Lionel and Nathaniel were as alike as any two men aged twenty years apart. Both shared broad faces and prominent foreheads, topped by luxuriant dark brown hair. Nathaniel was the taller of the two, by a good three inches, a testimony to his father’s insistence on a healthy diet denied to the older man in the hard times of his youth. Otherwise, their heritage shone through in the way they carried themselves, their choices and actions; and the quirky speech mannerisms marking them out as different to the melange of Grangetown’s habitués.

They sat in the front room of a small terraced house facing the southern edge of Cardiff, with just a broad strip of green known locally as “The Mall” between them and the Bristol Channel. Continue reading →