WHIMBERRIES on the Coity enjoyed a successful book launch at Blaenavon Heritage Centre.

The book is the memoir of Elvina Brock's early childhood in Wales, in particular in Garn-yr-erw. Writing under her maiden name, Elvina Hill, she writes of her childhood days when she was evacuated from Brighton with her brother and mother to Wales.

Recalling her arrival in 1941 in Garn-yr-Erw at the age of three, she writes: "To an outsider, I suppose, it must have seemed a bleak and unlovely place, ravaged by the satanic machinery of coal-mining, dominated by one enormous black slag heap and a row of gloomy black houses lining the road. But I was too young to notice such things I knew it as a place where we belonged, in spite of joining that category of displaced war-time persons known as evacuees."

This is Mrs Brock's, age 73, first book and she decided to write the book for her children and grandchildren.

As her father, Vin, had been called into the armed forces, the book includes some of the many letters that he wrote to her mother, Elsie.

It includes wonderful recollections of a child's view of the landscapes and of life in the Welsh valley, complete with pictures.

"The winters were long and hard with tons of snow transforming the landscape into a picturesque wonderland my cousin once told me that if you buried your bare hands underneath the snow for five minutes you would never again suffer from cold hands. I tried this painful experiment once, and can assure you it does not work."

The book is available from Browning Books in Blaenavon for £7.50.