web analytics

Carmarthen Cameos – 5

As you might have noticed from a few posts on this blog and from my Flickr photostream windows, I’m a rare one for quirky messages, strange images, especially as they appear on the signboards and in the shop. I can say I was spoilt for choice in Carmarthen, so “Signboards&Shopwindows” set has acquired a few valuable additions.

I’m taking a notice, for example, of the names of the pubs and inns. Someone on BBC Lancashire has written in the past of a pub called Three Clowns. I liked the name Dutch Birds Inn; the inn stands somewhere between Manchester and Oldham. There’re numerous Queen’s Head‘s across the entire UK, although those that I saw displayed Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria on their signboards. In Carmarthen, stags seemed to be a popular totem for a pub. But in a street close to Lammas St there was a pub called The Three Salmons (left). I adore salmon, so to have a pub “dedicated” to my favourite fish is something of a miracle. And this is a deftly produced outside display, again in Lammas St (right).

A shop window is usually a somewhat dull display, unless one of the mannequins is standing “naked” between two dressed “colleagues”. It always brings Edouard Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe to mind. Or unless the mannequins stand in these rather uncomfortable positions, as on the photo. Modern art at its best.


The Queens hotel and restaurant in Queen St boasts this remarkable display in its dining room. Well, let’s be fair: pottery and motorbiking don’t exactly contradict each other, do they?

Last, but not least: Nessie seems to have migrated. Probably sick and tired of the many visitors to its Scottish abode, the poor creature has gone “down south”. “Down south” in Carmarthen it is being used as a boat.

error: Sorry, no copying !!