HARRY and BERYL

CHAPTER 20

HARRY and BERYL

PLOUGH and HARROW #4

I could not find any photos of Harry and Beryl

So I have added photos of my friends taken up at the plough during the 80s.

( Photo 1 ) The photo shows the path leading to the entrance of the plough, wobble parked his 400/4 outside the bottom left hand window, the photo was taken on a normal wet day in Wales.

I have mentioned Harry and Beryl before in another blog story, when I have been writing about the plough, but I thought I would go into a little more depth about them, as they were very important to the character of the pub and worth remembering, they made the pub memorable for just being there, and it would not have been the same without them.

Everyone has problems with relationships, but harry and beryl had their marital issues and their everyday problems exposed to the public, because of the nature of their work, we seen them nearly every day and everything they got up to was normal to us, but any newcomer to the pub would have been seeing their behaviour in the pub, let's say a little unusual.

Beryl was a very approachable person, and she always seemed to be happy to see you, and she had a pleasant and relaxed attitude to most things.

But she did like a drink.

This was in complete contrast to harry who seemed to be sober all the time and perpetually miserable, he was always polite, but he gave a very unenthusiastic service with very limited conversation, but both of them in their own way were interesting characters and their relationship behind the bar always gave us something to watch, the only way I could describe some of their goings-on behind the bar would be to compare them with the sit-com ( Faulty towers ).

Harry was the husband of Beryl, she was the landlady of the Plough and harrow, and it was easy to see in the way they spoke to each other, their honeymoon period of their marriage was well behind them.

Harry was not the happiest of people, he didn’t seem to have any sense of humour.

In all the time that I had spent at the plough, which was quite a few years, I can't say I ever saw him smile or laugh or even crack a joke, sarcasm possibly, a joke never.

He was one very serious guy, he was always polite and did his job as barman / landlord, he just seemed to tolerate us, because Beryl liked having us in the pub, and we put money over the bar.

To be honest he was one grumpy old git, this is how I remember him anyway, but maybe others seen him in a different light, I never had any issues with him, but he never seemed to be happy, which seemed to be his normal demeanor.

We would all normally be found in the backroom with the pool table and the jukebox, the most interaction we had with harry was over the bar, when he would pour you a pint, other than that, he stayed away from us.

Harry was around 6” or so tall, slight of build and at the time in the early 80s he must have been around the late 40s or maybe in his early 50s, he did look stressed all the time, so maybe he was younger, not really sure, but he was in that age range, his hair had been receding for sometime, which created a bald patch on the top of his head, harry used to grow his hair on one side of his head longer then the other side, so he could brush the longer pieces of hair across the top of his head, in an attempt to cover the balding area, it didn’t really work, but he seemed happier with his hairstyle like that.

If harry could hear the music from the jukebox in the main bar, he always told us we had the volume up to loud at whatever setting it was set at, he would storm into the pool-room and without saying a word, he would turn the music down, so we could barely hear it, he would then look around the room daring anyone to say something to him, we would just look at each other and smile, he would look around and storm off again back into the bar without uttering a sound.

This type of jukebox had a small round black knob at the back of the machine hidden out of sight of the causal user, this button adjusted the volume, of course we knew where it was.

As soon as harry left the room one of us would leap up from our chair and turn the music back up, maybe a little under the level that it was set before so it didn’t sound so loud as it did before, and the same person would quickly as possible sit back down where he originally was sitting, harry would almost immediately come back behind the poolroom bar to try and catch someone messing with the jukebox, he would look into the room and no-one would have moved, and we pretended he wasn’t there, he would shake his head as he went back into the main bar, followed by a chorus of laughter from the pool-room, it was very rare that he caught anyone.

There was one sure way of getting an emotional response from harry and that was when he caught someone pouring their own pint from the pump at the bar, he would get really annoyed if he caught one of us doing this.

If you wanted to be served, you would need to call for someone to come from the other bar, if you were very quite you could top your own pint up without beryl or harry knowing.

Sometimes it was possible to place your empty pint over the bar and under the pump and top up your pint by holding the glass and pushing the pump handle with your other hand. you wouldn’t get a full pint, but your glass would be topped up for free, and if harry or beryl were busy in the other bar they would be none the wiser, I remember Pete Woodman being caught a number of times by harry.

Harry would suddenly come around the corner of the wall that separated the bars and say “ what’s going on, you can't do that “, you could see in his face that he was annoyed, and he was holding the rage at bay that was building up inside him, he would grab the glass fill it up mainly with white froth so you only had a small amount of beer in the glass then place it hard down on the bar, then without saying anymore to the person he just caught which was mainly Pete woodman, he would stare straight at him and put his hand out for the money for the pint, his hand would stay in that position with the palm facing up until he had enough money for a full pint.

Well you can't really complain if you were caught, after all you were nicking his beer, if you were caught there is no argument there.

In any other pub you would get banned, but not the plough, harry would take the money and say something like “ stop doing that “ and just walk off back to the main bar, We would just laugh if this happened, even beryl thought it was funny, harry had no sense of humour and the best you could get from him was scowl.

( Photo 2 ) . Inside the back / pool-room on a normal night, wobble is tucked into the top shelf of the alcove behind us for some bizarre reason, from the left Lawson, then ( me, Phil Frog ), Fat Mike, Sian, not sure who is being held by Sian, Gaenor and finally Wobble on the shelf.

I attended Ken Haymer`s funeral with some of the other guys from the plough, I remember harry was also there, Ken was killed in his mini car with two other girls on the S bends between Bryncethin and Blackmill, he turned the mini on to it's roof as he tried to take a bend to fast, one girl survived, I believe at the time she was Dai Moberly’s girlfriend.

I was standing alongside harry by the grave side, he was looking into the grave, and he said very quietly to no-one in particular “ we are all going in there one day “.

I looked up at him and I said in a low tone so ken’s family would not hear our conversation “ they will have to make it bigger, it’s not big enough for all of us “ and I gave him a little smile.

Ok, it’s not the best place to make a joke, but funerals are far to miserable, when I go to the great bike rally site in the sky, I hope everyone celebrates who I was, when I was alive not snivel about that I’m not about anymore.

I remember when myself and wobble would attend a funeral we would have to stop ourselves from laughing out loud and to behave to the accordance of the event after all it is a sad time for many people, ok, I know its not done, but we always went to celebrate peoples lives and remember the good times, there is enough sad times in people live`s without adding your own personal misery, well, I hope my funeral is remembered for all the good times we all had together.

Of course this is my personal opinion.

Well anyway, I said it quietly enough for only harry to hear.

He didn’t reply, he just gave me one of his long hard stares.

Well, I thought it was funny.

On one Saturday we all had a go at harry about the jukebox, we were complaining that it had never been up-graded for a newer one, and the existing one was playing up it was refusing to play certain selections of records, all the records had not been changed for years, some were worn out so much the needle would just skip right across the record or the needle would get stuck on the same grove and endlessly played the same section over and over.

So we asked can we have more modern up to date records or change the jukebox completely.

Harry for some bizarre reason took exception to us asking and complaining about the music and his response was “ well if you don’t like the records, don’t play them “.

We didn’t let this go, his answer was far too dismissive, we were expecting a reaction something like “ ok, I’ll see what I can do “ but being told a flat no and just put up what you have was not going to apses our whining about the outdated music.

so we kept on to him saying things like ” come on harry, we put money in the jukebox, we are only asking for some newer music”, harry response to this continual harassment, has he called it, was to walk over to the jukebox and pull the plug out from the wall and killed the jukebox during a record playing, he said “ right that’s that, if you don’t like the music don’t listen to it and don’t put it back on “ and then promptly marched off to the main bar.

We were a little surprised at this turn of events, harry never really looked happy, but he was in a bad mood this time, then someone said let’s have our own music.

Wobble go get your bike let’s get some music on, it's dead in here without any tunes, so wobble rode his Honda 400/4 up to the entrance path to the pub and pulled the bike up alone side the window to the poolroom, he had built in speakers with long wires attached in a small top-box at the rear of the bike, inside the box was an old car radio which had a built-in cassette player and it was all linked to the bike battery, sometimes wobble would strap one speaker on to his tank using a 4 way bungee and then listen to music has he rode along the roads.

Someone opened the windows out wide and wobble put the speakers in the widow facing inside the room and turned the music up.

Harry must have heard the music in the bar, and he came bursting into the room and went straight over to the jukebox to turn it off again, he was thinking that someone had switched the jukebox back on and then turned the volume up, he was surprised to find that it was not playing, it was not even switched on, this confused him a little, he looked around the room and then spotted wobbles bike outside the window.

Harry shouted over the music, “ you can't do that, who’s bike is that, we don’t have a broadcast licenses turn it off “.

He was tamping, his face was glowing red.

Wobble said “ ok I’ll turn it down “.

Harry replied “ no you won't, turn it off now, I’m not having it, turn it off right now “.

He ranted on until wobble turn the music off, he started to leave the room and then turned around and said “ move that bike off my garden and don’t do it again “ and then he stormed off out of the room, so we just all sat outside on the wall and listened to music outside in the large beer garden at the front of the pub.

Wobble set the bike up near to the wall and once again turned the music up, it was a nice sunny day, there were no benches or seating out in the front garden area back then, so we all sat on the wall, which was a fine substitute.

( Photo 3 ) . Some of my friends in the front beer garden of the plough, directly opposite the pub.

As I said earlier Beryl was a very friendly woman and spent time with the customers in the pub, when the pub was not busy, she would amuse herself by spending a long time playing on the space invader in the pool-room, this space invader was a flat black glass table type machine, very handy to put your drink on while you played which suited beryl fine, because she always had a drink in her hand, some of the games that I remember were on the machine were Asteroids, Galaxions, the nuclear attack one. “ cant remember the name of the game “ it was a game that where you had to defend your cities from rockets falling out of the sky and of course no pub gaming machine would be without the classics like Space invaders and Packman, there may have been other games, but they are the ones I can remember.

Beryl would spend so much time on the machine that she would run out of change for the machine, when this happened she would ask someone in the room to go to the bar till and tell harry to take some change out and give it to them, so she could keep playing, of course harry was never happy about doing this.

He would shake his head when he gave you the money, but he would not say anything, beryl did this on a regular basis, she would play on the space invader or just talked to customers in the pub, meanwhile harry would be running back and forth serving both rooms, no wonder he looked so stressed.

The plough didn’t really server food back in day, the best you can get if you were hungry was a pasty or maybe a pie and sometimes a packet of crisps, if you did buy something to eat in the plough, you took your life in own hands, you will understand why I say this if you carry on reading.

Behind the bar on a unit, next to the back wall, there was a clear plastic bread bin shaped container, it had a curved lid on the front which could be lifted and slid back over the top so you could gain access to whatever was on show inside, well when I say clear plastic, it was once clear, now it had gone a mustard yellow colour from its age and the heat from the warmer at its base, it did not help that back then there was no smoking ban in the pub and everything that started of white would turn a mustard colour over time, sometimes it was so smoky in the room, it looked like a smoke bomb had gone off and believe me I’m not exaggerating, as I never smoked, well not tobacco anyway, it was necessary for me sometimes to go outside because the tobacco fumes were choking me.

In this bread bin shaped container Beryl kept patsies and pies, the base of the container had a low temperature heater that was designed to keep whatever savories that were inside warm but not cooked.

So, ok your thinking what’s the issues with this kind of equipment almost every pub and café has something similar to do the same job, there are food warmers everywhere.

If I told you that no regular customer at the plough would ever consider buying one of these tempting savories for a couple of very good reasons.

( Photo 4 ) . A food warmer like this type, but not has big and definitely not has clean, but the cat liked it.

The first reason to stay away from these savories is the dish cloth.

The dish cloth was kept behind the bar and used to mop up any drink spillages that happened during serving a pint that would have accrued on the bar, ok this does happen and it is a good thing that there is a dish cloth handy to clear up the mess.

The spillage would be cleaned up and the beer soaked cloth would then be placed over and spread out over the pasty container, the idea being that the heat from the container would quietly and slowly warm the cloth up and eventually over time it would dry out to some extent, so it could be used again, ok that’s not too bad, but there was a tendency by beryl to leave the pasty warmers' lid in the up and open position and the dish cloth would hang down inside the container dripping the previously wiped up beer onto the savories.

The second concern was the pub cat, we all know cats love sleeping, and they like nothing more than somewhere nice and warm to take a kip and one of the favorite places for the pub cat was inside of the pasty warmer on top of the pasties, this was quite a common sight because the small bar was generally unmanned, the cat would sneak in the container and snooze his life away like most cats do.

If beryl or harry caught the cat, the cat would be evicted from his warm sleeping quarters and thrown out into the cold world outside with a few choice words following him out of the window.

If beryl caught the cat, the Moggie would be removed immediately, and the beryl would proceed to wipe the pasties down with the handy drying dish cloth to remove all the cat fur off the surface of the pasties, and then she would place all the pasties back into the container as if nothing had happened, once dealing with this little mishap she would return to her serving duties without a word being said.

So pasties and pies were off the menu for any regular pub customers.

There was also a 50/50 chance of having an out of date packet of crisps and I mean out of date by months, if they had not gone soggy, and they were still crunchy and had not turned any strange colour they were eaten, well I always eat mine, if your hungry, your hungry, and there was nowhere else to get any other food, so if a packet of crisps are out of date by a few weeks, it’s worth the risk and I don’t think it killed me and I don’t believe anyone has died from potato crisps poisoning.

The Eat by date with the pasties was another issue there was never any cellophane wrappers on the pies or pasties, so you never knew how long they had been in the pasty warmer and sometimes they seemed to be in there for a very long time.

So we stayed away from the savories.

( Photo 5 ) . This was taken in the front beer garden, directly in front of the back / pool-room where we normally hung out, in the photo, Bridgeman, Cherry and Brian were trying to hold Fat Mike down on the floor for some unknown reason, sadly Mike and Cherry are no longer with us, but it is nice to see them enjoying themselves.

We regarded the plough has a very friendly place to visitors, but some were not welcome and this is one example of a number of unwelcome customers.

There was one night at the plough that Beryl asked me to help out behind the bar for a short time because we had a sudden influx of customers.

It was early on a Wednesday night only around 18:00 / 6:00, the pub would not have filled up until around 20:00, so most of the regular customers would not have been in the pub this early in the evening and the rest of my friends who intended to come out for a couple of pints would have all arrived later, they would start to trickle in after 18:00.

Myself and Gaenor and two other couples whose names I am now ashamed to say I have forgotten, were already in the poolroom, the pub would be still quiet for another hour or so, with just a few customers trickling into the bar side of the pub.

Beryl was playing on the space invader machine and then in through the pub doors came two mini bus load’s of football supporters, they just streamed in as if they owned the place, they had decided to stop off for a quick piss break and a quick pint before they would move onto their next destination.

I called them football supporters, but they were from what I could tell were more like Cardiff City yob’s, they were most likely Cardiff Soul Crew ( a notorious group of thugs and hooligans ) or some something very similar, I knew they were Cardiff supporters because I heard a number of them mention the word Bluebirds to each other, which is what Cardiff city is called in football circles, all football clubs have a nickname, I thought they were maybe Soul Crew by the way they were dressed, normal football supporters wore their club shirts showing their club colours that their players wore on the pitch and there were other signs like blue and white scarf’s as in Cardiff’s choice of colours.

These guys wore smart casual fashion of designer clothes with selected labels, all of these guys dressed in this style, it was a kind of unofficial uniform that they all wore.

The clothes consisted of Burberry caps and Aquascutum scarf’s, plus other expensive casual ware like Ben Sherman shirts, the brand names were very popular amongst these kinds of people.

These guys were hooligans and not strictly football fans, they were more into kicking the crap out of someone then watching a football match, they’re usual odds would be six on to one, and strangely enough they liked to look cool while they ruined someone’s day, battering their chosen victim into a bloody pulp was a one of their highlights of the day, and they did this by looking as smart as possible in their designer clothes.

Their reputation had proceeded them, they were always in the papers or the news causing trouble somewhere in the country, they were best avoided, if I intended to go to Swansea or Cardiff on a weekend I always made sure that the Swansea jacks or the Cardiff Bluebirds were playing away, the amount of trouble both these club supporters created was not worth bumping into them, everyone was a target to them including property which includes bikes, and they were always in a large mob.

They would do more than just fight with other people they would also smash up a pub, if they weren’t happy, they didn’t really need an excuse, it was just something they would do for the fun of it.

This was not the first time I had issues with these kind of pricks, I had my head kicked in by four of these Wankers on a sunny bank holiday weekend at Coney beach at Porthcawl fair ground ( that’s another story ).

I was being very careful with these guys, I know what they were capable of doing, I intended to take any bull shit off them with a smile on my face, I’m not trying to over dramatise the situation I was in, you have to remember what these idiots were like in 70s and 80s, if you don’t believe me, look up all the crap up on Google of what chaos they created in the media back in the day, and you will understand.

I didn’t want to see the pub wreaked and my bike was outside, and to be honest I was more concerned about my bike than myself, I would not have fared well against them, but I would have gone down fighting and given them something to think about, once these guys go off on a rampage nothing was safe everything and every person in the pub would have been attacked by them, these guys were scum even if they did dress smartly.

There were two mini buses full of them, I would estimate around 30 people in total, they filtered into the main bar and the backroom where I was.

Beryl immediately stopped playing the space invader and went into the main bar to serve whoever was in there, beryl turned to me and said Harry will not be on shift till 20:00, so will you serve them in here.

So, I went behind the small bar, I had never done this kind of job before, but I gave it a go.

I Served a few customers, they behaved ok to my surprise, a bit on the noisy side and were not very friendly, none of them said please or thank you, they must have thought having no manners made them harder and made them more intimidating, it didn’t make any difference to me, I had no respect for them anyway, and having no manners just made them ignorant in my eyes.

One of the customers shouted from the door of the main bar into the back room “ one pint boys, then were off, make it quick “ , all of these type of ( football supporters ) were well-organised groups with a pecking order, organised a bit like a criminal underworld, were there were people in charge at the top and the sheep at the bottom, they referred to themselves as soldiers and being part of an army, but using that term Army in my opinion was an insult to any real army.

These football supporters had an age range from 14-year-olds up to 40 plus, the older guys were in charge, it didn’t matter what they were dressed up in they still looked like thugs in their expensive gear.

I was serving a big lump of a guy with four pints and standing by him, were the two others and one of them said “ two pints, come on we got to go “.

I said ” hang on, I have to finish serving this guy first “.

The guy that asked for the two pints said to his mate standing next to him “ what do you think of the barman john, he looks like a right Wanker to me “ and he was staring straight at me, I looked up from pouring the pints and gave him a hard stare back, but biting my tongue, I wanted to tell him to fuck off.

His friend answered “ yeah, he looks like shit, is he going to serve us or what.

They were both staring directly at me now.

I said to them ” I’ll serve you, when I finish with this guy “, I knew they were trying to wind me up, but I was not in a position to have a go back at them, so I kept my mouth shut and bit my lip.

The bigger older guy I was serving looked over to the two boys who were still standing next to him.

I finished serving the older big guy, I had poured him 4 pints from the pump and while I was doing this the two other younger guys were still taking the piss out of me, making disparaging comments about me, trying to get a rise out of me, I knew exactly what they were doing and I ignored them as best I could.

The big guy grabbed the four pints and picked them up in one go, holding them in both his hands.

As he turned to leave the bar, he gave the two younger boys a great big smile and said “ have fun boys, but get your pints in first “.

The two boys laughed at this comment made by their friend, I thought this doesn’t sound good.

I carried on pouring their pints and at this point I didn’t know what was going to happen next.

Fun to these guys was kicking the crap out of someone.

I gave them the drinks that they had ordered and I took their money, they also asked me for two pasties that were in the warmer behind me, which I happily gave them.

One of these two tow-rags, that gave me a hard time, gave me a kind of a smirk as he turned away, I was just relived they just walked away, it could have been a lot worse.

They were not so cocky once the older big had gone, it looked to me like they were just acting hard to try and impress the older guy.

These yob’s were not in the pub for very long, they knocked their pints back and sang football chants, they were soon on their way, undoubtedly to annoy some other pub goers.

Beryl gave me a free pint for my trouble, and I did manage to sell all the pasties that the cat had been keeping warm, I must admit, I did enjoy watching the two scrot`s who were trying to wind me up earlier eating two of the warm pasties.

I think I had the last laugh there.

I remember reading an article in the Glamorgan Gazette about the plough, it was printed in the late 80s or early 90s, it filled two full pages and it covered the heading of ghosts in the plough and harrow pub at Monknash.

The pub being over 800 years old and with its ancient beginnings has so many stories to tell, I mentioned in one of the other blog stories that the pub was also used as a morgue for drowned sailors, they were kept in our poolroom until the were buried in the church.

The article stated that there were many ghosts spotted there over the many centuries from monks and to the modern day, and one of the last ghosts was said to have been Beryl Button, the landlady, she was recognised by Dai Woodman ( brother of Pete Woodman ) who knew Beryl during our time at the pub.

He had taken over the pub as landlord in the later years and said he was positive it was her, they still have ghost evenings there even now, if your into that sort of thing.

In a way I hope Beryl has found peace, but if she is still happy having a drink and playing the space invader in her pub, I say best of luck to her

I will always remember her has being a nice polite woman with a good heart.

( Photo 6) . More strange people sitting on the wall outside the plough. Fat Mike, Leslie, Sharon, Gaenor and Trem.