tempus fugit

By ceridwen

"I like my bike" *

One of two currently occupying the windows of our heritage centre. It belonged to Frederick George Palmer who lived in the town for the first half of the 20th century. He was the church organist and a music  teacher and he used the bike to get around town carrying his scores in box attached to the crossbar. When Mr Palmer died in 1956, aged 78,  his bike fell into the hands of the local undertaker whose son Bill  can be seen riding it on the harbour quay when scenes from the film Under Milk Wood were  shot there in 1971.

The bike in the other window  (extra) also has a notable connection.  It originally belonged to DJ Williams, illustrated, a teacher at the town's secondary school and an ardent Welsh natonalist. In 1936 he served a prison sentence at Wormwood Scrubs for his involvement in an arson attack on a RAF bombing school in North Wales. As a teacher here in the 50s  DJ used the bike to get around the several chapels in which he preached. He eventually gave it to a  local lad who had need one. This  man, Lynn Davies, used it for the rest of his life for work and recreation (it was often be to seen leaning against the wall of a pub).  When he died in 2017 it passed to his daughter who lent it for the display.

* "I like my bike" is reputed to have been Dylan Thomas's first poem as a young child. It was written on a peice of card used as a collar stiffener.

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