvet flairs and embroidered me a waistcoat for the occasion. I have no recollection of who our witnesses were, or who else attended but we went back to her parents’ house in Grimwade Avenue and shared a bottle of cheap champagne after. I have only one photo, laying on their back lawn with a glass in hand. The next week we went back to the cottage and told everyone we were selling. An estate agent told us it was worth about £7,000 but a friend (Lock keeper Bob, now with a new partner who already had 4 kids) told us they could only afford £5,000.00 so on the basis that we’d promised to sell for over five thousand we said they could have it if they gave us £5,100.00

Aardvark Wholefoods was born.