Felt quite disappointed when going through week's unread Telegraphs to read an article destroying my mental image of Aberystwyth. When I lived and worked on our upland Montgomeryshire farm after leaving school, I imagined I'd missed all sorts of carnal pleasures which would have been on offer at Aberystwyth, the only university town in mid Wales. I imagined thousands of sophisticated students, free and emancipated, living the wild 60s life - a whole town replicating on a large scale the shockingly uninhibited behaviour on display at the hippy communes that were popping up all over the countryside at that time. Always thought I was missing out on the 'free love' and 'sex parties' we hard-drinking, rugby playing country lads could but dream of. But it seems that this is a very false image of Aberystwyth.
Ms Trish Murray must have had the same mental image of 'Aber' as I did because she opened one of her chain of Nice'n Naughty shops in the town. On sale were sex toys, erotic literature and skimpy underwear. Eve Egerton, who runs the Cabin Cafe opposite reckoned the shop window to be imaginative - even if "quite comical rather than sexual". Elderly Aberystwyth residents restricted themselves to looking through the windows, trying to work out what the various devices were for. It seems there's been a recent publication called something like '50 Shades of Grey' which had sold quite well in Aberystwyth, and had stimulated an interest in observing some of the apparatus mentioned. But no-one went in to buy any of the goods for sale - despite Nice'n Naughty having been voted the Best Adult Retail Chain in the UK.
Ms Murray has concluded that the people of Aberystwyth are just not 'kinky' enough. Nothing like as much business as in all the other 14 Nice'n Naughty shops, with their 'imaginative' windows. So she's closed it down. And destroyed my image of Aberystwyth. It seems its just a lovely gentle Welsh seaside town where the university students work hard, eschewing the sort of activities I'd imagined. Ah well, I'll dream of deck chairs instead.
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