After 30 years living on the streets, Terry just wants somewhere to call home
Terry Allen will be 70 on Valentine’s Day. His birthday wish is to have somewhere to live after spending more than 30 years on the streets. He tells Estel Farell-Roig how being homeless is getting tougher as he gets older
FOR more than 30 years, Terry Allen has been wandering the streets of Port Talbot.
The 69-year-old, who has piercing blue eyes and a long silver and ginger beard, was known for regularly wearing a kilt around the town, but, for the past 10 years, a brown cowboy hat has been his trademark.
Full name, Terrence William Allen, who once lived in Wildmill, Bridgend, he is a bit of a local celebrity, and was recently featured on some T-shirts by a local clothing company.
Born in Sandfields in 1949 and having lived in Port Talbot all his life, he has been homeless for more than 30 years.
However, for his 70th birthday on Valentine’s Day he would love to have somewhere to live, as it is getting harder and harder to be homeless.
Mr Allen said he was struggling at the moment, adding: “It is killing me. I am aching all the time.
“I have arthritis all over my body and also have asthma. I dread winter.
“Sometimes it is so cold I cannot sleep.
“When I was fit, it [being homeless] used to get me down sometimes, but I just went through it. “
He says he lived in a barn in Cwmavon for five years, but, at the moment, he is sleeping in different places. He recently spent some time in a garage in Cwmavon, but he is currently sleeping under the motorway.
Mr Allen, who was shivering after spending just a few minutes on the streets to have his picture taken, said he tried not to worry about dying on the streets, but he was conscious he had lost many friends over the years.
Growing up, Mr Allen said he had three sisters and one brother, and his mum was busy looking after all of them.
His mother is now dead, but he stills keeps in touch with one of his sisters, whom he goes to see regularly, but tries not to bother too much.
As a child, he went away to a residential school in Monmouth for six years after not having attended his school in Sandfields much.
While he was in the residential school, his parents were allowed to go to see him and he would return to Port Talbot to see his family at Christmas.
The school was great, he said, but he never learned to read or write. All he can write is his own name, and, because of his illiteracy, he isn’t confident about going to the council to ask for help.
“It was great growing up in the 1960s though. We used to play on the beach and have fun in the fair,” he said. “It is all different now.”
At the age of 22, he joined the merchant navy after some sailors he used to drink with asked him if he would be interested in joining them.
Being on board the Orecrest, he did several trips to Norway, where they went to get iron ore for the steelworks.
“They are my favourite memories [his time in the merchant navy],” he said. “I did a couple of trips but I never went to America.
“I met all different kinds of people and had friends from all over the place.”
He spent two years in the merchant navy, where he worked in the kitchen as well as doing manual work lifting materials into the ship.
However, Mr Allen decided to leave the merchant navy after, he says, the ship felt like it was going to break down during a storm.
These days, his arms are covered in tattoos, which he has had done over the years, and some of them hark back to his time in the merchant navy, such as the ship on his hand or the anchor on his wrist.
Returning to his home town, he had a few different jobs such as labouring while he was still living with his parents.
He worked at the tip on Stormy Down near Pyle for about five years until it closed down.
Mr Allen recalled: “One day I found £18,000 in £50 notes. It was in a parcel that was all wrapped up.
“I remember it was a Sunday. I had never seen a £50 note before. I could not believe it.
“I handed the money in but no- one claimed it so they gave it to me.”
He used the money to pay for his wedding to a woman called Gina, whom he met in a pub where she used to go drinking in Bridgend.
They lived together in the Wildmill area of the town for six months but it didn’t work out and they were divorced. Ever since, Mr Allen, who has never had any children, has been homeless.
He said: “I don’t remember my first night on the streets, but I didn’t mind it when I was young and fit. I used to spend the night in the old docks.
“I worked on the motorway and now I sleep under the M4 sometimes.”
After 30 years on the streets, he claimed he was a popular man in Port Talbot, where people liked him.
He said he didn’t need to beg as people give him money and clothes, for example.
He is best known for his cowboy hat, which he has had for 10 years after it was given to him in a church. Before, he used to wear a kilt he bought from the British Heart Foundation shop.
A couple of years ago, he was an extra in a Vikings film shoot by a local film company, which is one of his happiest memories from recent years.
He also has fond memories of when some people he knew from the pub took him to Glastonbury in 1999, where he saw David Bowie and David Gray perform.
Mr Allen said he was friends with other people in the area who had been homeless for a long time, such as Bernard Parker, from Neath, and the late Tea Cosy Pete, who was a familiar sight on Swansea city cen-
tre streets. When Pete collapsed and died in 2015 in the city’s Castle Square, there was an outpouring of grief for the 66-year-old.
Mr Allen believes it is time he left the streets behind: “I would love to spend my last few years in accommodation. It would mean the world. I am no trouble and I just want to be comfortable the last few years of my life.”