Take a pew in the park if a chinwag brightens your day
WHEN Allison Owen-Jones was walking her dog around Cardiff’s Roath Recreation Ground she noticed an elderly gentleman sitting on a bench alone.
Unsure whether the man wanted anyone to speak to him, Allison came up with an idea which eventually spread across the world.
The retired Cardiff and Vale College lecturer went home and printed out a sign that could be attached to the bench saying: “Sit here if you don’t mind someone stopping to say hello.”
Now Allison’s Happy to Chat benches have become a permanent fixture in the capital, with the council installing three brightly coloured benches in Bute Park, Hailey Park and Roath Pleasure Gardens.
“It looked like it had taken the man a lot of effort to get there and my dog went up to him and his face lit up,” Allison, who has lived in Cardiff for 35 years, said about the day she came up with the idea.
“He patted the dog and I thought that I should go and speak to him but I felt awkward – perhaps he wanted a bit of peace and quiet.
“That’s when I thought: ‘What if there was a little sign on the bench to say, sit here if you don’t mind having a chat with somebody?’”
Allison printed her sign out on green paper and laminated it, punching two holes through it so that it could be tied to the bench.
A week later Allison’s son, Cardiff councillor Owen Jones, sent her a photo which had received hundreds of Likes on social media.
“I decided then, that summer, that I would go around and put the signs in all the parks in Cardiff,” Allison said.
Allison realised that the word had spread when she was attaching a sign to a bench in Bute Park and she was approached by two women who had been looking for one of the benches.
“Then I really knew it was catching on, that people were actually looking for these things I’d invented,” Allison said.
But word hadn’t just spread around Cardiff – Allison’s sign started to be picked up around the world in places as far as America, Canada and New
Zealand, all using the same me words she had put on her er original laminated sign.
“Any time I’m feeling down I just Google ‘Happy to Chat benches’ and look the images and they come up from all over the world. It is very, very exciting,” she said.
Cllr Jones put his mother’s idea to Cardiff council in autumn of 2019, but due to flooding in early 2020, followed pandemic, the plans had to postponed.
“I’m very pleased that Cardiff ardiff have put three up now,” Cllr Jones s said. said
He added that more benches are planned for some of the cemeteries in the city.
“Loneliness and isolation is a huge problem facing society today and one that was really highlighted because of the pandemic,” Cllr Jones said.
“It’s just that opportunity to break down barriers. We are a nation of people who shy away from talking to strangers – British people as a whole, not just Welsh – so it is that opportunity that if someone does want to chat, someone will talk to them.
“If you’re having a bad day just having a chat with someone can make a difference.”
Allison added: “It was only a couple of weeks ago that I went into the same park that I saw the old gentleman in and there’s a beautiful lilac bench, gleaming in the sun, with the words on it. I was thrilled – absolutely thrilled.”
She says that she’s started to see the benches all across Wales and has started to take pictures of them when she comes across them.
In September Allison was invited to open a Happy to Chat bench that had been installed in Krakow, Poland. “That was a huge adventure – I’d never been to Poland before – there they’d opened lovely bench with my words written in English, Poland Y Yiddish.”
Allison hopes h that the benches be used as a a way to combat loneliness and that tha every major town will have one.
“My kids have ha grown up, and you’d be surprised how many people do feel isolated,” Allison said.
“I don’t, I’ve got a big family, but people are invisible sometimes, especially if they go up to somewhere like Roath Park Lake and everyone’s playing happy families and someone on their own will often be ignored. “I’ve noticed that if someone is sitting on the bench, even if someone doesn’t want to sit and talk to them, they will always say: ‘Good morning’. They’re suddenly seen and that’s what I want – for people to be seen.”