Last Coach to Bargoed

It’s 1987. My mum, dad, sister Emily, and I are boarding a coach in Newport, Wales, bound for Bargoed - a town nestled deep in the South Wales Valleys, in Rhymney.

Now, if you’ve never heard of Bargoed, you might be wondering how it’s pronounced. You are not alone. Even people who live there aren’t entirely sure. It changes from street to street. Your guess is as good as mine. Bar-god? Bar-goid? Baa-Gud? Baa-Go-Ed? I even consulted Wikipedia, but that only left me with more questions. What I do know for certain is that the correct pronunciation requires an extraordinary amount of phlegm.

We find our seats. Emily and I are side by side, with Mum and Dad right behind us. I’m wearing shorts, and these seats are unbearably itchy. Emily has claimed the window seat, which is fair enough because she’s two and a half years older than me. That is the law. I glance around the coach. Everything - the seats, the walls, even the ceiling - is covered in carpet. Everything except the floor. Which, when you think about it, makes absolutely no sense.

“All right, any requests?” the driver booms over the Tannoy.

For a moment, I panic. Requests? Is he asking where we’d like to go? Because my parents have already paid for this trip, and I would very much like to see my nan. I am not in the mood for a last-minute detour. But I quickly realise he’s talking about music. He’s asking what we’d like to listen to.

I scan the other passengers. The demographic appears to be a travelling cast of Last of the Summer Wine.

The Emporium in Bargoed, 1980s from the James Roberts collection

Now, I need you to know something. At seven years old, I was cool. Unbelievably cool. My music taste? Impeccable. I reach into my bag, grab my Walkman, and retrieve a cassette. Emily clocks this immediately and tries to stop me. She knows what I’m about to do. She is attempting, no doubt, to get me to offer up her Bros tape instead. Absolutely not. Not on my watch.

I march confidently up the aisle, cassette in hand. The driver looks at me. I give him a nod that says, When you’re ready, mate. When you’re ready. And then I swagger back to my seat like a rock star.

Mum leans forward. “What did you give him? Your new Michael Jackson album?”

I push my face through the gap in the seat. The carpeted fabric scrapes my cheek.

“You’ll see,” I say, nose scrunched, lips pursed.

And then...

♪ ♫ “Here we come, walkin'

Down the street...

We get the funniest looks from

Ev'ry one we meet...

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees!” ♪ ♫

The Monkees. I have handed over a Best of The Monkees cassette. Now, I hear you ask: what is a seven-year-old in the late 1980s doing with a Monkees album? Excellent question. They hadn’t been on telly for two decades. But for a few glorious months in 1987, I was their number one fan.

And so, the driver - clearly a man of taste - cranks up the volume. The pensioners? They’re loving it. The whole coach is singing along. And if you know anything about Wales, you’ll know that legally speaking, three Welsh people singing in unison constitutes a choir.

Dad, meanwhile, is pinching the bridge of his nose, fuming. Mum is clapping slightly out of time, trying to join in, but also, I suspect, reconsidering some of her life choices. There is a silent understanding between my parents that, once back in London, they will need to have a serious discussion about their son’s future.

The journey is beset by delays. A coach has broken down ahead of us. And so, after three full listens of Best of The Monkees, we finally arrive at my nan’s.

She greets us at the door and asks how the journey was.

Dad, exhausted, simply jabs a finger in my direction.

“Ask him!” he says. “Bleedin’ poppy show, it was!”

Moral of the story? If you’re catching a coach with me from Newport to Bargoed in 1987, do not ask me for musical recommendations.

By Johnny Larran, 2025.