John Edward Cooper’s Notes
David Jones
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Early Days Click here for the preferred version of this story. See also David Charles Jones.  1.
So Charlie’s wife died, mourned and wept over, and buried by Charlie and his first-born son. Of this latter, this first fruit of Charlie’s youthful vigour, we cannot now dwell; for Charlie, comforted of his bereavement, chose himself a companion for his encroaching age, named Flo, and on Flo begot a second son, the subject of our narrative.Wednesday 26th July 1950 2. It is said by some that as pains got hold on Flo, and as she lay abed and laboured and travailed, from her loins sprang, fully-formed, adult-proportioned but in miniature, a figure dressed in a dark blue gaberdine mac and school cap, and carrying a square, framed, brass-cornered, tan vinyl document case, walking with bouncing, long-legged strides across the sheets, and saying, “Hello, Mums, I’m Jones; but you can call me David.” 3. And thus it was that David Jones came to his parental Mostonian home: a son to doting Mums and Dads, and cousin to that Middletonian menace, cyclist-conquistador, imperious Gerard (of whom more anon)[more]—David: lopsided-smiling, puckered-faced, chuckling as if half-choking, half-gasping for breath. Summer 1961 4. Youthful Mostonian thugs harassed haughty David Jones. Said Jones to Dads, “The Teddy Boys have been bothering me again.” “Right!” said Dads, discarding Evening News and donning cap.[1] “We’ll move to Blackpool.” Thus they did; though some say Dads’s failing health dictated the departure from Mancunian Moston. Had Jones said, “No, Dads, it’s got to be Southport”, Southport it would have been. But Jones acquiesced in Thornton Cleveleys near Blackpool, so Dads’s decision stood. [1] In perhaps the late 1950s there was an advert on television for cycling proficiency, a cartoon, in which a boy approaches his dad, who is seated reading a newspaper. “Dad, Dad, I want a bike,” the boy says. Without a word, the boy’s father sweeps the newspaper upward, it turns into a hat which he places on his head, and the two walk off. |
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