The memory: Triggered by a letter from an old friend living in retirement in Llandudno. By John Abberley

Triggered by a letter from an old friend living in retirement in Llandudno. By John Abberley

IF LLANDUDNO was good enough for Reginald Mitchell, said my father, it's good enough for us.

I knew how dad got that information about the Spitfire designer.

We'd seen a film based on Mitchell's life which showed him watching seagulls flying on the Great Orme.

So just after the war we went to Llandudno for our August holiday. As we strolled along a promenade free of fish and chips, my father said it was a cut above Blackpool.

I muttered that there was a lot more sea at Blackpool. But secretly I felt proud of being among the nobs.

We even acted like posh people, going to an orchestral concert on the pier.

My grandparents must have had ideas above their station, too. They went to Llandudno around 1930.

I have a faded photograph of them in a Morgan three-wheeler. So I can claim a family attachment to the queen of the North Wales coast.

Other Potteries people must feel the same. That's why so many of them have retired there.

When I was last in Llandudno about 20 years ago, it struck me how little had changed, or at least how much I still recognised.

Coach trips into Snowdonia were advertised by oil paintings of the mountains, just as they were when I was a schoolboy.

The Codman family were running the Punch and Judy show.

Also, old men were walking about 1940s-style in their sober suits.

For old time's sake, I took a ride on the mountain tramway to the top of the Great Orme and looked across the sea towards Anglesey.

I had the Greek name Thetis in my mind. That was the submarine which crash-dived into that shallow sea in 1939 and got stuck on the seabed with one end above the water.

The sailors inside could be heard tapping against the hull, but after several days they all died.

Why weren't they rescued? Goodness knows.

For some reason, that tragedy has stayed with me and later that day on Llandudno Pier I came across a former Potteries man who also remembered it.

This chap with a goatee beard, I discovered, was William Richardson, a former pupil of Burslem School of Art.

He was in his 21st season as a quick-sketch artist.

I became his 30,000-and-something customer, sitting in the little studio while William executed a charcoal drawing in 15 minutes.

His sitters, he told me, had included Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher when each was Prime Minister. They'd been in Llandudno when it was a favourite for party conferences.

William was quite a celebrity in North Wales.

He painted Welsh characters in oils and one of his best-sellers was a picture of middle-aged women drinking in the Carlton Hotel.

Perhaps foolishly, I asked William if he still felt he was a Potter at heart.

Not at all, he said. After 30 years I'm a North Walian.

He liked Llandudno, he said, because they'd kept the seafront clear of ice cream sellers and fish and chips.

Perhaps Reginald Mitchell would have agreed.