'Mrs Morgan' was the author of 'A Tour to Milford Haven'.The wife of the Vicar of Ely, she visited Haverfordwest during the C19th.

Her book casts light on the state of the roads at this time. Although the roads in Haverfordwest are deemed good, not many townspeople kept carriages, because the roads leading out of town were 'deplorable'.

Mrs Morgan singles out the turnpike road from Haverfordwest to Honeyborough as being particularly bad.

Ladies often road side-saddle, but Mrs Morgan decides not to. Shefears her mount might stumbleon the many loose stones,throwing her, but she concedes the horses are used to the hazard for: 'It is surprising how the horses lift up their feet over them'.

On her journey to Honeyborough, south of Haverfordwest, Mrs Morgan meets drovers taking large numbers of bullocks to market in England. It couldnot have been apleasant experience, because she writes: 'The journey was attended with many alarms to me'.

Mrs Morgan sympathiseswith thejudges who cameto Pembrokeshire for the Assizes and had to put up with the discomforts of travelling on poor roads.

Local people are not deterred from travelling, however.

In 1851, theomnibus for Carmarthen left Salutation Square on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at eight o'clock in the morning. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdys it departed from 'The Old Swan' at half past elevenin the morning.

Each day an omnibus left 'The King's Arms', bound for Milford Haven.On Tuesday and Saturdays passengers for St. David's gathered at 'The Mariners Hotel' to board the four o'clock omnibus.

Three carriers left for Cardigan on a Thursday, driven by John Thomas, James Williams and Henry Hanson. Evidently, Haverfordwest was not an isolated town.

Haverfordwest's High Street was once grand and elegant, boasting a variety of architectural styles. Near the top of the street stood tall Georgian houses, built forwealthy merchantsof the town during the C18th.

Traditionally, the country gentry left their mansions and took up residence in their town houses during the winter months,continuing to do this into the nineteenth century. Families like the Pictons, the Laugharnes and the Lort-Phillips' added to the gaiety of the social scene.

Parties were given and balls attended, sometimes in the Assembly Rooms near Saint Mary's Church at the top of the town. Haverfordwestrivalled Bath for entertainment.

Ladies prepared for thefestivities bychanging into evening gowns inbedroomswarmed byfires their maids had lit. Dressedelaborately inshimmering dressesthey rouged their cheeksandfixed diamond clips to sparkle in their hair. Beaded bags, feather fans and boascompleted their ensembles.

The sedan chair, or even a carriage was the usual form of transport, to convey the ladies over the steep cobbled streets.

At these soirees, old social contacts were renewed, friendships ignitedand mothers with eligible daughters hopedgood matches wouldbe made.

On August 12, 1780, Jones Llwyd, a Carmarthenshire barrister, sent a letter tohis 'Ever Dear Alicia' from Haverfordwest. Things were very quiet inCourt and he was scarce making enough money to powderhis wig. A bright spot occurred when he attended a Ball given by Sir Cornwallis Maude where he met Mr and Mrs John Vaughan and Miss Price of Cilgwyn.

In 'A Tour of Milford Haven', Mrs Morgan, wife of the Vicarof Ely, says she attended some dances in Haverfordwest andwas enchanted by the gentlemen whose acquaintance she made, remarking that 'they have a softness of manner that is perfectly pleasing'.

So the drabness of the winter months wereeased by the social life of the town.

A new development, including nine hundred houses, a school and a supermarket is planned for the outskirts of Haverfordwest.

Contractors will clear the land, architects, builders andworkmenwill be kept busy for months, if not a few years. Money will circulate, change hands, the townwill prosper. There will be jobs for five hundred peoplein the supermarket.

Wonderful news for the local economy and population. For too long Pembrokeshire has suffered from high unemployment.

Young families are hopingto buy starter homeson this new site andthere is an air of optimism and hope but, hark, I hear a rumble of discontent.

Some dinosaurs have reared their heads to ask hasn'tHaverfordwest got enough supermarkets as it is? This,not from a desire to protect the superstores we have but from a wish to highlight the plight of the small shop. Yawn, yawn. The small shop was wrapped in mothballs and fossilised years ago.Small shops I know make their money fromtheend of the day or early morning worker, someone popping in for a pint of milk and the newspaper,not fromsomeonetrawling for the family freezer.

Next moan please:What about Haverfordwest'sHigh Street?

In between the Shire Hall and St Mary's Church there are three banks, two charity shops, two hairdressers, a clothes shop, a high class gift shop, a public houseand a jewellery shop. The Shire Hall,with it's nod to Grecian architecture and Doric and Ionic columns accommodates some good quality restaurants.Enoughvariety here to attract a fair number of customers, I would say.

The next complaint: Why isn't Haverfordwest's High Streetlike Narberth's? I could offer some suggestions but can't see why the difference between the two streets has anything to do with this new development.

I've come to some conclusions about this whole debate. Boutique shopping is an entirely different concept from supermarket shopping. (Think delivery lorries all times of the day and night, remember large lorries have been banned from the centre of Haverfordwest so as not to disturb ancient foundations, frighten the shoppers and block traffic).

Choccy-box-town shopping involves buying artisanal bread at three times the price of a prepackaged loaf. Yes, I'll grant it's a different experience, but try telling that tothe workman in front of me who was buying six sliced loaves and ten bottles of pop. Heparked his truck in the car park and he stopped to buycheap food.

I rememeber the lamentations surrounding thearrival ofMcDonald'sin Haverfordwest. Letters to the paper, usually by people who hadn't set foot in the outside worldfor years, said there were enough cafe's in Haverfordwest without the need for the 'Big Mac'. This from people who had no concept of twenty four hour drive-through fast-food, free-toy for the kiddies and clean toilets thrown in. People must get away from the village pump mentality, 'y milltir sgwar'. We don't need this type of narrow minded parochialism any more, (if we ever did).

I find comfortin the 'inevitability of gradualism'. Change comes, like it or not, andPembrokeshire desperately needs it.Plain air isn't enough to live on.

I'm with Keynes when he says it is necessary to 'Spend, Spend, Spend' to boost the economy.

I've just returned from a Hallowe'en party.

This is the night when the souls of the dead are said to return to earth again and it has become the custom to light bonfiresto ward off evil spirits.

In Welsh parts of Wales, this night is known as Nos Galan Gaeaf, the night before the first day of winter, Calan Gaeaf, November 1st.

This evening, we celebrated by eating roast potatoes, three different types of sausages, pizzas, tortillas, salads, trifles, cakes. Welit candles, had a lucky dip and bobbed for apples. There were carved pumpkins and lanterns outside the front door andneighbours dropped by for a drink and a nibble.

During the fifteen hundreds, the poor went knocking at doors on the eve of Hallowmass, offering to pray for the dead in return for food. Shakespeare mentions this in 'The two gentlemen of Verona', whena character is described as 'puling like a beggar at Hallowmass'.

Tonight Idressed in a long black gown (Morticia-ish, I hoped) with apattern of diamonds. It cost 2.50 in a TK Maxx 'Clearance'. Maudie was a cat, Ffion a 'ghostly maid',Kate was a bat,Emma wore a black cocktail dress and lurex tights in plum and silver. The menhad bow ties and Dracula hairdos, but nobody dressed as a blacksmith.

Mygreatgrandfather was the village blacksmith in Croesyceiliog, a cluster of houses two miles outside Carmarthen.

WhatI did not know, until Emma became interested, was that as far back as two thousand years ago blacksmiths were considered magicians and healers. The gift was said to be handed from father to son.

Blacksmiths were skilled at twisting hot metal into spirals and this shape is considered to have magical powers in Wales.Hot metal, dipped into water andheld over skin complaints, was thought to have healing properties.Bathing the skin in the water was beneficial, too, since the waterabsorbed some of the properties of the metal.

Saint Brigid, the Celtic saint of poetry, healing and water is, appropriately, the patron saint of blacksmiths.

Wales's most celebrated blacksmith is David Peterson and we visited hisSt Clears studio a while ago.

His giant dragon graces the Bute Building in Cathays Park, Cardiff. Worth going tothe cityif just to see this imposing sculpture

I love reading diaries. I don't mean peeking a look at someone's private jottingsbut published diaries. Samuel Pepys's diary is a gem, but I also like the mundane happenings of ordinary people.

By chance, I came across a copy of 'The Red Leather Diary'. It gives a glimpse into the lifeof a young girlfindingher independence in New York during the early part of the twentieth century. She is very daring and uses money she's won in a writing competition to defy her parents and travel to Europe. (She soon gives the chaperone the slip and the fun can begin).

For almost seventy years the diary was forgotten. It was only whenanapartment was being cleared thatit was found by a janitor.Knowing a young journalist whomight be interested, he saved it for her and she traced the writer to Florida.

'House Wife No 47' and 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady', also gave me many happy hours of reading.I'm interested in the minutiae of people's lives.

I forget what prompted him, but Peter once remarkedthat minor irritationsvexed me, butthe big things in life hadgone unnoticed by me. This reminded me of Charles Dickens's assertion that life is composed of trifles; this might have been saidaboutdiaries, too. It is the details about the wholewheat bread for tea,spread with plumjam, the clothes peggedon the line for three days thatare still wet, that interestme.

At the moment I am readingthe handwritten diary ofAgnes Griffiths, a Pembrokeshire housewife. The diary is for the year 1882 and gives glimpses of the daily round of chores, enlivened bytrips to market to sell eggs or a fowl.

On Thursday, 2nd April, Agnes finds that rats have got into the calf's cot and eaten three gosling eggs, leaving only twenty one, 'Such a pity'.

Friday 3rd and Baby Gwladys is a little better. 'Busy all day. Killed a fowl for dinner'.

Saturday 4th:'I went to market. Sold twenty eggs. Made baby's biscuits by dinner. Gwladys better'.

What will I write in my diary tonight? 'Arranged white chrysanthemums spiked with red berries in a large glass vase. Wanted to impress my mother who was visiting. We had salad and cold pork followed by apple sponge with cream for tea'.

This family has its own vocabulary, including 'cysgu byes' (go to sleep) and'tucky down day' (same as 'cysgu byes').

Harry and Oliver were attached totheir 'dinkies', (dummies), when they were babies, just as Ffion and Maudie had 'diddlas' when they were tired.

The television remote control is known as the 'dibber', the frying pan the 'frimpan'..

I was trying to explain to Peter who I'd been talking to one day. As a form of shorthand, I said'Surgical' and he knewimmediately it was someone who liked relatingthe gory details of pastoperations.

Pouring tea for a workman in the house, I askedhow he liked it. 'Strongish', he replied.

'Strong enough to trot a mouse on?' I asked.

When Oliver was small he put a chocolate in his mouth, brought it out admiringly and said a bee had licked it.

Thinking of these things, I told Peter we hadour own version of 'speakeasy'.Not a man to take things at face value, he replied that a'Speakeasy' is to do with the illegal sale ofliquour.

Whilsthe's correct, Ihave my own interpretation and it's nothing to do with drink, justthat we like making words up and rearranging things.

The way you think about words affectsyour feelings about poetry.If you must translatefiction literally,you'd be better off reading non-fiction, a railway timetable, perhaps.

Some poetry is difficultto understand, granted, but you can stillappreciate the soundsof the words. Nursery Rhymes like 'Ring a Ring of Roses', about the Plague,have lasting popularity because they have a strong rhythm and rhyme; the words in themselves are incidental.

But don't expect the poet to explain every 'pob dim' - every little thing;always remember:

'Excessive explanation tends to curb the lion in his leap'.

We have been married fifty two years. Peter is a good listener and I am a fast talker, so we both have our roles.

Peter was busy with the crossword this morning,one of the clues being 'Greek market-place', for which he wrote 'agora'. I mentioned the Agorawas also the venue forpronouncementsregarding the various city states and whereyoung men wereenlistedfor the army.

I'm not normally very talkative first thing, but Isaid the word agarophobia, (fear of open places), comes from the word agora andthe Welsh word 'agor', meaning 'open',must havesome Greek connection.

Laterin the morningI started thinking about our midday meal.Peter likes what I cook but, formost of the last fifty two years, just when I'm putting the food on our plates, he says: 'Not much for me'.

Today, I had a brainwave,fifty two yearslate. I called Peter and asked him how much he was going to eat. I was not going to prepare cabbage and carrots, potatoes and gravy and steak if he did not want much.

His answersurprised me and made me laugh. 'You know I always say "Not much for me" but you always cook the same amountand put it on my plate, because you and I know I will eat it'.

Iwas discussing poetry with someone who is English. I said that one of my favourite Welsh words is 'cydymdeimlad', which conveys not justsympathy, buta feeling of compassion,making a phrase like 'I feel your pain', seem inadequate.

He then mentionedthatthe Greek word'symbiosis', from which the word sympathyderives, isused in biology to denote a mutual dependency, sometimes of lichens or fungi, but always infers a close association.

So, if anyone's interested, I've had a brainwave: this is how a marriage works.

I was bornduring the 1940's, in the country, two miles from Carmarthen.

We weren't as cut-off as some neighbours, beingwithin sight of the main road into 'town'(what decadent deliciousnessthat word had for me,holding the promise of shops, cafes and cinemas).

Mymother baked food in the 'ffwrn' (oven) at the side of the fire. Vegetables wereboiled in smoke-blackened saucepans, just as in the song: 'Sospan fach, yn berwi ar y tan'.Potatoes, dug from the garden, were crusted with earth and had to be washed endlessly before being peeled.

All our water came from a well sokeeping things clean was a taxing job.(Sorry, I don't mean to sound like a frontierswoman, but that's how it was).

Many people have romantic images of country living, at odds with reality.

Friends of mineretired early, movingfrom London tolive ina cottage with land and a stream, near Fishguard.

Afterthree months, the stars in their eyeshave fallen out.The weather's turned cold, logs burn quickly in the stove, are expensive and heat only one room. Big weekend 'shops' mean a trip to Haverfordwest, because Fishguard's stores are few.

A feeling of isolation has descended on them. Apart from the estate agent who sold them the property, they know only one or two people.

We moved to Fishguard over fifty years ago. I am a country mouse but Peter, brought up in an urban area,is a town mouse. He likes the newspaper delivered, towalk to the postbox with a letter and, if he fancies some buns and a pot of jam for tea, he hops to the bakery.

I don't notice mudand cow dung on country roads,but Peter looks out for it and washes the splashes off the car as soon as we're home.I could live quite happily in the wilds of Preseli but he couldn't.

I've beenreading the unpublished 1882 Diary of Agnes Griffiths, to whichher granddaughter has generously granted me access.

Agnes Griffiths led ahard working life on a lonely farm in Bosherston, Pembrokeshire.When meat was needed, she killed a fowl.

Mrs Griffiths's life, miles from neighbours, shows howlocation affects the quality of our lives.

Most of my adult life, I've hankeredto return to the country, tothe harsh landscape, bent thornbushes and rocky outcropsof NorthPembrokeshire, but I've changed my mind recently.

After the last few winters, when we've hadheavy snow, I've decided that the town has its compensations and I shall be a day tripper to the country.

I'm writing about Agnes Griffiths tomorrow. No paper kitchen roll for her, she had cloths to boil and dry, towelsand her husband's working shirts to wash, thenBaby Gwladys's little dresses to see to. Some winter months it rained nearly every day and Agnes was very tired by bedtime.The dreary winter months were brightened by the occasional supper party she gave.