The Machno Witch.

Before I tell this story I just want to say that no matter how outlandish or ridiculous some of the things I put in these posts are, I am not a creative writer and lying to you would be of no benefit to me.
Everything I tell you is true.

Here we go.

In the early ‘90s my friends and I rented a cottage in the small Welsh village of Penmachno in the Snowdonia Mountains. The cottage was on the outskirts of the village and had a coal burning stove, a coal fire in the living room, there was no TV and the electricity ran on a coin operated meter.

The village was at the foot of a mountain that contained a disused slate quarry. There were two pubs and four or five churches, all made from slate, in fact the whole place was slate.

On our first night there we walked down the unlit dirt track leading from the cottage and went to the nearest pub, called The Eagles.
We walked through the door into the heat from an open fireplace and din of voices, all speaking the Welsh language. The place was full of huge quarrymen, all of whom turned to look at us.

The pub fell silent as me and my four mates stood in the doorway being stared at. Now anyone who has seen American Werewolf in London will know this to be a Slaughtered Lamb moment. If you haven’t seen that film then you must do so immediately as it is a classic.

I looked around the pub and over at the roaring log fire place, made from slate of course. Above the fire was a large stone lintel with the words ‘Fear Knocked at the Door, Faith answered and No-one Was There’ carved into it.

Great, we’re going to end up in a fucking Wicker Man, I thought.
There was no going back now so we walked to the bar through the heavy silence.

‘What can I get you’? said the barman, who also looked like he was made of slate. As I looked at the row of hand pumps along the bar a huge bloke standing next to me held out his pint and said “Here, try a bit of that”. It was a deep, dark brown, almost black and I took a sip. It tasted as strong and dark as it looked

“Blimey, that’ll put hairs on my chest. What is it”? I asked, grimacing.

This was apparently hilarious as the big feller burst out laughing.

“John Smith’s Bitter and Beamish Stout mixed”, said the man.

“Looks like we’ll be having four pints of that then” I said.

“You lads sound English, whereabouts are you from”? asked the barman.

When we told them we were from Yorkshire the atmosphere suddenly relaxed and conversation started up again.
The Welsh are like the Scots and Irish in that they hate the English because of the nasty habit we had of invading them all the time. Fortunately for my friends and I Yorkshire shares a mining heritage with Wales so our presence in the pub was tolerated.
If we had been from Liverpool or London things wouldn’t have ended as amicably.

So we sat at a table and necked our bitter/stout pints while outside the mountains became enveloped in a night so black it was like outer space..

To be concluded in next weeks post: The Witch!!!!