Llanelli – will it ever move with the times? No.

Living in Llanelli, Wales

I have lived in Llanelli all my life. At first sight, it seems like a nice town. When I was a child, it seemed all normal. But as I got older, I realised how behind the town is. With the exception of a few people in my family, everyone seems to be stuck in a 1950’s time warp. Everyone over 30 acts proud, and gives you a very smug smile, as if to say “aren’t we brilliant?”.

The people are ridiculous stereotypes. The men are like smug gorillas who obsess over rugby and drinking, and spend ages having tedious conversations. The women are like a group of chickens, gossiping about everything and oohing and cooing and talking people down and giving anyone who doesn’t act “the Llanelli way” (more about that further down) disapproving sideways glances.

The teenagers are all nerdy and spotty and swotty and act smug about it. Even the children are ridiculous stereotypes. The little boys all seem to have very short hair, round faces and no eyebrows, and are built like mini rugby players. They also run around the town centre yelling their heads off and stinking of pee. The little girls are very plain too, and act all prim and say, sorry lisp, things like “I wuv you mammy dear”.

How grim is your Postcode?

All these people are also rather unattractive, and frequently quite overweight. They also are frequently chauvinistic, sexist, racist, homophobic and transphobic, and look down on these people and refer to them as obvious cruel nicknames. They also appear to have their own language, and make up words for things. Some I’ve heard (and don’t have a clue what they mean) include “twch” “skimp” “stife” “dedoreth” “in a sog” “moithered” and probably others. Whilst also swearing a lot and using common slang over proper decent English, and mumble and mispronounce words badly, so therefore I never have a clue what anyone is on about. They also have a very false sounding gruff accent, and if anyone speaks different, they get badly mocked.

They’re also into something called “the Llanelli way”. This consists of the town’s traditions, food preparation being one example. For example the Llanelli way appears to consist of food mushed down with butter, gravy, baked beans etc. and refer to eating dinner as “avvin food”. And as for things such as expressing yourself, well. As far as I know, everyone appears to wear very dull clothes, no colour at all, apart from rugby shirts.

The people aside, the town has some very nice buildings, such as several fine churches. One of which was tragically gutted by a fire in 2015. Sadly, there are a lot of modern buildings appearing, which are not in keeping with the town’s tradition at all. One such example is a solicitors office near the cinema, which [we can’t allow you to possibly libel as they’ll take us to the f’ing cleaners -Ed]. There’s a Facebook and change.org campaign about it, created by me so follow it!