I was a patient for a month to two months in Cothi Ward, St. David’s Hospital, in the summer of 1971.
I remember a friend I made there, Glyn Lewis of Llanelli, a patient like me, and until some years ago, have kept in touch with him. Like me, he speaks Welsh. I remember kicking a plastic football around with him on the grass outside Cothi and other wards.
It was a time when Rev. Irfon Jones was my minister of religion and he called at my home in Boncath almost every day before I went into Cothi Ward. He encouraged me to take my Airfix Jumbo Jet kit with me to Cothi, thinking I might occupy my time by assembling a model of the Jumbo Jet from the kit. As it happened the kit lay untouched on top of a cupboard in the nurses’ office, while I was in Cothi, though I could have assembled some of it if I had wished. (After coming home I did construct a model of that Jumbo Jet.)
Make no mistake, I owe a lot to the, now, late Rev. Irfon Jones. He had suffered a breakdown himself, when as a minister in Liverpool, his chapel had been bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. So, he could sympathise with me, as he too had been through the mill.
I had ECT, electro convulsive therapy, while in Cothi. It made me forget some things – unfortunately the good memories as well as the bad. Thankfully, that was the last time I had ECT.
I have little memory of the staff at Cothi, though I have some vague memory of someone good working there as a nurse.
I had a flirtation with a lady called Primrose, while at Cothi. She was older than me, but I still remember her. I expect she has long passed on by now. God bless her soul.
I remember attending a service in the church; I think it was while I was a patient there.
I think I was sent to a Rehabilitation Centre at Port Talbot after attending Cothi Ward. It was to see what I could do and what I was best at. I remember a sympathetic Occupational Psychologist at the centre.
Afterwards I was employed as a Laboratory Technician in Ysgol y Preseli, thanks to the then headmaster James Nicholas. Mr. Nicholas too had suffered with a breakdown earlier in his life, and was eager to help me, and get me a job.
Such are the few memories I have of this time.