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Characters abound in the Rhondda. None more so than one Teifi Thomas. Thomas was only four foot eight tall and had a love for large cars, beer and Tom Jones. He was also an expert skip filler who had developed a method of skip filling envied by punters from far and wide.Teifi owned a large Ford Zodiac in which the seats were of such capaciousness that he had to place three cushions behind his back in order to reach the pedals. This being Wales and the Welsh being the Welsh with a gift for hyperbole, he soon became known as Teifi Ten Cushions and would spend great periods of his valuable drinking time explaining to the great unwashed the reasons for his moniker.As I said Teifi was an expert skip filler, boozer and a lover of Tom Jones. On one memorable evening those three aspects of his persona would collide in a manner that was to change his life forever.To understand this better I must first explain that Teifi would perform a party piece at the local pub when hed had just a few too many to drink. He would select the song Delilah, sung by Tom Jones, from the juke box in the bar. He would then stand outside the bar door and wait until the song started. As the first few strains of the ditty began he would fling open the door and begin to mime the song accompanied by gyrating movements that would have had him arrested in less polite company. This performance had become an acceptable and almost tedious part of his drinking routine and was tolerated by all and sundry.However, on one particularly memorable day Teifi had secured a skip filling job with a local builder called Dic short fuse. Dic was a fair man in business but had a terrible temper that would erupt at a seconds notice if he felt the equilibrium of his day was being upset for no obvious reason. He knew Teifi quite well and knew he could be trusted to do the job at hand and so he had no qualms about paying him in advance. And so it was on the day in question that Dic took Teifi to the skip and left him there to fill it at midday.It was with some surprise therefore that Dic spotted Teifi walking into the local pub an hour later. Curious, Dic went to look at the skip and sure enough it was full to the brim and above with dirt and detritus. Impressed, he decided he would call to see Teifi later and buy him a few extra pints for his speed.Meanwhile in the pub Teifi proceeded along the well worn path of roll your own fags, betting slips and beer. Outside it had started to rain .Three or four hours later Dic had done enough work for the day and decided to go and see Teifi at the local. On the way there hed passed the skip Teifi had filled earlier and noticed it seemed to have been emptied. When he took a closer look he could see that Teifi had filled three quarters of the skip with cardboard boxes and had topped them up with about a foot and a half of rubble. The rain had weakened the boxes and the whole of the contents had dropped to within eighteen inches of skip bottom. His blood pressure started to rise alarmingly.In the pub, Teifi had now reached the intoxication level required to perform his act. He made his way to the juke box and noticed that there were at least three records in front of his to be played. He checked the song that would be played before his choice, placed his coin in the jukebox and selected Delilah. He calculated that he would have enough time to visit the toilet and be back to perform his party piece by the time the three other songs had played. So off he went out the bar door towards the toilet at the back of the pub. While he was there Dic short fuse walked into the bar and enquired after Teifi. He was told that hed gone out for a minute and would be back soon. Dic looked around and noticed that several of his fellow builders were sitting at a table just inside the pub door and so, as was the practice, bought them all a round of drinks. He was making his way across the bar with about eight pints of beer on a tray when a familiar tune started on the jukebox. In a flash the door was flung open and eight pints and a tray went spinning through the air. I saw the light on the night as I passed by your windowwwww Teifi howled.He hadnt got as far as I saw the flickering shadows of love on the wall before he was punched back across the passage and straight into the lounge.It took some time to revive Teifi but the whole experience seemed to have had a Damascene effect on him. He quit drinking, Tom Jones and skip filling in that order. His love of cars remained however and he can still be seen cruising the valley propped up of course with Ten Cushions.

A friend of mine from Cardiff, Derith Rhisiart, has produced a film with Welsh Director Karl Francis - HOPE Eternal an S4C Production. A Welsh African film in 7 languages. www.hopethefilm.com

If you go to this page:- http://americymru.ning.com/events/wales-v-england You can leave your scoreline prediction on the comment wall. The winner ( most accurate guess ) gets a prize. We havent decided what that will be yet. But were sure you will count it amongst your most treasured possessions.Mine is Wales 47 England 13 ( payback ).

I am a first generation American of Welsh background who wants to learn Welsh. I have heard it spoken, more often sung, and have (or had) an ear for languages. I am planning to visit Wales this summer and would like to learn some Welsh (hopefully they won't be like the French when I make errors.) There are several programs available for conversational Welsh, and I'm wondering if any of you have a recommendation. I live in Montana where population is sparse and spread, so there are no language groups available locally. Thanks for any help you can give.

We apologise for the cheesy title but we are naturally very pleased and excited to be able to announce that plans for the Left Coast Eisteddfod in Portland this August are now beginning to firm up. This week we secured the location for the event in Portland, Oregon: it will take place at the Crystal Ballroom on Saturday, 22 August 2009.

Below is a shot of the view of the ballroom from the stage. The Crystal Ballroom has been a Portland nightlife destination for many decades, glamorously famous for its dance floor: a wooden floor on a ball-bearing base, below a balcony of fixed seating, with two bars - one in the balcony and one at the back of the ballroom itself. The ballroom overlooks downtown West Burnside Street, a main boulevard which bisects the north and south halves of the city and just blocks from Powell's Books, the largest independent bookstore in the United States, probably in the western hemisphere.

The ballroom is on the third floor and in addition to that floor, we have the second floor, which is another bar and dance floor - photograph of that bar, intrepidly claimed for Wales by AmeriCymru member, Hugh Roberts, at the bottom of this post, below.

So far confirmed to attend are:- Chris Needs , Bruce Anderson , Niall Griffiths , Oceans Apart and David Western . Other announcements will follow. There is every chance, should our funding situation continue to improve, that we will book a second and possibly a third day It was our original intention to stage a three day event and we are exploring various sponsorship options with interested parties at the moment.

The program for the event is in the beginning planning stages but so far we're looking at a Welsh market/tradeshow with vendor spaces during the day and seminars/appearances by lovespoon carver David Western and author Niall Griffiths on the ballroom stage and performers appearing in the ballroom in the evening.

The winners of all our online Eisteddfod competitions will be announced at the event. The Short Story Competition is being judged by Lloyd Jones and Peter Thabit Jones is judging the Poetry Competition. Judges for the other competitions have yet to be announced. David Western will announce the winner of the Left Coast Eisteddfod lovespoon he is creating and auctioning for the event.

We're working out additional presentations and possibly appearances and events at other locations near the Crystal Ballroom: book signings and other events. We'd really love to hear from anyone about events they'd like to see at this, any ideas anyone to make it even bigger and better.

We want to thank all our members and contributors for helping us get to this point and giving us an opportunity to promote Wales and modern Welsh culture in the western USA. We really hope we see a lot of you here and plan a special event for AmeriCymru members.

AmeriCymru members Andy Edwards and Gareth Evans are part of a cycling team that is doing a cross-continental bicycle challenge across the southern USA to raise money for the Children's Hospital for Wales.From their blog :"This is the first and currently only children's hospital in Wales. All funds raised through this cross-continental challenge will be donated to the Noah's Ark Appeal, which was created to raise funds to make the Children's Hospital a reality, to provide a hospital dedicated to the care of children and the support of their families."The members of our team are fathers, brothers, uncles and friends of the children in our lives and we're looking to raise 50,000 on our two-week ride across the southern US. We need help. We need people to pledge donations on our web site and we need people along our route to hold fundraising events to help us make this trip a success."They'll be cycling from Oceanside, California to Saint Augustine Beach, Florida and you can see their whole planned route HERE on their blog . They're shooting to arrive in Florida on or about 03 April 2009. You can see Gareth Evans AmeriCymru interview HERE .They're taking donations in support of their challenge on their site HERE or go straight to justgiving.com to sponsor them.They have offers of places to stay and events, both fundraisers and just for fun, being put on for them in cities along their route but nothing at the end of the route in Florida! If you're in Florida, you're able or willing to be there for the big finish and you could put on the dog for these guys or plan an event or just welcome them to town for a beer, contact them and set it up.Please show these good and crazy boys some well-deserved, American hospitality!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/changed the post around so its less of an issueedited post

By default, anyone can view a member's profile page and list of friends on a public social network on Ning. It's now possible for members to change this from the "Privacy" section of the "My Settings" area. Here's what a profile page looks like if you choose to only have content visible to network members:

In the above example the text reads:-"THIS PROFILE IS SET TO PRIVATEYou must be a member of this network to view this profile."

Members can choose to show their page to everyone, give access only to network members or limit to just their friends. Network Creators and Administrators can still view all information on the social network.

Reproduced from David Western's Portland Eisteddfod Lovespoon Blog

After too many weeks away from the project, its high time to get back to work on the Left Coast Eisteddfod spoon! This week I'm going to work on the maple leaf and the star.

These elements require radically different handling to make them look as they should. The leaf needs to be soft, curvaceous and 'flowing', while the star needs crisp angles and a uniform rigidity. Those with a keen political eye will note that the maple leaf is on the left and the star is on the right...I'd like to be able to take credit for a bit of a political wit with that one, but it was actually just an accident of placement. Perhaps I should have put them both in the centre (or center) to avoid any political misinterpretations!

Anyway, the key thing with the maple leaf is to make it appear 'leaf-like' which is easier said than done. While cutting the leaf on the scroll saw, I was careful to make the tips of the leaf appear to bend slightly. This creates a bit of tension, which in turn makes the leaf appear to have some movement despite being completely static. To further enhance this illusion, I exaggerate the 'hills and valleys' between each leaf tip by using a curved knife (a gouge works good too) to create a concave surface.

I've become a huge fan of curved knives for this type of work and have pretty well forgotten all about my gouges. Because I work on such a small scale, these knives are the perfect tool and are both light and fast in the hand. I'm careful with leaves to not overwork things and make the surfaces too smooth.

A bit of texturing helps give the leaf a vitality which disappears if the surface is too homogenous. There is a tricky area at the bottoms of the valleys where the wood grain changes direction which must be handled with care. Because I don't want to sand my leaves (which kills the vibrant look completely) I need to be very careful in this area. Nice shallow cuts are generally the answer, but occasionally I will fair out a rough patch with a small, curved scraper blade.

The star is a completely different kettle of fish. Here the surfaces will ultimately need to be as flat an fair as I can get them. The intersections of the angles need to be kept crisp and should be as straight as possible. I like to get a facetted look to the star with each arm having a central ridge from which the wood falls away meeting in a valley between sections. To get each arm faired properly, I take advantage of a skewed knife which allows me to cut on a bit of an angle. When the majority of the shaping is done, I go back over the star with a smaller straight knife to clean up any rough spots or fraying. I could cut the star all flat and on the same level, but I have found that facetting it in this manner makes it look a bit more regal and impressive.

Next week I'll have a go at the Celtic knotwork which is always good, dangerous fun! If the spoon is going to break anywhere, the Celtic knotwork is generally the place it happens. But that won't happen on this spoon because I'm doing it for a cause and my Karma will be good!

Please don't forget that the purpose of this spoon is to raise money for the Left Coast Eisteddfod! Without your support, it will be very difficult to get this worthwhile event off the ground. Every dollar you send in will give you a chance at winning this spoon and I very much hope that you will see your way to making a donation!

Hi everyone. My hobby is creating websites and indeed anything that 'communicates and informs', and I would like to just tell you about my latest Internet venture which will be of use to those who have an interest in North Wales and in particular the current weather conditions.I have installed a weather station at my home, built it into a website and added a few extra resources for your info. It is a non-commercial website (a hobby) and you can view it at www.quayweather.co.uk Take care all.Roy