Burry Port, west dock
Returning to ones home town after many years abscence, and having very little to do with the place inbetween, is a very strange experience. One that was heaped upon myself yesterday when I decided to visit my late mothers grave.
I was born and raised in Burry Port, a tiny fishing village in West Wales, where everyone lives inside each others pockets, feeding off gossip like starved pigeons. The only Gods honest real smiles found there are on Friday and Saturday evenings, when the entire town it seems congregate in its many pubs to wash away the weeks misery and woes with lager tops and bacardi.
It was a wonderful place to grow up, sandwiched between a rough sobering coast with three sleepy harbours and pea green hills which serve as a dominating background to houses, chapels and parks.
There were many places to keep a young boy entertained; the Furnace fields with its waist high ferns, newt filled ponds and narrow lanes formed by vicious brambles. The old tramline, a path which started near the park and took its walkers on a honeysuckle scented stroll alongside a bubbling river to the foot of the towns protective hills. There were the ash pit ponds along the coast, formed by waste from a power station, eerie like the surface of the moon, white grey and pitted. Home to herons and weasels, with a little cove perfect for pirate boys in summer holidays.
There were a hundred distractions and I knew them all. I knew every rope swing whipping over nasty nettles, every ramshackled den, even the underground mine shafts I was not a stranger too. The very air, a mixture of sea, oil and earth, was comfort and thrilled my lungs.
But I had moved many years ago, and although Ive always wanted to go back, I never really had good reason to other than to attend the funeral of my mother, and it was her who took me back yesterday. Good mothers always bring their sons home.
It never occurred to me how different it would feel, how cold a town it had become to me since I last stumbled with earnest along its fine roads. The second I stepped out of the car and looked toward the old iron footbridge which crosses the railway track, and leads to the main street and its short parade of shops, I felt a stranger to it all. An outsider.
As I crossed the fabled bridge, (which had been a regular hangout in my teenage years) I was met with a familiar sight: Stepney road, which runs almost straight through the town, and pubs spill out into chip shops on the opposite side. The heart of the place, busy but not so loud as you could not sleep if needed.
I had stood on part of this bridge, many many times in years long past, like a hungover buzzard watching locals and buses run around in sun and rain. The bridge had been a stage to many pranks and episodes, many alcohol fuelled, others stirred by mischievious youth.
And now as I descended the steps I felt completely out of touch. I looked around at the old Smartiland sweet shop, and the street 'corner' where gangs of locals would congregate after a night swilling in the Hope & Anchor and other taverns, and nothing stirred in me. The feeling of this town being home had entirely disappeared.
I was no longer a 'local', I knew nothing of the gossip or petty scandal that was currently brewing as they do in small communities. Indeed if it were not for my distinctive West Walian accent I could almost have passed for a tourist, visiting from the Shoreline caravan park half a mile away.
I rolled back the years in my mind, to a time where I could have gone into any pub, shop or chip shop and been welcomed by warm smiles on instantly reconisable faces. People knew me, I knew them and everyone local shared everything.
Not anymore I thought as I made my way along Station road toward the Co-op supermarket, my one time daily port for beer. Nothing but groceries would be available now, and only pints at the bar would be offererd. Enquiries into health or discussions on town developments would be off limits, for even though I was, (and still am) a 'Burry Portian', I had a different address outside of the fold.
In the car park I looked around a final time and for a minute everything came alive again; lunchtime drinkers in the old Carbay club, teenagers diving off harbour walls and the black redundant crane, Carmarthen Bay power station, that mighty red bricked building with its three giant smoke stacks reaching to the clouds and July carnivals always with its fairy queens and fisticuffs.
Its all there in my heart and these memories will never leave me, however much I leave its tiny shore. Porth Tywyn yn fy enaid.
