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Here is a lovely jewelry box for the Welsh woman, or any woman. Featuring the lines to the popular Welsh song Ar Lan Y Mor. Makes a wonderful gift!

http://www.zazzle.com/welsh_song_jewelry_box_gift_box-246830708555763435

For the Welsh Rugby fan, especially you men, here's a box perfect for your rings, wallet, tie clip, whatever. In several sizes and colors, makes a great gift!

http://www.zazzle.com/wales_rugby_jewelry_box_gift_box-246007655437722279

The prestigious links championship course at The Ashburnham Golf Club in Pembrey has just been awarded another key tournament.
The 2013 Mens Welsh Amateur Championships has been awarded to The Ashburnham by the Welsh Golfing Union.
The Ashburnham stepped into the breach when another club couldnt fulfil the requirements to stage the championship.
We were asked if we could help by stepping into the gap and staging the championship and we were delighted to accept, said Ashburnham club manager Huw Morgan.
The Ashburnham has a huge reputation as a championship course and there are only a handful of courses of our standard in Wales who could possibly stage such a championship.
We are absolutely delighted to host the 2013 Mens Welsh Amateur as it now gives us four great years of championship events at The Ashburnham, proving that we are widely recognised as a quality tournament venue.
Our calendar for the next few years reads -
2012 Welsh Ladies Open Stroke Play Championships
2013 Mens Welsh Amateur Championships
2014 Ladies British Open Amateur Stroke Play Championships
2015 Mens Welsh Stroke Play Championships
Thats quite a portfolio of events for us at The Ashburnham and we are delighted to be staging them. We can promise a true championship test for each event and the warmest of Welsh welcomes.
The Ashburnham is the course where the great Welshman and winning Ryder Cup Captain Dai Rees won the PGA title in 1959. It has long been regarded as one of the best links courses in Britain.
The Ashburnham takes its name from the 5th Earl of Ashburnham, who once owned the land and became the clubs inaugural President in 1894.
Two other Ryder Cup Captains have been successful in their playing careers at The Ashburnham in the shape of Bernard Gallacher, who won the Schweppes PGA Championship in 1969, and Sam Torrance, who won the Martini Tournament in 1976.
The Ashburnham has a proud history of hosting many of the major amateur tournaments, having first held a Welsh Amateur Championship in 1904.
Last year, The Ashburnham was the venue for the Mens Home Internationals.

Picture: Ashburnham officials celebrate the award of the 2013 Mens Welsh Amateur Championships at their annual dinner staged at the Stradey Park Hotel, Llanelli. Pictured left to right Ashburnham club manager Huw Morgan, Captain Tony Washer, President Brian Williams, Vice-captain Mel Williams and last years Club Captain Huw Dixon.

For further information about The Ashburnham Golf Club, contact -
The Clubhouse, Cliffe Terrace, Burry Port, Carmarthenshire, SA16 0HN
Tel:01554 832269
Fax:01554 836974
Email:admin@ashgolf.co.uk
Website - http://www.ashburnhamgolfclub.co.uk

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Just passing this on:


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Sioe Tudur Owen Show
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 10:16:33 -0500



I work on the Tudur Owen Chat show which will be shown on S4C at 9pm on Christmas day. As part of the show we will be showing short video clips (around 10 seconds) of Welsh people who are living abroad sending their Christmas wishes to their family and friends back in Wales. The programme will then be seen on the internet for 35 days from the 25th of December onwards.

Would you be so kind and ask amongst your society members if some of them would be willing to record their videos and send them on to me please. They will have to be through the medium of Welsh please.

Here are some guidance notes to help you as you film your Christmas greetings:

1. Youre welcome to use a mobile phone to film or a normal home video camera.

2. When filming it would be great if you could stand in front of something that relates to Wales f.i. a Welsh flag, memrobilia, picture etc + a few Christmas decorations would be excellent in the background (not essential)

3. Youre welcome to include everyone from the family in the shot.

4. When greeting your family and friends can you make sure that you clearly state where exactly they live in Wales.

5. Please make them as funny and jolly as you can.

We need the videos to be sent to us as soon as possible in order to be shown during the filming on the 2nd of December.

Were also looking for a person who would be interested to fly home to Wales and suprise their family and friends over Christmas. We would considerably contribute towards the cost of flying the person home. The idea would be to see the Christmas greeting video of our person from abroad before suprising everybody in the studio (including their family) by unveiling him/her on stage! Ideally were looking for somebody who hasnt been home to Wales to see their family for a while. The person from abroad would need to fly home no later than the 1st of December 2011 in order to be in the studio to film the show on Friday the 2nd of December. At least 2 family members would also need to be in the audience.

Please send your video clips as soon as possible or if you you would like to propose a person from abroad to fly home. Please send everything on to me please: aled.davies@cwmnida.tv

Thank you very much/ Diolch yn fawr,

Jenny

Ymchwilydd/ Researcher
Cwmni Da,
Cae Llenor,
Caernarfon.
LL55 2HH.
01286 685 300

A new development, including nine hundred houses, a school and a supermarket is planned for the outskirts of Haverfordwest.

Contractors will clear the land, architects, builders andworkmenwill be kept busy for months, if not a few years. Money will circulate, change hands, the townwill prosper. There will be jobs for five hundred peoplein the supermarket.

Wonderful news for the local economy and population. For too long Pembrokeshire has suffered from high unemployment.

Young families are hopingto buy starter homeson this new site andthere is an air of optimism and hope but, hark, I hear a rumble of discontent.

Some dinosaurs have reared their heads to ask hasn'tHaverfordwest got enough supermarkets as it is? This,not from a desire to protect the superstores we have but from a wish to highlight the plight of the small shop. Yawn, yawn. The small shop was wrapped in mothballs and fossilised years ago.Small shops I know make their money fromtheend of the day or early morning worker, someone popping in for a pint of milk and the newspaper,not fromsomeonetrawling for the family freezer.

Next moan please:What about Haverfordwest'sHigh Street?

In between the Shire Hall and St Mary's Church there are three banks, two charity shops, two hairdressers, a clothes shop, a high class gift shop, a public houseand a jewellery shop. The Shire Hall,with it's nod to Grecian architecture and Doric and Ionic columns accommodates some good quality restaurants.Enoughvariety here to attract a fair number of customers, I would say.

The next complaint: Why isn't Haverfordwest's High Streetlike Narberth's? I could offer some suggestions but can't see why the difference between the two streets has anything to do with this new development.

I've come to some conclusions about this whole debate. Boutique shopping is an entirely different concept from supermarket shopping. (Think delivery lorries all times of the day and night, remember large lorries have been banned from the centre of Haverfordwest so as not to disturb ancient foundations, frighten the shoppers and block traffic).

Choccy-box-town shopping involves buying artisanal bread at three times the price of a prepackaged loaf. Yes, I'll grant it's a different experience, but try telling that tothe workman in front of me who was buying six sliced loaves and ten bottles of pop. Heparked his truck in the car park and he stopped to buycheap food.

I rememeber the lamentations surrounding thearrival ofMcDonald'sin Haverfordwest. Letters to the paper, usually by people who hadn't set foot in the outside worldfor years, said there were enough cafe's in Haverfordwest without the need for the 'Big Mac'. This from people who had no concept of twenty four hour drive-through fast-food, free-toy for the kiddies and clean toilets thrown in. People must get away from the village pump mentality, 'y milltir sgwar'. We don't need this type of narrow minded parochialism any more, (if we ever did).

I find comfortin the 'inevitability of gradualism'. Change comes, like it or not, andPembrokeshire desperately needs it.Plain air isn't enough to live on.

I'm with Keynes when he says it is necessary to 'Spend, Spend, Spend' to boost the economy.

I've just returned from a Hallowe'en party.

This is the night when the souls of the dead are said to return to earth again and it has become the custom to light bonfiresto ward off evil spirits.

In Welsh parts of Wales, this night is known as Nos Galan Gaeaf, the night before the first day of winter, Calan Gaeaf, November 1st.

This evening, we celebrated by eating roast potatoes, three different types of sausages, pizzas, tortillas, salads, trifles, cakes. Welit candles, had a lucky dip and bobbed for apples. There were carved pumpkins and lanterns outside the front door andneighbours dropped by for a drink and a nibble.

During the fifteen hundreds, the poor went knocking at doors on the eve of Hallowmass, offering to pray for the dead in return for food. Shakespeare mentions this in 'The two gentlemen of Verona', whena character is described as 'puling like a beggar at Hallowmass'.

Tonight Idressed in a long black gown (Morticia-ish, I hoped) with apattern of diamonds. It cost 2.50 in a TK Maxx 'Clearance'. Maudie was a cat, Ffion a 'ghostly maid',Kate was a bat,Emma wore a black cocktail dress and lurex tights in plum and silver. The menhad bow ties and Dracula hairdos, but nobody dressed as a blacksmith.

Mygreatgrandfather was the village blacksmith in Croesyceiliog, a cluster of houses two miles outside Carmarthen.

WhatI did not know, until Emma became interested, was that as far back as two thousand years ago blacksmiths were considered magicians and healers. The gift was said to be handed from father to son.

Blacksmiths were skilled at twisting hot metal into spirals and this shape is considered to have magical powers in Wales.Hot metal, dipped into water andheld over skin complaints, was thought to have healing properties.Bathing the skin in the water was beneficial, too, since the waterabsorbed some of the properties of the metal.

Saint Brigid, the Celtic saint of poetry, healing and water is, appropriately, the patron saint of blacksmiths.

Wales's most celebrated blacksmith is David Peterson and we visited hisSt Clears studio a while ago.

His giant dragon graces the Bute Building in Cathays Park, Cardiff. Worth going tothe cityif just to see this imposing sculpture

The frustrations of producing a novel which one hopes will at least be read, if not on the bestseller charts, are manifold.

There are the physical problems: blurry eyes (from looking at a computer screen for far too long); stiff shoulders and neck (from too much typing); aching legs (from the lack of a proper desk, footrest and typist's chair). There is the anger, rumbling constantly under the surface, from the lack of faith by publishers and literary agents.

In addition, there is the fury one feels with the computer software which fails to appreciate one's bons mots (in fact it's just done it with that very phrase) and offers ridiculous alternatives which make no sense at all.

I've mentioned lack of faith but that could also be interpreted as prejudice. While Scotland and Ireland appear to have any number of authors writing various types of literature about the most obscure parts of those delightful countries, anyone who dares to write about Wales is the subject of near-derision. I'll allow that some serious literary works, especially the poetical, have been found morethan acceptable but anyone, with the notable exception of Malcolm Pryce, who tries to take the reader down the humorous paths beyond Offa's Dyke is clearly not to be taken seriously.

The response I've received from a variety of publishers (mainly Welsh) and literary agents (mainly non-Welsh, simply because there don't seem to be any Welsh ones) is a variation on the theme of "Yes, it's amusing but we can't take a chance on it" with one literary agent (part-Welsh) inviting me to write something non-Welsh which she would be pleased to take a look at. The latter does at least give me some sort of back-handed compliment in implying that she thinks I can write! For such crumbs from the literary power breakfast table I suppose I should be grateful.

I've said before and I'll say it again, if one is famous for one thing (whether it's pulling a ten-ton truck with one's teeth, having multiple breast-enlargements, having an affair with a Member of Parliament/footballer/Z-list celebrity, taking part in Big Brother or just being Tony Blair) then publishers will be beating a path to one's door and offering a book contract with large amounts of folding money changing hands. The fact that one cannot write (in either sense) is neither here nor there; a ghost-writer will be employed and Bob is one's uncle. There'll be queues in High Street bookshops up and down the land. This is merely a fact of life, like death, taxes and dog shit where one least expects it.

There are multi-million-selling authors who would probably even admit themselves that they are not good writers but they can at least tell a story (I'm not testing this hypothesis by naming anyone as I can't afford a lawyer). The one that really gets me riled is the one who sells in millions and has his name above the titles but does not actually write the novels. Actually, I'm just envious of anyone who can get away with a deal like that.

So, as Miss Nobody, I sit at my computer and type my deathless prose in the vague (not vain) hope that there are at least a few people out there who will enjoy what I've written.

Bitter? Moi?

Yes, the software did it again!

I love reading diaries. I don't mean peeking a look at someone's private jottingsbut published diaries. Samuel Pepys's diary is a gem, but I also like the mundane happenings of ordinary people.

By chance, I came across a copy of 'The Red Leather Diary'. It gives a glimpse into the lifeof a young girlfindingher independence in New York during the early part of the twentieth century. She is very daring and uses money she's won in a writing competition to defy her parents and travel to Europe. (She soon gives the chaperone the slip and the fun can begin).

For almost seventy years the diary was forgotten. It was only whenanapartment was being cleared thatit was found by a janitor.Knowing a young journalist whomight be interested, he saved it for her and she traced the writer to Florida.

'House Wife No 47' and 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady', also gave me many happy hours of reading.I'm interested in the minutiae of people's lives.

I forget what prompted him, but Peter once remarkedthat minor irritationsvexed me, butthe big things in life hadgone unnoticed by me. This reminded me of Charles Dickens's assertion that life is composed of trifles; this might have been saidaboutdiaries, too. It is the details about the wholewheat bread for tea,spread with plumjam, the clothes peggedon the line for three days thatare still wet, that interestme.

At the moment I am readingthe handwritten diary ofAgnes Griffiths, a Pembrokeshire housewife. The diary is for the year 1882 and gives glimpses of the daily round of chores, enlivened bytrips to market to sell eggs or a fowl.

On Thursday, 2nd April, Agnes finds that rats have got into the calf's cot and eaten three gosling eggs, leaving only twenty one, 'Such a pity'.

Friday 3rd and Baby Gwladys is a little better. 'Busy all day. Killed a fowl for dinner'.

Saturday 4th:'I went to market. Sold twenty eggs. Made baby's biscuits by dinner. Gwladys better'.

What will I write in my diary tonight? 'Arranged white chrysanthemums spiked with red berries in a large glass vase. Wanted to impress my mother who was visiting. We had salad and cold pork followed by apple sponge with cream for tea'.