Public Steven Number One

Myself and the former Batcave

When I was growing up most children built dens. Places to escape from nagging parents and play truant from school when the classes offered nothing interesting on a particular day. (Religious studies and gym had me slipping the leash more often than not). Dens were made out of wood, tin sheets, anything you could lay your hands on, including old furniture from skips. And they could be anywhere from a farmers field to the old ash pit ponds that used to be in Burry Port.
My brother and myself, along with a few friends went one step further. One step down in fact. Under the streets and parks of our hometown, under the wheels of speeding cars and thundering trucks. It was cool.
Look at the picture above. Its in Burry Port park and before that mighty slab of concrete was put in place, there was a river there. In the 1950's before I was born, a young boy sadly drowned in it. So it was fenced off and eventually was pipes were laid and it became a sort of giant drain in case of floods. The pipes were big enough for youngsters to walk in (even skateboard) and they ran from the park right down to the harbour.
This was our greatest den. There were no cages or locks like you can see in the photograph, we had free access. Perhaps the council didn't think kids would be daring enough to make underground pipes a den but they hadn't reckoned on our crew of daredevils. We were mad back then, we even free climbed a 100ft quarry without rope and journeyed down a disused mineshaft. But those are other stories.
I am slightly proud to report that those locks were put there because of our antics. Look at the picture once more and theres a satisfied smile playing around my lips. We looked on it as a sort of Batcave and we could disappear for hours underground with nobody having hope of finding us. We could just appear out of nowhere from a wall in the harbour having walked half a mile in near darkness. Hell yes it was cool. Very bloody cool.