Chivers Corner

Petrol indeed

Chivers Corner is a wonderfully named petrol station in Burry Port. And as I have with every part of my hometown, I have a story about the station. A few in fact come to think about it but one stands out like the red topped lighthouse which greets mariners every day. I was around eight years old and very adventurous, and I remember my parents deciding to take my brother and I to Porthcawl fair. An announcment like this was enough to excite children until they were filled with an almost uncontrollable amount of energy. And so it was with me. The family car pulled in to the Chiver's Corner forecourt to fill up with petrol for the journey and this prompted me to get out to stretch my legs (eventhough we'd barely gone a mile). Years ago the petrol station had a small shop which sold Smurphs and toy cars and it had a concrete walkway which went around the back of the place. This narrow path jutted out over a drop of around 12ft, the bottom wild with sharp rocks, nettles and thorns. Hardly a soft landing.
Now owing to my wreckless streak I thought it would be a good idea to climb over the metal railing and hang from my fingertips over this prickly and quite frankly dangerous area. Over I went and just as I lowered myself down my brother joined me to see what I was doing. In this I was fortunate because after I had been dangling for a minute, the grit from the path began biting into the flesh of my fingers, and as I looked below, I could tell that dropping into the debris underneath was going to result in a nasty injury.
So I began yelling at my brother to fetch our father to help me up. Of course he was busy filling the car up so I had had to wait, clinging painfully for life. It might have been 12ft but it looked way more than that to me at the time. I remember glancing down, trying to work out what type of injury I was likely to sustain if I let go. Broken ankle, lacerated shins, bruised legs, shattered knees, mangled toes. There was no end to the agonies I conjured up in my increasingly terrified mind.
When the old man who owned the gargage at the time walked around the corner to come to my aid, my arms felt like they had been pulverised by a steamroller and I gritted a smile from my mouth because by now Id been hanging for something like seven or eight long minutes. After pulling me up I offered my heartfelt thanks and we went on our way to Porthcawl with me looking quite sheepish on the back seat it has to be said. Ego and a devil-may-care attitude brews strange feelings in a young, and not so young mind.

A Carnival of Carnivals!

Today is Carnival Day in Burry Port, and its been held on the first saturday of July ever since I can remember. (Probably since it began, as we are sticklers for tradition in Burry). And this morning, as I awake thirty miles away from my hometown and a whole different skin from my ten year old self, the sunshine is pouring in through the windows like a buttery avalanche of goodness, which is exactly how every Carnival Day started in the past.
I might be using a touch too much of the Perfect Childhood Potion here but I honestly can not recall there ever being rain on this day. Certainly not from around 1979 (you can tell its sunny from the included photo below) to the mid eighties anyway. Come Burry's Carnival Day you could guarantee sunshine.
And excitement. And hundreds of locals and visitors lining Station Road in order to see the colourful assortment of floats and walkers in costumes. Teenagers back then (before the nanny state gripped everything) even climbed lamposts and hung from the railway bridges to secure good vantage points to watch the parade.
All of the work and build up in organising, designing lorries and choosing the Carnival Queen, it all paid off with interest when the day itself pounced from a ususally murky June. For most Burryportians it truly was/is the beginning of summer.


Myself (left) Father (Gonzo) and younger brother in 1979's Carnival

The carnival procession would start at 2pm in the carpark of the old Carbay Club, which is now the Neptune Hotel. The route was over the Coop Bridge and down along Station Road until the whole thing turned into the park after heading through New Street. Burry Port has quite a large public park with rugby and football pitches, and it is here that stalls and a funfair would pitch up for the day.
As a young boyo my family would all gather in my grandmothers house, near the tiny wooden gilled surgery, that was a darts throw from the park/shops, and had a car park so that family members from Penclawdd always had a place for their always orange~looking cars. My mother, grandmother and aunts would make a giant buffet of sandwiches, crisps, homemade pasties, rissoles and no end of sticky drinks. Everyone it seemed was at my grandmothers house on Carnival Day back then.
I was not fussed with the floats and procession itself, I was always eager like a firefly to head on over to the sugary delights of the funfair, where candyfloss would often fall from other childrens hands and blow in the summer breeze across the dried rugby pitch like neon tumbleweeds. All I remember was being crushed in Jones' newsagents shop doorway as noisy floats passed by, decked out in cardboard interpretations of paradise islands and sets of populat television shows of the time. While an assortment of Draculas, Incredible Hulks, Bugs Bunnies and the odd clown jigged by on rubber feet, holding out buckets half filled with copper pennies that rattled like teeth in a jam jar.
Being a solitary type of boy, I would always try to use the crowds to hide and shrink into so that these strange, mad eyed, usually sports shoe wearing beasts could not find me among the denim and cotton stalks of grown ups legs. Of course down there there were new dangers such as falling cigarette ash and syrup from ice cream sauces.
It was worth it however because the rest of the day was magic. An afternon spent in the park with hot dogs, game stalls, funfair rides and seemingly hundreds of chances to win miserable looking goldfish! (Im holding a goldfish in the photo above but due to the limits of the width of this post its too small to actually see). Every short trousered Welsh pup wanted one of those fish, regardless of how tattered they looked and no doubt come teatime every home in Burry Port had a hastily bought goldfish bowl which stood on top of the fridge like a crystal blister. Fridges were ideal for fish bowls as they were too high and too smooth and cat proof.
The funfair wasn't never going to challenge Porthcawl obviously but it had a nice selection of daring rides from waltzers to the parachutes, which were a type of ferris wheel which stood lazily at an angle instead of being upright and had umrellas over the wheels cars. This was a particular favourite of mine because when you came down from being at the top, it looked as if your rickety carriage was going to smash face first into the baked mud below. Quite a thrill even in those days when homemade 'rides' involved tree swings going over 30ft hillsides.
After the funfair and games, not to mention perfomances by the local brass band, we would head back to my grans for yet more homebaked treats. As you might have noticed, Burry Carnival day left quite an imprint in my memory and its a place in my head which I know is safe from any darker, more morbid thoughts which frequently invade my mind.
Of course as time rolled on and my older self left the salty snacks of my grandmothers oven and found another shaded area amongst rows of beer and ciders, the carnival offered new experiencces for my eager self and I was equally thrilled by them. Come the age of 19 onwards (until the day I left the town) Carnival Day would herald a mornings drinking; weak lagers, sherry and occasionaly spirits, fetched from the Co-op as soon as its doors opened. Crates of ale were carried from there and taken to various friends houses to be thrown back with heavy metal roaring in the background.
It was a fine day in Burry Port, as fine as the sloe berries that were found in the Furnace fields and made into wine.

The Adelphi: Burry's Popular Cinema

Its little known today as Burry Port goes through yet more changes, that this quaint fishing town boasted a cinema, the Adelphi. It was situated in Seaview Terrace, overlooking one of the the harbours and flung open its doors in October 1937, a few years before WWII kicked off and was considered one of the most luxurious cinemas of its time. None other came close in Wales.
The Adlephi had a stage with dressing rooms and when film wasn't on offer, plays and musicals could be performed. (Bingo was also played in the 50's).


Modern for its time: The Adelphi

The owner was Mr Labor Dennis who used to greet people in the foyer whilst puffing on a pipe. A much loved and respected chap in the town at the time. And boy did the people flock for the movies! They came from all over, from Llanelli to Kidwelly, in fact all over the Gwendraeth Valley. Such was the lure of live/recored entertainment before the war.
I would like to write that this happy place enjoyed many years of success but alas it was not to be. The good times only lasted 22 years, and in May 1959 the cinema closed its doors for the final time. The building was knocked down during the years of 1972 and 1973, which is why I don't remember it at all. (I was born in 1971).
The site where it once stood is now a car park used for shoppers and visitors to Burry Port.

The Train Station

Burry Port/Pembrey train station is where I, and many others, spent our teens (from around 16 to 19.) It was an ideal spot because it is in the center of the village, with the shops and chip shops close at hand. And of course there was a shelter. It saved all the hassle of going to call for friends one at a time, everybody could be found here. Well I say 'everybody' but it was more the place for the rebels to kick about in, guys like me who enjoyed beer and drawing on brick walls. It was cool believe it or not.

Old hang out

The photo above is a recent snap I took while visiting my hometown. The shelter didn't look like that when our crew held court there. It used to be solid breezeblock with a tin, corrugated roof. Inside the shelter was a 5" thick stone marble bench that would numb your behind in the winter, and a light with tough perspex casing which allowed us to count our cigarettes and scrawl a few more lines of graffiti on the wall.
Around the back of this legendary shelter was the 'toilet', if the weather was okay. If not we used to relieve ourselves against the inside wall so that the urine would pool under the bench and wash away the cigarette butts and bottle tops. You can get a fair idea of the 'unique' aroma that lingered when the lager was in full flow.
This is where we kept tabs on the gossip and goings on of the town. People gettingvoff the train from Cardiff, Swansea or Llanelli must have thought they were stepping into a kind of modern Wild West, getting welcomed by lager louts. But there was never trouble, we kept our minds on new heavy metal records and where the best magic mushroom spots were that year.
That area unofficially belonged to us and anyone wanting to catch a train to Kidwelly or Carmarthen usually waited under the old footbridge (where I took the above photo from.) We smoked there, drank, talked, went with girls, made our mark on the walls and occasionaly ran across the railtrack in a mad dash to look brave before an oncoming train. Whenever I look at the station either visiting or in pictures, I am always nearly drowned by the wonderful memories.