On the way back from conquering Mount Snowdon yesterday we passed through Betws y Coed, a really very nice Welsh town/village which I recall visiting a number of times as a child. There's two visits that stand out as particularly memorable, one getting smashed in the face with a rock and nearly losing my left eye and the other at a place called The Ugly House.
Going back 25+ years or so Mum, Dad, my bro and me were inside this old stone cottage called the ugly house that's been made into a tourist stop with gift shop etc. Mum and Dad are chatting about boring stuff to the woman in there so Rob and me search around looking for mischief and find the visitors book. Rob looks through other peoples comments and selectively edits in the word
piss along with some small but vulgar drawings and I decide to scrawl a slightly less subtle "
the ugly house is fucking shit". We close the book and scuttle off sniggering just as the parent's conversation is tailing off. The person in there then says "
ooh right well before you go lets see what the boys were writing in the visitor book....." uh oh!!! me and Rob look at each other with a sense of dread although still giggling,
".....oh dear! this isn't very nice! the ugly house is effing shit???!!!"and then pages get torn out of the book while Mum and Dad sink into the floor under the weight of what must have seemed like the most embarrassing thing that has ever happening in the world to anyone ever. It was a long, tense drive home after that.
Back to present day and I thought I should go back and put things right, you know make amends for what happened all that time ago, so firstly I thought I must go back and find their guest book..... and write the comments back in which were so harshly censored! Unfortunately, for some reason and much to my disappointment they no longer have such a book anymore, it's been turned into a cafe now.
2 comments:
I don't remember doing anything wrong so I think my name should be left out of this. But I will be finding their webpage and starting a massive campaign of online abuse, really vile and nasty stuff, just as they deserve.
O, yes indeed. That glorious day! I remember it well. It was the day after we climbed right up to the summit of Snowdon - an ascent which took poor Jenny and me four and a half hours to reach the hot dog stall above the clouds. Yet only a mere two and a half to return to the cute little Youth Hostel nestling in the valley at Pen y Pass below the mountain. Having almost turned back on several occasions we were quite elated that evening, despite our state of exhaustion. So naturally we were still on a high as we set off for home the following morning after our little break. As we approached the Ugliest House in Wales, after about a half hours drive, my legs had stiifened up somewhat after the punishment they had received the previous day. It seemed an ideal place to stop for a short break and to offer the lads an educational inspection of one of the Wonders of Wales. Any pleasure to be gained from the visit was to be gained from seeing the exterior of the building for once inside there was practically nothing to stir the imagination ... and unfortunately, as it turned out, nothing to capture the attention of the two little people that were travelling with us! It all seemed to happen so quickly. I had been so much occupied with trying to make conversation with the most boring of curators that I had ever encountered that I hadn't spotted them picking their way impishly through the visitors' book. When the woman opened the book to witness what delightful little words they had written I can only recall that my heart was gripped with a sort of steely traumatic horror which paralises the brain and the nervous system. So much so that even to this day I'm still not really certain whether the incident actually happened or not. Perhaps some truths are simply too terifying for the human mind to absorb. As Jonny himself used to utter manny years ago upon losing his final life against the boss on the final level of Wonderboy .... "It didn't 'appen!!!"
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