Characters abound in the Rhondda. None more so than one Teifi Thomas. Thomas was only four foot eight tall and had a love for large cars, beer and Tom Jones. He was also an expert skip filler who had developed a method of skip filling envied by punters from far and wide.Teifi owned a large Ford Zodiac in which the seats were of such capaciousness that he had to place three cushions behind his back in order to reach the pedals. This being Wales and the Welsh being the Welsh with a gift for hyperbole, he soon became known as Teifi Ten Cushions and would spend great periods of his valuable drinking time explaining to the great unwashed the reasons for his moniker.As I said Teifi was an expert skip filler, boozer and a lover of Tom Jones. On one memorable evening those three aspects of his persona would collide in a manner that was to change his life forever.To understand this better I must first explain that Teifi would perform a party piece at the local pub when hed had just a few too many to drink. He would select the song Delilah, sung by Tom Jones, from the juke box in the bar. He would then stand outside the bar door and wait until the song started. As the first few strains of the ditty began he would fling open the door and begin to mime the song accompanied by gyrating movements that would have had him arrested in less polite company. This performance had become an acceptable and almost tedious part of his drinking routine and was tolerated by all and sundry.However, on one particularly memorable day Teifi had secured a skip filling job with a local builder called Dic short fuse. Dic was a fair man in business but had a terrible temper that would erupt at a seconds notice if he felt the equilibrium of his day was being upset for no obvious reason. He knew Teifi quite well and knew he could be trusted to do the job at hand and so he had no qualms about paying him in advance. And so it was on the day in question that Dic took Teifi to the skip and left him there to fill it at midday.It was with some surprise therefore that Dic spotted Teifi walking into the local pub an hour later. Curious, Dic went to look at the skip and sure enough it was full to the brim and above with dirt and detritus. Impressed, he decided he would call to see Teifi later and buy him a few extra pints for his speed.Meanwhile in the pub Teifi proceeded along the well worn path of roll your own fags, betting slips and beer. Outside it had started to rain .Three or four hours later Dic had done enough work for the day and decided to go and see Teifi at the local. On the way there hed passed the skip Teifi had filled earlier and noticed it seemed to have been emptied. When he took a closer look he could see that Teifi had filled three quarters of the skip with cardboard boxes and had topped them up with about a foot and a half of rubble. The rain had weakened the boxes and the whole of the contents had dropped to within eighteen inches of skip bottom. His blood pressure started to rise alarmingly.In the pub, Teifi had now reached the intoxication level required to perform his act. He made his way to the juke box and noticed that there were at least three records in front of his to be played. He checked the song that would be played before his choice, placed his coin in the jukebox and selected Delilah. He calculated that he would have enough time to visit the toilet and be back to perform his party piece by the time the three other songs had played. So off he went out the bar door towards the toilet at the back of the pub. While he was there Dic short fuse walked into the bar and enquired after Teifi. He was told that hed gone out for a minute and would be back soon. Dic looked around and noticed that several of his fellow builders were sitting at a table just inside the pub door and so, as was the practice, bought them all a round of drinks. He was making his way across the bar with about eight pints of beer on a tray when a familiar tune started on the jukebox. In a flash the door was flung open and eight pints and a tray went spinning through the air. I saw the light on the night as I passed by your windowwwww Teifi howled.He hadnt got as far as I saw the flickering shadows of love on the wall before he was punched back across the passage and straight into the lounge.It took some time to revive Teifi but the whole experience seemed to have had a Damascene effect on him. He quit drinking, Tom Jones and skip filling in that order. His love of cars remained however and he can still be seen cruising the valley propped up of course with Ten Cushions.