BBC

First, as visitors to this site might expect, a word concerning the old Kardomah and the circle of friends who met there. It can never be complete, of course, so much having passed beyond recollection since we were together in those spacious rooms over Castle street. And since the man writing this note is presently 90 years old (the last, then, of all that circle to be alive ) it is unlikely the inevitable gaps will ever be filled. I wish this were not the case, for merely to have outlived one’s contemporaries is a melancholy distinction. I still miss these people, Dylan, Fred, Tom and Mabley Owen especially. Of Dylan, enough has surely been written. My intention Is to bring to mind the presence of others no less brilliant in conversation, no less gifted with personal charm. In particular I want to emphasise the achievements of Daniel Jones of whom far too little has been said. His genius – I choose the word after deliberation, believing him to be a major composer of the first rank – has never received the recognition which was its due. He deserves to be regarded as Dylan’s equal in the field of creation, not as an extra, or a spear-bearer or as one to be dismissed lightly as ‘Dylan’s friend’. Here and now I invite all who knew him, all who admire his work, all who would like to make amends, to write to me at this website and make their contributions. This is a subject to be discussed later in some detail, and I should appreciate any help I can get. There is much I have never understood about public reaction to his work – so much that I missed while living and traveling abroad. Why, for instance, in the persistent, shameless boosting conducted by the chamber of commerce to attract tourists do we hear so little about Dan Jones? Why should it be no longer possible to purchase recordings of his work? Let others more closely in touch with the music scene in post-war Britain send me their thoughts in detail and at length. I shall be grateful. This subject has yet to receive the attention it deserves.

Material for our website, Kardomah, will not be hard to come by. My hope is, of course, to amuse. We shall see. Meanwhile, I invite visitors to skip lightly over the next few paragraphs, jottings written with an eye to the record and not without embarrassment.

It was my good fortune to pass many hours in the Kardomah not only on popular days (Saturdays) but on weekdays too thanks to the leisure which my work paradoxically afforded. No coffee house could have been more convenient, since it was just across the road from the offices of the Evening Post newspaper where I was employed. One duty assigned to me in those years was to make 'morning calls', a routine which involved -- or rather which should have involved -- a leisurely progress on foot between the hospital, the police station and ships in port. In practice I could always find time to enjoy an hour or so of conversation in our time-honoured corner. Or, if no one else happened to be there, no matter, the Kardomah itself was still a good place to be, just as it was, a perfect café now I think of it Dylan liked it, too; he could be sure of finding excellent talk there. My recollections of the place date from the year I started working for the Post (1934?) Dylan, briefly a reporter at the same time as myself, was in the process of leaving the paper and preparing his assault on literary London. (But he and I were in the habit of meeting there even before then, in Grammar School days when editing the school magazine was used as a pretext for cutting classes). I realize now that a great deal of the latitude allowed me was due to the kindness of Edward Job in overlooking long absences from the news room. It is true that in time these Kardomah mornings became something of a cultural institution, one recognized as such if only tacitly. But there never was such thing as a Kardomah Group in the sense usually applied to people who meet to reinforce artistic or social aims they possess in common. We were far too individualistic for that. We had no manifesto to publish, no theory of art to propose. Janes and Vernon, and certainly Dan and Dylan, would have been be uneasy about ever using the word 'group'. And we never did. . . Our purpose in meeting was simply to talk and exchange news in the wittiest and most lively way we knew, which we did at great length and to some effect for a decade or so of ‘the great depression’ during which more material pleasures were largely beyond our means anyway.
A few years ago the Welsh arm of the BBC had a notion to re-unite survivors of the Kardomah days a collection of old crumblies of whom I am presently one, to reminisce about time spent together so long ago. I have no idea what they said, though no doubt a tape exists somewhere. Fred told me later when I saw him and Mary Ross in London that he had denied the very existence of a Kardomah group, but that if there was one, I had started it. Perhaps others shared this view. I do not know. I was in America. I do not even know if the notes I sent were helpful. I do know, however, that in our Kardomah circle the BBC was ever an unseen presence, a force in our lives never to be taken lightly, albeit shifty, unpredictable, treacherous. For young composers, especially, the organisation was a nightmare.