Blogs
My tribe
my place in it
the island of our existence
and patriarchs entitled
John John
David David
Evan Evan
Rees Rees
Owen Owen
Thomas Thomas
they did not have many names
and never questioned why
it was so long ago
when there were fewer words
available to be connected
to people who had no names
who were our ancestors
Dylan Marlais Thomas
they forget the middle name
in the land where you need
three names to be identifiable
from the next Thomas
the next DT
somehow there are two suns in the same sky
the primary school yard is
overlooked by a house
in which I live
I don’t know how to like people
they are strange and frightening
I stood where the sun did not reach
I moved my feet a few feet
it took me many years
of tiny toe actions
and Herculean effort
and several changes of footwear
to see the sunshine on my toes
summoning me from my cave
the sons of the hinterland farms
were written off as “hambones”
I was probably closer to them
than I admitted
than I suspected
the clipped enclaves of council
houses replacing former tied cottages
on the edges of villages
bring back the countryside
living on the land
an end to employment
and its tyrannies
some people's furrowed brows
as the result of invisible ploughs
a half-remembered agriculture
of the mind superimposed
on meadows of skin
I was thin then
thought the wind would blow me away
him that wind
him that did not
now tries again with renewed oxygen
I am heavier
more anchored
holding on to a metal post
conveying a button
at a pedestrian crossing
I felt the cold in the days
with less flesh on bones
pre central heating
those guards in front of coal fires
what were they guarding?
what was necessary?
what was required?
what was essential?
it was getting harder to tell
keeping on top of things
or at least to their sides
sliding backwards slowly
on a sloping concrete path of ice
laden and with a hedge
for a handrail
Nature to my rescue again
the bunch of fives
always offered
turn it around
so that it faces itself
disarms itself
Mars bars
Milky Bars
Curly Wurlies
Puffa Puffa Rice
Nesquick
Corona
dandelion and burdock
gobstoppers
and Bazookas
we became the sherbet herberts
the invasion of sugar
taking over certain
hours of my life
punk came
punk rock
punks
do it yourself
be brave
with one's talent nowhere near
fully formed
or likely to ever be
bass boom lines
wafer guitar chimes
chanting
him that wind a hymn
33 or 45 rpm
12 or 7 inches of
hypnotic black whirlpool
the depths
crackling
the gems among the dust
John Peel on late night Radio 1
a Japanese cassette player at the ready
capturing the sound and its attendant
inimitable and irritating hiss
I wore the big hopeful badges
of the new sound
until it was superseded
and there was no further use for
those silhouettes of rodents and wreaths
a walking pictorial promotion of a moment
puck rock suicide Scottish guitarists
pipe me aboard
their all-steel pistols
pointing to my place in the mud
I try to accompany them
by desperately coaxing
a beat from the keys and coins
in my pockets
I am here for the equinox
preparing for equality
whilst developing into a crooner
of my own love life
my acceptance of loans
out of kilter with any other sort
of tribal gathering
an electric guitar solo strikes up
and I can’t breathe
for this epiphany
as I have outlived my heroes
and give thanks for songs that outrank
most people I have met
in their importance to me
sometimes there are glistening listeners
attentive and orderly
other times it's shuffles
and an embarrassment
of embarrassments
that loud scraping sound
of uncomfortable chairs being moved
sing something simple
for you
and for me
Top of the Pops
Pan’s People
T Rex
Showaddywaddy
The Sweet
Slade
Alvin Stardust
Gary Glitter
Jimmy Saville
Jim’ll fix it
the can-do years
the make-believe adolescence
the lack of confidence
the impudence
the insolence
the smiles of the circling hyenas
the pasted-on tinsel sneer veneer
of the promise that did not deliver
the cover story for secret domination
of one’s private madness and oppression
Father Christmas must share the blame
the anticipation of a munificence
of presents delivered by a mysterious stranger
who enters like a burglar
a thief of transactions
and of the true meaning of magic
rock’n roll summers followed
by rock’n roll Christmas
like rivers of dead polluted sharks
our little country town
a matter of two or three commercial streets
dropping down to the river
guarded by a redundant
military construction
an old man with no legs
got around there on a homemade sledge
he must have had a challenging life
to me he was something out
of a fairy tale or
an unfunny comic book
another inhabitant of that town at that time
was called Dai Split Nose
that’s all I knew of him
we lived in a house owned by a chapel
none of us knew that distant cousins
lay buried unmarried in a corner grave
around which my father pushed his lawn mower
visiting Ministers of Religion dined
in our home each Sunday
in a room reserved for that purpose
they ate alone in silence
while we had our family meal nearby
they were alien to me and a little forbidding
I wish now I had broken through my shyness
and intellectual and linguistic inferiority
to speak with them about the word of God
and how Methodism was faring in the early 1970s
the stone of chapels and their cemeteries
always rained upon or so I remember
where the sun set
I don’t recall my great grandmother
who died six years after my birth
though I remember playing
around her ancient one storey cottage
and in its orchard
I was distraught at losing
tiny blue US 7th Cavalry
toy soldiers among the crevasses
that were its cobbles
Henry Tudor had passed that way
a secret fort overgrown
the shock overthrow of the show
the soft defences of a country
that forgets its been invaded
its graves seen in the same view
as bales of hay wrapped
in their shining black plastic bag shrouds
when a target is not a target
I also don’t remember her daughter
who died when I was two
my mother missed her each day
of her remaining life
I missed her too
in the photographs she has a high forehead
she made her own clothes
including her wedding dress
my mother knitted my jumpers
until increasing income
and the widening reach of retail opportunities
made us less self-reliant
she sewed patches onto the worn knees
of my jeans creating
a peasant distressed look
that would later become fashionable
she spoke the intuitive Welsh
and the learned English of
the hollows and lanes that led to
Sunday schools and sermons
some of the words were highly localised
a language of those hedges
as were the ways of saying those words
and all other words
she’s leaning into you
the wide belt of her wedding dress
punctuating her tiny waist and that day
as you exult and fret over your triumph
and the rising sea level which will bring
coral which will invade the photo frame
the image slowly sucked away
by the salt of brine time and tears
my only surviving memory of the day
my paternal grandmother died
is her daughter in law not wishing me
to watch that night’s episode
of World at War on TV
but being overruled by her husband
I was an unplanned first born
taken shortly after my ironic birth
to the Rhondda valley
to be introduced to the family
of my great grandfather
I threw up on my grandmother’s shoulder
such was my brand new life
and its direction
my parents did the best they could
beset by doubt and lack of resources
in a landscape of linoleum
and used cars
and everything changing
all the time for people
unused to such a pace
of transformation
in my father’s car
my sister and I in the back
faces behind glass
we didn’t go far
relatives and graves
and orthodontists
a sneak view of the rises
the dips
the possibilities
the impossibilities
piggy back
bubble cars
and Hillman Imps
Esso Blue and
Green Shield stamps
those times I thought about the universe
how big it might be
how it neighboured another universe
how big that might be
how the neighbouring universe
bordered on yet another cosmos
how big they all could be
and so on
my head ached
world without end
one night as I lay in bed
I observed a shape
emerge from the carpet
growing until it became
a narrow black triangle
about the height of a man
in the street light dark
was this the Devil we had been promised
or just my overactive childish imagination?
I sneeze
what escapes?
a sneeze that’s all
my best friend and I bemoaned
the lack of homegrown serial killers
I read a book on Manson
during a thunderstorm
we got our wish
the Vietnam War
the PLO
the IRA
Baader-Meinhof
the Angry Brigade
Brady and Hindley
Zodiac Killer
The Daleks
The Sweeney
take your pick
my pet dead lacewing
surveyed through inert eyes
the end of the century
of massive killing
and felt fine
last night I dreamed my wife and I
were having dinner with friends
in the valley where I was brought up
I was distracted glancing
in the direction of the coast
a volcano had erupted on the estuary
my father appeared and we discussed
this occurrence
this may have been influenced
by reading reports of people who had lived
on the escarpment to the east of that valley
seeing the glow of Swansea
following a Luftwaffe night bombing raid
two counties away
I longed to watch two trains
racing each other
yes two trains
on equal lengths of track
on equal rate of incline
with evenly-powered engines
a contradiction of the principles
of public transport
I had never seen one due to
the effects of the first Government
cutbacks of my lifetime
but this was my very own Roman Emperor Syndrome
not Hornby
not British Rail
not Beeching
but always on time
or ahead of it
a castle town again and again
I am on the sidelines
as others journey down
their memory lanes
an odd one out
the British Empire
still in our heads
somewhere somehow
in the backs of minds
though we don’t rule waves
no English Electric
superstar test pilots overhead
when we were thinner
the past as a different hue
tonight it's 70s pink and orange
the stain of an unknown stamen
the morning after
the sun revealed
hangovers of different levels
of discomfort
with martially inclined friends
I played at being soldiers
in the woods behind our school
I made a Sten gun
by nailing two straight lengths
of wood together into a right angle
this game was called “Armies”
some of us ended up in the Army
we dammed a stream with stones
mud grass and twigs
and broke these barriers
when we became bored with our handiwork
unaware that we were imitating
the rural monumentalism
of our principality
and the tactics of those
opposed to its existence
we were chased once
by cattle that we had antagonised
throwing stones at them
producing sparks from their hides
in the thickening twilight
made a spear of a stick
a small number of us grappled
with ideas of liberation
whatever we meant by that
I thought I was preparing for a war
with known and unknown adversaries
made a stick of a spear
the heart-squeezing soundtrack
of ice cream vans
remixed in some accidental ears
as ambulance sirens
I amassed a wealth in toys in
as plastic intervened
Fireball XL5
U Boat and Short Sunderland
Subbuteo
Scalextric
Cluedo
an old cricket bat I never used
Action Men
helping me learn how to fantasise
about decisive action
without ever taking it
Joe 90
Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons
The Champions
Garrison’s Gorillas
Tom Grattan’s War
Bonanza
Lassie
Stingray
Thunderbirds
after the Magic Roundabout
there was no need to be real
no need to grow up
Benny Hill
Jimmy Hill
Brian Moore
Dickie Davies
Billy Bremner
Harold Wilson
Ted Heath
Tiede Herrema
how men were
Raquel Welch
Sophia Loren
Brigitte Bardot
Ursula Andress
Jenny Lee-Wright
Caroline Munro
Ingrid Pitt
Madeline Smith
how women were
my first day in comprehensive school
sitting on the floor in a new building
a gym with new boys
I talk nervously
and earn a clout on the top of my head
from a shoe wielded by the games teacher
I am hurt shocked and a little embarrassed
by my first lesson in
how older males are violent towards
younger males
rugby
it’s a man’s world
he can keep it
some schoolboys accused their peers
of “not having enough spunk
to shag a mouse”
I lived in fear of earning that epithet
whatever it meant
and of the milk white girls
haughty
knowing
tormenting
those times when one is confused
by one’s gender
not knowing what to do
not liking what was expected
everyone looking the same
the long hair
the soft focus
the decline of hard labour
the deflection of draughts
we grew larger and more stupid
misunderstanding what expectations
Time would have of us
on the cusp of spring
becoming summer
of a language nearly changing
into another
the handover
from a safe pair of hands
to us
the light bulb people
the people light bulbs
the neon nowhere
empty vessels on an endless train
of other empty vessels
the rolling stock
the obsessed cocks
electrified trash but not fatally so
those mules
the workplace turned out to be a circus
conjoined with a black comedy
or an off-white tragicomedy
moving paperwork and people
from one end of the county
to the other and back again
from one under-rewarded circumstance
to the next
Pompous Dick presided there
with handbags for hands
and two glass eyes that saw
all they needed to see
a bag for a bag
he joked
I got it
I got it every time
this page has some issues
kill page
your call will be answered shortly
refer to supervisor
about:blank
OK
sensitively illuminate your anus
put it on the market
sell yourself as you have always done
as you have been obliged to do
for decades at a time if you’re lucky
a micro job in the zero hours economy
the golden age of useful employment
now foreclosed
I have been a wage slave
since 1981
my father toiled between
1953 and 2002
Arbeit macht frei
the promise of a better standard
of living with little thought
of achieving much else
so where are the Celtic warrior heroes?
are they amongst us in IED-proof vehicles
or entombed in slate
that awaits the quarryman’s swing?
would we recognise them if we saw them?
the line breakers
the berserkers
shock troops
unthink tank
think big
think
the lengths of their lines
their direction
where they point to
their alignments
the Druids will return in small boats
that are not coracles
with trails of elvers as wakes
when no one is looking
landing at the mouths of minor rivers
row upstream sometimes carrying
their vessels on their backs
that are not coracles
knowing when to nod
when to breathe
when to see
when to soar
knowing when to know
they say they can now print
a viable gun in 3D
can they print new homes?
hospitals?
sustainable energy?
a cure for all medical conditions?
the truth?
I thought I had more time
but forgot to remember
and remembered to forget
Her long hair flowed all down her back, as should stood next to a fruit machine in Victoria Street, Merthyr Tydfil.
Her doctor had advised her to change her diet and change her habits if she wanted to live past 40.
As the reels on the machine, whirred electronically and stopped with a red cherry icon, two bananas and an orange.
She had lost her money again, even if she had nearly had her medically recommended five fruits a day.
It was Wednesday and teenager Amber Punt was skint.
She had had her state ‘benefit’ and wasted it all on hopeless gambling.
Amber was born with an addictive personality, which meant she never knew when to quit- never learned that there was only one winner with a fruit machine or that odds and cards were always stacked in favour of the ‘House’.
She could never walk past a bookmakers without placing a bet, and therefore living in a first floor flat in the Town Centre in Merthyr above a fruiterers was not the best place to be situated.
In a recession there is only one growth industry and that is gambling and Merthyr Tydfil had been in recession for over 200 years now.
Amber loved them all, fruit machines, horses, greyhounds, bingo, scratch-cards and lotteries.
If ever there was a sucker born -it was Amber.
She had her money on Monday and had frittered it away by Wednesday , leaving her penniless and reliant upon handouts from food banks, wheelie bins and friends when she was starving.
By Thursday Morning, she would be competing with the local rodents over empty food containers fly tipped in the centre of Town.
She was often engaged in a life or death struggle with a rat over an empty pack of Cheerios.
She had zero prospects, no chance of improvement and had lived hand to mouth ever since her Mother kicked her out at 16 with her baby due any day.
Sadly, she had lost the baby but in a way it was a blessing in disguise, as what child would want to be born into an endless cycle of poverty, depression and addictions?
But despite her bleak future, Amber was never down- she was grateful to be alive and lived every moment to the full.
They say that the best things in life are free, but they omit luxury yachts, foreign holidays and jet skis from that list and poor young Amber would never experience any of those pleasures during her lifetime.
She passed the remainder of her week walking around the parks, tramping around the beautiful Countryside of Pontsticill, the Brecon Beacons and Pant, walking barefoot in the fields to save on shoe leather and drinking directly from the mountain streams.
To Amber, she lived in the Garden of Eden and as long as she didn’t stray into Cynon Valley or into Sun Valley, she felt free from the temptation of snakes and Fruit Machines.
Her favourite pastime was to sit on the brow of Heolgerrig Mountain and get a panoramic view of the Merthyr Valley in all is glory.
Gone were the black spoil tips, white slag heaps and brown polluted river and its tributaries.
Merthyr had paid a high price for the Industrial Revolution but was now being returned to its natural state before the Rape of the Fair Country, with wildlife and flora restocking the once barren landscape.
Gone were the mines and ironworks, but so too the cholera and diphtheria.
Nature too was ‘the House’ and despite the pestilence of Mankind, the Earth will always rebalance and restock long after mankind has been forgotten from the history books.
Amber sat making daisy chains for her to wear, as she gazed at how green was her valley.
Her stomach rumbled loudly, warning her she was running on empty.
She glanced across at the Mountainside and wondered, as it was September whether or not there were any blackberries out on the brambles.
The Heolgerrig Mountain was bare – picked clean by straying sheep and birds as it sat high above the treeline-with its bleak barren windswept landscape.
Amber decided to try the Cwm Glo woods lower down , as she heard old wives tales that a witches coven once met there and lived off the fruits of the forests.
As she made her way over the wooden stile, her barefeet sank into the soft grass, as she strolled towards the copse of ancient oak trees, silver birches and rowan that had inhabited the Welsh upland.
Amber could see that nature had provided a bounty for primitive man in the form of fungi.
Mushrooms and toadstools were everywhere- as, in Merthyr, was primitive man.
They were growing untouched out of the remains of ancient trees and were all colours and shapes.
Mother Nature had laid on a banquet for her.
She felt like Eve -except she was fully clothed and thankfully there were no Aberdare people around.
She marvelled at the cornucopia of natural produce all around her.
Amber was a little wary of eating the mushrooms but being a gambler and being starving ,she had no real choice.
The first on her menu was a yellow and orange upright mushroom- it looked safe enough.
She smelled it.
It was divine- like peaches.
Unknown to the little waif- it was a mushroom called Chanterelle and was perfectly edible.
It’s slightly acidic taste was very palatable.
Once she had tasted it – her addictive personality took over and she scoffed the lot.
Amber was the kind of person who could not open a packet of McVities’ chocolate digestives and eat just the one.
She would have to eat the lot in one sitting.
She looked around at several other species of fungi which were extremely large and were shaded white with a brown flat cap dome.
Unbeknown to Amber these were ‘Cep’ mushrooms or penny buns.
They were highly prized by the Welsh Italian community and used for pastas etc.
They called them ‘porcini’.
They had been transplanted from Bardi in Northern Italy and this particular variety was called ‘Chiappa’- as it tasted of coffee.
They were the ‘Emperors’ of the Forest- with a taste to die for- not die with.
Once again, Amber polished off the whole glade.
She then came across a whole ring of mushrooms in a ring.
They had little wizened faced and looked like Paul Daniels.
Amber didn’t know but these were ‘magic’ mushrooms or shrooms in Gurnos dialect.
She kneeled down, closed her left nostril and snorted around in a clockwise circle.
The thirty or so mushroom she had ingested via her nasal passages were sucked down into her throat and oesophagus and joined their mushroom cousins in Amber’s stomach.
Magic mushrooms are so called because they contain a primitive form of LSD or acid which has hallucinogenic qualities.
Very soon Amber felt nauseous and like she had trespassed into Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland- as the trees looked like they had faces and their long branches like long arms.
There was a red and white spotted fungi which loomed large and bizarrely spoke to her.
It was a toadstool called Fly Agaric and was highly poisonous.
It whispered to Amber to ‘eat me’.
Amber refrained as the remaining conscious part of her brain was still working.
She didn’t like its colours and didn’t fancy shitting out her spleen later.
There was something untrustworthy about it- like the look of a politician after they had been re-elected for another term of office.
In addition, there were some green capped mushrooms and some white capped mushrooms.
Little did Amber know that the green ones were the highly poisonous Death Cap mushrooms and the white ones- the False Death Caps which were nutritious and edible.
The warring Mushroom Mafia families of the Valleys, were very protective of the food sources and didn’t want any members from outside the ‘Five Families’ muscling in on their fungi racket.
So they had planted both varieties to kill off the local opposition.
Only they and the local Coroners Department knew the difference- and they were well taken care of.
If they weren’t Bardi then they soon would be.
The Mushrooms stared back at her ominously and then started to sing a rendition of Paul McCartney’s ‘Frog Chorus’.
Amber was spooked but she was incapable of movement – and just sat like a Red Indian witch doctor transcending to a different astral plain.
Her head was spinning, her sight blurry and her speech was slurred.
Just like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky 6 -the Vampire Rocky Horror Picture Show movie- ‘Out for the Count’.
Then she blacked out.
The next thing, she was conscious of was the wind flying through her hair, as she sat astride her Harley Davidson motorbike.
She felt like she was capable of flight- a real sense of flying- as she flew down the narrow Heolgerrig Road, cornered like The Stig off Top Gear at the ‘Gambon’ roundabout passed the Cyfarthfa Retail Park and headed the wrong way around the roundabout and down the wrong lane of a dual carriageway like a cataract suffering 90 year old pensioner.
Cars flew at her in the opposite direction, as she zigzagged the oncoming traffic like she was a Hollywood stuntwoman.
Finding a small gap in the dual carriageway central divider, she hopped over into the correct lane, sending cars careering into each other for fear of being sideswiped by her Hawkwind ‘silver machine’.
In a psychedelic haze caused by the effects of the psilocybin in the mushrooms, she stared back at the wavy distorted colours of the traffic lights as they changed from green to amber.
She knew from experience on Merthyr’s roads that the sign for Amber was interpreted as ‘go faster’.
So Amber the Gambler went faster.
Unfortunately, in her hallucinogenic state she had stolen a motorbike but a disabled shopping cart with a top speed of 10 miles per hour.
Amber might have been fine if the Nantygwenith Street, Georgetown crossroads had been empty.
Regrettably, there were three other people all trying to beat the lights too.
Dick Scratcher, Merthyr Taxi Driver with his Provisional Licence to kill was the first to collide with the cart.
Second, was uninsured Driver, Gurnos Heroin addict, Mac Head in his tinted windowed Vauxhall Corsa.
Finally, came Polish Student Lech Walesa Junior who having worked a night shift of 96 hours solid, forgot we drove on the left in this Country.
He slammed into the side of the cart that had been knocked sideways by the taxi.
His ‘Solidarity-mobile’ made out of a Volvo with internal metal cage adorned with ‘bull bars’ and thirteen spare tyres built for Cross-Border hashish smuggling was the wrong kind of vehicle for barefoot Amber to hit.
He ‘polish’ed her off.
She became concertinaed, resulting in a mash of legs and arms that was reminiscent of back stage in a Stringfellows nightclub.
Her shopping cart was now the same size as an oxo cube and there was not ‘mushroom’ in that for a human being.
Amber Gambler had lost her bet.
And the moral of the tale is don’t drive ANYTHING under the influence of Psilocybin- as it isn’t magic or fun guys.
The lights went down on a hushed audience at the Aberdare Coliseum and the adrenaline rush of the young fledgling comedian intensified.
He waited for the nod from the stage manager before he went out into the Cynon Valley Snake Pit.
He wasn’t being paid he was just volunteering…a YTS trainee comedian …as there were precious few jobs in the Valleys he thought he would give it a go…and his tour of the South Wales clubs was starting to take off.
After all if Rhod Gilbert could make it on television as a comedian why couldn’t he?
He strolled confidently onto the stage heading for the centre and the single microphone that he was to make his own for the next 30 minutes.
As the initial applause of the twenty people present had died down he adjusted the stand.
As he opened his mouth to start- he heard it.
“ Get Off….you’re rubbish!” came the shout from the audience.
“ Thanks for that vote of confidence!” said the kid with the stage name of Mike Knight.
He tried to start his act.
“ Ever been on an airplane….” he stammered.
“ No…!” shouted back the voice of the female heckler.
“ Well looking at you lady…you don’t need to go on a plane….as you have your broomstick to fly on!” he railed back at his abuser- even though he could not see her.
“ Cardiff Airport…you are waiting to go on a plane…!” he continued.
“ It’s shut….!” said the heckler.
“ I wish your MOUTH was!” spat back Mike.
“ You are standing at the security check-in…waiting to go through to duty free and they pick me to be searched ….why me?” he tried to plough on.
“ Because you look like the type who’d enjoy two fingers up his arse!” said the heckler right on cue.
The entire audience laughed at that one.
“ Listen ….these people have come to see me…not you!” said Mike.
“ Actually, that bloke over there in the raincoat has come for the topless darts…not to listen to your Christmas cracker specials….!” laughed the heckler.
“ So ….the security guard says to me …occupation….and I say I know I’m Jewish but I don’t intend…..!”
“ To pinch another Country…..heard it !” said the Heckler ruining the punch-line for everyone.
“ If you think you are so funny….stop hiding in those shadows ….if you have any guts….you’d get up on stage and do this job yourself!” said Mike.
“ You should be on a stage…there’s one leaving for that Cowboy Town in Merthyr soon…it’s where you belong!” said the heckler.
The comedian novice tried again.
“ Do you worry about flying ….do you get sick?” asked Mike.
“ Only when I watch an act as bad as this…you have less talent than the panel on X Factor!” said the Heckler.
The crowd enjoyed that one too.
“ I’m nervous flying anyway…so why do they reassure you by calling it the terminal?” asked Mike resuming his act.
“ Terminal….I’ve had funnier cancers than this!” said the Heckler.
Mike tried to peer through the blackness to see who his abuser was but the footlights were too strong.
“ Look lady …if YOU are a lady that is….take that mask off Halloween is over… they warned me this place was haunted…!” Mike tried to fight back.
“ As if you are an oil painting yourself….God clearly ruined a perfect bum when he put teeth into your face…! said the unseen witch.
“ Look you women are all the same…never happy with life always criticising others- …I don’t trust anything female…anything that bleeds once a month and doesn’t die!” said Mike.
“ You know all about dying now…you are dying tonight on your arse son!” said the heckler.
“ So the check in lady asks me if I want a special seat…so I say yes on the black box please…the flight recorder to you stupid…!” he said in the direction of his verbal attacker.
“ I want to sit at the back of the plane….!” Mike carried on regardless.
“ Because you don’t hear of many planes reversing into mountains!” shouted the Heckler ruining it again for everyone.
Mike stormed off the stage and complained to the Stage Manager who looked a little like a feline version of Nicholas Lyndhurst.
“ I’ve had enough of this….my first proper gig and I’m having to deal with a heckler who knows all the punch-lines…is funnier than me …either throw her out or shine a light on the woman so I can see who is abusing me!” moaned Mike.
Doing as he was told the lighting man swung a huge ‘Colditz- like’ searchlight beam on the audience until it stopped on a woman in the ‘fringe’.
Mike was surprised to see it was a strangely attractive brunette with a slim figure who was sitting side- saddle on the top of the seats.
Her only blemish was a vulgar tattoo of a flaming battenburg cake on her shoulder.
On further examination it appeared to a drag artist- a man dressed as a woman.
“ Where you from Luv…is it Llanbobl…. with that tattoo on your back…you look like a female equivalent of Robin McBride….you cheap hooker you…come up here and fight me man to man …you granny tranny….I’ll soon have you ‘knocking on Heaven’s Door’….threatened the youngster.
The woman swung her legs over the top in doing so catching her ‘najjers’ in the velvet seating last seen in a 1970’s picture-house.
The heckler had called Mike’s bluff.
As she made her way onto the stage Mike began to get worried but the woman’s five o’clock shadow looked familiar.
“ Why are you abusing me….I’m only on work experience!” protested the kid worried that this was the Swansea Cross dresser on ‘You Tube’ that battered people for fun.
“ You know why ….’Ask Rhod Gilbert’ because you’ve been stealing his act !” said the voice of the Welsh Tourist Board.
“ Every club I have been in ….has heard my jokes before…because you’ve been pinching them!” said the heckler.
“ I keep getting paid off like Tom Jones was!” protested the tranny.
“ But there is no such thing as an original joke….no copyright on gags!” protested Mike.
“ Well…here’s one punch-line you won’t forget !” said Rhod as he gave the fellow a ‘Carmarthen Clout’ and turned the stand up comedian into a lie –down one.
The youngster lay still with an expression on his face like ‘Lloyd Langford’….as blood oozed from the YTS man’s cut face and animated stars around his concussed head.
“ Next time, leave the ‘Open Mike’ nights to the professionals!” said Gilbert
“It is the year of our Lord 1644 and we are gathered at this Hamlet of Gyrnos, to witness a trial to determine the guilt or innocence of Margaret, the straw roofer’s daughter, who is accused of being in league with the Devil!” declared the Puritan dramatically.
The man was dressed all in black from his stovepipe hat down to his cape and trousers, with only a square white frilled ‘ruff’ , adorning the area around his collarbone.
He held a silver-tipped cane in one hand and use it somewhat belligerently to command respect from the assembled crowd.
“ This wretch is accused of maleficium, causing storms which sank Good King Charles ships, consorting with familiars, and putting spells on the good folk of the village!” continued the Puritan.
Poor Margaret was tied up on a wooden stool which was precariously balanced over the limestone outcrop of rocks over the River Taf Fechan in Pontsarn.
She also had a hangman’s noose around her neck to prevent escape.
She may have only been in her forties but with all the outdoor hard work that had exposed to the elements and years of labouring in the fields that surrounded the Gyrnos, she looked more like she was sixty.
Her face was cracked and lined and she had more warts on her face than Oliver Cromwell himself.
“ Behold ….said the man…she bears the marks of a wytch…!” said the Puritan in a strong Suffolk English accent, as pointed with his cane towards her lumpy face.
Most people spoke Welsh in these parts but even they recognised why the oldest woman in the village had been called to the ‘cleansing’ waters of the Pwll Glas to answer for her crimes against God, the Monarch and Mankind.
It was a time of superstition, a time of ignorance and a time for vengeance.
There was no television, no radio, or internet.
The only entertainment was provided by the local Hangman and Netflix by local fishermen.
Most of the inhabitants of the sleepy hamlet, lived in simple, white- daubed cottages with thatched roofs and were not literate.
They were God- fearing folk, tied to the Feudal system of their local Lord of the Manor, who lived off the land, defecated in buckets and ploughed the fields just like their fore-fathers had done.
How times have changed.
Margaret sat trembling- she already had a fear of heights and was being held against her will, balancing precariously on a wooden chair with her hands and feet bound by rope, some 40 feet above the raging white water and limestone rocks of the Blue Pool.
“ I am innocent of all charges!” pleaded the woman.
“ Be quiet wretch…ordered the Puritan…it is my time to speak not yours…for it is I Matthew Hopkins -Court appointed Witch Finder General- here on the orders of King Charles I himself to root out the evil that lurks amongst us!” continued the Pilgrim dramatically.
“ I thought you told me you were down here on HOLIDAY!” said Olwen the Cholera, standing on her own away from the gathered throng.
“ Be quiet woman…snapped the Holyman’s sidekick John Stearne not wishing to have his Master’s Pilgrim’s Progress interrupted.
Once again Hopkins addressed his accused.
“We have examined your body and found it to contain many marks of the Devil himself…warts,
bo-pox, even a Bunyan too called John!” said the Pilgrim.
“ It’s a lie....!” said Margaret protesting her innocence.
“ AND she has a THIRD nipple!” said a yokel from the crowd called Scaramanga the Titman.
“ I know …because she feeds her familiar with it at full moon on Cilsanws Common!” continued one of her Irish neighbours from the cobbled Street, Betty Lynch who simply hated the old hag.
“ This is just crazy….just listen to yourselves for a moment….who picks the herbs and mixes your potions when your children are ill?” pleaded Margaret quaking in her Boots.
“ Verily- She condemneth herself with her own words!” whispered Hopkins to his sidekick.
“ Give them enough rope and these stupid, illiterate creatures will eventually hang THEMSELVES!” said the Pilgrim.
“ She turned all the cow’s milk blue in the village with her witchcraft and grabbed away from my son the last remaining pail from his hands!” said another villager, Thomas Thomas, the Satellite Navigation inventor’s son.
“ Where’s the evidence for that?” asked Margaret, amazed at the spurious nature of the claims against her.
“ I saw her run across my Twynyrodyn field of barley naked, before she changed shape into a Mountain Hare….!” Said Pete the Pimper.
The whole mob was now in a state of hysteria, making up lies and half-truths, just to get rid of the woman who was disliked by the village and was suffering from a mild form of dementia.
Matthews Hopkins banged the ducking stool impatiently with his shoe like a future Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations, until the ‘Lynch’ Mob finally quietened.
“ We have heard several testimonies from you good, God-Fearing people of the Gyrnos, which in my eyes condemn this Evil Hag to death….and I Matthews Hopkins -the Hammer of the Wyches will, once I receive my payment from the Hamlet, arrange for the ducking stool to be lowered into the water to determine her guilt….I am not Judge Rinder…I do not predetermine this case….but will allow God to do that for me…..if Margaret shall float, she is guilty of her heinous crimes….but if she drowns….then she is innocent….!” Said Hopkins.
“ What sort of choice is that?” protested Margaret.
“ Either I die by hanging or drowning!”
“ Yes….but if your soul is pure….you shall surely go the Heaven…..or as I believe ….as guilty as the original sin, then you shall be reunited with your Dark Master for all eternity!” replied Hopkins.
“ This is why I am a Puritan….I can cleanse this Parish of the curse of foul creatures like you and do good by setting up chocolate factories at Bourneville and cereal production at Quakers Yard with the money I receive from the Community!” he continued.
Realising she was damned if she did or damned if she didn’t, Margaret decided to fight fire with fire and spit back at her neighbours, reinfusing their superstitions beliefs, hoping to prick their conscience or at least make them scared of her vengeance and of course of venturing out at night.
Margaret twisted her head and contorted her face to look as ugly as possible.
Like Anne Widdicombe without make-up.
“ So you ALL think I am a wytch do you?.....Well let me tell you this…when I meet up with Lucifer later today in Hell…I shall make sure that he knows all of the names of you ‘Good’ Christian Folk who would hang an innocent woman….you Silas Mahoney the Weaver….you Watt the Tyler and you gluttonous bastard- Corden the Smithy!” said Margaret pointing a bony finger at the cringing menfolk .
“ If you shall murder me in cold blood based on false witness, spurious accusations and religious claptrap be warned this day that the Hamlet of Gyrnos and the wider village of Merthyr Tydfil shall
see a curse that will not be lifted for over 400 years- till it ends with the election of an Olde Labour Government….your menfolk shall NEVER find work…your children will be born ugly and deformed….and your minors will starve….. I will be reincarnated in many forms and will ensure this accursed place is only home to the illegitimate, the drunks and the Damned…..cholera, rickets, boils and diphtheria shall infest the land together with vermin and pestilence!” continued Margaret.
“ Not taking it well is she?” said Corden.
“ Silence WYTCH…!” shouted Hopkins above the furore of the confession.
“ Thou art condemned thyself by thy own wicked tongue!”
As he said so, his nodded to his assistant John Stearne, who pulled slowly on the rope which tightened around the poor woman’s scrawny neck.
Margaret began to choke, as her windpipe became constricted.
“ Plymouth (Pentrebach) Brethren, we are gathered here today in the eyes of God to rid the Earth of this evil creature who has tempted your children away to her ‘gingerbread’ cottage in the forest, forced the local farrier to perform cart- karaoke with the Smithy, cast incantations and spells on the menfolk so that Dewi the sheepherder was found unconscious but still attached to the back of one of his ewes….and spoken in tongues with the Devil himself!” said Hopkins voiced rising to intensify his statements as fact.
“ Hang the Wytch!” cried Stearne stoking up the crowd.
“ But first….the cost of investigating such crimes against God himself do not come cheap….come all ye Faithful fill this bucket with coins so that I may continue my work and purge these lands of evil!” continued Hopkins.
Stearne having satisfied himself that the woman could not escape went around the crowd for collection.
“ This Parish is poor!”….declared Stearne….after pocketing a few groats with a slight of hand before passing the bucket back to Hopkins.
From on high, in amongst the oak trees, the entire scene was being witnessed by a man not un’familiar’ to Margaret.
A Nobleman who normally put the liar into familiar.
He had in his possession and bow and from his quiver he took an arrow.
Stretching back his right arm, he took aim – for around these parts he was the ‘first among equals’.
His name?
Why Jeffrey the Archer of course.
Down below, the choking Margaret was turning bluer than a Conservative Party Conference.
Margaret the Thatcher’s daughter was lost for words- she could not move a muscle- the lady was not for turning even if she could.
Hopkins having counted the money sighed with disappointment.
Was that all the hanging of a wytch fetched in these parts?
Ten groats, three farthings and two buttons?.
Anyway, he had a job to finish.
He gave Stearne a stern look, as he realised that his sidekick had his ‘hand in the tiller’ once again.
He should give him a Suffolk punch one of these days for his acts of dishonesty.
He signalled for the ducking stool to be cut free and the woman dropped into the raging torrent below, only for her to be raised back up to be hung by the neck slowly, thereby prolonging the agony for her and the ecstasy for him- as the Deviant Puritan ‘got off’ by making an example of the poor woman.
His misogynistic ways meant that once he had hung one woman in a given village, what other women would be brave enough to refuse his sexual advances without being accused of witchcraft and risk the same fate?
Like Margaret -they were Damned if they did or Damned if they didn’t.
Justice 17th Century-style.
As Margaret’s feet touched the water, she gasped for oxygen, taking what might be her last breath.
Her lungs began to fill with water, as she became totally submerged in the flooded River, coughing and spluttering as high above her ‘good’ Amish-like Christian Folk became her ‘witnesses’ to the acceptable punishment of Man over Women.
History has shown that for evil to prevail it takes only a few good men to turn a blind eye to it.
Margaret could see her hard life flashing before her eyes- she didn’t deserve this fate.
What crime had she committed in her lifetime other than taking in those stray cats from the village.
After all they kept the vermin problem down in the fields.
True, she did have fourteen of them and one of them just so happen to be name Beelzebub but so what…..he was a horny little devil.
Margaret could feel her soul beginning to separate from her physical body, as she started to feel that she was beginning to rise above the crowd and then the two were reunited in one sudden instance.
Her out-of -body experience was halted by an expertly aimed arrow that had cut the rope around her neck.
Like a scene from Clint Eastwood’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the Good but extremely ugly Margaret threw herself of the stool into the mercy of the raging waters.
Yes, her hands and feet were bound but at least she would have a fighting chance than the slow asphyxiation that was on offer from the Church-appointed executioner.
The crowd and Hopkins himself were in a state of panic…how could God allow a self-proclaimed Wytch to escape the clutches of the Pilgrim….was it Black Magic at work?
Margaret bobbed up and down for a few minutes thanks to the trapped oxygen in her oversized dress moving round the eddy of the whirlpool before being ejected with force like a fallen tree branch downstream with the fast moving current.
Whether it was judgement by God or Man’s doing but 30 minutes later the dead body of Margaret the Thatcher’s Daughter was pulled out of the weir near Taff’s Well to the peel of bells from the local Church.
The sound seemed to say ‘Ding Dong- the Wicked Wytch is dead’.
Fast forward 320 years to 1984 and the Miner’s Strike.
Fast forward another 32 to 2016 when Teresa May became the unelected Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Only another 44 years and the Merthyr H-experiment 400 year old curse will lift.
Phil 'Boz' Evans
Venlo, the Netherlands - January 6, 2019 – Smiling Cube Studios today released WORD TANGO , a free word puzzle game in Cymraeg (Welsh), English, Cornish and 5 other languages for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
The rules are fun and very simple: the game shows words with missing letters. Letters can be dragged to the empty positions to complete the words. The goal is to find the correct words and proceed to the next level.
Word Tango is played without time-limit and is relaxing to play. It has an infinite number of levels, randomly generated for the player. The player can earn extra coins and use a hint when he is stuck.
The developers strongly believe in supporting multiple languages :
“ Most word puzzle games can only be played in a few major world languages, but many people speak a different language. We think people prefer to play in their own language. Our goal is to support more than 100 languages , big and small , in 2019 “
In it's first release, Word Tango can be played in English, Welsh, Cornish, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic ,Dutch and Frysian. More languages will follow soon.
FEATURES
* Free to play
* Play and improve your language skills
* Train your brain while having fun
* Infinite number of levels, randomly generated for the player
* No time limits, no pressure
* Beautiful visual design for a pleasant experience
* Use a hint when you are stuck
* Play in 8 languages
WORD TANGO is now available as a free download on the App Store and Google Play Store
Google Play Store link: https://play.google.com/
Apple App Store Link: <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/word-tango-find-the-words/id1441751300?mt=8" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/word-tango-find-the-words/id1441751300?mt%3D8&source=gmail&ust=1547151648491000&usg=AFQjCNGp5LH_VhiwJYy8q7eMsY-iD5R6Gw" rel="noopener"> https://itunes.apple.
Youtube video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3B9hL2wAdE" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3Dm3B9hL2wAdE&source=gmail&ust=1547151648491000&usg=AFQjCNEYp5ZgGVsGHSu159V12e3t1PadVg" rel="noopener"> https://www.youtube.
ABOUT SMILING CUBE STUDIOS
Smiling Cube Studios is a 2-person independent game developer from Venlo, The Netherlands. Founded in 2011, their goal is to make fun and educative high quality mobile games.
WIN TWO TICKETS FOR NEW YORK KARL JENKINS CONCERT!
"Sir Karl Jenkins is the most performed living composer in the world."
We are extremely pleased and proud to announce that Distinguished Concerts International have made available a pair of tickets for the forthcoming Karl Jenkins concert in New York at the Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall on Monday, January 21st, 2019. The program includes Sir Karl Jenkins’s Symphonic Adiemus as well as Jenkins’s Stabat Mater. Read our (2010) interview with Karl Jenkins here
We are offering these tickets as a QUIZ PRIZE on Americymru!
Just answer the three easy quiz questions below ( answers can all be found on Wikipedia ) and reply with your answers to this email ( all email addresses will be deleted when the competition closes ). We'll throw all the entries in a hat and pick the winner! Please email us by Monday, January 14th, 2019 no later than 9 PM ( Pacific Time ). Tickets will be ready at will call on 1/21 at the Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall; the winner will just need to bring a photo ID.
Only one entry per email address is permitted. Duplicates will be disqualified. You do not need to be an AmeriCymru member or logged into the site in order to enter this competition.
If you don't win the competition, please do not despair. DCINY is very kindly offering a 30% discount code for AmeriCymru readers. The code is DCG30382 and it can be used online, over the phone, or in person at Carnegie Hall
Karl Jenkins Quiz
- Which famous jazz-rock fusion band was Karl Jenkins a member of in the 70's?
- Which of Jenkins' works was listed as No. 1 in Classic FM's "Top 10 by living composers"?
- Where was Karl Jenkins born?
WIN A SIGNED COPY OF 'THE MOVING OF THE WATER'!
David Lloyd chronicles the trials and tribulations, the triumphs and despairs of several generations of Welsh Americans in this series of interlinked stories. These tales combine pathos, humour, drama and insightful observation in an anthology which is at once masterful, entertaining and illuminating. Set in Utica, New York in the 1960's the book opens with a tragic tale from the Vietnam war.
In 'Nos Da' Private Richard Bowen is severely wounded after stepping on a land mine. He rambles, seemingly incoherently, as he recalls the details of his past life. In particular he remembers wishing his father goodnight in the happier days of his childhood.
READ MORE HERE ... ... .
.... ...
COMPETITION
We are pleased to announce that author David Lloyd has presented us with a signed copy of 'The Moving of the Water' for a giveaway competition. Answer the three questions below (all easy, wiki links provided) and reply, with your responses, to this email. The winner will be announced on January 31st. The competition is open for entrants worldwide and is not restricted to the USA.
Questions: Famous Welsh Americans
1. American pioneer Daniel Boone (of Welsh ancestry) was born in which year?
2. In which year did Meriwether Lewis (of Welsh descent) set out on the Lewis & Clark Expedition ?
3. In which American state was architect Frank Lloyd Wright (of Welsh descent) born?
Pob lwc 
JANUARY BOOK SALE
Every Welsh American should own a copy of this book! BUY IT HERE
In 'Nos Da' Private Richard Bowen is severely wounded after stepping on a land mine. He rambles, seemingly incoherently, as he recalls the details of his past life. In particular he remembers wishing his father goodnight in the happier days of his childhood. His comrades have no idea what 'nos da' means and assume that he is delirious. As the 'medevac' chopper arrives his friend, Denny, says:-
“ God-damn here at last! No more talking crazy bullshit. You are going home, Richie boy. Back to your cars and your f****** mother and father and girlfriend you maybe have and those baths you love and the sun on the dark side of the moon. Back to the towel. Nose-f******-da, you crazy f***. You’re going home. ”
This is a poignant tale but it is perhaps difficult to suppress a trace of anger at the prospect of another son of Wales dying in a distant land for a cause not entirely his own, whilst those around him know nothing of his culture, heritage and language.
But this cultural anonymity does, perhaps, have its 'advantages'. In 'Eeeeee', the protagonist, a Welsh American named Ben, is offered employment as a local mafia fixer/hitman. A role in which he does not acquit himself particularly well. His employer, Sal, explains why he was picked for the job:-
"If you do good, there’s more of this work for you. Maybe someday that piece’ll be yours for real because I’ve had my fill of goombas f****** up and expecting a pass because they married my second cousin Mona, you know? You heard about that one, right?”
The Welsh, both at home and abroad have always prided themselves on their ingenuity and adaptability. This is reflected here in the story 'Home'. Griff, the caretaker at a local school is found to have converted a portion of the storage area for which he is responsible, into an apartment complete with fridge, TV and all modern conveniences. After his wife's death he moves in. In the course of debating what to do about this situation, the head custodian opines:-
“Griff’s not creepy. He’s messed up. I’m the same. A messed-up old guy. If I hadn’t stopped drinking, I’d be a dead old guy. I retire in two years. Maybe I’ll leave the Algonquin and move in with Griff. Be cheaper too. Think he can make bunk beds? ”
There is much humor in this collection. The comical dialogue in 'Monkey's Uncle' is a case in point. In this tale a nephew (Nye) meets his uncle (Llew) in the pub. The one has recently been released from a mental institution and the other is a notorious drunk. Their communication in the bar and afterwards as they wend their way through the streets of New York is hilarious. Upon arriving at Ny'e mother's house (Ceridwen) after their drunken sojourn they are greeted as follows:-
“It’s me,” Nye told her, “and no one else.”
“And no one else,” Llew echoed.
“A pair of no ones you are, aren’t you?” Ceridwen said. “My son and my uncle. My ball and my chain.”
In a collection which contains so many gems it is difficult to single out individual stories for critical attention. Also, of course we want to avoid too many spoilers. At this point, however, we should mention that one of these tales was submitted to the 2015 West Coast Eisteddfod Short Story Competition. It won and, for those who like to sample before buying, it can be read here:- Dreaming of Home .
The title story delves into the loneliness suffered by a Welsh American widow whose life revolves around her back yard, and those of her neighbors. In this reviewer's opinion it is a minor masterpiece. As the lonely Mrs Bevan awaits a spiritual 'moving of the water' she is preoccupied by a neighbor's pond which annoys her by providing a home for insects, fish and birds. She fears filth and contamination and presses her neighbor to fill it in. Whilst the pettiness and prejudice on display here are humorous this tale is no slapstick offering. Indeed , David Lloyd reveals his character with a subtlety and empathy worthy of the 'greats' ( think Mansfield, Fitzgerald etc )
Of course, all these stories of adversity, loneliness and adaptive ingenuity could be set in any immigrant community. That it reflects universal concerns is one of the strengths of this collection, but the fact that it does so through the prism of Welsh American experience is what makes it unique.
It has been a pleasure and a privilege to review this book and I hope that you, dear reader, will enjoy it every bit as much.
Review by Ceri Shaw
Anchored in the community of first, second, and third generation Welsh Americans in Utica , New York during the 1960's the stories in David Lloyd's The Moving of the Water delve into universal concerns: identity, home, religion, language, culture, belonging, personal and national histories, mortality. Unflinching in their portrayal of the traumas and conflicts of fictional Welsh Americans, these stories also embrace multiple communities and diverse experiences in linked innovative narratives: soldiers fighting in WW1 and in Vietnam, the criminal underworld, the poignant struggles of children and adults caught between old and new worlds. The complexly damaged characters of these surprising and effective stories seek transformation and revelation, healing and regeneration: a sometimes traumatic "moving of the water".
The front cover features a detail from a painting by acclaimed Welsh artist Iwan Bala titled "Cof, Bro, Mebyd [Memory, Community, Childhood]
David Lloyd is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at LeMoyne College. His previous books include the novel 'Over the Line', the short story collection 'Boys: Stories and a Novella', and the poetry collections 'Warriors', "The Gospel According to Frank' and 'The Everyday Apocalypse'. He lives in upstate New York.
We are pleased to announce that author David Lloyd has presented us with a signed copy of 'The Moving of the Water' for a giveaway competition. Just email your answer to the following three questions (all easy, wiki links provided) to americymru@gmail.com . The winner will be announced on March 1st. The competition is open for entrants worldwide and is not restricted to the USA.
Questions: Famous Welsh Americans
1. American pioneer Daniel Boone (of Welsh ancestry) was born in which year?
2. In which year did Meriwether Lewis (of Welsh descent) set out on the Lewis & Clark Expedition ?
3. In which American state was architect Frank Lloyd Wright (of Welsh descent) born?
Pob lwc
The fear of Christmas
of the retail hell we've made it
and dying in a giant
impersonal shop-hangar
wearing unclean underwear
after discovering that a product
one has just purchased
was cheaper elsewhere
the anxiety of missing out
on a bargain
of losing a receipt
of not finding a car parking space
the tyranny of opening and closing times
of time itself inching forward
unstoppably impudently
fretting about leaving items in hotel rooms
letting a fire go out
and not having funds
for unashamed continuous consumerism
worrying about saying the wrong thing
and forgetting acquaintances
before they forget about one
the disappointment of
not remembering any dream
the itchiness of being a member
of a minority population
of ignoring one's native language
apart when required for jingoistic purposes
the fear of not being as brave as the past
or as brave as fear
The Power & Glory of Welsh Male Voice Choir Singing - An Interview With Author Stuart Street
By Ceri Shaw, 2018-12-21
Stuart: The Welsh male voice choir book is simply an overview of the history of men’s choirs in the South Wales area, from the past to the present day.
It explores what is happening when you join a men’s choir and what to expect.
AmeriCymru: When did you first become interested in Welsh Male Voice Choirs?
Stuart: I was told about male voice choirs when I joined my first choir at 16 years of age. My first job was to be the choir guest accompanist for Cor Meibion Morlais at the age of 16. I missed their tour of Canada. I couldn’t go as I couldn’t afford it and didn’t know the repertoire but I soon became known as a good musician by pupils from Ferndale Community School when I was known to play the piano for the choir of Ferndale Community School / Maerdy.
There was also a family history of my grandfather singing in Welsh male voice choirs and I got him back into singing again after a long spell of absence since Ferndale Male Voice Choir fell apart around 1989.
AmeriCymru: Why, historically, do you think that choirs became such a central part of Welsh social and cultural life?
Stuart: Men’s choirs need to keep on attracting students in schools and doing creative projects and events.
All choristers must remain positive and not sit on their bottoms and do nothing all day. Every human must try and make an effort by giving up their time to bring something to young men to come in. They can’t go to a coal mine now to work and say "hey mate do you fancy coming for a drink with me after" and have a sing song and something to do and also keep you company.
They have to forget all that and having music marketing in mind and offer digital products and more and more networking live music events wherever they can travel globally.
When there are no youngsters we won’t have male choirs. They can’t ask young people to pay if they are unemployed. Wherever you're from.
If more choirs were thinking of that psychological strategy more and more young men wouldn’t be isolated and would actually get out more and learn more about life exactly as I did.
AmeriCymru: Do you have any favourites? Any choirs whose achievements and current standards merit a special mention?
Stuart: Pendyrus Choir are currently outstanding. At the moment their sound is as good as I’ve ever heard them before. I don’t want to give an opinion on certain songs that hit me whenever I hear a male voice choir because wherever you are depends on the venue. I have emotion and some people don’t when they listen to or play music.
I’ll leave that opinion up to you.
AmeriCymru: Do you think that the future of the Welsh choral tradition is assured? The rate of recruitment of younger members is declining. Is anything being done to reverse this trend?
Stuart: No I disagree, with this opinion, I actually feel younger members have a big role to play in men’s choirs and we are seeing more young singers entering men’s choir not just in Wales but over in England too. I think young men just want to just do something different now. They want to distract themselves from the women if they can afford it. The reason why, if any, young men are not in men’s choirs is because they can’t afford the subscription costs which are often a worry or burden for many young men even though they live with their parents or if they are on their own it’s much harder. If you adapt a range of styles youngsters will just come because the music won’t be the same repertoire. It has to be constantly rapidly changing for concert audiences.
I don’t just talk about Music, but I am making contradictory opinions on what I think happened in the male voice choir’s industry and arguing that not all men’s choirs are suffering for young members declining.
I actually think a lot of training work is being done to attract singers from schools to come to choirs and there is evident research that this does happen from peripatetic music teachers that connect with youngsters in the schools to come to the choirs.
AmeriCymru: Where can people go online to purchase 'The Power & Glory of Welsh Male Voice Choir Singing'?
Stuart: You can find the book here:- The Power & Glory of Welsh Male Voice Choir Singing
It’s actually free for Amazon Unlimited account users.
AmeriCymru: What's next for Stuart Street? Do you plan any more publications?
Stuart: I can offer paperback editions of my book when the publisher says they are interested in my book.
I am currently doing a Master of Music in the University of West London – London College of Music so the future is still unknown and I may turn my writing into digital or book publications just a bit like I have been doing with this.
I am going to record a track promotional CD of Bass Trombone & Piano music and also new Bass Trombone repertoire music on YouTube and Vimeo.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Stuart: I haven’t been on here for a while, but I am also a musical artist and my digital sales have actually risen quite well however it won’t harm to trigger further music marketing hyperlinks so that your members can have complete access to my free music tracks in full and there is an option for you to download or stream my music products too. I recorded classical crossover piano music and I think you’d agree that I tried my best with them and tried to upload them on digital aggregator tunecore.com to put my music on all the websites / apps that you love. iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Amazon mp3 Digital Music, band camp
I set up my own music tuition business in Aug 2012 http://streetmusicschool.co.uk/ Stuart Street pianist, I play Bass Trombone and Singer, author.
Biography
Discover the formations of male voice and go on a journey with Stuart to see how communities have formed male voice choirs. Learn how singing goes good with sport and why the Welsh love to sing. Why is male singing, so powerful and rich? Why do we still like singing? I talk about the formations of tonic - sol - fa and I follow my roots in the Rhondda Valley's in the mining industry of South Wales. I interview local Rhondda men and women who have actively been involved in music making in the Rhondda. You'll be convinced that singing in Wales is a good interest and everyone should have a go and sing!
The Moving of the Water - An Interview With Welsh American Author David Lloyd
By Ceri Shaw, 2018-12-20
David Lloyd
David: The Moving of the Water is a collection of stories set in a Welsh-American immigrant community in upstate New York during the 1960s, exploring their struggles, aspirations, and desires; how the past helps creates the present, how the present makes us reinterpret the past. Immigrants and their children live within competing cultural currents - some they welcome, some they ignore, some they struggle against. I want to entertain readers but also address large issues: what is “home” for an immigrant? how does culture shape behavior? what connects us to others, and what divides us?
AmeriCymru: What is the origin and significance of your title, The Moving of the Water?
David: The title is from the New Testament, John 5:2-3 - and that passage is the book’s epigraph: “Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.” My characters, like those at the Bethesda pool, are (in different ways in different stories) hopeful and faithful, but complexly damaged. In a sense they all are “waiting for the moving of the water” - for healing, fulfillment, transformation. “The Moving of the Water” is also the title of the collection’s final story - and my favorite. Those interested can find it at the Virginia Quarterly Review web site: https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2018/06/moving-water .
My father emigrated to the US with my mother, eldest brother, and sister in 1948. While minister at the Welsh Presbyterian Church in Liverpool, he received a call from Moriah Presbyterian Church in Utica for a minister who could preach in Welsh. So I was born into a Welsh-American chapel community, attending two services on Sunday, Sunday school, choir practice, and so on. It’s no surprise that passages from the Bible and from Welsh hymns echo in my mind and memory!
AmeriCymru: Can you tell us something about the book cover?
David: The cover art is by Welsh artist Iwan Bala. I’ve admired Iwan’s political and cultural art for decades and found the image in a book of his art, Hon: Ynys Y Galon (This: Island of the Heart). It’s a detail from Iwan’s oil painting Cof, Bro, Mebyd (Memory, Community, Childhood), and shows a figure in a coracle-like boat on the open sea, the dark mountains of Wales looming behind. An umbilical cord stretches from this adult figure back to Wales as the archetypal head faces west - in my mind, towards the “new world.” The figure in the coracle is nourished by Wales, tethered to Wales, but striking out into the unknown.
AmeriCymru: One of your stories (included here) is "Dreaming of Home," which won the 2015 Americymru short story contest. What can you tell us about this story?
David: The main character is Llew, short for Llywelyn, an illustrious name in Wales because of Llywelyn the Great, King of Gwynedd, and his grandson Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last independent prince of Wales, who died in battle in 1282. Llew is a nickname for Llywelyn, and in one of my stories Llew had also been a warrior. Another connection with these medieval warrior-princes is that “Llew” in Welsh means “lion.” In my story, Llew was a soldier in WWI who almost died of his wounds in battle. An immigrant to the US, Llew is psychologically wounded: he’s become an alcoholic, and during the evening of the story, he comes home drunk to his shabby apartment, turns on the TV, and hears news of an attack by the Viet Cong on the Bien Hoa air base. He falls asleep and dreams of his own battle, his wounding in a trench during a German mortar attack. In his delirium, surrounded by dying and dead comrades, his father appears in the trench to comfort Llew - and Llew asks his father to take him home. “But you are home, my boy,” his father tells him - meaning that this trench is a new home for Llew, one he can never leave. Llew wakes up - and remembers nothing of his dream except seeing his father. He falsely believes that he dreamed of his childhood in Wales, the home in the village where he “truly belonged.” But the story suggests that “home” is complicated for Llew, as for all of us. We have many homes that define who we are, and for Llew it is his childhood home in Wales, the flat where he lives in upstate New York, and also a trench in Belgium. The many places to which we belong reminds me of the passage from John 14:2-3: “In my father’s house, there are many mansions.”
AmeriCymru: "Anchored in the community of first-, second-, and third-generation Welsh Americans in Utica, New York, during the 1960s, the stories in David Lloyd’s The Moving of the Water delve into universal concerns: identity, home, religion, language, culture, belonging, personal and national histories, mortality." Is there anything unique about the Welsh-American community or are their concerns and experiences in any way universal among the various immigrant communities?
David: Utica, New York, where I grew up, was home to many immigrant communities: Irish, Italian, Polish, Eastern European Jewish, Welsh, Lebanese, among others. And more diverse populations have arrived since I left. While distinct in so many ways (religion, food, music, the language, and so on), the Welsh-American community definitely shared concerns and experiences with their neighbor communities. My family’s social life was centered around Moriah Church, where my father served as minister, similar to how the Catholic church was central to most of my Irish and Italian friends, and the synagogue to my Jewish friends. But culture is not static - it moves and spreads - so we all learned from each other. We all absorb what’s around us. I’m lucky to have a Welsh and an American heritage, and the weird blending that results.
AmeriCymru: You use Welsh words and phrases in many of the stories: how does the Welsh language function in the book?
David: Many contemporary writers from immigrant backgrounds include their languages of origin in their English-language stories. Translating their characters’ speech would sound false, since immigrants would naturally use a hybrid of English and the family language - in my case Welsh. At home my parents spoke English with Welsh accents, and every day from bore da (good morning) to nos da (good night) I heard some Welsh. At dinnertime, my mother would call out, “mae’r bwyd yn barod” - she’d never say, “food is ready.” In my stories the meaning of the Welsh that characters speak should be evident within the context, but at the end of the book I provide “Notes on Welsh Words, Phrases, and Names.”
AmeriCymru: "Lloyd’s stories are in the realist mode, yet sometimes broken up with startling, dream-like, hallucinatory passages that are decisive in opening up another range of experience." Would you agree with this assessment?
David: Yes I do agree. All the stories deal with people facing crises or challenges drawn from the “real world.” But life - for immigrants or indeed anyone - is not simply made up of verifiable facts. It’s also magical, mysterious, irrational, infused with memory - we dream, we fantasize, we hallucinate, we remember and misremember. I want to build those dimensions of life into some of my stories. So for example, in the story “The Visitor” a woman in her 70s receives a nightly visitor - Geraint, whom she’d hoped to marry when a young woman living in Wales, before her parents brought her to the US. She has conversations with this figment from her past - conversations that help her live in her present and understand the conditions of her early life. The conversations are real, but they’re also a fantasy arising from her past in Wales, impinging on her present in the US.
Another example is the story “Crooked Pie,” in which the ten year old son of Welsh immigrants who has assimilated into American culture visits a theme park based on Disneyfied renditions of Grimm’s fairy tales - Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks, and so on. He enters the House of the Crooked Man. There, in this magical place, he meets himself as he might be at age fifteen. This is impossible, but his double in a lengthy monologue gives him a vision of what it’s like for a boy to live through American culture of the mid to late 1960s. I hope this dream-like dimension conveys the traumatically rapid pace of deracination, and of dynamic American culture generally as experienced by the children of immigrants during that era (and in our current era!).
AmeriCymru: What attracted you to the short story genre? Will you be publishing more collections?
David: In adolescence I wanted to be a poet. And that identity continued through my college years. But while in the PhD program at Brown University, I took a fiction writing course with novelist John Hawkes - a magnificent teacher and an amazing writer. I was hooked. So I joined the Brown master’s degree creative writing program in fiction - not poetry - while completing my PhD. I soon discovered that I’m less interested in writing stand-alone stories than in extended projects, such as story cycles - that’s the case with my first collection, Boys: Stories and a Novella, and with this new book, The Moving of the Water. I am working on a novel now featuring a Welsh American - I won’t say more so I don’t spook myself!
AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little about your poetry?
David: I’ve published three poetry collections: The Everyday Apocalypse, The Gospel According to Frank, and Warriors. All include poems about Wales or Welsh-American experience, but The Gospel According to Frank is entirely about blended experience, the ebb and flow of cultural forms and ideas. The “Frank” of the title is Frank Sinatra, and so in general the poems explore issues relating to popular culture in twentieth-century America, such as fame, greed, creativity, and power. But in doing so, the forty-eight poems merge Sinatra’s public persona with other cultural materials, including the Old and New Testaments (this is, after all, Sinatra’s “gospel”!), Greek mythology, the medieval Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, and the medieval Welsh masterpiece, the Four Branches of The Mabinogi.
AmeriCymru: What's next for David Lloyd? Any new titles, readings in the works?
David: I have a new poetry collection, The Body’s Compass, just accepted by Salmon Poetry (based in Ireland). And I’ve been giving readings to promote The Moving of the Water. Last summer while in Wales I gave readings at Bangor University, the Imperial Hotel in Merthyr Tydfil, and the Workers Galley in Ynyshir. I have readings coming up at Wells College, Aurora, New York on February 26; at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York on April 4; and the Utica Public Library, Utica, New York on June 1. I’ll likely give a reading in Portland, Oregon in March.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
David: I’m thankful to see such dedicated engagement with Welsh culture and language on the AmeriCymru site. Books, music, art, film, photography - they give us pleasure, they expand our horizons. They also need our active support!
