CHAPTER 18
Kids
THE PLOUGH AND HARROW # 3
I and my friends would spend a lot of our evening times in our regular pub, the Plough and Harrow.
The plough was in the middle of the countryside not far outside the village of Wick in a area called Monknash.
If you didn’t know where the plough was located in the narrow hedge covered lanes, you would have driven right passed it, there was no signpost on the main B road that ran alongside it, this B road eventually snaked its way to the town of LLantwit Major.
There was nothing to show the pub existed.
On the roadside there was a large barn shielding it from the road and just a few small group of farm buildings nearby, there was no indication that there was a pub just off the country lane.
As I say we were regulars, we knew most of the other bikers in the area and on occasion we would have some visiting bikers who would pop into the pub because they would have heard through the grapevine that bikers were welcome there.
You have to remember back in the day in the 70s and 80s if you worn a leather jacket or not have the right dress style you had no chance getting into a pub or even if you were wearing the wrong shoes you just didn’t fit in.
The photo below is a very good example of dress code harassment.
On a Saturday afternoon, Wobble, Fat Mike, Beaker and Brian went to The Welcome to Town pub in Nolton street, for a couple of pints, they did not have a very warm welcome.
As soon as they walked into the pub they were told they would not be served with any drink unless they took their jackets off.
They refused to do so and were promptly throw out, this did not happen everywhere, but it is a good example of the attitude of some landlords back then, the pub lost out on the boys custom, they just found another local pub to drink in where they could wear their jackets.
( Photo 1 ) . The photo shows a very young Wobble, Mike and Beaker seconds after being thrown out of ( the Welcome to Town ) pub in Nolton street, Brian took the photo.
I know there is a dress code nowa days for certain places, but back then you could have a small earring that was just about discernible thought the long hair that we all had back then, the bouncer or landlord would pick on something to use to ban you from going in or serving you, they would use anything trivial and use it as an excuse and that would have been enough to refuse you entry, this happened all to often, just being a biker was good enough to be refused, the amount of times my friends and I have been refused entry or a drink in an ordinary pub was ridicules.
The normal conversation with the landlord / lady would go like this.
“ 4 pints please “, this would be responded with not being served or just getting completely ignored and the request for a drink would normally end with “ if you don’t leave, I’ll call the police this is a family pub, we want no trouble “.
I really don’t know what they were expecting us to do, we may have been a little bit on the loud side and maybe a touch scruffy for most people, but all we wanted was a drink, we were not there to cause any trouble, we could be loud but no more than any group of rugby players and most likely better behaved than those idiots when they are out on the piss.
So any biker being informed that there was a biker friendly pub in the countryside would need to be looked into.
Friendly watering holes were very far between back in the day, if you intended to go somewhere in town for a night out there was a certain way you had to dress to get in a pub just to have a pint, I know there are still dress codes nowa days, but it was ridiculous back then, the Plough with Beryl being our landlady was happy to server anyone as long as they behaved and this relaxed attitude towards customers brought a few random visits from bikers outside our circle.
The Knights Arm’s in Porthcawl was another pub that excepted all kinds of customers, but sadly Ken Evans the landlord gave the pub up in 1981 and it was never the same after ken left.
( Photo 2 ) . The Plough and Harrow, Monknash.
On one particular midweek day in the middle of October, it was quieter than normal in the pub, there were only a few of us in the pool-room, the weather had changed, it was getting wetter every day.
If that is possible in Wales, it seems to be wet all the time.
The temperature had dropped dramatically and it was getting dark earlier, so lots of people stayed in-doors and would only venture out on weekends.
Well on this night there were only few of us at the pub, if my memory is correct I remember Fat Mike, Wobble, Brian, Collin the Sheep, Galen, PJ and Sharon, Gaenor, Beaker, Tony Dog and maybe one or two of the Batey Brothers with Caroline and Julie, I’m not 100 % on who was there as we spent so many nights there , 30-40 years later it is hard to remember exact nights with the right amount of people being in the same place, but the mix does seam right to me.
so we were all doing whatever we were doing on a normal night in the pub, drinking, talking, playing pool and generally messing around or just planning our next party, day-out somewhere or a rally.
At around 20:00, that’s 8 o'clock to you non- military minded people out there.
We all heard some bikes pull up outside.
Wobble looked out of the window and said I don’t recognize any of these guys and from the sound of it they are on small Jap bikes.
A few minutes later three young bikers walked into the pub, they didn’t look at us or make eye contact and just went straight to the small bar in the corner.
Beryl the landlady served them, to be honest they were kids and did not look anywhere near the legal drinking age of 18 years.
Beryl had been drinking earlier in day which she did most days and most likely was to pissed to notice how old they were.
They were wearing multi coloured motocross type jackets and the same type of coloured helmets with vented peaks attached to the Helmet’s with no visors, they were dressed in total contrast to what we were wearing with black leather jackets and denim cut-offs, and we were all around 8-10 years older than they were.
The three youngsters huddle together in the corner near the bar, none of them were trying to make eye contact with anyone in the room, they just talked quietly to each other.
We just ignored them.
Everyone was welcome here as long as they were not looking for trouble.
Mike went to the bar to get another drink and has he headed for the bar he approached kids, he turned towards them, Mike not being the most diplomatic of people said " where the fuck have you guys been , you look like youjust came out of a bike show window ".
The youngsters stared at Mike and looked like three rabbits caught in the headlights of a car.
They did not reply.
Mike was a little bit in your face when he said something, he had a very dry sense of humour which I always found funny, but it was hard to tell if he was joking when he said something or if he was being serious and these kids did not know what to expect.
Mike then asked what are you guys riding, they replied that two of them had 100 cc trail bikes and one had a 125 cc road bike.
Mike reply “ well you have to start somewhere “ and then broke of the short conversation and walked off and went straight to the bar to get his pint off Beryl.
I called over towards them and said “ where are you boys from “.
They said “ llantwit major just a few miles down the road “, I said “ yes, I know where it is ", said with a touch of sarcasm in my voice " sit down guys, we are not going to bite you “.
Then someone said , “ well, maybe Galen will “.
There was a little chuckle around the room, so mike had broken the ice with them, and they looked far more relaxed from that moment on.
It is not easy walking into a biker pub as a stranger, we were all there to relax and enjoy ourselves there were no issues here.
The kids settled down by the table directly under the electric wall heater by the main door into the room.
They were there a little while and then Galen and Joss had stopped playing pool and Galen said to the kids “ you guys have a game “, and that is what they did.
This was fine with everyone, we were getting alone with them, they were causing no problems and behaving themselves, even though we were older than they were, and we were a different kind of biker to what they were used too.
They fitted into the room very well.
The night rolled on, the kids played pool and drunk more beer.
We did whatever we were doing amongst ourselves listening to the jukebox and chattered to each other.
At one point one of the kids stood near to me while he was waiting to take his next turn at the pool table, he had the pool cue in his hands, and he was trying to put blue chalk on the tip of his cue in preparation of his next shot.
I moved my chair slightly so he could have a better shot at his chosen pool ball and then I noticed something about him while he was chalking his cue.
There should have been nothing unusual to see about someone playing pool.
What I noticed was that it was not his pool cue he was chalking but the knuckle on his hand, and he had blue chalk all over his hand, it was all over his fingers and down the side of his hand, he also had the blue chalk smeared over the left side of his face.
( Photo 3 ) . Some of my friends and regular bikers at the plough, that’s me in the middle with the green shirt being molested by everyone for some strange reason.
I thought “ what the fuck “.
I turned to Fat Mike who was sitting close by me and said “ look at the kid standing by me playing pool, he looked over the table and said “ what the fuck is he doing “.
I got up from my chair and called Beryl from the other bar, she said to me expecting me to order another drink " you want another pint ", I said " not at the moment, but do you see the kids playing pool, don’t server them any more drinks they have had enough ".
She replied " ok, you keep an eye on them ", I answered " don’t worry, leave it to us, we’ll sort it " and with that short conversation she disappeared back into the main bar.
The kids were pissed, in fact so was Beryl, which was not unusual.
I walked up to the first kid I had noticed with the blue hands.
I said to him how many pints have you had, he looked at me I could see he was trying to focus, he was more pissed than I first thought.
He replied “ I dunno “ his reply was slurred and I could see he was having trouble keeping his balance, he had one hand on the pool table to steady himself.
I said “ how the fuck did you get so pissed quickly.
“ I dunno “ he said once again.
I took the pool cue off him and told him to go and sit down by his friend.
I looked at the other boy playing pool and said “ you sit down as well “.
One of their friends who was already sitting by their table had his head flat on the table, he was worse than the two playing pool.
I turned to the rest of the guys in the room “ how come nobody noticed the state of these kids, for fuck’s sake they are all pissed “.
The only other person more pissed than the kids was Tony Dog and maybe Beryl, but Tony was a passenger and not riding his own bike home.
There is no problem with getting pissed in a pub.
The main problem in this case was the kids were underage and in the middle of nowhere, in twisty dark country lanes with no lighting and their transport home were three small Jap chicken chaser bikes with about one candle of headlight power between them and the most important point was the kids were bollocks`d .
If one of these kids had an accident on the way home and the police got involved, Beryl our landlady could lose her drink licence and lose the pub as a result, and nobody wanted the kids to get hurt, after all they weren’t that bad when they were with us, and we were all kids once, they were just lacking some common sense at the moment and didn’t know their limits.
Wobble picked up the remainder of their drinks and took them away and went into the girls toilet and poured them away and then filled the glasses up with clean water from the tap.
Wobble came back in the room and put the pint glasses down in front of the three kids on the table and said to the kids “ drink, there’s plenty of it and it is free “.
One of the kids stood up and grabbed his helmet and was making for the exit door, Fat Mike pushed him back down into his seat and said “ your not going anywhere “.
The three kids looked like scared rabbits again.
I said “ for fuck’s sake, just stay there and drink the water, your not going anywhere until you sober up a bit.
The time was only 21:30, these kids had managed to get this drunk in one and half hours.
We kept them there drinking water and made them go to the girls toilet when they wanted to go, we made them drink a lot of water, there was only one door into the girls toilet and that was from the pool room, we did this until 22:30 .
They were still pissed an hour later, but they were in better condition then they were an hour ago.
The kids were very stressed, they must have felt way out of their depth, I think they learned a life lesson from this night.
We offered the three of them a lift to where they lived in LLantwit Major as pillions on our bikes or they could leave their bikes at the plough so they could pick them up another day and we said we would even order a taxi for them, they didn’t seam very keen on a lift or a taxi, it was their choice, they were adamant that they wanted to ride home, they seamed to have sobered up a lot, so around 22:45 we let the go.
They practically ran to their bikes and then the kids were gone, they disappeared into the darkness in a cloud of blue two-stroke smoke, we could hear the screams of their engines revving through the gears has they made Has much distance from the Plough as quickly as they could.
The sound of their bikes soon disappeared and so did we, within 10-15 minutes of the kids leaving, we all left the pub, there was no-lock-in tonight none of wanted to be there if the coppers turned up, normally Beryl would close when the last person stopped drinking and this could be 02:00, but not tonight, none of us wanted to end up in cell for a night or even longer, I can image the coppers slapping a kidnap charge on us and confiscating our bikes and anything else they could try to make stick.
If one or more of the kids had an accident, the police would have wanted to know where they had been drinking, so the Plough and Harrow would have been their first port of call and also technically we had held them hostage for a couple of hours.
We stopped them leaving for their own safety, we could not have let them go as pissed as they were, but I don’t think the pigs would have seen it that way.
None of us know for sure, but we think they must have all got home ok, we didn’t hear of any accidents in the llantwit area involving any bikes during the following week, if there was an accident we would have heard about it through the grapevine.
The kids never came back to the pub. I don’t know why they seemed to have liked the beer, they could all still be in a hedge somewhere near Saint Donats Village as far as we know, but hopefully they learned something from this night even if it was a hard lesson for them.
I think it was a night they would not forget to quickly.
( Photo 4 ) . The field behind the plough and harrow pub, with remains of the Monks Grange, the plough is the building on the far left of the photo.