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The unusual collection of offbeat anecdotes are a collection of just some of the strange incidents which have happened to him over a period of 65 years, and over several continents:
“ I am lucky to have done an awful lot of travelling, including with the Spanish Foreign Legion in the colony of Spanish Sahara, being surprised by several nasty earthquakes, and being in East Germany as they built the wall, but my stories are in the shadow of the world affairs rather than dealing with them directly,” says Randall Baker.
The incidents recorded in In Passing are all true stories from his own life, starting from when he was a pupil at Abermorlais Junior School in Merthyr. Over the years, he started to realize that the number of odd events that happened to him was unusual. Speaking of the realization, Randall said:
“Throughout my life, when I discussed something that had just happened to me, inevitably I was greeted by cries of “Oh, come on ” and the like. Eventually, my wife started to preface them with “Here comes another of Randall’s stories” . The hard thing for me was that I was just recounting something that had really just happened . Eventually I realised that life is not like this for everyone and so for posterity, I decided to put all the most interesting or amusing events together, starting with post-war Wales and moving on to New Zealand, Fiji, Mecca, and other places far from Merthyr. As a scientist I do require rugged standards of proof, but what do you do when the incident happened to you and you have absolutely no way of explaining it!”
He credits his childhood in Merthyr as ‘a good training ground’, enabling him to go out and face some of the wilder corners of the world.
“Merthyr’s history in the iron and steel industry and the buying of ore and selling metal brought Merthyr into the world – in a way that’s hard to imagine today. Merthyr manufactured cannons for Nelson, and built almost every railroad in South America. It’s hard to imagine this world leadership as you stroll around Merthyr these days, but it’s not like any other place in Wales,” says the author of his hometown.
Crimebusting soothsayers, a homicidal optometrist, men who fall off trains or into open graves, a ridiculously over-attentive waitress, an abandoned stripper and a fellow traveller whose huge suitcase is packed solely with alcohol are just a few of the colourful characters populating this engaging book, The stories get more and more inexplicable, though all are true! He comes across coffee with strange properties, gets caught in the crossfire in the OK Corral of English tearooms, locates lost property through the power of suggestion, meets royalty and rebels, and POSSIBLY steps back in time into 1944 New Zealand. Holding all of this together is an infectious sense of Welsh humour, especially in handling the unexpected!
Randall Baker is a distinguished Welsh academic who has studied and taught in universities all around the world. He co-founded the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, and has acted as an advisor to UNESCO, the Fijian Government, the Prince of Mecca, the Sultan of Brunei, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, The British Foreign Ministry and Crown Agents, UNEP, and the US State Department. He has published extensively on both academic and non-academic subjects. He now spends half the year in Bulgaria and the other half in Newbridge-on-Wye in Wales.
In Passing: A Welshman’s bizarre adventures from Merthyr to Mecca w ill be launched at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth at 1pm on Thursday 19 th of September. Seats can be reserved at www.library.wales or turn up on the day. Dr Brinley Jones will host the session.
In Passing: A Welshman’s bizarre adventure from Merthyr to Mecca by Randall Baker (£9.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
VOICES FROM WALES – TWENTY FOUR OF FIFTY-TWO, RON LEWIS PART THREE
It’s the final part of the Ron Lewis interview and once again he reveals stories from his career as a T.V.reporter.
Thanks for sharing, Ron, it was a real insight.
You can read Ron's memoir here for more: Confessions of a TV Newsman: Broadcasters behaving really badly in the Golden Age of ITV
VOICES FROM WALES – TWENTY THREE OF FIFTY-TWO, RON LEWIS PART TWO
Ron Lewis, retired T.V. journalist and reporter, reveals more about working in Pontcanna, Cardiff as part of the news team on the newly founded Harlech Television, H.T.V.
When I first heard Ron’s voice, I giggled to myself, as in its soothing warmth I heard a voice from the past, from my childhood. It brought memories of sitting with my family in front of the telly and having to sit through the news every night, whilst all I wanted to do was watch cartoons.
Ron is a natural storyteller and has a rich vein of experiences during his lifetime to call on. The morning we spent with him was both relaxing and illuminating.
Please take 10-15 minutes of your day to enjoy his reminiscences.
THE JOY FORMIDABLE release 10-year anniversary edition of A Balloon Called Moaning along with Welsh language acoustic version Y Falŵn Drom
By Ceri Shaw, 2019-08-06
Hear both English and Welsh language acoustic versions of Whirring HERE
Released October 25th via Hassle Records
Written and recorded in a bedroom over a decade ago by lead singer and guitarist Ritzy Bryan, and bass player and vocalist Rhydian Davies in North Wales, A Balloon Called Moaning was an instant hit. Rated 8/10 by NME, it was the first of the band’s releases to feature their now iconic single Whirring – a track that was named amongst Pitchfork’s Top 100 Tracks of The Year and described as “the song of the year” by Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl.
In the passing decade, as the world tours, festival main stages and stadium shows have racked up, it has always been especially important to the band that they continue to recognise and highlight the importance of their Welsh heritage. In this new anniversary edition, each song from the original release is re-worked acoustically and presented again in the Welsh language. On the new release, Ritzy said:
"We’ve been through such a lot as a band over the years, it’s been a really reflective studio session, returning to the old recordings and transforming them into these beautiful stripped back, intimate versions. It’s exciting hearing them in the Welsh language because now they have new life too and can be a celebration of language as well as memory."
In celebration of A Balloon Called Moaning / Y Falŵn Drom , The Joy Formidable are also announcing the launch of Formidable Fest / Gŵyl Aruthrol , a mini festival at The Tramshed in Cardiff on Saturday 23 November 2019. Ritzy commented:
“We see Formidable Fest as a lovely opportunity for us to invite some bands to play in Wales, in front of an audience that otherwise might not get to see them. That, and having a bill that promotes Welsh language acts and bands from Wales - just a really inclusive night of great music. We’ll be doing 2 shows that night, one short acoustic Welsh set & the other full electric.”
How many pedestrians are arguably pedestrian?
how many drivers can claim to be driven
as the kilometer psychotically accelerates
to that finite point when rust will return
triumphant on the saddles of a troop of horses
that will be the daddies and mummies
of the new heathen horsepower horde
of carbon-neutral transportation?
flashing one's debit card in the twilight of plastic
in an era of multiple extinctions
you could almost get a programme to aid
a more user-friendly viewing of the shows
got Popol Vuh on the speakers
Germans riffing to Mayan influences
how I like it how dead people still speak to us
across the centuries of disease invasion
and the most extravagant exterminations
I try to remember the names of people
I used to work with
to stave off forgetfulness
and the names of actors
I rehearse my new escape wings
awkward with still tacky glue
going around and around in circles before non take off
until I fall asleep my beak stilled on my chest
and birds fall on my garden their eyes bleeding
or did I just read about that on the web?
VOICES FROM WALES – TWENTY TWO OF FIFTY-TWO, RON LEWIS.
Ron now lives with his family in the subtly stunning countryside of west Carmarthenshire in the parish of Merthyr where the River Cywin cuts through a rolling landscape of fertile tree-covered hillsides.
Earlier this year Ron gained a First Class Honours Master’s Degree at Lampeter University in Creative Writing.
VOICES FROM WALES – TWENTY ONE OF FIFTY-TWO, HUGH REES D.F.C.
A Professor at Aberystwyth University, a Fellow of The Royal Society a peson, like so many others, who never talked about the war. He did, however, leave a diary, which hopefully we will look at a later date. Hugh’s family lived in Llansteffan and his father was the local policeman, P.C. Owen Rees.
I hope the film reflects the respect and gratitude that we always will have for those who fought during the Great War and especially those at Mametz Wood 103 years ago.
In the video his son, Hubert Rees, is interviewed following a lecture on his father’s diary of the war.
Hugh’s plane was shot down during a daylight raid on a synthetic oil plant near Homberg in the Ruhr Valley. All were RAF crew, except the bomb aimer F/O Westwood, who was a New Zealander. He became a good friend of Hugh’s, and was a visitor to Llansteffan in 1945, as reported in the local press at the time.
After capture, Hugh was taken to Oberursel, near Frankfurt. This was an interrogation centre for captured aircrew. He was later moved to Stalag Luft 1. The camp housed about 9,000 allied air force officers by the end of the war, mostly US aircrew (about 7,500).
His diary gives an awareness into life at the camp: food shortages, communication with home, his hobbies while held captive and the general living conditions that they endured. He also gives an insight into the relationship with his fellow American captives.
Many thanks to the following websites that have helped Hubert collect images and facts about his father’s wartime experiences.
75nzsquadron
Stalag Luft
Footnote: Colonel Hub Zemke
Zemke was a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot. He established his leadership of the POWs at Stalag Luft 1, developing working relations with the German commandant and staff. He achieved some improvements in living conditions. Toward the end of the war, Zemke suspected the Germans might try to kill the POWs rather than allow them to be liberated by the advancing Russian armies. In preparation, Zemke prepared a force of commandos and stockpiled weapons, (mostly home–made grenades), in order to resist any such attempt.
As it became apparent that war was lost, the Germans became more cooperative, especially as Soviet armies approached from the east. When the prisoners of Stalag Luft I were ordered to leave the camp by the camp commandant, Zemke refused the order. Zemke and his staff negotiated an arrangement for the Germans to depart quietly at night, bearing only small arms, and turn the camp over to the Allied POW wing. To avoid conflict between POWs and guards who had been particularly brutal, Zemke's staff kept the arrangement secret until the morning after the German departure. Zemke then cultivated friendly relations with the arriving Soviets, using his fluent German and some Russian language picked up during his time with the Soviet Air Force. Ultimately, in Operation Revival, Zemke arranged for the POWs to be flown to American-held territory by U.S. B-17 bombers shortly after VE day.
It's theatre on a dead planet
a candidacy lost in space
the life lessons you need
from a black girl's reading list
there's not a cloud in the sky
so I'm going to give you what I want
a quarry in the steeper side of a peak
abandoned unworked unloved
except by us in our hole in the wall
with raven flight feather we don't fly
as our legs and loads are heavy
and anyway we're enjoying the view
and the fact that no one comes here
on the more challenging side of the eminence
where paths are of sheep
and water oozes from the skin of height
a week of resignations
an ambassador
a footballer
my sister
good for them
there's life after a life
especially when bullies are broken
and exit in wheelbarrows
and no one any longer knows
where the bodies are
I have collected two birds that crashed
into windows and died
a finch and a sparrow I think
one was still warm when I first picked it up
its eyes closed its beak and claws small
unthreatening and alluring
don't know what to do with them
and they're starting to smell in the heat
the fragrance of decomposition
moving again in temporary maggot propulsion
but I have begun to gather stray feathers
and took a fancy to theirs too
receiving my treasure as it happens
and not after the fact
someone painted a large erect penis
on tarmac near a cattle grid in the hills
on the day I come up with the idea of a wealth cap
the revenge of the benefit cap
the revenge of the underpaid
the oppressed and the short-changed
it's all connected
I don't like the modern world
but it's the only one they've got
having to pay to view redundant antique war planes
that our grandparents surely helped to purchase
through taxation and maybe through blood spilled
in operating them in campaigns they did not subscribe to
a bit like the money they charge us to visit castles
after they succeeded in subduing us
the massive watchtowers of the conquerors
still invading our pockets so give me what I want
VOICES OF THE GREAT WAR JULY 2016
A video from the archives - in July 2016 Seimon and myself organised a day of commemoration. It was 100 years since the Battle of Mametz Wood took place on the Somme during the Great War of 1914-18.
We invited local people and musicians to come along and tell their stories and sing their songs of the war. We videod and recorded their oral history and their musical performance. The Open Day at the Tin Shed Museum in Laugharne was an amazing emotional day and thanks again to all those who cointributed!
I hope the film reflects the respect and gratitude that we always will have for those who fought during the Great War and especially those at Mametz Wood 103 years ago.
EISTEDDFOD COMPETITIONS - North American Festival of Wales (Aug. 29 - Sept. 1, 2019)
By Ceri Shaw, 2019-07-17
It’s not too late to enter the stage and Visual Arts competitions at the North American Festival of Wales in Milwaukee (Aug. 29 - Sept. 1)!
Once again, we have seven different stage competitions in singing or poetic recitation - suiting all ages and different levels of proficiency in Welsh. Singers can join our Semi-Professional competition to win the Welsh North America Prize - a generous cash scholarship for travel to compete at next year's National Eisteddfod of Wales (Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru) in Tregaron (Ceredigion). We’ve also got Instrumental Solo, open to unaccompanied soloists on any musical instrument. All stage competitions are on Fri. and Sat., Aug. 30 and 31, and are time-limited to help you enjoy the rest of the Festival!
Also, the new Visual Arts Competition is open to entrants submitting visual artistic submissions (painting, sketch, sculpture, etc.) based on a Welsh theme, for popular adjudication at the Festival (setup is Fri., Aug. 30 and viewing is that day and Sat., Aug. 31). We will only need a description of your piece before the deadline.
Go to the link shown here for information and guidelines on all of our competitions! You will also find there our new online entry form for the stage competitions and Visual Arts… deadline is August 20, so fill out your form today and we’ll see you soon in Milwaukee!
(NAFOW Eisteddfod link: http://thewnaa.org/
