Ogwen Blues

By George Veck

''A compelling exploration of human resilience in the face of adversity.'' - Demetria Head

Breaking free of isolation-induced coercion's no breeze.

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Up in the mountains of Bethesda, North Wales, fifty-year-old football referee Colin Tudur has endured a pitiful, people-pleasing existence. Finally chasing his dream, he quits his steady job as a bin-man and commits to full-time training, one day dreaming of reffing on S4C.

Such selfishness far from serves his parasitic, coercive wife Clare and stepson Dale, who have both long grown dependent on his salary. Now thwarted in his pursuit of freedom by North Wales' second-home owner induced housing shortage, twenty-year-old Dale's forced to wallow in the family's toxic, co-dependent bubble.

Hard hitting and fiercely raw, Ogwen Blues charts their plight to thrive in an area starved of adequate opportunities.

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''Ogwen Blues is another fast, authentic blast through the squalid wastelands of North Wales and provides additional layers of veneer to Veck's maturity as a writer. Highly recommended.'' - Rose Auburn

''Brutal, shocking, eye-openingly stark, unforgiving and gives a very raw look at a life most would run a mile from. I do love this author's opposition to the norms in writing a family drama and daring to be so visceral.'' - Mark Fearn


''Not for the easily triggered by Drug Use and the wild untamed language of the locals. If you however enjoy a dirty, raw and real storyteller, Veck is your guy.'' - Stuart BRKN Johns


''George Veck's writing is sharp, unflinching, and deeply empathetic. He invites readers to confront the dark corners of human nature and consider the weight of choices made when one's back is against the wall. This novel is an emotional rollercoaster that leaves a lasting impact, making it a must-read for those who appreciate powerful storytelling and complex characters. George Veck has delivered a literary gem that will linger in your thoughts long after you've turned the final page.'' -- Demetria Head 

''George Veck manages to capture the world of drugs and the misgivings that comes along with it all perfectly. The language used and the misfortunes that come along with drug dealing, is portrayed almost to the letter. Once again a great read!'' - Cassandra Doon 

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Veck
• Release date: May 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223957706

Book preview

Chapter 1

S

at stewing over a multi-screen surveillance display of upper Bethesda farm, hunched up in his cramped attic bedroom, is Dale Carson. Surfeited of standing by as Bethesda boy William 'Caradog' Wyn – the farm owner – indulges in daily barbaric animal negligence, Dale's planted three cameras across the farm. All feedback to an app on his custom, two-thousand-pound gaming PC, charity shop second-hand Windows monitor, and when required, his cracked Lumia phone.

Beaming from the first camera; a group of six skinny, malnourished black dairy cows huddles around a pitiful smattering of livestock feed in an awkwardly steep field. Hangry beyond belief, their pack's alpha mauls its way to what remains, taking no prisoners, not least its newborn calves.

Cleverly wedged into a gap of the sheep field's dry-stone wall, the second camera bares an equally dreary sight. Scraggly, long-haired adults and lambs mull around a shoddily grazed, borderline grass-less field. Those yet to relinquish hope plod across the field's outskirts, resignedly nibbling on newly born dock leaves and nettles. Only metres away, two still-born lambs lay perished next to a placenta mixture. Sensing easy pickings, a gang of crows peck at their eyes and gorge on the iron-rich placenta.

On the third, facing the farmhouse itself, Caradog's mean, over-weight, behaviourally challenged twelve-year-old son Hywel Wyn fights to pour petrol into the farm's quad bike. His quivering hand struggles to hold up the ten-litre jerry can as precious unleaded drips onto the boggy floor. A tumultuous, ice-cold childhood – where the total hug tally can be counted on one hand – diminished his self-belief. This chronic insecurity morphed him into quite the archetypal schoolyard bully, rock solid for his age, but a doormat to savage year-elevens, who perpetually lambast his weight. Caradog bursts out of the storage barn, yanks the jerry can, and flings it aside – failing to alter Hywel's eerie, gauntless presence in the slightest. Such dogged resolution has been paramount in Hywel's survival under his volatile father's solitary care. A bloke infamous among most local men for shagging swathes of the village's women – despite his scruffy, grade-six all-over haircut and deceivingly unassuming looks. Hywel's histrionic mother hung herself eight years prior, a fact that only bagged Caradog further sexual conquests out of pity for his grief. After any mournful dust settled, village gossip determined Caradog's copious affairs and financial manipulation caused her death, further alienating him from respectable villagers.

Dale stands up, coming brutally close to clipping his battle-hardened skull on the curved attic roof of a bedroom he outgrew at fourteen, six long years ago. With stress levels skyrocketing, it's time for a rolly. A few sit pretty in the crusty ashtray, between a third and a half-smoked. After a brief deliberation, he lights the chunkiest and smokes it out of the Velux window. In the distance, Caradog scoots away on his quadbike with Hywel sitting behind, clinging on for dear life as they tackle the bumpy, pothole-ridden mountain track. With it being Monday lunchtime – the Llangollen pub's renowned happy hour – Dale is gifted a few hours to get grafting.

Paid for with Dogecoin profits after coolly cashing out during Elon Musk's Saturday Night Live appearance, two 'Ring' stick-up CCTV cameras await unwrapping – a moment hotly relished all day. Only adding to the excitement, Dale uncovers two extra batteries in the package, thrown in on the house! At treble the price of the three TP-Link cameras already planted, this fresh gear takes Dale's surveillance game up a notch.

While ordinarily privy to the farm's four-hundred metre altitude, a dull gin and tonic hangover tips Dale over the edge. Once outside, he stumbles into the dry-stone wall separating his house from one of the mounds of sheep-littered fields. After regaining composure, he heads down the farm track. A patchy, steep road leads up to the farm, where past a gate at the top, the road then splits into two bumpy lanes. One leads to Caradog's farm, which includes Dale's cottage within the land, while the other takes you to their neighbours Ernest and Felix's house. In-between the two lanes sits a typically scraggly field, and behind that – unprotected from any kind of fence – lies a two-hundred-foot drop into a flooded, disused slate quarry.

After careful consideration as to the optimum spot, Dale places a camera in the dry-stone wall facing Ernest and Felix's sixteenth-century cottage's front gate and battered silver pick-up truck. While his whacky neighbours seem cordial enough on the surface, he despises the pair for their dozen locally owned houses. All of which, other than their own, are pimped out on Air BnB. Jealousy isn't the issue, it's their contribution to North Wales' dire small village housing shortage for locals. Any sniff of bait to have them sent down, fined, or banished is worth monitoring, given the guaranteed heroes acclaim should their houses be seized and released back to the community.

Hoping for evidence to compromise Caradog's dubious free range egg production, Dale clambers up a tree overlooking his fifty odd sized chicken hutch. They're locked away the second Britain's hit with a single case of bird flu, whether five, or five-hundred miles away. Given the farm's rurality, Caradog remains adamant nobody will find out. He charges premium buck while lapping up phony animal care narcissistic supply through glittering responses to his regular false Twitter adverts. Once perfectly placed to face most of the hutch, Dale wraps the second camera in ivory and leaps down the ten-foot drop.

With time ticking away, Dale speeds over to Caradog's three parallel barns. Using a bobby pin, he picks open the storage padlock. Corn bags sit right up at the top, meaning tiptoes are needed to hoist down a twenty-kilo bag from the tall, rickety metal shelf. As the weight comes tumbling down on his twiggy shoulders, he stumbles back as the wall catches his fall. Lesson learnt. With a measured approach at a quarter of the speed, the second proves less bother to fetch. Caradog's lax stock counts will no doubt miss two stolen bags, with way over ten in stock – the magic, complacent number he stops counting them. Satisfied with the salvage, Dale sticks on a fresh, £7.99 Argos replacement padlock – the exact model whacked on after his last break-in. Six snarling sheep dogs locked in the next barn, all clambering over one another to maul their intruder, sends Dale on his merry way. He hides a bag in his shed before drooping the other over his shoulder for a strenuous two-hundred-metre chicken hutch trek. They manically lap up their impromptu meal as he pours out five kilos worth of nosh.

Next, it's the cow's turn. With a catalogue of near-miss stampedes narrowly escaped over the years, Dale stays in the next field. A handy stack of hay bales placed by the fence provides elevation, enough to keep a safe distance. After climbing up to the third tier, he pours the remaining fifteen kilos of corn over the fence and into the next field's disused bathtub. Ten cows come crashing over, pushed to the brink of hunger-induced delirium as they scrap for the precious feed. Spotting three hovering calves without hope of a fill, Dale throws the bag's remnants over the domineering adults, for the grateful youngers to skip after.

Following a swift pit stop to grab the second bag, Dale lobs it over his garden wall and leaps down into the sheep field. Dozens urgently hurtle over, blaring out an incessant racket despite their depleted energy. Proud to feel of use, a smirking Dale tears open the bag with his trusty old penknife – one he's used to self-harm with since the age of eleven – and sprints across the field as it trickles onto the grass. Any passing joy fades as a crow pecking at a petrified lamb's eyes swivels Dale's attention. While the crow fails to spot his charge at first, it soon scuppers off as he nears. Dale winds back his shoulder and cops it with the empty bag, momentarily skewing the predator's flight path. With a face drowning in blood, the stricken lamb leaps off in desperate search of its mother.

Dale's lumbersome stepdad Colin Tudur Parry has never had to work. Following his mother's death from breast cancer, she left their mountaintop cottage in his name, making him an eighteen-year-old homeowner. In the wake of meeting Dale's wily mother, Clare Montague, nine years ago, this blissful leisurely freedom came crashing down to an abrupt end. Previously having survived solely off football income, firstly from playing at a semi-pro level, then refereeing after hanging up his playing boots fifteen-years ago, Clare insisted he got a proper job. This was non-negotiable in his bid to lure herself and children Dale and Shona – aged thirteen and sixteen respectively at the time – to live with him. Left with a gaping CV owing to this privilege, he's reluctantly plugged away full-time as a recycling bin man for the last seven years. While growing a thick skin to despicable on-pitch refereeing abuse, he cannot stand the workplace's toxic industrial humour. Chronic dissociation as it unfolds makes him the unwilling scapegoat and butt of the banter.

On this grizzly, early Spring afternoon, Colin wearily slouches in the wagon's passenger seat, gazing out at Dinorwig's derelict old quarryman's cottages. Being the longest serving employee of this high staff turnover company, he routinely assumes driving duties. Not today. Against strict protocol, he has dished that role over to Trev, his grubby, bearded, cockney ex-fraudster partner. A spell of relaxation he savours by munching down the last of a dry Tesco sausage roll six-pack, adding to the crumb mountain littering his full orange jumpsuit. An unlit hash joint dangles out of Trev's mouth, which, coupled with flying around at twenty-miles-an-hour over the speed limit, certainly pushes his luck. Taking pity on Trev's failed post-release work search, gaffer Gary hired him in spite of multiple convictions, when nobody else dared. Colin zones out as Trev embarks on a classically racist rant, this time about immigrants entering Britain.

''Then after all that Syria bollocks, it's Ukraine this, Ukraine that,'' Trev remarks after an evening glued to GB news and Nigel Farage.

''Oh yeah?'' Colin mutters.

''Worst of all, worst of fucking all, are the ten thousand so called Brits ballsing the lot of us over, pushing us halfway down