TWO YEARS IN MID WALES

This is just a single webpage to remember my best ever job, the memory of which will undoubtedly remain with me forever. That's not because of the work itself, which was a typical automotive job, but because of the handful of people that I met whilst employed by B & S Motor Spares in Llandrindod Wells.

Despite it being nearly 20 years since I lived and worked in the Victorian Spa town of Llandrindod, I still retain a deep and abiding fondness for the place, its people and for the generally easier pace of life that such rural communities often provide.

When I'd first applied for employment with the Welsh based automotive spares company, B & S Motor Spares in the early 1990's, I'd never even heard of places like Llandrindod, Rhayader, Builth or Newtown and certainly didn't think that I'd take to them so readily.

One of the first people that I met when I arrived in Llandod was a local girl called Sarah Pembridge who worked in the B & S shop I had been asked to manage. She was great fun to work with and I was sad to see her leave the shop, when she decided to pursue a career elsewhere. I did manage to get in touch with Sarah recently, to find out that she's been married for a good while, is now a mum and holds down a responsible job with the local council. A far cry from the fairly "dippy" young girl that I remembered from all those years ago

The next person who helped to make my time in Llandrindod Wells really memorable was a local mechanic called Ken Griffiths. He cut quite a figure with his cowboy hat and boots, his bootlace tie and embroidered shirts, not what you'd expect to find in the middle of rural Wales. He and I got along straight away, no doubt because of a shared sense of humour and our individual interests. Even after I'd moved away from Llandrindod I stayed in touch with Ken and his family by phone and even visited them every now and again, which was nice to do.

Although I've lost touch with Ken over the past few years I still keep in touch with his ex-missus Anne, who still lives and works in the town. I keep promising to come down and visit her again, as it must be a good few years since my last trip there, but things just keep getting in the way! or so I keep saying to myself. Anne runs a small business in the town, teaching quilting and patchwork and manufacturing her own range of individual handmade quilts, cushions, etc. Some examples of her work is shown HERE

Although there were a few people who worked in the shop with me over the two years or so that I was there, the two that I remember with the fondest memories are two local lads, Ian Hilliard and Martin Price, simply because they made the job itself easy, but at the same time great fun My abiding memory of Ian, is running around the shop, wearing a pair of heavy duty gauntlets, trying to grab hold of a stoat or a weasel, or something similar, which had managed to get itself trapped in the shop. Only in a place like Llandod!!

Ian was the only person I knew who could hammer a nail in the wall and at the same time hit himself in the head with it, a great lad, but absolutely no sense at all. Martin's greatest pleasure was taking the p*ss out of Ian, without Ian actually realising he was doing it, which was virtually every day. They were great days and even now some 20 years later the memory of their antics still make me laugh!! Local people tell me that Martin now works for Powys County Council as an electrician, which doesn't surprise me, because despite his wicked sense of humour, he was first and foremost a grafter and he has no doubt done very well for himself and his family. As for Ian, I'm told he was thought to be working at a hotel in London, so let's all hope that there are no hammers involved with the job?

The great thing about working for B & S was that you could never be sure, what you'd be selling from day-to-day, despite the fact that we were ostensibly running a motor spares shop. Boy! the owner didn't half buy some CRAP to put in his shops. Once a week like clockwork, it was a bit like your worst possible Christmas, when you'd open the main stores delivery to see what utter rubbish the shop had been allocated by the "boss". Mousetraps! Candles! Sunglasses! Mountain Bikes! and loads of other miscellaneous products would just "tip" up from our central store, it became a really popular game trying to figure out what the next big "thing" would be. That said though, I was glad that Llandrindod was a relatively small shop, otherwise I might have ended up with a range of East European bedroom furniture, which was put into the bigger shops like Aberystwyth and Swansea, so i was lucky there then!!

Someone else who worked with me briefly was a guy called Ceri Owens, who sadly did not fare as well as some of my other former colleagues. Sometime after I'd left Llandrindod and returned to Chester I heard that he had died as a result of a car crash, which had been made much more serious through his own tinkering with the cars electrical system and seats. He was a really nice guy, but his tendency to overrate his own mechanical abilities, made it almost inevitable that he would either hurt himself or worse still someone else. I was saddened as much for his parents, as I was for Ceri himself. His father, Roy, was the pharmacist at the chemist shop in Rhayader who spent a great deal of time worrying over his son's health and behaviour, but probably never expected that his life would be cut short in such an unexpected and wasteful manner.

I used to particularly enjoy the annual Victorian festival, which was held in the town, even if it meant being driven mad and being deafened by the man with the barrel organ, who insisted on playing the same old tunes for hours at a time, right outside the shop's doorway. Then there were often the local "good life" crowd who would hawk their punnets of hand picked strawberry's on crappy trestle tables, at the same time blocking the walkway through to Somerfields and causing a log jam of people who would be busily trying to avoid them, or having to buy their products.   

Another Rhayader resident who worked with me at B & S in Llandrindod was Damien Hurley, the son of a local minister and a typical "boy racer" who liked to thrash about the country lanes in his Ford Escort car. He was a decent enough guy and I well remember him giving me a lift up to Chester late one night and then driving me all the way back again, something that not everyone would do. The best part of that journey, was when he noticed a barn fire, off in the distance and set off to lend a hand. There was me and his then girlfriend, basically abandoned in the middle of nowhere, while Damien disappeared into the smoke to help the local farmer rescue his livestock or his straw or something? We must have sat there for ages, not quite sure whether he had gone up in flames as well, but fortunately he did eventually turned up again, a little bit smoke damaged, but still in generally good order. What a relief!!

I remember him trying to impress me with his driving skills, hurtling round the unlit country lanes at high speed, with me sitting in the passenger seat trying to seem unimpressed, whilst at the same time hoping like mad that there wasn't a tractor, or worse still a loose animal around the corner!! Fortunately, there wasn't any unexpected obstruction, which just goes to prove, that PRAYING REALLY DOES WORK!!

I wonder whatever happened to the Parrot, that he owned? The poor bird was obviously so annoying that the family had put it in a room on its own and as Parrots are thought to be fairly sociable animals, the lack of company had caused it to start plucking out its feathers, so that when I saw it, it had a completely bald chest area. Sad really!!

Possibly the most important person I met during my time in Llandrindod Wells was a, local girl, Joanne Davies, whose family lived at Hendre Farm in Nantmel. I remember her as a vibrant and bubbly young woman who was fun to be with and who showed me a great deal of love and kindness during my brief time in Mid Wales. The fact that we parted company, on what can only be described as bad terms, is and was a real cause of regret for me and I can only hope that she remembers me with the same fondness, that I continue to have for her. Pictured above with Joanne, her little Jack Russell Terrier "Patch" was a tidy little dog and a great "ratter", although no doubt he's long gone. I remember watching him attacking an enormous hedgehog that had made the mistake of wandering across Patches' farmyard in broad daylight. That little dog was completely oblivious to the damage being caused by the hedgehog's protective quills and only stopped attacking it after it had lain quiet for some time. Patch then simply retreated to a safe distance and watched for any sign of movement from the hog. Sure enough, after a little time it began to unfurl itself, ready to resume its journey, only to be attacked again by the game little terrier. He must have spent hours terrorizing the poor hedgehog, before he eventually got bored with it and wandered off to go catch some rats or wind the farms sheepdogs up! 

I'm not so sure that Joanne ever forgave me for "nicking" her beloved car, but BOY!, it was so funny. With the help of a local breakdown guy, I essentially repossessed her Ford Orion car and arranged to have it stored elsewhere, which with hindsight was a bit mean, but HEY!!, what can I say? Joanne and  a group of Rhayader locals were said to have scoured the area for the car and set up surveillance on the breakdown guy's premises, in the hope of re-acquiring the vehicle before it left Powys. Unfortunately for them, the area around the guy's garage was so dark, that they failed to realise that the "missing" car was in fact in plain sight and was probably no more than a hundred yards of where they were all sitting! It was lucky for me that none of them got out of their cars to stretch their legs or for a wander round, as they would have almost certainly spotted the Orion sitting in the darkened field. Talk about "PSYCHE". Still, never mind, having spent some time in Chester, the car was eventually given back to its distraught owner, but I'm not sure that she ever saw the funny side of the situation?

I understand that sometime after I'd left Llandrindod, Joanne married her local man and settled down to raise a family in Rhayader. I'm glad that things worked out for her and hope that life has given her all the good things that she would wish for herself and her family.

I would also like to think that her parents Dorothy and Idris and her brothers Carl, Gwyn and Michael have all fared well over the intervening years and life has treated them all kindly. I'd read somewhere that both Joanne and her brother Carl had their own children, so no doubt the farm is alive with the sound of kids running about and making a huge fuss of the various animals. I always think of Joanne's mum as being like "Skippy" the Bush Kangaroo, because she had a really annoying habit of "Tut-tutting" at everything she disapproved of, which appeared to be a fair amount. Poor woman must have had a really sore tongue at the end of each and every day! especially with a number of grand children running amok around the place. Unfortunately, God obviously didn't bless Dorothy or her daughter with a great deal of patience, but probably gave them both hardened tongues as a substitute gift. (kidding!!)

I've nearly lost count of the number of times that I've promised myself that I would move back to Llandrindod, just to see if it's still as wonderful as I remember it. But the fact that nearly 20 years later I still haven't done so, maybe says something about me, rather than the place itself. Still, if I never saw the place again I would still have some some wonderfully funny memories of the place itself and of the handful of the people that I got to know for such a brief time and I'd happily settle for that.  

Phillip E Jones

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