Postcards from Pembrokeshire

When I came back from Australia last year, I went to an Open Mic night and performed a brief overview of some of the people I had met and I called it 'Postcards from Australia'. 2020 has been ... how shall we say ... less ambitious but, all the same, here are some postcards from Pembrokeshire.

1

Not so long ago, I wrote a story that was set in a small hotel. I gave all the characters who worked in the hotel about three jobs to do, partly because I did not want to write more characters to cover every job. Hence, I was rather pleased when the woman who welcomed me to the hotel replied to my comment that I was a vegetarian with the explanation that she also cooked breakfasts every morning, so she would remember that. It seems that several jobs per person is realistic.

She had seen me park up in the car park behind the hotel and then wheel in a large, heavy suitcase. After meeting me and giving me the details of the hotel, she asked when my partner would be joining me. I took this as a comment on the size of my suitcase, but some of us like to come prepared for every eventuality.

She did indeed make a good veggie breakfast. On the last day, she came out of the kitchen as I was chatting to the owner before leaving in my car. She was wearing black shoes, black trousers, a black top and black gloves. He black hair was tied back. "You look like some kind of burglar!" said the owner. "No, no, no," she replied and added a pair of dark glasses to the outfit, "Now all I need is a getaway driver."

"My car's outside," I offered, but unfortunately getting the case back out there would probably have caused problems with a quick getaway.

2

I try to think of myself as not a prejudiced person. However, there are certain times in certain places where you think that you must have met someone who is English. There is a certain accent that suggests that someone is probably English and unfortunately, it does not always go with behaviour that makes English people look good.

I was trying not to be judgemental when I sat at breakfast in my hotel and observed the family assembling at a table across the room. They were unhappy with the seating, unhappy with the position inside and just unhappy with everything initially. The waitress asked if she could take their orders and they demanded menus. She explained that there were no menus because of COVID19 but that she could recite the menu for them.

At this point, I was reminding myself that they could come from anywhere and that they might have learned their English accents in schools or from foreign language tapes. Then they took issue with the waitress. She was wearing a mask and they objected to this. She explained that due to COVID19 restrictions, she had to wear a mask. They claimed that this stopped them hearing what she was saying but, if this was true, their response was not to try to understand but to criticise her for wearing a mask. When they demanded that she either took it off or wore a visor, she tried to calmly explain that this was the PPE that she had been given for her job.

This is something that always annoys me - people who abuse the lowest levels of employees in service industries. I have never found it funny when people post online about how they insulted someone from a call centre who phoned them. That does nothing beyond make someone doing a miserable job reading off a script all day feel even more disillusioned with their life. Similarly, that waitress has no input into the PPE policy of the business where she works. It is unlikely that she will complain about it, even if she did agree with them. As it happens, I met the owner of the business before I left and, had I had any complaints, I would have made it to him ... or on TripAdvisor if I did not have the courage.

They were from rural Shropshire, by the way. I overheard them talking about it the next day. If you want perfect service and people who do everything you say, book a five star hotel and do not abuse service staff in a 'boutique B&B' in Narberth. It is not only an English thing, but done in an English accent it sounds all the more bullying.

3

I paused when I reached the beach at Lydstep. I had been walking for about two hours at this point and I wanted to take a moment to look at my map. I had also walked down from the cliffs to a beach, though it was mostly stony and faced with rows of caravans owned by people who obviously never had a memo on climate change or were at least hoping to have sold the caravan on before the effects became too clear.

The coastal path has a number of places where the route that you choose depends on whether the tide is out or in and so I was also consulting a sign that explained the inland and the beach route. A man came up behind me and asked, "Where are we?"

I told him that it was Lydstep and he asked me where I was going. "Manorbier," I replied and he said that he was going there too. He wanted to know how long it would take and I estimated at least two hours. It did not look far on the map, but the coastal path is very up and down and I would not estimate a speed of more than 2mph for walking.

With this information, he walked down on to the beach and I looked at him for the first time. He was wearing trainers, shorts, a t-shirt and a cap and he was carrying a phone. He had no map, no water, no food and nothing for emergencies. The weather was cool and rain was forecast for later. I had a jumper, a hoodie and waterproofs just in case, he had nothing but the belief that the coastal path continued along the beach.

I did take the beach route, but had to climb over some rocks and up on to a slipway to find the coastal path again. Meanwhile, T-shirt man had walked to the end of the beach and was wondering where the path was. I continued on a climb past the old manor house (I did not need the information board to tell me that the former owners sold all their land to caravan park developers) up to Lydstep headland, which is owned by the National Trust.

A little bit more walking later, I found myself at a picnic table at Skrinkle Haven. Can we pause and say how fabulous Pembrokeshire names are? I decided to stop and have my lunch. As I sat and watched the sea and the dramatic arch formations along the coast being lapped by waves, the mapless man reappeared again. He overtook me as I sat there and I gave him a little wave. I never saw him again, but I do wonder if he ever made it to Manorbier. I hope that he did it without the help of air sea rescue or the RNLI.

There is no excuse to go on a long walk on a wet day without any preparation at all. I admit that I once tried a walk in the Brecon Beacons on a punishingly hot day when the usual trail was closed and I had to go on a huge diversion I was not prepared for. I ended up getting heat exhaustion and vomiting into a cool bag at the back of a bus heading to Abergavenny ... but that was when I was young and foolish. Also, I did have enough with me that day to reach Talybont-on-Usk and get a bus to Abergavenny. If that man had mis-stepped on a cliff edge further along the route, he would have had to hope that he did not drop his phone and that he could keep warm until he was rescued.

4

South Pembrokeshire has been settled by all sorts of people over the years and that is one reason why its placenames are so unusual. It was once well-known to the Vikings and at one time Flemish archers were given land in the county as reward for work done for English kings. If you are looking for areas that have retained their Welsh-speaking history, then you are better off heading to the north of the county. At least, so I had thought.

On the sunny Sunday of my stay, I decided to drive to Barafundle Bay. Barafundle once had an odd role in a conference I attended. The opening speaker at this conference was talking about the importance of memory and told us that if we called out a random set of things, he would repeat them an hour later in the same order. I am sure that the woman who shouted 'Barafundle Bay' knew that she was tripping him up. Indeed she did too as an hour later, he stumbled over Barafundle Bay. Later he explained that he remembered things using images memorised as part of a room by room walk through his house. As he had never been to Barafundle Bay, he could not memorise a picture for it. I think that the woman who called it out was being unfair.

The trouble was that everyone else had decided to go to Barafundle Bay on a sunny Sunday. The roads in the area are only one car wide so when people start parking by on the road, you have a huge traffic jam. I was stuck on the coast road and going nowhere. In these situations, someone always gets out of their car and starts to move people about. This time it was the man in the car behind me.

He wanted me to move my car back towards his and he said, "Dod nôl" to me. It took me a few moments to realise that he was speaking in Welsh to me. He then went forward to talk to other car drivers ... in English! I have no idea what it was about my car, with its YesCymru sticker and peeling sticker from the 2016 Eisteddfod in Monmouthshire, that made him think that he should speak to me in Welsh. He came back and repeated his request and I almost asked if he should not be using the vocative case and thus the command form of the verb, 'Dewch'. No-one likes a smart arse learner, by the way.

The traffic was cleared and I drove on. There was no way down to Barafundle itself, so I drove on to Lamphey, where a girlfriend once insisted that I met a man in a hotel and that is a whole different story. The memory man had no picture of Barafundle and neither do I to this day. Next time I will try when it is raining.

5

I avoided The Peppercorn pub and restaurant on the Saturday night as it appeared to be full of locals and groups of people. However, on the Sunday it was looking deserted in the evening and so I went in for a halloumi burger. I also discovered the local Henry VII cider. Henry VII was born in Pembroke Castle, but I have never seen any definite proof of a link between the Tudor dynasty and the cider industry.

As it was a slow night, I was able to sit in the back of the pub with my diary. Eating out on your own is, let us be honest here, rubbish and so you need to take something to do while you wait or eat. This did not go unnoticed by my waitress, Alisha.

When I finished the meal and she brought me the bill, Alisha asked if I was a writer. I said 'yes'. I have never replied 'yes' to that question before, but it struck me that that was my identity or, at least, one of my identities. I advised her that you could not make a living out of it, but she was still interested to know what I was writing. Then she said that she had always had a desire to make mad, passionate love to a curly-haired writer on holiday in Pembrokeshire.

Now I think about it, part of that last story may have only happened in my imagination.