Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
place that must live through the year on the takings of three months
must be big, as those places of entertainment must be big that are full
on Saturdays only and empty during the rest of the week. Nothing smaller
would tempt the Railway Companies. (This, by the way, was not altogether
good news for Raymond Briggs. Architecture is not needed for that
broadened base. Any working master-builder can run up houses that are
good enough. The pattern of one is the pattern of all, and Raymond would
have small chance in competition with the bigger men of his profession.)
Nor would it suffice merely to house and feed the people who came. Other
watering-places were awake to the new menace now, so that the rival
announcements on the hoardings resembled a desperate grapple for the
possession of those sixpences and shillings and half-crowns that were
poured without ceasing into the coffers of the Holiday Clubs. Not one in
five hundred of those who contributed those shillings and half-crowns
stopped to think that Wales herself has no Holiday Clubs--that Wales
does not go abroad with a year's savings in her pocket of which it is
black shame to bring as much as a single penny back again. They wanted
amusement. The Resort or Spa that could provide the most amusement would
get the lion's share. Amusements were a more urgent necessity than
chairs and tables and roofs.
So it was that, between this place and that, the people who intended to
have a better time than their fathers had had were in some danger of
being pampered.
The project for the Llanyglo Big Wheel was set a-going.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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