Rhuddlan Castle
Lewis’s Sale
Twice a year there’d be an ad and a pricelist in the Abergele Visitor announcing Lewis’s Sale, Lewis’s was the men’s clothes shop next door to the Gwindy.
The owner had a name that really suited her personality: Jolly Much – a lively and kind woman.
Jolly would have a start date, tempting pricelists available for days beforehand, balloons and limited launch offers to build anticipation. She’d also stick paper on the windows to cover up the bargains until the ‘reveal’ on the first morning of the sale.
Skinny ribbed polo necks were in fashion and mum bought me a mustard one that was a bargain. I wanted to look like Illya Kuryakin from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
In the 1970s, underpants were generally sold individually, but Jolly would bundle up the pants and socks so you’d get five pairs for 50 new pence.
Yes, the Abergele shop owner who really knew how to stage a sale was Lewis Bros’ Jolly Much.
Marble Church
Always known as the Marble Church but the real name is St Margarets.
Abergele in rhyme
Local Interest
I have come across some old postcards that I haven’t seen before. They are not all of Abergele but they are of local interest. I’ll post them all over the next few weeks, here is the first.
At the moment there is a lot of talk and plans about the preservation of Colwyn Bay Pier. I really hope they save it, we lost what was left of Rhyl Pier and it would be a shame to loose another. Here is a reminder of what it looked like in its hayday. I believe it to be circa 1920.
Did witches dance naked around this tree?
Here’s an Abergele Halloween video for you. Shot on Tower Hill.
Abergele Fireworks 2011
Here are the details of Abergele’s main Bonfire Night / Halloween firework display.
The poster was photographed outside Discos while I was distributing flyers for AbergelePost with added QR codes around the town’s wireless internet points and in some shops too. Look out for those pinned up in town.
Magic Potions
When they were younger, our children loved making magic potions. They’d fill jam jars with water, mud, my wife’s perfume, Fairy Liquid, etc. Then they’d seal the lid and put them on display on their bookshelves for weeks.
Is there a genetic urge that makes us want to do this, I wonder? I ask because, when I was a child growing up in Abergele, I used to love making magic potions too.
Ann Morris and I would pick rose petals from the front gardens along High St and crush them between two rocks and mix them with water in a jam jar to make ‘perfume’.
In late summer, we crushed blackberries, elderberries and bilberries to make ink. And we even used the juice of raw onions to make invisible ink. It brought tears to our eyes. To reveal the writing we had to hold the paper close enough to a candle flame to heat the paper without burning it.
We’d make stinkbombs by throwing lighted matches into an empty Haliborange bottle, then close the lid quickly and wait until the flame went out.
Unscrew. Sniff, sniff. Phew!
Killer Jar
We were fascinated by killing bugs when we were children and we devised some pretty cruel ways of doing the killing.
The smallest bugs we’d kill were those tiny red spiders – about the size of a full-stop – that dash along the tops of walls when it’s sunny. We’d fry those by focusing a tiny dot of on their backs with a magnifying glass.
The other bugs we killed we called ‘smack bottoms’. They were actually wood lice but Michael Hughes and I lifted logs, grabbed a handful of woodlice and gave them a … smack bottom.
The weirdest and most elaborate contraption we used to kill bugs was called a killer jar. We’d tear up laurel leaves picked from Bryn Aber and pop the pieces into a jam jar. We’d throw in a daddy longlegs, screw the lid tightly and watch the poor spider die slowly from the laurel fumes.
I’m ashamed now of the killing and I don’t know why I did it. Is it human nature to take pleasure in this?
