Blogs

The Big Spring Beach Clean, Surfers Against Sewage
Freshwater West, Pembrokeshire
April 7th 2019

It’s World Oceans Day, June 8th, and people around our world celebrate and honour the ocean, which connects us all.

https://www.worldoceansday.org

#TOGETHERWECAN

To celebrate we would like to release a video of the Big Spring Beach Clean . It is the UK’s biggest coordinated beach clean activity, which has brought together over 150,000 volunteers over the last five years, contributing an incredible two million hours of volunteer time to protecting and conserving our beaches for everyone to enjoy. These vital community events not only remove dangerous plastics from our unique and precious coastal environment, but also indicate where action needs to be taken further upstream to reduce the leakage into and impact of plastics on our ocean and beaches.

Jaz Strelecki has been a representative for Surfers Against Sewage since she was nine years old. Jaz also helps mum, Anna, run her iSea Surfwear clothing business in Amroth. Jaz is the surfer of the family and has always had a passion for spreading the word about environmental issues and especially beach cleaning.

As lots of groups help to clean Freshwater West already Jaz and Anna decided to focus on the teeny tiny micro plastics and nurdles/mermaids tears, to see how bad it really is on this lovely beach.

Mermaids’ tears, also known as resin pellets or nurdles, are used in the manufacturing of plastic products. S.A.S. identify these plastic pellets as a major source of pollution on Welsh beaches, and their undercover work in plastic factories have identified a route from plastic factories to the beach, via the storm drains.

This week sees the publication of a book of delicious vegetarian and vegan recipes from the hugely successful catering company No Bones Jones.  No Bones Jones: Festival Cookbook  shines a spotlight on the authentic, wholesome vegetarian and vegan food that the company supplies to festivalgoers across the UK.  

No Bones Jones started after Hugh Jones returned from a long period driving an overland tourist bus around India, Nepal and Turkey in the 1980s.  

“When he left, he knew little about food or catering, and cared even less. When he came back, he was a man transformed! He seemed to have gone food-mad and enthused at length about the exotic salads, magical spices and fabulous flavours he had discovered in far-flung lands. He seemed to have set his heart on crafting here at home these same delicious, mainly veggie dishes of vibrant colour and fragrance,” says Mark Jones, friend, translator and co-author of the book.  

In the meantime, Hugh’s former girlfriend from his school days had started a vegetarian and wholefood café in their home town. With Jill’s cooking experience and Hugh’s new-found love of exotic vegetarian food, together they developed what is now No Bones Jones, a catering company that feeds thousands of happy customers at a host of festivals over the summer months every year – from Glastonbury to the National Eisteddfod of Wales to numerous folk festivals.  

“Our aim was to provide a mixed, nutritious vegetarian meal. This was something most unusual in those early days, but it was what we ourselves wanted to eat. We started with two dishes: lentil stew and chickpea curry with brown rice and salad. In 1995 this was considered  off piste , but we knew we were on the right track and we’ve never looked back,” says Hugh, who is nowadays a frequent guest on BBC Radio Wales, where he cooks live on air for a following of regular listeners.  

No Bones Jones: Festival Cookbook  is more than a recipe book as it also discusses the company’s ethos and ideas. The work tirelessly to keep their carbon footprint as low as possible, which has won them the coveted Green Trader Gold Award at Glastonbury (awarded by Greenpeace, the Soil Association, the Fairtrade Foundation and the Nationwide Caterers Association to one out of 400 on-site food traders). Their vehicles run on bio diesel, their lighting is solar-powered, and packaging is kept to a minimum by staples in 20kg sacks, spices by the kilo and all vegetables in returnable crates.  

Hugh Jones cites two people as being the main influencers of the company’s approach. The first was his mother:

“Like all mothers of that era, she knew how to prepare a nutritious meal from very little and how to make do and mend. It's nothing new to recycle, reuse and repair. People back then had grown up during the war with very little, so their whole ‘3Rs’ approach was not so much a virtue as a necessity, and at the time was simply called good housekeeping.”

The second was a young Nepalese woman who cooked her dal-bhat (Nepalese lentil and rice dish) on a dried cow dung-fuelled stove in a little shack on the side of the Rajpath, the road leading to Kathmandu, for 3 rupees.

“Barefoot she was with her two young children, but nevertheless successfully eking out a humble living. In her hut I was dining in the original ‘lean start-up’, the antithesis of a modern restaurant and for me far more exciting,” says Hugh.  

The book recounts the fascinating and often highly amusing anecdotes behind the discovery and development of their recipes. It also tells the story of a man who got out of his rut and chose a path less trodden. Throughout the book, Hugh’s enthusiasm for distant locations, and his passion for not impacting the planet and for vegetarian food is infectious. Hugh states “you don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat veggie food! You’re not a pigeon, so don’t pigeonhole yourself.”  

Hugh and Jill Jones live in Montgomery in Powys, where they were well known in the local community.

Hugh’s lifelong friend Mark Jones is a freelance writer and translator based in Avignon in France.  

No Bones Jones: Festival Cookbook  by Hugh and Jill Jones with Mark Jones (£12.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.

THE FORGOTTEN CONSCRIPTS

These young men could well be described as having served in the secret underground movement during the Second World War, but not in the sense that most people would imagine, for even today many have not heard of the term Bevin Boy.

Sixty-eight years ago on the 2nd December 1943, Ernest Bevin the wartime Minister of Labour and National Service announced in the House of Commons a scheme that was to change the lives of many young men, by being directed to serve their National Service working underground in the coalmines of Britain.

When war was declared against Germany in September 1939, a large number of experienced miners were called up into the Forces, with others leaving to take up work in other higher paid industries. In the years leading up to 1943 various schemes were set up to recruit labour and thus increase coal production vital to the needs of the nation.

The release of ex miners in the Home Forces, the recall of retired miners, unemployed and young boys of school leaving age to make a career in coal mining were all tried, proving to be unsuccessful.

The only way of overcoming this serious situation was to conscript an additional 50,000 men to work underground in the coal mines over a period of eighteen months.

By Warwick H Taylor, MBE,
Former Vice President of The Bevin Boys Association

I first met writer, Jaye when she needed to use The Great War trench system in Pendine to be a location for her screenplay Letters Home .

Letters Home started life as a short play in 2012 at Pontardawe Script Slam and went on to win the audience award. Jaye adapted it to a screenplay, which reached the semi-finals of the London Underwire Festival, and was chosen for a rehearsed reading at the London Screenwriters Festival.

After the success of Letters Home , her next project is Forgotten Conscripts . Jaye has a passion to get the story over and is now in the middle of postproduction of The Forgotten Conscript Trailer, which will act as a proof of concept and hopefully her skill, effort, and energy in remembering The Bevin Boys will be noticed by someone out there in the media world.

VOICES FROM WALES - THIRTEEN OF FIFTY-TWO

The ABC of Opera is the brainchild of Mark Llewelyn Evans. Mark has visited over 250 schools in South Wales and has now published a book to go with the workshops that is sold online worldwide. It is a fantastic piece of work that has been collated with the help of creatives across Wales.

Five Hundred years of opera to captivate, inspire, enlighten and empower children of all ages and abilities.

I feel so passionate that every child should have the chance to experience the performing arts
whilst using their imagination to their full potential. It's about inspiring our next generation….
No art form should be elitist or unobtainable.

Mark Llewelyn Evans

Purpose of the project:

• To make opera accessible to all children, non-pretentious and without elitism.
• Offer the means to introduce opera to a much wider audience.
• Educate about opera through the current curriculum.
• Bring the power of classical music to young people.
• Nurture imagination and personal creative expression through interactive elements of the project.
• Offer the thought-provoking morals within each of the stories within a modern context.
• Give some insight into the historical and cultural significance of the stories.
• Make learning fun, build personal skills, build confidence, nurture imagination and creativity

Tom 'Paddington' Jones

  Photos: 5

It may come as a surprise to some readers that Tom Jones has been formally inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.  Many readers will be aware of the fact that Tom has had a long standing interest in the squared circle...except in this instance we aren't talking about the famous singer, but a lesser known Welsh namesake, who was actually added to the famous Boxing Hall of Fame back in 2010.  He may not be as familiar to boxing fans as other Welsh inductees, which include Joe Calzaghe and 'Peerless' Jim Driscoll, but Tom 'Paddington' Jones was one of the greatest fighters of  his day.  

Tom 'Paddington' Jones is said to have been born on November 18, 1771 in Montgomeryshire to Welsh parents, and was taken to London as a child.  His parents settled in the area of Paddington, which in time earned the youngster the nickname of 'Paddington' Jones.  Jones was little more than a boy when he fought a man named Ned Holmes at Paddington fields, which ended in defeat for the Welshman.  It was to be the only time that the fist of Paddington Jones wasn't raised in victory until 1799 when he battled valiantly but ultimately in vain against a youthful fighting phenomenon named Jem Belcher.

In the days of Paddington Jones, before the adoption of boxing gloves, fights within the 'prize ring' were bare-knuckle battles, and there can be no doubt that as a knuckle fighter, Jones was amongst the cream of the crop.  No less an authority than the celebrated Pierce Egan commented, "Paddington Jones has fought more battles than any other pugilist now in existence...for seven years VICTORY crowned all his attempts".  It is said that the number of opponents he met and defeated exceeded three figures.

With the boxing career of Paddington Jones having been so closely associated with his stomping ground of Paddington, London, it is perhaps unsurprising that even within the International Boxing Hall of Fame, where Jones is listed in the boxing 'Pioneers' category he is incorrectly recorded as having been born in Paddington, and not Montgomeryshire, Wales.  A new hardback book by Welsh boxing historian Lawrence Davies entitled 'The Story of Welsh Boxing, Prize Fighters of Wales' published by Pitch Publishing finally places him alongside the more famous inductees of the IBHOF, and gives the fullest published account of the Welshman's impressive pugilistic career to date.  

The cover features a striking illustration of Paddington Jones landing a punch on one of his well known opponents, Isaac Bitton, who was featured in the BBC programme 'Who Do You Think You Are?' exploring the ancestry of award winning Eastenders actress June Brown in 2012, who discovered that her great great great grandfather was the once famous Isaac Bitton.

'The Story of Welsh Boxing' will be published on June 1, 2019, and contains accounts of the careers of the most prominent Welsh fighters from the period 1700-1830.  The majority of the boxers within the book have never been recorded in any book of Welsh boxing history, and include such forgotten ring heroes as Jack Rasher, known as 'Ironface', John Thomas of Merthyr, who claimed to be the 'Welsh Champion', The notorious fighting brothers known as the 'Welsh Savages', and the first ever published account of the career of William Charles of Newport, deemed the 'Champion of Wales' by 1828, as well  as many more boxers that have been rescued from the mists of time.  

Thanks to the exhaustive research of Lawrence Davies, Paddington Jones can now finally take his place alongside the other great Welsh boxers to have been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and we can celebrate another fighting 'Welsh Wizard' and add him to the lists of great sporting Welshmen nine years after his induction.  

The Story of Welsh Boxing is released on June 1, 2019, and is available from Amazon, Waterstones, WH Smith, and other bookshops.  Read more about the book at:  The Story of Welsh Boxing

VOICES FROM WALES - TWELVE OF FIFTY-TWO

The Eclectic Shed Experience are Ron Savory and Liz Crippin. Both solo singer-songwriters who have now combined to inspire fresh arrangements of their most popular self-penned material.

They hope to record their first album soon. You can find them on the web at: theese.co.uk

They have just performed at the World famous Tredegar House Folk Festival in Gwent.

Last week they recorded an interview with Malcolm Cawley for B.B.Skone’s Pembrokeshire Music Show for Pure West Radio.

If you want to listen to one of the the tracks in full that are played on the documentary:

This was filmed a few weeks back when we were in the middle of a cold snap and the rain was driving down the valley.

Hope you can feel the warmth of the people, the music and the bwythyn.

VOICES FROM WALES - 11 of 52 James Page, Columbus Campervans

An enthusiast from Swansea who over the years has learnt how to restore old VW vans and from a hobby has turned the projects into a small business.

I first heard about Jimmy nearly 30 years ago when a guitar tutor friend came to a band rehearsal and said:

"You wont believe this but I am teaching guitar to Jimmy Page! Hang on!" he said, "I’m also teaching bass to his mate, Steve Miller!"

As the boys grew older and learnt their respective guitars to a high standard, they formed a band. Another friend called Paul Young came on board, he was the singer and on drums they had the magical drummer, Paul Daniels – a super group was formed!