My name is Finnegan. Yes, as in Finnegan's wake. And no, i'm not Irish. If you give a shit, eventually I'll tell you all the reason for the name. But not now. It is a depressing story and I'm of the opinion that folks shouldn't be depressed within one minute of meeting you. I live in Wales. No, I'm not Welsh either. I'm a true, oreo-eating, beer-gut-owning American. Being that you, too, are American, I'm sure you don't know the first thing about Wales, so do yourselves a favor and look into it yourself. I have no intention of giving you some sort of cute, superficial Lonely Planet summary of where i live. You'll figure it out as we go.
I run a small bar on the coast called "Merry's Kitten" (don't complain - i didn't name the fucking place. I don't like bad wordplay any more than you do). I guess I should clarify, whenever I say "the coast", I am referring to the southern coast of Wales, on the Bristol Channel, by Tenby, in Pembrokshire. Feel free to look it up. The bar, which I refuse to call a pub like all the fuckers here do, is small, filled with fat, pale tourists from "the town," which is a fancy, look-how-insider-I-am term for London. They usually come to Tenby to see Caldy Island or Pembroke Castle but get bored within a few hours, so they come here to sit on a stool, get piss drunk and munch on laver bread, some godawful snack made from oatmeal, seawood and cheese on toast (these fucking people have no idea of good food). I don't make the shit. I have it delivered each day by some 12 year-old deaf boy from the Centre. His mom is ugly in a way that only people from here can be. She sits in her kitchen and makes it for some of the places around here, and her kid bikes around each morning to deliver it. The kid is quiet, which I like, so let him hang around while I set up in the morning. The best part of my whole gig is nobody here has a problem spending 4 quid on a pint. As I'm sure you don't know what the hell that is in your beloved dollars, I'll help you out. It is about $7.50. Not bad considering I can pour about 50 pints from a keg I buy for about 60 quid (quid being slang for pound, of course. Some drunk professor from Birmingham once told me it is from "quid pro quo", meaing, according to his slobbering rendition, "somein in 'change fore anudder". These Brits sure do love their Latin.) I get some locals in here too, although I don't charge them tourist prices, not that they'd pay 'em anyway. We usually work out some sort of exchange. I'll give them some pints, they'll give me some thing I need. Favors are important in a remote town like this. Especially when you're an outsider.
Whatever your fantasy is of some English bar on the coast of the North Atlantic, I can assure you it is wrong. My bar doesn't have expensive mahagony wood, pictures of 18th century HMS cutters, or mirrors imprinted with the reflections of centuries worth of visitors. I do have a dartboard, but that is left over from the drunken local I bought the place from, and doesn't really hold darts very well. It took me a few weeks here to realize nobody wants that cliche English shit. The bar's greatest asset is a lack of pretension. I have beer, seats, a good heater, and a small TV always warmed with the images of their much beloved Premiership (I tried getting these fuckers into baseball, but it didn't catch, so to speak).
To the east of my bar is an Inn, something like a B&B, but with more rooms. If you ask me, it is a fucking glorified Motel 6 with shingles. But it gets me good business, as much from the sorry-ass employees there as from the sorry-ass tourists they serve. To the west used to be a video store, then nothing, and now is getting renovated to be some sort of Welsh souveneir shop, or at least that is what the city woman who bought the place told me. The Welsh are real proud of themselves, and have some sort of paranoid idea that everyone is out to desecrate their culture. I, for one, give a shit if they keep talking in their ugly language. Go ahead and order a pint in Welsh, but I can't promise you'll get what you ordered.
If the bar isn't what you'd expect from your movie-induced imagination, the weather certainly is. I know you haven't been to Wales, seeing as how Americans don't go anywhere a Marriott doesn't exist, but I'm sure you can guess our weather. It rains. A lot. And not those pussy raindrops you guys call rain over there. This is rain, as in freezing water that falls from the sky, as in raindrops big enough to break a bone. And it doesn't stop falling until sometime around April, for about an hour break, before it gets going again. The there is the wind. Wind that head in from the southwest, right off the Irish Sea. These winds have a smell, too. Smells like cold. Like a scream from Greenland, spiked with whale piss and supertanker exhaust. And it is pissed off by the time it gets here, the first land it hits after a few miserable days on the North Atlantic. You get used to it afterwhile, though. Reminds you something is going on in the world outside of your bar. Reminds you the world doesn't give a shit about you. Mother nature would blow you off the earth in a second if she had her way. I feel the same about her. I actually like the weather here. It suits my mood perfectly. The world doesn't really give a shit about this place, and I don't give a shit about the world, so it fits.
Not sure if you are wondering how I ended up in Wales. Eventually that'll come out. I've been meaning to start up a blog, and came across this one. As it doesn't look like the person who used to run this blog is still posting, I figure I can use the space for awhile. Saves me the trouble of having to start a new one up, and earn a readership. If this "workmonkey" who actually started this blog ever comes back, I'll be willing to let the readers decide who should stay. Mostly, I've got some secrets I've got to get off my chest. Something I did, or, rather, something I am going to do, that you just might find interesting (though I know your numb American minds have been neutered of their ability to be interested in anything for more than 2 minutes, thanks to years of the internet and Hollywood). So maybe you won't be interested. Maybe you'll just be mildly curious, as you paw at that cup of Haagen-Das i know you eat each day. But hell, I'll take that.
So let's get started.