Llancaiach Fawr - 8 October

When Mistress Proude asked the children of Plas-y-felin Primary School how they were getting along with their lesons in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, there were just a few raised eyebrows! Even though the pupils are well used to visiting the big house at Llancaiach Fawr, there's always something new to catch them off their guard! Llancaiach, if you haven't been lucky enough to visit yet, is an ancient manor house near Nelson in the Rhymney Valley. It has been restored and furnished just as it would have been at the time of King Charles I . When you visit, just like the pupils at Plas-y-felin, you will meet characters such as John Bolitho, Rachel Edmunds and Mistress Proude, who will tell you all about their lives as servants back in the seventeenth century. Don't be surprised if they ask you whether your journey took three days on horseback! It probably would have done back in 1645.

The Plas-y-felin children, along with author Jenny Sullivan, official guests, librarians from the Caerphilly library service and two members of staff from Pont Books were at Llancaiach for a very special reason. We were there for the launch of Troublesome Thomas, the sequel to Tirion's Secret Journal which won its author the Tir Na n-Og award in 2006.

The highlight of the day was when John Bolitho took the children out into the October sunshine so that they could learn how to use a pike. (Not a fish, you understand, but a long-handled spear!) Some of the children were dressed for the part in clothes similar to what they would have been wearing back in the 1640s. When they began their training, the 'pikes' looked more like broom handles than spears (obviously no real weapons could be used for safety reasons) but, by the end of the session, the boys and girls handled their pikes confidently, marched to the drum like seasoned soldiers and charged so ferociously that the other visitors were relieved the young recruits were not going to learn how to use a musket!

Other high points of the visit included learning about the 'secret' ingredients which made Llancaiach cider the best in the county. When we entered the kitchen, Rachel Edmunds explained how the poor spit-boy had to sit by an enormous open fire for ten hours at a time, turning the handle of the spit so that meat would be cooked thoroughly and evenly. No wonder he had rosy cheeks! She showed us how meats and cheeses had to be kept well above the level of the floor to stop rats and mice getting at the food. She then explained how sometimes rats could be useful: in the olden days, they always used to skin a couple and add them to the cider. They knew when the cider was ready for drinking because the rats would have completely dissolved!

That detail about rat cider - and many more snippets of information, such as the kind of cough mixture seventeenth-century children would have been dosed with - is featured in Troublesome Thomas, which follows a similar form of presentation to its predecessor Tirion. Jenny Sullivan has added footnotes to many of the pages, so that it's a little bit like reading a story and a 'horrible history' all at the same time. Apart from being a boy, Thomas is different from Tirion iin other ways too, because, instead of being one of the servants, he is nephew to the owner of Llancaiach, Colonel Edward Prichard. As a result, he gets a lot more freedom than Tirion would have done. He has lessons to learn - but not of the Greek and Latin variety - he too learns how to handle a pike and fire a musket. He gets very worried when he thinks his father might change sides in the Civil War between King and Parliament, and has a long and serious talk with Jenkyn Jones, his friend Ifor's boss, about what loyalty really means. (A civil war is when people in the same country fight against each other. Civil wars can be very bitter and upsetting because friends and relatives often find themselves on opposite sides. The English Civil War - though it happened in Wales too - ended with the execution of the king.)

At the end of the morning, the children and the other guests all assembled in the Visitor Centre, to enjoy a short reading from Troublesome Thomas by Jenny Sullivan herself. Then we all had a delicious buffet provided by the staff at Llancaiach - no cider, fortunately! - and, for most of us, the event was over. The children of Plas-y-felin were extra fortunate, though. They stayed on for an afternoon's writing workshop with Jenny Sullivan.