Letter from Bangor

Julie Brominicks

In the silent night they are calling. Come see! I push back the thick duvet. Creep down wooden stairs and swing my torch over tables, spinners, and shelves. Books don’t sleep. Who knew? Like the snow-resplendent mountains I passed on the bus, they are waiting for their moment to flower.

Bangor has been on my mind. One conversation led to another, a need to visit the RS Thomas archive in the university arose, and suddenly I’ve been offered by Jo Potts – ‘in the true tradition of Shakespeare and co in Paris’ – a room above a bookshop for the night. 

I didn’t even know Bangor had a bookshop. This one is also a café; Kyffin Café in Pendref. Jo is passionate about Bangor’s history and heritage. The diamond cutters. The quarrymen who gave their wages to found a university to educate their children. She also has a clothing and interior shop, her first love being textiles and creating spaces where people feel comfortable and calm. 

Kyffin Café is a magic box of vignettes, coloured glass, nooks and books and geraniums. Homemade cakes under glass domes. Ruby pomegranate seeds in the salads. The music is Latin Jazz and the vibe vintage Europe. No wi-fi. At every table, people are talking or reading. Retired professional men. Ladies who lunch. Students. And here is Kumi who runs a small school to prepare Japanese students for university, chatting with Yuna and Sogo. 

It’s not easy to leave Kyffin Café, but the longest High Street in Cymru unwinds and intrigues. Nail bars, barbers, kebab shops. Here’s someone carefully reversing his motorbike out of a pizza place. Vegetables outside Bangor Spices. A woman floofing her hair in a salon. Matt, Tank and Jac chatting in Cymraeg outside the building they’re converting into student flats. Tank tells me on days off he takes his son to the cathedral.    

Word on the street is, there’s a multi-millionaire, a Bangor boy back in the city who is buying up major buildings. ‘He says he’s for Bangor. He’s giving out £10k to people who rent empty properties.’ ‘He’s foul-mouthed and has vile politics.’ ‘He’s upset life-long members of the Football Club.’ ‘He tried to shut this place down.’ ‘When he was in prison doing time for drugs, someone advised him to invest in renewables and that’s how he made his millions. Reportedly!’ ‘To be fair, a lot of people have come to see what he’s doing with the Debenhams building.’ 

I go and see what’s he’s doing with the Debenhams building. It has a new sign. FRUGAL. The old signs are still up. There are piles of cardboard boxes and an unpleasant smell by the toilets that are barricaded off. Clothes, lots of clothes, on rails, some slipping off. ‘Frugal’s is a new company’ explains an enthusiastic lad erecting a shelf. ‘What we do, when a company goes bust, we take all their stock and sell it at 20% of the original price. That’s why everything’s so cheap. And we’re putting up these stalls so local people who want to start a business can rent them.’

I continue exploring. Bangor has its deprivation but there’s a palpable strength and continuity of community. In Clio Lounge, Sian is selling scarves she has knitted for charity. In the not-for-profit café Bwyd Da, all staff are paid a living wage and people in recovery are given jobs. Customers can pay £2 to cover a community meal for someone in need and no one is turned away. 

Down on the old docks the sky is rosy porcelain. ‘I call this Snovember!’ Lutfallah greets me, sweeping his arm to take in the white peaks. He’s from Saudi Arabia, speaks Arabic, Persian, Pashtun, English, and after working as a banker in Cardiff for 18 years, is now learning Cymraeg in Bangor. Brought up a Muslim, after years researching synagogues, temples and churches, he is now seeking something different. ‘All religions have their unique qualities’ he says, ‘but what we need is unity, cohesion and one-ness.’

Y Garth. The pier, oh the pier is special tonight with its strings of red lights and diamond-cut air. Listen. The mudflats are screaming and teeming with birds in the dusk. There’s an urgency to the oystercatchers, one fair running along with a crab. ‘And there’s an egret next door’ says Dubliner Dylan, out to see the last of the light, as is counselling student Luciana West.  That egret, those swans, cormorants, mallards, gulls, curlew, redshank.

I warm up with chips in Hi Bangor. ‘It’s cold outside’ Ginny says, not charging me the fee to eat indoors, while a stream of customers call in for chicken omelette, chicken-fried rice, chicken curry sauce. In the Nelson Arms I startle Sam. ‘To be fair, no one’s ever asked me for tea’ he says cheerfully.   

I’m returning to my room above the bookshop when I see what I think is an ambulance. But no, it’s an icecream van! ‘Yes’ says the vendor. ‘I am Mr Ricky, Prince of Desserts. I’ve got 100,000 followers. I’m very famous!’ he hands me a cone with strawberry sauce and sprinkles that tastes like the frosty night itself. ‘Free sample!’

Ah Bangor with its crown of sculptural clouds. Between Y Fenai and Eryri, city of stone, ice and light. City of slate and transit. Come morning, sunlight shines right through the university building.

After visiting the RS Thomas archives, I wait for my bus in the cathedral where Paul Martin is giving a flamenco-guitar recital. His plim-solled foot keeps soft rhythm on the tiled floor next to his playlist. ‘This one’s called Camino’ he says. ‘I got distracted from playing guitar for a while and started a business. It went spectacularly wrong and I lost a shed-load of money’ he laughs. ‘When anyone goes that way it nearly always goes wrong.’ Light falls through the windows and warms the stone. It glances off the guitar and bounces around the people in pews, who are listening. They are listening.