This short film, by my reckoning, was made from the balcony of the Pavilion Theatre, looking east into the Pavilion Gardens, which, when I was a lad, had developed into the roller skating rink and cycle track in the background. I have happy, but cold memories, of Sunday afternoons spent in the sun shelters on the beach side of this photograph with my girlfriend! Come to think of it, the time between this film and my teenage romance and between the romance and now is roughly the same. How quickly time passes and how we fritter it away!
Everyone seems in their Sunday best – there was a tradition of Rhyl dads wearing a suit and tie when walking on the promenade, which seems very formal by today’s standards. I can remember an adult saying to me on the promenade,
“Are you American sonny?”
To which I replied, somewhat caught unawares, “No!”
The quick riposte was “Then get your bloody hands out of your pockets and smarten up!”
Ambrose Conway 