Welsh Journals

It wasn't until the next day, when I attempted the identical round on my own, that I discovered that each hole, despite all the elaborate machinery for re-identification, had obliterated all recol- lection of the previous one that in fact all the holes had merged into one vague composite idea of hole-ness that had neither material reality nor a local habitation. I suspect there was a twinkle in Charlie's eye whenever he asked that recurrent question, Think you'll remem- ber this one ? I thought of the assurance about Goat's Hole given to one of our members by another, You can't miss it Things went better with lobster holes, for they are larger and more characteristic, easier to recognise when you stumble across them. You know a crab-tenancy by the feel and sound of his shell a lobster, having more room to manoeuvre, grabs your hook with his claw. But you still have to turn him into a displaced person, which is less easy, especially as most of us tend to make a strategic withdrawal when such a strangely-built piece of armour darts between our bare legs backwards. Once you get excited, says Charlie, you've lost your lobster. Just coax him to the edge of the pool, where your waiting left hand can gently seize the one part of his body which makes you invulnerable. You needn't be afraid Charlie hasn't been nipped in over fifty years, though on one occasion, when carrying a bagful of crabs on his back, he lost a piece of his waistcoat. And Charlie once got a lobster weighing nearly eight pounds. My excursions with Charlie were both entertaining and instructive, but I am indebted to him most for showing me one lobster-hole that nearly always yields a victim without having to play with the con- founded thing when I'm up to my neck in a pool. It's what he calls a trap," a small basin with no direct channel leading to a larger pool or even to the sea. Any father who has returned weary and empty-bagged to his waiting family, with his children running to lisp their sire's return while all the other families on the beach hear their shouts of Got anything, Dad ? will know how grateful I am to Charlie for the one single hole I remembered, that better 'ole which has so often saved me the ignominy of the most depressing of replies, No, lad, nothing doing today." Elis Jenkins. SURVEY OF FOOTPATHS The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act (1949) Part IV, lays on County Councils the statutory duty of producing maps with all the public footpaths of the county marked upon them. As a preliminary, a survey has to be carried out and for this the County Council has to rely principally on the Parish Councils. In Glamorgan, the Parish Councils were directed in the summer of 1950 to submit six-inch to the mile maps of their parishes showing the paths regarded