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.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.
