The news brought back memories of tranquil moments in one of the store’s cafes when Owen was a toddler. In October 2010 I described lunch there as an oasis of calm.
The Bethany chapel within Howells
Howells must be the only department store in the country with a chapel. When the store took over the site, rather than demolishing the old Bethany baptist chapel the owners incorporated it in the shop.
In truth, we were a David Morgan family. Howells seemed rather posh to us, and so we would head to Morgan’s nearby store for a coffee, Santa’s grotto – or in the case of my parents, to order new carpets. For years they kept a carrier bag commemorating Morgan’s centenary in 1979. Back then no one would have suspected that the store would be gone within 30 years. As a small child I was impressed by the Oak Room restaurant although we never had anything to eat or drink there. (In the 1970s it was disfigured by garish panels, as if the store management were embarrassed by the retro look.)
Both stores sprawled endearingly. Howells once included a bridge over Wharton Street linking its two buildings. (Waterstones now occupies the old Howells annexe.) Morgan’s was bisected by the Morgan Arcade, which still contains quirky independent shops and cafes.
Howells and David Morgan are two of a long list of vanished Cardiff department stores: Debenhams, Evan Roberts, Allders (Mackross), Seccombes and Marments to name just the ones I remember.
But the store I miss the most is Lears. This wonderful bookshop was a treasure trove, and I doubt my love of reading would have been so deep today were it not for hours spent in Lears as a child. At first I was hooked on the usual Enid Blyton bestsellers but I also fell under the spell of Jackdaws: a fascinating series of folders that illustrated historical topics with facsimiles of related documents. For example, the Battle of Britain one included an identity card and a copy of a 1940 Daily Mirror. I added my grandfather’s wartime identity card to that one.
Would we mourn the demise of Amazon in the same way? I doubt it!
On Friday 24 March, we said farewell to my wonderful father, Bob Skinner. Here is the tribute that Mylo, Bob’s oldest great grandchild, gave at the lovely funeral service at Penarth Methodist Church, conducted by Rev Catherine Lewis.
Mylo and Bob at Glamorgan county cricket ground Cardiff, 2017
I will miss Bob dearly; he was such an amazing great grandfather.
I fondly remember my visits to Owy and Bob’s. We would always go for a walk along the pier, normally followed by an ice cream. On reflection, I now fully appreciate and am grateful for how he would always make the time and effort to play football with me in parks and gardens, despite being in his 80s. He was such a caring, impressive and giving person.
Bob had so much time for everyone which I often got to witness first hand with my little sisters. During visits, he would constantly talk to and play with them despite them being very loud and energetic. Whenever we would visit Bob at his flat in Penarth he would cook an amazing roast dinner which tasted as though he had been perfecting over the last 80 years. This was one of the highlights of visiting him considering I have vegetarian parents.
Bob with his new teeth, January 2023
As a child I always enjoyed writing stories which I think was influenced by Bob, he would frequently ask me to read them to him and would enquire about when I’d be starting my next one, interested in the topic or draft storyline. As I grew up, I gained a greater understanding of Bob and his career as a successful journalist. I’m certain this has contributed to me choosing to study journalism at university. I was very recently given an assignment to write a story about something “untold” in my local area. Thankfully when Robert came to visit us, he suggested I write about Bob’s teeth saga. I emailed Bob and despite him being in a hospital bed he still managed to reply and help me gather additional information about his unfortunate situation. I really appreciated his interest and input – I am so grateful that he had the time to help me, it really emphasises how much cared for and valued his family. I emailed him back the final version, I so hope that he got a chance to read it. I’m sure he would have enjoyed seeing his great grandson take footsteps on a similar path to the ones he took (albeit without a Fresher’s week).
It was a real shock to hear of his passing, and desperately sad. When my Mum and I visited him in hospital he seemed to be getting so much better, he was certain that he was going home to be able to live independently. That was something that I really admire about Bob, how he was so determined and positive, even in his 90’s. Bob was someone who I really looked up to and someone I will continue to look up to. I hope that as a great grandson I have made him proud.
This is one of three tributes to Bob from his funeral service. Read the others below:
On Friday 24 March, we said farewell to my wonderful father, Bob Skinner. Here is the tribute that my son, Bob’s youngest grandson Owen, gave at the lovely funeral service at Penarth Methodist Church, conducted by Rev Catherine Lewis.
Bob Skinner 1926 – 2023
Growing up, I have always felt close to Bob. Despite living two and a half hours away from him and Owy, I still saw them enough to develop a deep and loving relationship with them as my Grandparents. I would always look forward to those precious visits to Wales; some of my favourite memories at Windsor Court, their old flat, are of us watching ‘Happy Feet’ in front of their TV, learning how to use their stair lift, and playing the game ‘Shut the Box’ in their living room.
Christmas Day Zoom call with Bob, 2021
As all of us here will have experienced, COVID disrupted all of our lives when it arrived, but it never stopped Bob. At the age of 93 he was able to crack the great enigma that had been troubling the older generations for years: How to use Zoom. Instead of losing precious time with Bob, we were able to see each other twice a week through a screen, and he was able to watch our dog, Rufus, join the family. In late 2020, Bob was struck down by the virus, and we thought it may be the end. Nevertheless, Bob never gave in, and was able to relentlessly fight the disease whilst still being able to deliver regular Zoom calls to us. If Bob is known for anything, it is his fighting spirit.
On Friday 24 March, we said farewell to my wonderful father, Bob Skinner. Here is the tribute I gave at the lovely funeral service at Penarth Methodist Church, conducted by Rev Catherine Lewis.
This is the day I never thought would arrive. Bob was the great survivor, the last of his generation in our family. His mother Gwen lived to 102. He even once used the word Everlasting in a password!
But Bob slipped the surly bonds of Earth on 21 February, after a life well lived. He had written the last chapter of a thrilling story, and today is a celebration of that remarkable life. I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you for being here, for your kind and comforting messages over the past month – and for your support during Bob’s twilight months. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi i gyd.
Robert Charles Skinner, 27 November 1926 – 21 February 2023
Ten years ago, I had one of the most wonderful evenings of my life.
I was having dinner with my father, Bob Skinner, at Penarth Yacht Club in Wales. A few hours earlier my mother Rosemary had had a successful cancer operation at the age of 84, and we were celebrating. Dad spoke movingly about losing his father Frank when he was 16 in 1942, and his deep regret that he never had the chance to get to know him. For the very first time, I admitted to Dad that when I was 16 I was scared the same thing would happen. (Dad’s grandfather also died young.)
Happily, Dad remained a precious part of my life for 43 years after I passed the milestone of turning 16. But those days have now come to an end. He slipped the surly bonds of Earth on 21 February, and I will always be grateful for the time we had together. He was an inspiration to me: his zest for life, his sense of fairness and his way with words lit up my life. I followed him into public relations, and one of the proudest days of my life was when we stood on the terrace of the House of Lords after I was made a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations almost 40 years after Dad himself became a Fellow.
I’ll write again about Dad in the coming weeks. I have a lifetime of memories, together with Dad’s extensive writing about his life and work, to cherish. I couldn’t have wished for a better father. Thanks, Dad. I will always love you.
Christmas is such a precious time, even for those of us who aren’t religious. It is a time for reflection, yet we often invest such unrealistic expectations of the festival that we risk feeling disappointed. Happily I have almost universally happy memories of Christmas past.
This year is a poignant one for our family, as my father Bob Skinner is in hospital, marking his unhappiest Christmas since 1942, days after his father died. We had planned for Dad to spend Christmas with us. I have been blessed with countless happy Christmas years, so I should not feel downhearted. Instead, I have been looking back on Christmas memories – especially during my childhood years.
1967
Grove Place, Penarth: venue for the first Christmas I can remember
Christmas 1967 is the first Christmas I can remember. Unusually we were staying with my maternal grandmother, perhaps out of sympathy after she was widowed when my grandfather died suddenly just before Christmas the previous year. 15 Grove Place was a cold house, without central heating. It had fireplaces in every bedroom, although I can only remember a fire in the living room. Dad was ill with flu and spent the whole time in bed, which was the warmest place to be.
Rob and his sister Beverley with their grandfather, Penarth, 1966
I have warm memories of my grandfather, Grampy, even though I had only just turned three when he died. I recall him shelling peas in the living room, perhaps on the day captured in the rare photo of my early childhood seen above. A decade ago my late mother told how my grandfather felt his way home along the wall that lined the back lane in an air raid. My grandmother was under the hairdryer in the hair salon in Penarth when the air raid siren wailed out over the town. The hairdressers raced to the bomb shelter and only later remembered that grandma was under the dryer, oblivious to the drama. I bet she never forgave them!
That house was a time capsule. The front room followed the Edwardian tradition of being kept for special occasions – happy or sad. My grandmother had good taste, and the furniture, presumably dating from the 1920s, was elegant and well preserved. In the middle room was a selection of books, including David Lloyd George’s two volume war memoirs, still in their delivery package. After Grandma died in 1981 I found the 1969 calendar I had made her in my first term at school.
1969
This Christmas, we stayed with my other grandmother, Nanny, who lived with my aunt Dorothy and uncle George. It was a much more hospitable venue – I loved my Nan so much, who was the perfect grandmother. (Dorothy and George were wonderful hosts.) It was a special family Christmas, with my cousins Valerie and Wendy also still living at home. Yet my most vivid memory, lying in bed on Christmas Eve, was seeing Father Christmas late that evening, placing a stocking with presents. Spoiler alert: I presume this was Dad or Uncle George, but I will never know for sure.
1970
Christmas 1970, with Mum and sister Beverley
This is the first Christmas I remember at home. We had moved to England when I was two, and typically went home to Wales for Christmas and other holidays. For some reason this year we stayed at home in Whitton, Middlesex, and enjoyed the first white Christmas I can remember. I remember Dad making a sledge from a baker’s tray – yet in pancake-flat Whitton the expectation was more exciting than the reality. We went to friends on Boxing Day, and I thoroughly enjoyed this novel Christmas. The following year we moved back to Wales.
1979
I shouldn’t have such happy memories of my pre-O levels Christmas. I’d sat my mock exams just before Christmas, and was already planning my expectation management after what I knew was a disastrous performance in Chemistry. (I didn’t manage expectations very well – my 22% still came as a shock to Mum and Dad…)
Dad found my maternal grandmother (mentioned in the 1967 Christmas note above) unconscious under her bed on Christmas morning. He called his cousin, the lovely Dr Donald Dymond, whose on-call colleague paid a house visit. She declared that my grandmother was not in any danger, and would revive with no ill effects, which indeed happened on Boxing Day. This provided great excitement to me as a 16 year old, especially as it spared me the usual ritual of going round to my sister’s in-laws for the ordeal of sitting at their Christmas dinner table for five hours. I much preferred our resulting unplanned festive dinner of cheese and biscuits.
My sister was 26 in 1979, 10 years older than me, and we were at our closest as I was better placed as a teenager to appreciate her adult sensibilities. On 27 December we all went into Cardiff and enjoyed a snack in the cafe in Howell’s department store, before I spent some Christmas money in my favourite shop: Lear’s booksellers. Later, we went for a family walk along disused railways near Creigiau, where the Barry Railway crossed the Taff Vale Railway. (I would love to retrace that long-ago family walk, 43 years on.) The following day, we came home from another shopping trip in Cardiff to find my grandmother sitting in our living room in the dark. We’d not realised we’d be home after dark…
Cardiff suffered severe flooding just after Christmas 1979, as the river Taff broke its banks, and we were very glad that we lived well above the city’s rivers and lakes.
1981
At home, Cardiff, 27 December 1981Our house, January 1982
1981 was not, strictly speaking, a white Christmas. The real winter began in the new year. But it was the snowiest winter of my lifetime, as I blogged here.
This was my first adult Christmas, graced by my one year old niece Siân. I was so fortunate to become an uncle at an early age as it gave me the chance to see Siân and later Ria (born 1982) develop when I was myself still growing up during my teenage and young adult years. I was also conscious that this was the last Christmas before A levels and university. A rite of passage.
2008
Mum, Dad, me and 5 month old Owen
My first Christmas as a father. Happily, Owen spent time with all four grandparents. My mother especially was boosted by the arrival of her bonus grandson 19 years after the birth of her previous grandchild, my sister’s son Ben. was lucky that I had changed jobs just after Owen was born. Our offices closed between Christmas and New Year and everyone had time off, which avoided any arguments about who should work between Christmas and New Year.
This has been just a small selection of my Christmas memories. Christmas remains a special time for me, offering a chance to reflect, relax and enjoy the company of family. I’m looking forward to many more festive memories in the years to come.
My grandfather Frank, left, and father Bob, right. Margate 1938
My grandfather died 80 years ago today. I was born 21 years after his passing, so Frank Skinner lives on in my father Bob’s precious shared memories of the father he lost when he had just turned 16.
Dad recorded his memories of that terrible day in December 1942 in a poignant, brilliantly observed blogpost two years ago: “At sixteen I had just started work as the Penarth Times reporter and was in Penarth police court when called home. My father was seriously ill. I knew before I got there that he had died. It was from a heart attack. He was 52.”
Dad went on to reflect on the sense of shock and loss: “Like this year [the coronavirus Christmas, 2020], it was an unusual [wartime] Christmas with families separated, celebrations muted. I remember very little of those few days, and have no recollection of Dad’s funeral. I did go out one evening, to join our church’s young people’s group carol singing. Mum thought it would do me good to get out of the house for an hour. Looking back, the saddest part was that I had so little time to get to know Dad.”
When I was 16, I was fearful of history repeating itself and losing my own father at an early age. (Dad’s grandfather had also died young, so I had reason to be concerned.) Ten years ago I told Dad of these fears for the first time, during a wonderful, celebratory dinner to mark Mum’s successful cancer operation in January 2013. Now, as Dad faces Christmas in hospital, I reflect on his extraordinary life, and his memories of losing a much-loved father 80 years ago.
I’m also thinking about the lovely grandfather I never knew. Here he is above in his Great War army uniform. Frank survived the catastrophe of the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, and before the second world war forbade Dad from joining the school cadet corps because of his horror of war – a similar emotion that inspired Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany.
Dad told me that his father featured in the national press after Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935. Frank featured in photos of two barges named Italy and Abyssinia. He was on Abyssinia and was throwing stones at the boat named Italy. It would be fun to track down the images in the newspaper archives for 1935.
Frank died almost exactly half way through the second world war, not knowing what tragedies his family might endure as Bob and his elder brother Bert entered adulthood. Happily, all lived to celebrate VE Day and VJ Day in 1945. As my father has noted, they never lived together as a family again, but remained close, a precious closeness that we all share to this day.
It is heartbreaking when the NHS fails the people it’s dedicated to help.
When my father Bob Skinner was brought home by air ambulance from Spain on 2 July, I was mightily relieved. It had been a huge battle getting him home after an accident on holiday, and it wouldn’t have happened without the valiant support of Dad’s MP, Stephen Doughty and his team. Yet his ordeal was only just beginning.
Fading hopes
Dad is still in hospital five months later. He has also been unable to eat properly for those five endless months, because the Cardiff & Vale university health board lost his dentures when transferring him between hospitals at the start of July. Shamefully, Cardiff & Vale has totally failed to take any responsibility for putting right the loss and getting Bob a replacement set of teeth. I made a formal complaint to Cardiff & Vale in September. Three months on – a quarter of a year on – we have had a string of broken promises to sort things out. I have twice asked Bob’s member of the Senedd, the economy minister Vaughan Gething, to help. Vaughan’s team contacted the ‘concerns’ team at Cardiff & Vale, but got nowhere. I feel so bad at failing to get the NHS to help Dad. But if Vaughan Gething, the Welsh government’s health minister through the worst days of the pandemic, can’t do anything, what hope do I have? Do I have to write to @PrifWeinidog (first minister) Mark Drakeford?
I say this to Suzanne Rankin, chief executive of Cardiff & Vale university health board. How would you feel if it was your father who was being neglected so badly? Can you imagine what it’s like for a 96 year old type 2 diabetic, constantly fobbed off and living off lukewarm soup and ice cream? Please, take responsibility and end the neglect. As a veteran who served in the army during the second world war, Bob deserves so much better. No one denies that the NHS is under huge strain, but Bob is just the latest example of how the service all too often lets down the most vulnerable and has to be chased repeatedly when things go wrong.
Happier days: Bob praises pandemic care home workers on primetime TV, April 2020
It’s heartbreaking seeing Dad in such a plight. He has an unquenchable spirit, although the past five months have tested his resolve to the limit. Back in the early days of the pandemic, he repeatedly went on national television to praise his care home workers. Our first lockdown reunion appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. And he survived Covid and a fall in his former care home – all experiences that he reported in a pandemic blog which we later turned into an e-book, which featured on BBC Wales Today.
I just hope that Dad’s Llandough ordeal will have a similar happy ending.
PS: I should point out that the medical staff at Llandough have been kind and caring, especially Hannah, Manuel, Siân and Andrea – and there will have been others whose names I do not know. And a decade ago I praised Cardiff & Vale for its amazing work getting staff to its hospitals in a blizzard, enabling my late mother’s cancer operation to go ahead.
PPS: I was grateful to receive a call this morning from a director responsible for dentistry at the Cardiff & Vale university health board. My father’s case now appears to be a priority, which is good news. Thank you, Bev.
POSTSCRIPT
Bob with his new teeth, Friday 13 January
It’s only fair to update this post with praise for Cardiff & Vale university health board’s response to my cry for action. Roz and Bev sprang into action and Bob got his replacement teeth soon after the new year. On a video call just before Christmas, the team explained how they intended to apply the lessons from Bob’s experience, in particular to check that a patient does not leave hospital without their dentures.
Bob has made amazing progress in January, and is now blogging again! You can follow his progress here.
UPDATE
Remembering Bob
Sadly, Bob died on Tuesday 21 February in Llandough hospital. As mentioned above, January was a far happier month for him, as he was able to eat properly for the first time since early July. He was due to return home the day after he died, and we were full of admiration for the care and kindness of Cardiff & Vale university health board staff making the necessary in-home care arrangements, especially Tendai and Therese.
I didn’t plan to go to Vigo, Spain, this month. I’d not given the place a moment’s thought since reading Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning for my school O level exams in 1980. The Gloucestershire writer began his walk through Spain at Vigo in 1935.
But fate brought me to this friendly city in Galicia. Fate and my father. Bob Skinner had been so looking forward to his first holiday for three years. He and my late mother loved taking cruises, and Bob was thrilled to book a week’s voyage to Spain and Portugal on P&O Cruises’s MV Ventura.
My cousin Brenda and her husband Ivor helped him get the compulsory Covid test and he was ready to set sail. But disaster struck within an hour of the liner leaving Southampton Water. Dad fell as he was getting out of a lift and he broke his right hip. The ship’s doctor called me the following day and explained that Bob would be taken to hospital at the first port of call, Vigo. I would soon me on my way to a city I’d not thought about for 42 years.
it has become fashionable to criticise members of parliament, and politicians generally.
”They’re all the same.” How often do we hear that? Yet so many polls show that we hold a higher opinion of our own MP than of politicians generally.
Years ago, many MPs visited their constituency once or twice a year. They regarded councillors as the people to sort out problems experienced by constituents. But now MPs (and members of the Senedd in Wales and of the Scottish parliament) take very seriously their responsibility to help constituents with all manner of problems.
My family has reason to be very grateful for this trend. Years ago, former Welsh first minister Alun Michael helped my parents secure their right to attendance allowances, as we had failed to do so through the normal byzantine process, despite Mum’s near-blindness and Dad’s immobility.
A decade or more later, Alun’s successor as MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, Stephen Doughty, has been magnificent during an even greater crisis.
I wrote a week ago that Dad, Bob Skinner, was embarking on a long-awaited cruise. Sadly, unknown to me, by the time I wrote that post Dad was in the medical bay of P&O Cruises ship MV Ventura. He had fallen getting out of the lift and fractured his hip.
He was looked after magnificently by the P&O Cruises team (note: there is no connection between P&O Cruises and the venal P&O Ferries who sacked its crews a few months ago).
Dad was taken to hospital in the first port it came to, Vigo in northern Spain. He has been looked after wonderfully by Vithas Hospital in Vigo, and I flew out to be with him and support him.
But we had a problem. His travel insurers were not communicating and the hospital was, understandably, concerned whether they would be paid. I then found, to my horror, that Dad had bought travel cover from a company not authorised to sell insurance in the UK. At that point, I thought we were totally alone.
I tweeted Stephen Doughty, Dad’s MP, last night and he phoned me this morning, and promised to help. Within an hour or so, on a Saturday morning, he’d phoned the insurers and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Soon after I had a call from the hospital to say they had just received a guarantee that they would be paid by the insurers. (We’d been about to send £10,000 to the hospital to pay Dad’s bills.) I have rarely been so relieved in my life. Stephen’s intervention was crucial. Just now, the insurers have been in touch about repatriation arrangements. Having been in the depths of despair this morning, I am now feeling confident that we will get Dad home.
Stephen didn’t have to do this. He could have spent a leisurely Saturday morning after a no doubt busy week as an MP and shadow Europe minister. But Stephen cared. He acted. All our family are so grateful.
This isn’t a party political point. MPs of all political colours take their responsibility to constituents very seriously. Friends have spoken of the wonderful support provided by the Lib Dem MP for Chesham and Amersham, Sarah Green. Tragically Jo Cox and David Amess gave their lives in fulfilling that duty. I have met Stephen Timms and Nigel Jones, who were both attacked at their MPs surgeries; sadly Andy Pennington was murdered defending Nigel. I am profoundly grateful for their selfless commitment. So is my father, Bob Skinner.
I’ll end on a family tale. I told Stephen that my mother took Dad’s job as reporter on the Penarth Times in 1944 when Bob joined the army aged 18. The following year, 1945, Mum was very unimpressed when James Callaghan made disparaging comments about the paper during the election campaign that elected him and swept Labour to power. Forty years later, I accompanied Dad to a meeting with by then former prime minister Callaghan (whom I greatly admired) to secure work permits for Hong Kong musicians performing at the Cardiff Festival of Music.
I had just graduated and Sunny Jim asked me what I wanted to do for a living. ”I’d like to go into PR or journalism,” I replied. Ignoring me, he turned to Dad and commented ”They all want to do that now, don’t they!” He wrote a note to then Tory employment minister Alan Clark, got it couriered over and soon after we returned to Cardiff with the crucial work permits, allowing the concert to go ahead at St David’s Hall. An early lesson in the influence of an MP – especially one of very few people to have been chancellor, home secretary, foreign secretary and PM.
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