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Peter and I were in Fishguard this afternoon. Peter and Iwere the only shoppers in Fishguard at all this afternoon. (I use the term 'shoppers' loosely as most of the few shopswere closed.)
In the Pharmacy,Peter bought some gel for his gum, which he'd scraped on a hand-sliced, pan- fried, sea-salted, vacuum-packedhard crisp; ('Don't buy them again, I prefer the ordinary ones', he muttered).
I went to the Cancer Charity shop and bought Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale', which I've already got but can't lay my handson, so at forty pence it was a bargain and saved me hunting.
We should have arrived in Fishguard on horseback, two strangers roughly jerking our mounts to a stop and gazing over the territory around us, pushing our hats to the back of our heads and narrowing our eyes against the dust but this wasn't 'High Noon' so we camethe usualway, in the car, Peter driving. (He wouldhave to be half dead beforesitting in the passenger seat).
Just like in the Hollywood version of things, there was a funeral in the distance, butthere were few mourners there, so it did not have much effecton the paucity of shoppers.
There was plenty of room in the car park, thirty pence for two hours. I decided they should be paying us for coming, not charging.(Some people's minds work differently from mine. A friend complained the charity cards she was selling weren't popular so, although I'd already had one pack, I said I'd have another. 'That will be double what you paid last time', she said, 'because I want to look as though I've made some money'). Mmh.
'Fishguard's like a ghost-town', Peter commented. 'There's nothing here'.
Pembrokeshire relies on its tourist industry, but this year,hotels have not fared too well.(This is true for other places as well.) A recent television programme featured Tenby, a pretty town with Georgian villas anda coastline to rival the Amalfi Coast. Aboat sails to Caldy Island, rather than Capri,in fine weather. The hotels are lovely, overlooking the sea, but there are too many empty rooms.
Pembrokeshire is not lacking in events: there isa 'Fish Week', a three-day County Show, a Classic Car rally, a tractor rally andpleasure flights from Withybush aerodrome, but caravans and self-catering are knocking the hotel trade.
Figures published recently show that despite European funding, Wales's prosperity has dropped. I love Wales and its rural communities and don't want our country to become the 'poor man' of Europe.
Before writing this, I ate a pot of 'Rachel's Dairy' organic gooseberry yoghurt.The brand was developed bya farmer's wife in mid-Wales when the milk tanker failed to reach the farm in the snow. Now it is a best-seller.This is thecreative thinking we need if we are to take our placesat the top table again.
Raymond Garlick was fond of saying 'Man is the measure of all things'. This popped into my mind today,like an e-mail from the past.
I was in the garden when it happened.I was allowingit to float about when a neighbour stopped to chat. She's always seemed busy and active butsurprised me by saying she often felt a gnawing loneliness. Yes, she had friends, family living away,but she felt an emptiness.
Without talking aboutexistential 'angst', we decided that sometimes life fallsa little flat beforepicking itself up again. When she'd gone, I began mulling.
Writing in the C17th Thomas Hobbesdecidedin 'Leviathan' thatlife was 'solitary . . . brutish and short'.
Most previous generations have not had the luxury ofwondering if theyfelt lonely; they had to do andendure,with no time for introspection.
Although being alone is different from being lonely,large families in the pastmeanta lack of privacy, yet there were compensations. One reportsays that those who move more than fifty miles from where they were born are less secure than people who see their families often.
T.S.Eliot'ssaid that 'Hell is oneself/ Hell is alone'. This could be a problem now that people will have to wait longer for their pensions, but not necessarily. Studies show that many pensioners fade away when they retire. Employment is not just about money butsocial groups andperception, one's own and others people's. Work confers identity.
Retirees havethe unfortunate tag 'pensioner' appended, as though they have reached the final full stop.A seventy year old, in employment, doesnot havethat nomenclature.
The skill is to see life as on-going. Peter Ustinov, oncetold he must feel very satisfied with his life's work,commented he always looked to the next project, hoping for improvement.
Dylan Thomas wrotethat theworld : 'Spins its morning of praise' andit's that vison that gives life its meaning and helps usconnect with what is around us.
Last spring I heard Allison Pearson speaking in Patrick's Restaurant, Mumbles, about her best-selling book 'How does she do it?'
The book has sold more than four million copies and a film has been made, starring Sarah Jessica Parker.
Allison has based the book on newspaper columns she wrote about the difficulty of bringing up children and working to pay the mortgage. The book found an echo in the lives of many women in a similar position. Despite not having children until she was in her thirties, the writer still needed money to maintain the standard of living she had become used to.
I remember in the fifties, in Fishguard, the Mothers' Union had a lively debate about whether women with families should work. The conclusion was 'Yes, if they need the money, otherwise don't bother'.
No one mentioned, or perhaps they did not realise it, that the well-being of women who go out to work is often better than stay-at-homes mothers, but it depends on the hours of the job.
Allison Pearson has gone on to write about the severe depression she suffered, probably due to the stress of working and making child-care arrangements.
The problem with life is that the years before a woman is forty and still fertile are filled with the need to build a career,manage on one's own earnings and then, vitally(!) find a man. A woman's fertility begins to wane in her thirties so time is short to achieve everything.
I can't help wondering would it be better, with so many mothers suffering from TAT (tired all the time) if they should settle for a cheaper house, change the car less often and various other economies.
I am left wondering not, 'How does she do it?' but 'Why does she do it?'
We call it the 'Loo-di-doo' in our house.
Once,when American friends called, one of them asked Peter where the 'Rest Room' was. Seeingthe look of consternation on his face, I stepped in swiftly to show the lady to the 'cloakroom'. (Just as well, becausehe had no idea whatshe meant).
Nowadays,the word 'Loo' has slipped into everyday use. It has been suggested the 'Ty Bach' was always housed in room 100 in French public buildings. '100'resembles the word 'loo', hence the namebut, apparently, 'loo' is a corruption of the French word 'l'eau' meaning water, as in 'gardez l'eau' - 'watch for water', which was called as a warning when a chamber-pot of slops was thrown from a windowin medieval times.
(In my novel 'Lucy Walter', Lucy tipsa full chamber-pot over some unwelcome guests - not a bad deterrent and there is documentation that this did occur).
Years ago, the word 'toilet' was considered to bemorerefinedthan 'lavatory', when referring to the 'WC'. The upper classes, fond ofcalling a spade a spade, considered the word 'toilet' very non-U, being a corruption of the French word 'toilette', meaning to wash andgroom oneself, so they stuck to 'lavatory'. Incidentally, the word 'lavatory' comes from the Latin 'lavatorium', meaning to wash oneself, which is not an accurate description of what goes on in the lavatorium, either.
It is surprising that it is only in the last twenty years or so that we have had self-flushing toilets and even now, they are the exception in Wales. (The first self-flush I came across was in Gloria Estefan's restaurant in Disney, Florida, thirteen years ago).
Now, here is the interesting bit. Anglesey Council is going to close or sell nine public conveniences in order to save thirty thousand pounds. The toilets may be used forother purposes. (What other purposes?) However, the council will give some financial support to pubs, cafes and businesses prepared to let the public use their toilets.
This brings me to a morning in Fishguard, not solong ago, when I wasaskedwhere the nearest storewith a 'Mother and Toddler' changing room was. I had to sayit was fifteen miles away.(Fishguard now has 20p a time toilets, but I don't know about the nappy changing facilities).
Toilets are essential facilities andit is a retrograde step to close them. Many people would not complain about paying for clean facilities. I know this, becauseholiday makers often ask me where they can find a good loo in town.
So, if there is an entrepreneur out there, perhaps there is 'loads- a- money' to be made out of loos.
London's always held afascination for me, ever sinceI watched 'Run For Your Money' in the 'Lyric Cinema', Carmarthen.
It was the 1950's and the story was about two miners going to the city to collect a win of one hundred pounds from a newspaper. There were many twists and turns to the story and predatory females, too, but the'big smoke' was an exciting place.
I spent a few days in London earlierthis week. At Paddington, I could not immediately find a taxi to take me to my hotel, which wasjust off Marylebone High Street (a gorgeous shopping area, French Patisseries, wonderful flavoury food, all manner of things to make my heart leap and beat with delight).
A workman, ona smoke break, realised my dilemma and suggested I took a 'bus into town.I didn't know where the stop was, so he walkedaround the corner with me, told me where the ticket machine wasandthe number of the 'bus I needed.
Next day, I got lost and asked a man holding flyers for a particular street I wanted. 'Straight down, turn left', he said. I crossed a busy road when I heard someone calling: 'Darlin' not that far', and when I looked round the flyer man had run after meto point out the way.
Later, I consulted a map, and a man on his way to the doctor's (he didn't tell me his malady) asked if he could assist me.He walkedwithme until I came to the roadI needed.
I knowLondoner's are dubbed unfriendly, but I've been before and always found them the reverse.
Later, in the evening,I was stopped by a young man dabbing at his leg. Could I help him?He had been late for his private college class and the gates were locked, sohe had climbed over some iron railings and had ripped his jeans and gashed his inner thigh deeply.
Although he was Italian, he spoke Englishand told me he was twenty from Firenza. There was a pub opposite so we crossed the road and satat an outside table.Ambulance controlsaid he wasnot toeat or drink and keep him talking. Twenty minutes later, he went off to hospital.
Next day, holiday over,the ticket machine for the Paddington 'bus did not work. The Polish driver told me to jump on, he'd stop at the next machine for me to get a ticket.
As Shakespeare might have said, 'we take and take, and we give and give' and that's as it should be.
I recently recalled the C13th century Mabinigion story of the 'Lady of the Lake', centred in the Brecon Beacons.
This remote Carmarthenshire spot hasnow been listed by 'Lonely Planet' as one of the top one thousand places in the world to visit and the lake is listed as one of the top ten most unusual lakes. (I don't think it was anything to do with my blog).
It was here thata young farmer saw a beautiful womanemergingfrom a lake and, not unnaturally, fell in love with her instantly.
This was no ordinary goddess, though.She agreed to marry him but warned that if he struck her three times, however lightly, she would return to the lake.
The lady had three sons in quick succession and each time, for various reasons, her husband gave her a light tap.The third tap saw her returning to the lake with her cattle.
Her sons were devastated, but she appeared to the eldest and taught him herbal lore, which he passed on to his brothers. Eventually, thesons became famous for their healing powers and known as 'The Physicians of Myddfai'.
Another way to read the story is to see the lady as a study in neurosis. Her behaviour is dramaric and hysterical. Obviously, sheseeks attention.
If you would like to read what I have said about this aspect of the legend, you will find it on my blog:
In Welsh, a tooth is a 'dant' and the meaning of the word 'dandelion' translates to'the lion's tooth', thus providing us withpoetic licence and cross cultural polination.
Bared teeth can be menacing, butthe word 'toothsome' suggests something else, something tasty, to get yourteeth into.
Problems arise when you have no teeth. During the eighteenth century, the better off started consuming more sugar, to the detriment of their teeth.
At one time,it was the fashion to have one's teeth out as a twenty first birthday present. The effects of this were not only cosmetic: minusteeth gums shrink, cheeks cave in but,essentially,you cannot enjoy your food.
I had a tooth extracted this week, a molar that had sprung an abscess over the weekend, so my thoughts turned to dentistry.
I retain a long-ago imageof some elder of the parish enjoying a pippin, part of which was shredded by his moustache and fell likesnow onto his lap. (Fascinating to watch when you are a child). The remarkable thing about this act,unremarkable otherwise, was he had enoughteethto bite into an apple at eighty. What joy!
Contrast this now, if you will, with a fortyish womanwho slices an apple (with a fruit knife!) before eating it.I'll tell you something and I'm not budging, there is nothing that makes you look moredecrepit than slicing fruit before eating it. Why? It looks as though you have no teeth or that you cannot find a good dentist.
It is said that George Washington suffered from wearing a pair of wooden dentures. He may have suffered, but his dentures were probably made of ivory or mother of pearl but not wood. They were held in place by silken threads and he was unable to use histeeth to eat.
Advances in orthodontics were slow until this century, thoughthe developmentof false teeth wasglobal. Even four thousand five hundred years ago, people were making dentures in Mexico. A team of archaeologists therebelieve they have discovered theremains of a body fitted with false teeth.
In 700 BC, the Etruscans in northern Italy, fashioned teeth from ivory and bone, held together by gold bridgework. Unfortunately, the skill disappeared.
The Japanese, in 1538, made stridesin fashioning false teeth but it was not until 1774 that porcelain teeth became more common.
So desperate was the need for dentures that fallen soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars had their teeth removed to be recycled.Teeth taken fromslain soldiers in the battlefields of the American Civil War were shipped to Europe and sold.('Why should death rob life of fourpence?' as Falstaff said).
The good news is, I'm out of pain and eating again andI've plenty ofteeth left to enjoy my food.
to americymru poetry comp 2012
Siglo'r Babi Bach
I hold him close,
His weight, heavy as a feather,
Nestled in a silken gown
Hand-me-down lullabies
Darned flannel blankets.
A blue skein and
Veins unravel. Auntie Mali,
Ninety three, threading needles
Recharging batteries on the 'pentan',
Her head alive in the 'News of the World'.
'Bara caws' for 'brecwast'
When I was a girl'
Mamgu in her 'fedog'
Baked the bread on Friday,
Dipped eachchild in melted sunlight,
Buckets brimming from the well.
Henry in South Africa,
Buttoned his dreams in a three-piece-suit.
Often, when the wind was cruel
Mamgu heard him in the shining darkness
Calling out her name.
Catherine, the 'new woman'
Rode her bike to London,
Wore a boater and man's tie,
Sharpened her tongue
On the anvil of language
'Miss Davies, Latin',
Carmarthen High.
Auntie Hannah never strayed.
Mamgu kept her for her own,
Tweezing fluff balls from the rowan
Placing pom-pom dahlias on the grave.
He stirs inside my arms.
'When you were little
What was your name?'
I hold him close,
This child who is and isn't mine.
