En andlig guide, en spöktiger, och en skrämmande mamma!
av
Owen Jones
Översatt av
Charlotta Zaar Böll
Berättat av
Ida Berglöw Kenneway
“Villfarelsen” är den första delen i en serie av tjugotre noveller om den andliga utvecklingen hos en ung flicka som heter Megan. Hon har latenta övernaturliga krafter och hon är nyfiken på att utveckla dem, men ingen annan som hon känner verkar ha någon aning vad hon pratar om.
Eller gör dom det? Både hennes mormor och hennes mamma gör allt de kan för att stoppa Megan från att ta reda på mer. Historien visar Megans frustration med de levande, så när hjälp kommer från den andra sidan, tar hon emot den med öppna armar och utvecklar långsamt men säkert sina övernaturliga krafter.
Detta är berättelsen om Megans uppvaknande.
“Villfarelsen” handlar om de paranormala krafter som finns inom oss alla, vilket borde göra dem helt normala istället för paranormala, om människor inte var så rädda för det övernaturliga, vilket i sig självt också är helt naturligt.
Det här är en bok för alla som någonsin har funderat över det övernaturliga, paranormala eller metafysiska- Det handlar om den normala andliga utvecklingen som alla högre själar måste gå igenom för att nå sitt ultimata, oundvikliga öde, hur lång tid det än kan ta. Dessa berättelser bygger på faktum på flera sätt än en.
We had only been back in Barry, my home town for six months, but it didn’t take that long to realise that there were street problems that were unusual. At least, I wasn’t used to them, but then of the previous fifteen years, I had spent thirteen in Thailand and two in Spain. One of the first things that my wife and I noticed was the lack of a police presence on the streets. The second was the deserted streets after dark – a sign that suggested to us that the unsavoury ruled the streets during that period.
One afternoon, a friend, who seems to know a lot, told me that the night before, there had been only two police cars on duty in Barry – a town of 60,000 inhabitants. The lack of a visible police presence was beginning to make sense.
A few days later, a man, whom I also know well, told me that he had spent the last hour with an elderly lady, who had fallen over and cracked her head. My friend had phoned the emergency services, but it still took an hour for them to arrive.
And then, just before Christmas, I was sitting in a pub opposite a local supermarket, when a woman started to beat a young boy. He was six, seven, eight years of age. One of the men in the pub sprinted out, but the mother had already disappeared inside to do her shopping, leaving the boy crying in a huddle in a corner.
He phoned the police, comforted the boy and came back inside. When the boy ran off, the caller got cold feet and left, but the police never arrived, and the woman emerged from the shop and called a taxi. The police did not show up at all.
That is my experience of modern Barry – it has changed so much since I last lived here.
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More details coming soon – he has promised me an interview at noon on Monday 30th September in the Butterfly Bar, Barry, but in the meantime, here are a couple of his poems.
There is good news for avid readers of Welsh writer from Barry, Owen Jones, that are also audiobook fans who prefer to use the ubiquitous service of Apple’s iTunes!
iTunes – Apple – now stocks not only the ebook novels of Owen Jones, but also the audiobook versions, AND, they are all on one page, which makes it easier to identify series and stand-alones.
Owen Jones now has more than three hundred ebooks on iTunes, a hundred and fifty of which are in languages other than English, and about seventy of them have been narrated by professionals to create audiobooks of excellent quality.
ACX – an arm of Amazon and Audible – has overseen production and Quality Control throughout, so you know that you are getting a great product.
Many Locations
Owen Jones writes in the general genre of Fiction>Psychological, often including references from Spiritualism, Buddhism, or even just ‘traditional religions’ – references such as intuition, dreams, Auras, Astral Travelling and the like. His books are also set in many locations, including Wales, naturally, Thailand, various countries in Europe, Russia and the USA. One series, Dead Centre visits seven countries in just one of the two volumes!
When asked about the new collection of his audiobooks on Apple iTunes, Owen said:
“I am very proud to have my audiobooks for sale on such a prestigious platform as Apple’s iTunes. So many hundreds of millions of people around the world use an iPhone, iPad or Mac several times a day, and now they all have direct access to my audiobooks as well as my ebooks. I don’t have one myself, but I checked some trivia just for my own information, and I was surprised to see that Apple uses 131 different URL’s to allow direct access to its products. That probably means 131 different countries! Not bad for a local Barry boy, eh?”
You can find Owen Jones’ audiobooks by following this link:
When I was young, there was a period of my life when I couldn’t wait to open a Post Office Savings Account and also buy Premium Bonds. I can’t remember how old one had to be, but let’s say fourteen for the savings account and sixteen for the Premium Bonds, the top prize for playing which every month was a million pounds.
At roughly the same time, I started buying coins for my collection from around the country and selling my duplicates too, which usually involved transferring money using Postal Orders. It made me feel independent and that made me feel ever so grown up.
At eighteen years of age, I abandoned the Post Office in favour of the bank, and postal orders for the more convenient cheque.
Well, now, forty-five years later, we seem to have come full-circle, since my bank no longer issues cheques. I had to send £65 to the Home Office last week, and I had to pay the Post Office £8.50 for the expensive privilege!
£8.50 to send £65 within the country!
Daylight Robbery
That is not only 13%, it is daylight robbery and a kick in the teeth to all the people who use this crappy ‘service’. They get my money for three or four days, and I give them 13% for the privilege! Is the dreaded and very expensive, Western Union cheaper?
It really wouldn’t surprise me.
However, the nightmare doesn’t end there. I had to send irreplaceable documents, which the counter staff cheerfully told me are not covered by their normal insurance, and so had to pay £11.50 postage and insurance.
At least this was a reduction. The first time I sent exactly the same package, they charged me £18.50!
You couldn’t make it up, could you, but I think the Post Office is… as they go along!
There has to be a better way, and, for me at least, the Post Office will be my last option next time, not the first port of call.
Stuff ’em – they don’t care about us!
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Boots Pharmacy has been in the centre of Barry, my home town, forever, or at least as long as I can remember. In fact, my first girlfriend got her first Saturday job there as an assistant on the drugs counter. The experience inspired her to go to university and become a pharmacist.
They were the good old days apparently, because it is a sad, old-looking place now, although I don’t know what opportunities they offer young people these days. I don’t know, but my guess is none.
Anyway, that is not what this article is about.
I have been suffering from a severe case of gout for the last week, and yesterday, a friend – a fellow traveller, suggested a remedy. Today, dosed up on an unsustainable amount of Ibuprofen and codeine, I limped up to the prescription counter in Boots.
‘Hi’, I opened, I’m having a problem with gout. What can you recommend, please?’ She started to look at her computer. ‘I have heard of Napraxis’, I said.
‘No, that is prescription only’.
‘OK, Altar? I used to buy that OTC in Spain…’
‘No, but, I could order something in for you’.
‘OK, yes, please, but I need something now. I’ve been told that Feminax contains the same drug, and relieves gout’.
She looked up from her screen and studied my face. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Research. Can I have a box of Feminax, please?’
‘No, I can only sell that to females between the ages of fifteen and fifty’.
‘OK’, I countered, ‘my wife here wants a box’.
‘No’, she replied, ‘not now that I know what you want it for’.
Crazy
So, to cut a long story short, I pointed out that Boots’ policy on this matter was prompting me to go to another pharmacy and not be perfectly honest. The woman shrugged apologetically. ‘Well, it’s either that, or I stand outside your shop here and ask a young woman to buy my drugs for me’.
She looked surprised when I said that. It reminded me of teenagers stopping adults outside a corner shop to ask them to buy cigarettes or alcohol for them.
It is a stupid policy that encourages people to lie, and we wonder what is wrong with society? Government and shopping policies are forcing me to either cheat, lie or wait four days to go to the doctor’s.
If I could have bought what I needed, I would be limping around for four days less, AND, the doctor’s time would have been saved for a more important case.
It reminds me of five years ago, when I tried to buy ten boxes of paracetamol from Boots to take abroad with me – a years’ supply – and the assistant refused me.
‘Thirty-two tablets maximum’, the girl had said. ‘Suicide risk’, she had said knowingly, but she also advised that I could buy thirty-two in all the pharmacies and corner shops in town.
And people wonder about why we are where we are?!
As a nation, we have all gone bloody mad!
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The saga of my bus pass begins in the now sleepy seaside town of Barry in South Wales. I happens to be my home town, and I returned to live there with my Thai wife of fifteen years in June 2018. I am now sixty-four years of age, so I have been qualified for a bus pass for four years.
However, I have lived in Thailand and Spain for most of the last fifteen years, so I didn’t bother to apply for one. I was soon to wish that I had started the application process earlier. From my first few days home, friends were extolling the virtues of the bus pass – one even called it ‘his best friend’.
A bus pass removes the restrictions on mobility that are imposed by a shortage of money, which a lot of older people experience despite what the media would have the youth believe about wealthy, greedy pensioners propping up the price of houses. Who are these pensioners going to leave their houses to, for God’s sake?!
Anyway, my bus pass… so, I went down to the local council offices and asked at the Information Desk.
A very large, but young woman, asked me what I wanted as she dabbed at the perspiration apparent on every inch of bare skin. I told her and she slid a form towards me, which I took, filled in and handed back.
“I cannot accept that without proof of eligibility”, she said with a strange look of satisfaction. “Proof of date of birth, a utilities bill, and a signature from your doctor”.
“I don’t have a doctor, and since I’m renting a room and have only been here for three days, I don’t have a utility bill either… I will probably never get one either”.
“That’s your problem”, she said and proceeded to ignore me.
I walked to the nearest doctor’s surgery, registered, and then took the council form to the ‘Buccaneer’ pub to think about it. An hour later, I phoned the surgery for an appointment for a check up.
“August 14th., 8:15? Does that suit you?” I was asked by a cheerful receptionist.
“Well, it’s six weeks away, on my birthday, and a bit earlier than I was hoping to have to get up”, I said light-heatedly.
“September…” he started. I interrupted him and agreed to the August appointment.
When the day came, the check-up fell way below my expectations, but that is another story, to continue my bus pass saga, the doctor refused to sign it.
“I am not here to validate your age or place of residence”, he retorted rather angrily.
“But the local council said…”
“Hearsay”, he cut me off. “If the local council want me to sign anything, they can write to me here!”
My birthday had not started well, and it set the tone for the day.
A week later, I went back to the local council, where the grumpy fat lady had been replaced by a friendly young man. I handed him the form.
“Confirmation, please, sir”.
I passed him the letter from the doctor confirming my appointment and my passport. They were sufficient, so he scrutinised the form.
“You need to get your doctor to sign this where the box has been marked with a cross”.
“He won’t do it, unless you ask him officially. Perhaps, he’s looking for a fee…” I quipped.
“All doctors sign these firms, take it back to him and tell him…”
“No”, I interjected. “I will not be the shuttlecock between you both. Here is my application for a bus pass”.
He took it. “This will be rejected”, he said glumly. “My advice is to change your doctor… it really is common practice for them to sign these forms…”
I received a rejection letter from the council today, which stated that I should return the form to my doctor for his signature. I’ll send that off tomorrow and let you know how I get on later.
And if you’re wondering why I don’t just take it to the doctor, I don’t want another six-week wait.
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My wife woke up three days ago feeling a little out of sorts, but when she actually got up to start the day, she complained of dizziness. Neither of of thought much about it, although that soon changed when she was physically sick before she could get to the bathroom. The dizzy spells continued, so I had to help her to the bathroom.
She could neither stand nor walk with any confidence, but she kept on being sick, so she spent the rest of that day in bed… and all of the following one. My wife tried eating again, but it came straight back up. Yesterday, she tried to eat again, but the result was the same, so she asked me to take her to our family doctor’s. It is not far, but I had to support her all the way, and we had to stop for a rest and vomit.
When we arrived, the receptionist told us that we didn’t have an appointment, which we already knew, and further informed us that no-one was available to see us.
Our Doctor’s Surgery
“So, what do want me to do?” I asked.
“Go home”, she advised. “I’ll put you on phone watch, if you like”.
I didn’t know what that was, but it means that if a doctor anywhere in town has a few minutes, they would try to fit her in.
“Do what you like”, I replied, “but we’re not leaving here. If she collapses anywhere, I want it to be here, not while we’re crossing the road”.
“What are her symptoms?” I was asked, so I told her.
“We really do advise that you go home, we don’t want sick people in here… we have a lot of very old and very young patients in and out…”
I was flabbergasted, but I had one more request.
“Here is a letter from the council asking my doctor to sign my application for a free bus pass”.
“There is a £10 fee for leaving it with us, or a £15 doctor’s fee for the signature”.
I refused to leave, and so took a seat while my wife went outside to be sick – I felt like joining her.
Some thirty-odd minutes later, a man walked in. He explained that he didn’t have an appointment, but wanted to see a doctor. My ears pricked up.
“Take a seat, we’ll see what we can do” chirped the receptionist.
I went to have a word. “Why couldn’t you have done that for us?” I asked.
“You’re on phone watch”, she explained.
The top nearly came off my head. “Only because you put us on it! That wasn’t our idea”.
“Your wife has gone home anyway, sir. My supervisor had a word with her and she left”.
I couldn’t believe it, but she was nowhere to be seen, so, I set off in the direction of her best friend’s shop nearby to look for her. A few doors from the shop, I called into a pub. I hadn’t taken two sips when our landlady and friend rushed in saying that my wife needed me at home. We were there in twenty minutes.
“She needs the paramedics”, warned our landlady, who is a carer.
My wife was a quivering wreck, by the time they arrived, which was not long. Anyway, after several tests, they diagnosed ‘vertigo’ – something my wife has never been diagnosed with. They also phoned our doctor to get a prescription, which I had to collect.
Bad Practice
Naturally, I wanted to know what the supervisor had told my wife to make her go home alone.
“I told her to go home and wait for a call…”
“And?”
“…and when she asked where her husband was, I said: ‘I have no idea. I don’t even know your husband”.
“And did she understand you?”
“I don’t know, she was looking at me…”
“My wife is dizzy, confused and Asian, but you didn’t check whether she had understood you or not?”
Today, after four tablets, my wife is sitting up in bed. She has eaten three bowls of rice soup – typical Thai breakfast food – and has not been sick.
The National Health Service is in dire straits due to the Tory cutbacks, we all know that, but we don’t need heartless people within the system making it even worse. On the other hand, the paramedics were wonderful. My hat is off to them, but we will be changing our General Practitioner ASAP, which is what other people, including the local council, had advised us on other occasions, articles about which can be found elsewhere on this blog.
Why did the receptionist and her supervisor treat my wife differently from the old man? I don’t know, but the only differences that I could see for this bad practice were age, sex and race.
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Conclusion
The experience of the United Kingdom, especially since 2010, underscores the conclusion that poverty is a political choice. Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so. Resources were available to the Treasury at the last budget that could have transformed the situation of millions of people living in poverty, but the political choice was made to fund tax cuts for the wealthy instead.
It was a British philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who memorably claimed that without a social contract, life outside society would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The risk is that if current policies do not change, this is the direction in which low-income earners and the poor are headed. Loneliness rates have soared in recent years and life expectancy rates have stalled in the United Kingdom, with the latest statistics showing a sharp drop in the annual improvement that has been experienced every year since the records began, and an actual drop for certain groups.
The compassion and mutual concern that has long been part of the British tradition has been outsourced. At the same time many of the public places and institutions that previously brought communities together, such as libraries, community and recreation centers, and public parks, have been steadily dismantled or undermined. In its fiscal analyses, the Treasury and the Government constantly repeat the refrain that fiscal policy must “avoid burdening the next generation.” The message is that the debt burden must be paid off now. The problem is that the next generation’s prospects are already being grievously undermined by the systematic dismantling of social protection policies since 2010.
The negotiations surrounding Brexit present an opportunity to take stock of the current situation and reimagine what this country should represent and how it protects its people. The legislative recognition of social rights should be a central part of that reimagining. And social inclusion, rather than increasing marginalization of the working poor and those unable to work, should be the guiding principle of social policy.
The UK should introduce a single measure of poverty and measure food security.
The government should initiate an expert assessment of the cumulative impact of tax and spending decisions since 2010 and prioritize the reversal of particularly regressive measures, including the benefit freeze, the two-child limit, the benefit cap, and the reduction of the housing benefit for under-occupied social rented housing.
It should ensure local governments have the funds needed to tackle poverty at the community level, and take varying needs and tax bases into account in the ongoing Fair Funding Review.
The Department of Work and Pensions should conduct an independent review of the effectiveness of reforms to welfare conditionality and sanctions introduced since 2012, and should immediately instruct its staff to explore more constructive and less punitive approaches to encouraging compliance.
The five week delay in receiving benefits under Universal Credit should be eliminated, separate payments should be made to different household members, and weekly or fortnightly payments should be facilitated.
Transport, especially in rural areas, should be considered an essential service, equivalent to water and electricity, and the government should regulate the sector to the extent necessary to ensure that people living in rural areas are adequately served. Abandoning people to the private market in relation to a service that affects every dimension of their basic well-being is incompatible with human rights requirements.
As the country moves toward Brexit, the Government should adopt policies designed to ensure that the brunt of the resulting economic burden is not borne by its most vulnerable citizens.
Many people rely on the Internet these days for their daily communication and entertainment. Television is dire, and people don’t talk much anymore… at least, they don’t tend to talk to the ones around them. People sit in groups, but talk to people miles away via the Internet. I am one of the worst, I wouldn’t use a pub that didn’t offer WI-Fi Internet. Most pubs, clubs and restaurants do offer Internet access, but some of them offer it via an Internet Service Provider called The Cloud.
I am not sure how extensive The Cloud network is, but several pubs in our area (Barry, South Wales) are connected to it.
Most establishments use ISP’s that are available to the public like Virgin, BT, Sky or whatever and they seem to function well no matter how busy the places are. On the other hand, many pubs and restaurants are quite small, and so, Internet access is unlikely to be overloaded often.
However, some of the largest pubs now use an ISP called The Cloud. I’m talking about places like Whetherspoon’s and similar sized businesses. I don’t know what The Cloud costs to install, but in my experience, the results are dreadful.
You have to register to able to use it, and once you have created an ‘identity’, it is supposedly your calling card anywhere that uses The Cloud. It sounds all right, but pubs with private accounts don’t require my personal details in order to use them. This data can be sold, so, in effect, you are paying for your Internet access.
Why do larger bars need to do this when smaller ones don’t? Not only that, but Internet access via The Cloud is far inferior to that of normal ISP’s. Surely, the traffic in larger pubs should allow them to provide superior access, not the opposite?
If micro bars can afford to pay for decent Internet access for their customers, why can’t larger ones? It doesn’t make sense to me…
Contempt is the only word that springs to mind… and they make us pay for it…
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All the best,
Owen
Podcast: The Cloud – An ‘Internet Service Provider’
We don’t usually stay out late on busy nights of the week, but last Friday night we were talking to friends in O’Brien’s bar and eight p.m. came around before we realised it. I looked up when someone started to use the P.A. system to see a thirty-something young man with curly hair, dressed in black at the microphone.
I forget the name of his first number, which was accompanied with overtly gay movements and gestures. Some laughed and some did not. I was uncertain what was going on. I had never heard of the man, and in fact, had not even noticed that there was to be an act.
All I knew was that I had never seen anything like it before. I looked around and could see that most people were enjoying it. When Iain started the second song, it was obvious that he was an accomplished singer with a great voice and that the ‘gaiety’ had been part of the act.
He had confused me, because his ‘gayness’ had seemed real but borderline piss-take without being offensive or anti-gay in any way.
Iain sang a variety of songs in different styles each with its own appropriate mannerisms and attitude. The results varied from hilarious to spot-on realistic. For example, Iain looks nothing like Mick Jagger, but when he took him off, he had him down to a ‘T’ both in voice and mannerisms.
It was uncanny. Iain Scott is as good an impersonator as he is a singer.
Well, we asked the man sitting next to us what time the gig would go on until, and he said that there were usually two sets between eight and ten, so we arranged to stay that long.
However, when we left O’Brien’s at ten past ten, Iain was still doing his stuff and people were still loving it. I would go to see Iain Scott again any time, and I have no hesitation in recommending that you give him a chance too.
I have managed to find Ian’s UK telephone number, so if you would like to find out where he is currently on tour or if you would like to offer him a spot at your bar or party, give him a ring.
Having lived on the Costa del Sol for a few years, I can imagine him going down a storm with the ex-pats over there. Give him a call!
Iain Scott +44 0740749136
Podcast: Iain Scott – Singer / Impersonator / Comedian Extraordinaire
Now, that may not mean much to you, but the S. A. Brain’s Brewery, which was located in the centre of Cardiff for centuries, used to be the most famous beer in Wales!
Brains Dark was legendary, but disappeared a couple of decades ago as younger people took to lager instead. The company started to produce special ales instead. So, many events special to Wales – like the Rugby World Cup – would have a special, short-term beer brewed specifically for it.
Next, Brains ‘tried’ replacing Brains Bitter with Brains Smooth, but I, personally, don’t think that drinkers took to it and some time during this confusion, their flagship beer, Brains S. A. became more and more difficult to find.
Brains S. A. affectionately known as ‘Skull Attack(er)’ was only 3.7% (or so) A.B.V. but it had the reputation among drinkers for ‘having something else’. I have seen many seasoned drinkers from ‘away’ feel seriously affected by three or four pints.
However, Brains S. A. is almost impossible to find these days – even more so that forty years ago, when the excuse was that Brains ‘didn’t travel well’.
Has S. A. Brain Moved On?
Well, it won’t be going anywhere now, because Brains has sold all its ‘large pubs’ now, and Miller is brewing all its beer. That means that I , and most Brain’s beer drinkers, won’t be drinking the stuff again.
It’s a crying shame… I feel that Brains has let its loyal supporters down, and I don’t want whatever the Americans think that (Brains) beer should taste like.
So, I’ll switch to European lager and British cider and hope that Brains enjoys the money they made from all the generations of Welsh beer drinkers who supported them
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For various reasons, but mostly because of travel, I have not had a medical check-up for twenty-four years – since I was forty. My wife is fourteen years younger than me, and she has never had one. So, being back in the UK ‘for good’ now, I thought that it was about time that I got that sorted out.
We registered with Ravenscourt, a doctor’s surgery in Barry, my home town, and were told that it would take six weeks. That was quite a surprise, shock even, but I had heard about the cut-backs, and since we were ‘non-essential’ and there was nothing obviously wrong with us, we let that go, even though the appointment fell inconveniently on my birthday.
So, we went along, at the also inconvenient time of nine a.m. not knowing what to expect. Friends had suggested that a full medical check-up would take ‘about an hour’.
We arrived punctually at the surgery, awaited our turn, which was also on time, and went up together, although only I was actually called. The doctor was surprised, but was all right about it when I explained that I sometimes needed to clarify some terminology for my Thai wife.
That wasn’t a problem and the young man took our blood pressure and listened to our breathing. We were both ‘A OK’.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘OK’, we replied. ‘However, my back is pretty bad’, I said. ‘I can’t walk a hundred metres without having to sit down’. He gave us forms to go to two separate hospitals for blood tests and heart traces.
‘I take these blood pressure tablets’, I offered. ‘I’ve been taking them for twenty-four years, are there better ones available now?’ I wanted to say that they were effecting me in other ways, but didn’t.
‘Oh, they are working for you, and they are readily available, so I recommend that you stick with them’.
‘I disagree’, I countered, ‘The last prescription I had for them in Barry, could not be fulfilled by Boots in Barry. I was looking for sixty and they only had twenty-eight…’
His attitude changed visibly – he obviously didn’t like being contradicted.
Our interview was over, but my back problem hadn’t been mentioned, so I asked him to validate my application for a bus pass (I am sixty-four, and one qualifies at sixty).
‘That isn’t my job’, he replied. I took a deep breath, could see that we weren’t going to get anywhere and left with the strange feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling me. We had been in there for fifteen to twenty minutes for two check-ups…
Is that what the revered British National Health has been reduced to?
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All the best,
Owen
Footnote: Boots the chemist could not fulfil that order either – they were twelve Atenolol short.
O’Brien’s – The Community Pub in the Centre of Barry
When we arrived in Barry, my home town, on the thirteenth of June, we were looking for a place to stay – not a hotel, but a lodging of some kind or a flat. However, we had to stay in a hotel for two days in order to have somewhere to leave our bags while we trudged around town looking for somewhere.
So, we went into the neatest pub, a Wetherspoon’s, for breakfast and asked about a room. No-one knew anywhere, but I asked a taxi driver too. He named a few pubs that I knew, but as I was walking away, he added: ‘… but don’t bother with O’Brien’s in town because it’s full of alchi’s and druggies!’
We tried all the most likely places, but without any luck, and even tried a few guesthouses, but all in vain. Then, with hours to go before becoming homeless, we were walking in town past O’Brien’s when a man who was smoking in the doorway stopped me.
‘Owen, isn’t it? Remember me?” We went inside and renewed our friendship of fifteen years previously and I told him my woes. ‘You can stay with us’, he offered.
Eleven weeks later, we are still there, and we have been back to O’Brien’s quite often.
I want to say on the record, that we have never found a more friendly pub in the UK, and that the people who frequent the establishment are among the nicest I have ever met. People can see our predicament, they are not stupid or blind, and there isn’t a visit there goes by when we are not asked how we’re doing, or when someone doesn’t offer us a drink or some helpful advice on housing, the NHS or the local authority.
Martin, the landlord, has also always been very welcoming and friendly, just like his staff and customers. It is a crying shame that this true community pub is going to have to close soon. I don’t know the ins and outs of why, but the dying town centre and its completely unjustified reputation cannot be helping.
If anyone is listening/reading who has a few bob to invest, come and take a look at the place, it would be a travesty for the local community if O’Brien’s has to close.
Please, step in and save the our community pub, some investing Angel!
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All the best,
Owen
Podcast: O’Brien’s – The Community Pub in the Centre of Barry
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