On a flying visit home yesterday (none of your business!) I stopped in Morriston, parked on Woodfield Street, and had a look around, for old times’ sake. Perhaps I was drawn there because in my younger days it was not unknown for me to saunter up to Morriston now and again for a shandy or twa.

What I found there shocked me. So many of the licensed establishments in which I had drunk my (very occasional) shandies were now closed. And I hardly deviated from Woodfield Street, the main drag. It was a truly sobering experience (geddit!). And yet, the place was busy enough, there were plenty of people about; so has there been a debilitating outbreak of tee-totalism? Have Temperance extremists taken hold? Fortunately, Morriston was always well supplied with those places where a thirsty man was welcome, so don’t be put off, there’s still plenty of pubs left.

Often, especially on a Friday evening in summer, I would walk up to Morriston via Trewyddfa Road, above Plasmarl, and stop en route at the Smelters Arms, which looked out over the old, but then changing, industrial landscape or, as it was so often described, ‘moonscape’. Needless to say, the ‘Smelt’ is also gone.

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