Blogs

One of the top news stories today is the collapse of a trial in London simply because the jury did not seem to understand "the basis of trial by jury and simple legal concepts". At first I thought it might be because both sides had not presented the case sufficiently well but, having read some of the questions asked by jurors, it became clear that at least some of them hadn't any idea of how a court works!

In the light of the collapse, all the usual arguments against jury trial are coming out of the woodwork again.

Tempus fugit in a most frightening way and it is now many years since I did my jury duty but it remains the best job I ever had. I received a letter calling me to jury duty in November of one year and was obliged to go to the Old Bailey in the following January. First of all everyone had to negotiate the security arrangements at the door but the security people were cheerful and pleasant. Inside, I suddenly felt rather lonely and overwhelmed despite all the other people who had been called in the same way.

I was called to be a juror on a fraud trial and asked by bewigged and gowned men whether I was willing to give up possibly 6 months of my life to do this. I said that I would do so. There was much discussion regarding someone else who said that they could not do it as they were afraid of losing their job; prosecuting counsel and the judge made it clear that sacking someone from their job in those circumstances was against the law but everyone had the opportunity to back out.

Returning to my own job that day, I explained the situation and my employer (an apoplectic man at times) went through the roof and that could be a frightening experience, believe me. As I loathed him, I dug in my heels and decided there and then I was not going to give in.

The jurors chosen had to return to the court to confirm that they would be taking part; I sent the judge a note about my employer's reaction and said that my boss would likely be sending him a letter by courier at that very moment about it. To be honest, I can't remember whether the letter arrived or not but the judge and prosecuting counsel, after some discussion, very kindly asked me to make the decision about whether I wished to continue. I said that I wouldn't be bullied and that I would carry on.

The jury for the fraud trial ranged from a young lad of about 19 to a cheery pensioner and all ages in between. I recall a London cabbie amongst the twelve. I think it fair to say that we were all reasonably intelligent and understood the basics of what was required.

The trial took place in a modern annexe to the Old Bailey where we had a comfortable room. We organised a kettle, teabags etc. and made ourselves a home from home for the next 6 months. Fortunately, we got along very well and all had a sense of humour. The court Clerk and usher were enormously helpful and kind too.

Obviously, I cannot say anything about what was discussed in the jury room or how we came to our decisions, but watching how a court works and observing how a clever QC can manipulate a hostile witness was a fascinating experience. The case involved an enormous amount of money but, at the very start, we were told that if we could understand a bank statement and balance a cheque book, we would have no problem understanding the prosecution's case. And so it turned out. At the end of the case, the judge said that the prosecution's presentation should serve as a model for other fraud cases and he was very complimentary to us also. At all times, we had been treated with respect. We were also told that we would not need to do jury duty again, having given so much of our time.

By the way, I returned to my job and my boss bided his time; he allowed a few months to pass before giving me notice! It was a relief actually, as I hated the job almost as much as I loathed him.

Living in Wales by David Hurn named in the best top 50 Black + White Photography books

Black + White Photography magazine have named Living in Wales by Magnum photographer David Hurn in their top 50 black and white photography books. Living in Wales is an album of one hundred and one duotone portraits of people who, in the words of David Hurn have enriched my life and that of Wales. It is a roster of the famous and distinguished in the fields of science, business, the arts, sport, the law, health, media, politics and religion. ISBN: 1854113399 Hardback 25.00

Seren author Cynan Jones long-listed for the Sunday Times Short Story Award.

Douglas Houston 1947-2013

We were sad to hear of the death of the fine poet Douglas Houston and thank his widow, Lynn, for permission to use the poem 'Welsh Dream TV', from the collection The Welsh Book of the Dead , as Poem of the Month (see below) for which Sean O'Brien wrote this recommendation, which now provides an eloquent euology:

"As a love poet he achieves freshness and pathos; as a fantasist he continually surprises; as a writer possessed of intellectual curiosity he strives for that marriage of direct apprehension and analysis which would be his equivalent of the philosophers stone. He is also a poet of landscape and of literature itself, of wild humour and humbling candour. We're lucky to have him."

New titles

Newspaper Taxis: Poetry After the Beatles Edited by Phil Bowen, Damian Furniss and David Woolley You know they caused a revolution - 50 years ago the Beatles transformed the face of music, youth, and popular culture. In January 1963 their single 'Please, Please Me' shot to number one, heralding the start of both Beatlemania and the swinging sixties. In the next few years the Beatles wrote the template for pop music. Their songs defined popular culture at a time when it was inspiring social change in Europe and North America, and this book collects poems that both respond to the music and to their influence on the way we lived then and the way we live now. With contributions from a myriad of poets, young and old, including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Paul Groves, Adrian Henri, Philip Larkin, Lachlan Mackinnon, Roger McGough, Sheenagh Pugh, Jeremy Reed and Carol Rumens, this book is a response to the Beatles' creativity and capacity to influence successive generations. "You can guarantee higher-profile Beatles nostalgia this year, but little will be as thoughtful." - The Independent ISBN: 9781781720271 Paperback 9.99

Forthcoming Titles

R.S Thomas: Poems to Elsi edited by Damian Walford Davies Foreword by Rowan Williams Celebrate the R. S Thomas centenary with this excellent volume that draws together 52 poems (4 previously unpublished) by Thomas to his wife, the distinguished artist Mildred E Eldridge - known as Elsi - from early meditations on their relationship to the elegies following her death. This revelatory collection dramatises the changing dynamics of a complex and vitally creative relationship. Poems on marriage, cohabitation, birthdays, anniversaries, family and bereavement offer a candid portrait of emotional intimacy, desire, the painful process of ageing, and of loss. Elsi is a complex presence here: to the 'to' in the title signifies not only 'addressed to' but also 'about', 'with an eye on', 'to be overheard by', and even in one case 'from'. ISBN: 9781781721117 Paperback 9.99

The Scattering by Jaki McCarrick The Scattering is a collection of 18 stories, many set on the Irish border, where this London-born author currently lives. These stories explore states of liminality: life on the Irish border, dual identities, emigration, being between states - certainty and doubt, codependency and freedom. Some explore themes of catastrophe and constraint. All explore what it means to be alive in a fraught and ever-changing world. This first collection from prizewinning author and playwright, Jaki McCarrick explores the dark side of human nature, often with a postmodern Ulster gothic twist. ISBN: 9781781720325 Paperback 8.99

She Inserts the Key by Marianne Burton This is a startlingly good debut by Marianne Burton. Often dark, but with a sharply concise and compelling style, these poems draw you in with a look at this! urgency. This is a collection of voices: dodos and wallpaper chant obsessively, a pair of shoes haunts a murderers moll, a cheese weeps for the calf whose milk it stole, an army cook laments the dead, a woman turned into soap dreams of her apotheosis as she washes into the sea. Uneasy yet fruitful juxtapositions abound: poems of war are set against poems of the natural world, a glimpse of a sparrowhawk is offset by a wider vision of the River flowing under the Bank of England. The series, Meditations on the Hours, that highlight the domestic and the personal, is at the core of this group of lyrical poems. ISBN: 9781781720387 Paperback 8.99

Meet the Author

Sunday 24th February 12-3.20pm: Let It Snow . Writing workshops with Anne-Marie Fyfe. Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court, London. 28 (concs. 24) all advance booking only, with cheque, please, as workshops/classes are frequently oversubscribed. CoffeeHouse Poetry, PO Box 16210, London, W4 1ZP. Visit the Coffee-House Poetry website for further information: www.coffeehousepoetry.org/

Thursday 7th March 7.30pm-9pm: 'First Thursday' Literary evening combined with music, presenting Stuart Silver on piano and Seren poets Emily Hinshelwood, Paul Henry and Rhian Edwards . Media Point Room Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff 2.50
Seren Poets at the Stanza Poetry Festival - St Andrews, Fife Wednesday 6th March 8-9.30pm: Curated by Liam Carson , a voyage through Dublin in poetry, music and image. The Byre Theatre, Abbey Street Auditorium 8.00/6.00

Friday 8th March, 11.30am-12.30pm: 'Border Crossings' Christopher Whyte (Crsdean MacIlleBhin) , Robert Minhinnick. The Town Hall, Queens Gardens Supper Room 3.00/2.0

Saturday 9th March, 11.30am-12.30pm: 'Past &Present' Ern Moure on Csar Vallejo, Robert Minhinnick on Dylan Thomas. The Town Hall, Queens Gardens Council Chamber 3.00/2.00

Saturday 9th March, 11.30am-12.30pm: 'Border Crossings' Reading Zo Skoulding , Jean Atkin The Undercroft, St John's House, South Street 3.00/2.00

Saturday 9th March, 5-6pm: Five O'Clock Verses' Reading Deryn Rees-Jones , Alvin Pang The Byre Theatre, Abbey Street Auditorium

Seren staff out of hours

Simon bought Wainwright's Complete Pictorial Guides from an RSPCA charity shop for 5. RRP 159.99. He feels bad for cheating the animals, and because he'll never actually read the books, nor walk in the Lake District. But they do look lovely on his library shelf.

Rebecca has recently completed level one trapeze and is now learning to climb ropes She is currently working on a couple of her own short stories and some new poetry.

Mick caught up with the David Nash exhibition at Kew and was more than impressed by his response to making work in gardens rather than the landscape. It's there until mid April and well worth seeing.

Clancy has spent the last few weeks battling off a cold which is slowly getting the better of her. When she can keep her eyes open she is enjoying the Stephen Poliakoff drama 'Dancing on the Edge' on BBC 2 and finally got round to reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which she absolutely hated!

Amy somehow finds herself taking a GCSE class in Italian on Monday evenings. After four months the verdict of some Italian friends is that her vocabulary is impressive but her grammar requires at least a further four years of study. She has also learned that you must not attempt to translate 'lightbulb jokes' into Italian.

Vicky has been to see Les Miserables twice in the cinema, she loved it even more the second time around and now has the soundtrack playing in her car! She is also counting down the days until the Capital One Cup Final at Wembley on 24th February.

Penny stayed by the fire in January, with the odd chilly beach walk, but is looking forward to stage and screen in Feb - taking her daughter to Les Miserables and going to see an all-female production of Hamlet at the Welsh College of Music and Drama.

Poem of the Month

Welsh Dream TV

Much of the time there is only the silence,
So transient particles glow with significance.
You may experience rippling water
As hope scoured bright by gales,
Or suspect the hail-flak thrashing the roof
Encodes something reassuring.
When the light goes grainy and thin
There is a technical fault,
And sometimes the rays travel too fast,
So the future keeps its promise early
In a brief confetti of supercharged photons.
The heart goes on pulsing its binary message,
The beats and the space that is everything else,
Each printed letter and all the blanks,
Leaves in situ or gone to rot,
Needles of Morse piercing the spume
Blown off a north Atlantic winter.

Welsh Dream TV is transmitting
A feature on perfect felicities.
In the square of a small market town
A spring has dried up temporarily
Out of respect for one recently dead
Who possessed monumental humility.

An auctioneer and three horse dealers
Are explaining how they run things here.
The simple arithmetic of their gestures
Fits its occasions like air round stones
And their smiles are very disarming when they say
Theyre glad youve tuned in to their channel.

From The Welsh Book of the Dead by Douglas Houston

Yesterday I was clipping a laurel bush that has grown massively large when a neighbour stopped to chat. He told me about an altercation he had with someone the day before.

It was a complicated story and Iwas unable to follow it all but, in essence, theother driver signalled incorrectly, confusing the teller of the tale.All we need remember is the aggrieved driver is seventy eight and the other driver was a soldier.

This did not deter the seventy eight year old from following the soldier to his house and making his complaint. Some verbal sparring followed before the soldier told him to learn to drive andwas met with the riposte that he could drive, he'd learnt in the Army.

Using some emotional intelligence, the soldier asked 'Shall we just leave it?'. Then they both shook hands and the day did not end badly after all.

InThe Times todaythe case of the Carmarthen blogger is reported. Briefly, Carmarthen Council has taken offence to the blogger's predilection for filming sessions of the planning committee, using her mobile 'phone.

This is another of those sagas that run and run. Along the way, she has been arrested andreleased.She and the council are embroiled in a wordy battle that looks as though it's going to be costly.

The Times and Derbyshire County Council case established that the State should not sue its citizens and should not pay for its employees to do so. In effect, the blogger, as a taxpayer,is funding the claim against her and is paying for her own defence.

The case concludes today.Judgement will be reserved. I'll watch out for it?

SWANSEA BLITZ

This night was the second of the Swansea Blitz of 1941.

The Swansea Blitz was a heavy and sustained bombing of Swansea by the Luftwaffe of Nazi Germany between the 19–21 February 1941.   The Luftwaffe unleashed 1273 high explosive bombs and 56,000 incendiary devices, targeting the port, docks the oil refinery at Llandarcy, ironically the Three Night Blitz left the industrial area virtually unscathed but almost completely obliterated the town centre destroying 857 properties and damaging 11,000.  230 people were killed, 409 were injured.  

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RICHARD TECWYN WILLIAMS

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Born this day 1909, in Abertillery

Richard Tecwyn Williams, who has been described as the founding father of drug metabolism.

Williams was the first scientist to really study how drugs are metabolised in a living body and his book  "Detoxication Mechanisms", described as "a marvel of organisation and enlightenment" helped in prescribing drugs to provide the maximum effect and minimum side effects.  He was awarded honorary degrees from Paris, Germany and Nigeria.  He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an honorary member of The Mark Twain Society USA. 

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ST DAVIDS CATHEDRAL EARTHQUAKE IN 1247

On 20th February 1247 St David's Cathedral suffered earthquake damage.

A History of St David's Cathedral;

6th century -  The monastic community was founded by Saint David ( Dewi Sant; c. 500 – c. 589)

Between 645 and 1097, the monastery suffered many attacks, including those by Vikings and several of the Bishops were murdered,  including  in 999, Bishop Moregenau and in 1080, Bishop Abraham. 

c.885 - The cathedral was of such note as both a religious and intellectual centre that Asser, a Welsh monk from St David's was asked by King Alfred the Great to  join his court and help rebuild the intellectual life of the Kingdom of Wessex. Asser later wrote a biography of Alfred in 893. 

1081 - William the Conquerer visited St David. 

1090 - Welsh scholar, Rhigyfarch wrote a Life of St David.

1123 - Pope Calixtus II  bestowed a Papal privilege on St David's, making it the object of pilgrimages.

1131 - A new Cathedral was completed. 

1171 - King Henry II's visit saw the following of David increase – and the need for a larger Cathedral. 

1247  - Reported earthquake damage to the cathedral. 

1540 - During The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII, the body of Edmund Tudor, father of Henry VII, was brought to St David's from the dissolved Greyfriars’ Priory in Carmarthen, for reburial. 

1649 - 1658 - During the Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, the Cathedral was all but destroyed by Cromwell’s forces, and the lead stripped from the Bishop’s Palace roof. 

1793 - The Welsh architect John Nash was commissioned to restore the West Front, to repair the damage done one hundred and fifty years previously. 

1862-70 - Within a century the Nash West Front had become unstable, and the whole building was restored by George Gilbert Scott. 

1995 - The British Government reinstated the title of "City" to St Davids.  

Frances Jones-Davies, Editor

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I was married in 1959. Peter was in his second year of teaching and earnedthirty five pounds a month, which could not be called a 'princely sum' by any stretch of the imagination. I did not have a job, having only just arrived in a small town in West Wales.

Our first 'married' task was to sortthe budget.We worked out that in a five week month there was seven pounds a week to juggle. Ashorter month gave useight poundsto splash.

Our rent was two pounds a week andcoal was ten shillings a bag. We had coin metres for the gas and electricityso we could pay-as-we-went. We also paid weeklyfor a rediffusion radio at first, but I forget what that cost.

I decided that three pounds a week would probably buy enough groceries for the two of us and in practise, it did.

I jotted down everythingI had spent when I came home from shopping, to see where the money had gone. (When supermarkets arrived in thesixties it was a relief, because prices could be compared and I knew what things cost before deciding to buy.)

The Sunday jointpresented a difficulty for me. I would ask fora small joint but always ended up with one that lasted us for four meals.My culinary imaginationwas tested to the limit. On a Sunday wehad a roast, Monday we ate the meat cold, with boiled potatoes, peas and a bottled sauce. Tuesday waspie day and on Wednesday I threw the remainsinto the cawl pot and breathed a sigh of relief.

(My daughters thinkI was lucky it lasted so longbecause meat disappears quickly in their houses.)

The topic for this blog was inspired by some recent research that says two people can save at least a hundred pounds a month by living together, sharing the bills.

Co-incidentallyIreada 1935 magazine earlier today and saw anarticle on household economy. I should have guessed thatthe main culprits for wasting money were the maids, who were lavishwith thecleaning materials, expecially scouring powder. Elbow grease would have done just as well and saved a lot of money!

In North Wales, we have experienced high pressure weather conditions over the last couple of days which has brought sunshine and great visibility. This has allowed the full majesty of the Northern Snowdonia scenery to be appreciated.

Similar images to be found at http://www.thesnowdonian.com

In a Word

Our lives begin and end with a word.

I do, I will, I promise, I give. Amen.

The Greeks would know whatI mean:

Beginning and end. Alpha and Omega.

Crystal and clear. Nothing absurd.

Life is a quest for words plucked from time.

I love, you love, he, she, it loves.

Only words will spell you what I mean,

Something simple, Amo, Amas, Amat.

A mixture from another tongue

Andlife goes on because of that.