My ears were all attention at this firm announcement for I was the Young Danny my grandfather was speaking about. And I, Daniel Idris Davies, was a small thin boy who was more inclined to study than to swing a pick in the deep dark shafts of a mine. Mother and father were as equally agog as I, I do admit. None of us had ever considered the possibility that I would become anything other than a coal miner. But grandfather had spoken and grandfather's word was law. When I became of age, I was to go to Oxford, if they would have me, or to Cambridge if Oxford wouldn't.

To this day, I cannot tell you how they did it but upon my eighteenth year, I was sent off to Cambridge for a term of study and, afterwards, to medical school. It was a hardship to the family, that's for sure. Mother took in laundry and a bit of sewing here and there; father took extra shifts in the mine. With grandfather's small pension, they managed to get by and keep me at my books.

Happy and contented to have a grandson with a doctor before his name, the old patriarch passed away in his sleep. It was two years to the day after I returned to the Rhondda Valley with my education. Although I could offer assistance with the income from my medical practice, father was too stubborn to quit the mine. He was a proud wage earner and a proud owner of grandfather's pocket watch. Every night before bed, he tended the timepiece in the ritual manner and slid it beneath his pillow, the same as always. And time continued to march forward in our small mining town in the Rhondda Valley in Wales.

It had been the family's wish that I should leave the valleys to set out my shingle in fashionable London Town. My heart and soul were in Wales and the Rhondda was my home. The land of my birth called me back every time I had to cross the border into England so in Wales I remained. I have doctored the sick and the needy. I have entered the mines after the shafts collapsed to dig out the wounded or set fractured bones. It is my calling; it is my life.

The years fly swiftly. The place is still the same but the old men of the mines are gone, replaced by the young. Father has now joined his old mates for today is his burying day. He lies beneath the ground in the churchyard beneath the stone that bears his name. The golden pocket watch with the flying bird etched on the cover lies in my palm. The old family relic is now my prized possession. A click of the lid reveals a bright shining white face with Roman numerals dancing around the edges and wee tiny hands pointing to the exact time. Gran, dressed in severe black with an equally severe expression, as grim as only Victorian ladies could be grim, is still on the opposing side.

Time is a strange thing. Grandfather's time is gone and so is father's. It is now my time, but it will soon be gone also. As I sit on the stone bench beside the kitchen door, I wonder if my two daughters would be interested in the old pocket watch. Their lives growing up in the doctor's house were much different than my life in a miner's cottage.

Neither Menna or Bethen knew their great-grandsire nor did they know how he cherished the old timepiece. They are pretty, fair of skin with golden ringlets in their hair. The mines are places they will never see other than at a distance. The niceties of life are their interest. Still, when the time comes, the watch belongs to one or the other. It is their choice to cherish it...or not. Until their time comes, Grandfather's pocket watch is mine to wind and polish...and to remember the days of the Rhondda when coal was King.