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.
I started drinking quite late for a boy in my home town of Barry, South Wales. It was in the Seventies, when, I assume, my hormones kicked in. Bars, or pubs in Britain, in those days, were very different places than they are now. For a start there wasn’t a single jukebox in town.
Anyway, up until then, I had been more interested in my coin and stamp collection than pubs. However, eventually, friends – the dreaded peer pressure – persuaded me to go to bars and look for ‘women’, although what we normally did was renew friendships with girls that we had been separated from at eleven, due to the segregation of boys and girls in our educational system.
In general, pubs were quieter then, far smokier, and not somewhere to go for something to eat. Most working-class pubs sold crisps, perhaps a pickled onion and a scotch egg, if you were lucky. There were designated smoking rooms, but nobody went in there to smoke. They were usually very quiet, and so, suited to illegal gambling (cards), or club darts matches. The main bars often had blue clouds of smoke floating five or six feet from the ground.
There was no music. In England, I did witness people playing the piano, but in Wales, people sang mostly hymns, rugby songs and arias. My favourite singing bar was the Park Hotel, or the Ship Hotel before they renovated it and tossed the singers out.
Many’s the happy Thursday (traditional payday), or Friday and Saturday evenings that I went there looking for a sing-song, even if there wasn’t a rugby match on TV. Otherwise, people talked while drinking and played dominoes or cards (especially: Crib and Don) for small stakes.
I clearly remember the evening that the first jukebox arrived in the Park Hotel. There were plenty of customers in there, although it was still daylight outside, but it was strangely quiet… as if a local had died.
I was standing at the bar alone, supping my first pint of S.A. when an older man stood near me, ordered a pint, took a long swig, and started to sing. I put my pint down and joined in… so did several others. It was a classic situation…
And then we all clearly heard a few bars of a top-ten record. The man stopped and I looked around. Who would have the effrontery to play a radio when someone was singing, I thought. Then I spotted it. I had assumed that it was a new bandit, and looked at the barman.
He looked very embarrassed and shrugged. “It does that…” he said. “It’s the first jukebox in Barry. The landlord is hoping it’ll make his fortune”.
“But nobody is playing it!” said the man nearby.
“No… if no-one uses it for twenty minutes, it plays a few seconds of a tune at random”.
“But, if no-one is using it, then it’s because nobody wants to hear it…” my new friend mused.
“Sorry”, said the barman with a glum expression, “that’s how it’s been set up”.
I later realised that that first jukebox in Barry really was a bandit. Singing in the Park died out within a week, and we were robbed of part of our culture. Unfortunately, it has never come back, and people wouldn’t know the words to the great old hymns and arias any longer, even if there was a power cut.
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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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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
We had planned our arrival in the UK three months in advance and had bought flights accordingly. I had asked friends and family to look out for accommodation for us and spent a lot of the intervening time researching procedures and looking for possible immigration problems and their solutions.
Two days before our actual arrival in the UK, my brother, our fall-back in case we were homeless, informed me that we would not be able to stay with him. I rushed to reserve a hotel room, but they could not do that without payment. However, I didn’t want to pay in advance because there was a reasonable chance that my wife, being Thai, might be refused entry.
When the day came, we flew from Malaga into Barry. At Immigration / Passport Control, the official said that he had never come across a case where an Asian married to a Brit was carrying a Spanish Residency Card. After a few worrying minutes, during which he talked to his superior, he called us over. He wanted to see her passport and residency card, and then gave her leave to stay for six months.
So far, our arrival in the UK was going better than we had hoped for, except for accommodation. A taxi took us to the hotel and, unbeknownst to us, we took the last room in Barry. Apparently, a festival in Cardiff and a Rolling Stones concert had caused every available room to be taken for the following week. They could accommodate us for two nights but no longer.
So, at eleven am, ninety minutes after our Arrival in the UK, we set off looking for the next place we could move to. Despite many helpful suggestions, we were out of luck, and so went to bed a very worried couple.
The following morning, we trawled the remainder of my old haunts and asked several taxi drivers, but everything came up blank. As we were walking forlornly past a pub in town, a man standing outside smoking said, ‘Hello, O, long time no see!’
It was someone I used to know twenty years before, but I had forgotten his name. I asked whether he knew of any lodgings, and he took us inside for a think. Anyway, he offered us his spare room which would become vacant after five days. We leapt at it.
Now we only had five days to cover.
Homeless in Barry
However, his assistance didn’t stop there. He and his wife insisted on taking us around all the guest houses they could think of. Needless to say, they were all booked solid, so we retired to a pub to think again.
‘You can have our bed and we’ll sleep on the couch’, was their solution. We were flabbergasted, but had to accept after offering to sleep on the couch ourselves.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said. ‘I only stopped at that pub to smoke a cigarette with an old friend and that was only the second time I’ve been in there in eight years!’
So, there we are now, and I am sitting on the couch writing this. I can’t wait for our own room, so that they can reclaim their bedroom.
Such acts of kindness are truly humbling, especially when I still haven’t had even a simple email from any of my family asking whether we are still homeless or even just all right!
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I just made progress on Megan’s Christmas! So far I’m 19% complete on the Editing phase.
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