“ This mist is a real pea-souper!” declared reveller Meirion Glyndwr to one of his accomplices.

“ I know ....it seems to have become stronger since that last farmhouse !” he replied holding onto the dead horse’s tail.

“ We are we?” asked Meirion his hands out in front of him like a methodone zombie, as he stumbled about the Welsh mountainside, holding the Mari Lwyd like it was some kind of compass.

“ Let the grey mare guide you bachgen!” said his companion Rebecca Iot.

“ Twm Shaun Catty.....announced the man (dressed as a woman) drunkenly...I do believe we are lost....hic !”

The trio had set off from the village of Llangynwyd, near Maesteg, on a very foggy New Years Eve to celebrate the pre-Christian Festival of the Mari Lwyd.

To those who were uninitiated, the pagan custom involved the practice of dressing up a dead horse’s skull with false ears and eyes and covering it with reins and bells and a white sheet colourfully decorated with ribbons all set on a S4C ‘television aerial’ as an impromptu pole.

The trio of Welsh speakers....the last three left in the heavily anglicised South Wales Valleys....had recently been granted £50,000.00 by the Welsh Assembly Government to continue the tradition and had spent the lot over the Christmas period boozing in the Maesteg pubs.

They had been at their ‘three horseman of the apocalypse’ tour since it went dark at 3.30pm in the ‘Nags Head’ Inn in Maesteg and 20 farmhouses later they stood pissed out of their ‘skull’ on a bracken covered hillside miles from anywhere.

“ This Mari Llyd must have been made by the Americans...!” declared Rebecca –a six foot three bearded Welshman with the same physique as Pontypridd’s Tommy David.

“ It has got us lost in the fog...it has all the accuracy of a US Bombing raid in Iraq...!” said Twm.

“ We are never lost as long as we are in Wales....we always get a ‘welcome in the hillsides’ said Meirion.

“ Did you spray those last cottages with my name...like I told you....so Hansel & Gretel here can find our way back to Llangynwyd?” he asked .

“ Yes....look there is an unlit dual carriageway in the distance...!” declared Twm pointing with the bony finger of the skeletal horse.

As the trio skipped down the hillside , rolling and cackling drunkenly they reached the roadside.

“ Look the AA emergency phone has had the wires bitten through...look at the human teeth-marks.... !” stuttered Twm

“ and the bottom of that road sign has been unscrewed and sold by the gypsies as scrap metal!” said Rebecca.

“ Where the hell are we?” asked the Mari Lwyd moving its jaw and looking like an equine grim reaper.

“ Nice one...Meirion...I didn’t see your lips move that time!” said Twm laughing.

“ With that aerial ...you’re more like Rod Hull and Emu....but I still think it’s a sick tradition having your hand up a dead horse’s arse!” said Rebecca.

“ Merthyr!” said Meirion.

“ Bollocks....!....you’re just trying to scare us... that place doesn’t exist...like Brigadoon!” said Rebecca.

“ Is it true they are still flesh –eaters ?....because I read somewhere in a newspaper that they had a huge find of cannibals in Bethesda Street!” said Twm nervously.

“ No... that was CANNABIS...and it was reported in the Merthyr Depress- you know the one that strives for accuracy and doesn’t have any printing errors!” said Meirion.

“ Talk about the Green, Green, Grass of Home then!” sighed Rebecca...

“ It is a sad fact when the bilingual road-signs have English, Portuguese & Polish but not Welsh!” he said putting a sticker ‘Ble mai Cymraeg’ on it in protest.

“ Look...over there on the banking marked A470- with that signpost and lay-by sponsored by Chris Rea ....there’s a farmhouse lit with oil lamps....it looks like there isn’t any mains electricity or mains sewerage in the town. !” said Rebecca.

“ We ARE in Merthyr then....someplace called Aberfan to be precise.... !” said Meirion.

“ They don’t need electricity anymore...no need for washing machines, vacuum cleaners or Sinclair C5’s since Hoover closed it’s factories!”

The three revellers looked at each other sadly then made their way towards the stone walled farmhouse cheering themselves up by shouting ‘Mari Lwyd’ repeatedly as one in Welsh.

Inside the rented Holiday Cottage, the Englishman put another log on the wood burner .

It was much colder at a thousand feet above sea level ...much colder than his native Norfolk, but then again he only had three months left of complying with his bail conditions before he could return home.

He looked around him at the 200 year old cottage and realised then why it had been given an F rating on the Energy Performance Certificate scale.

He shivered visibly and wondered when the promised global warming would start.

And then it went off.

The trip wire he had set in the garden sent up high, a flare which illuminated the area for 200 yards in all directions.

With the mud and pig-shit in the cottage yard, it was reminiscent of a scene from the Battle of the Somme.

The trio of revellers had set in motion a chain of events that they would come to regret.

As the passed the pig- sty, three Portu-geezers stuck their heads through the wooden structure and shouted in their native tongue to keep the noise down as they were trying to sleep.

Unfortunately, not being to converse in Welsh , the anger intensified.

“ Talk about Mi-grunt workers!” complained Rebecca as he approached the cottage carry the Mari Lwyd.

He banged hard on the solid wooden door and shouted his challenge in Cymraeg.

“ Cnocio, cnocio!” said the trio in bardic harmony.

“ Who’s out there?” replied the Saesneg nervously.

“ Cnocio, cnocio!” said the men of Maesteg.

“ Kinnock....I don’t trust you ....you slimy red-haired freckled Eurocrat....!” said the angry farmer aware of the custom that a red haired man on your doorstep brought bad luck.

“ Cnocio, cnocio.....!” came the challenge for the third time.

“ Is that you Kinnockio....you lying politician bastard....what time of night is this to go campaigning!” said the agriculturalist.

“ Try him with the pwnco!” suggested Twm.

“ Siarad Cymraeg?” demanded Meirion.

“ No...there’s no Sharon living here....wrong cottage ...this is Bleak House 2 ....what the Dickens do you want?!” said the Farmer reaching for his trusty shotgun.

“ Y Mari...dewch I mewn!” asked the drunken Welshmen.

“ I told you Portuguese before ....I’m renting this cottage.... I pay the bills....go and find somewhere to stay!” said the farmer patience starting to wear thin.

“ Bwyd i cefyll os gwelwch yn dda (Food for the horse please) ....cwrw dwyieuthog...(bilingual beer) ......!” demanded the Mari Party.

“ Dim baras?” they continued.

“ Dim Barras!” said the farmer eyes widening in fear and then rage remembering the gypsy burglars that had got him into trouble with the Police and Courts in the first place.

“ Let us in ....we only want food and drink for the mare!” said Twm in broken English.

To the cottager, who knew there was a £60,000.00 bounty on his head – it was a trick and that he would be a dead man if he opened the door to the thieving gypsy clan.

“ Pull the other one...it’s got bells on!” said the farmer defiantly.

There was more than ‘reasonable farce’ at play here on ‘Nos Galan’.

Looking through the spy-hole, the elderly farmer could see three young men, one a transvestite and a skeletal figure of a horse with huge bony teeth.

Clutching his only friend, a 12 bore shotgun for comfort he released the safety catch.

He could understand why the men were here but why did they have that bony mare from the One Show Christine Bleakley as a hostage .

True it was coming up to ‘Daybreak’.

The trio were determined to get the last free food and nosh before setting off home and once again beat forcibly on the wooden door.

“ Try him with a Christmas Carol instead!” suggested Twm.

As they struck up the first verse of ‘We three Kings all Ospreys are!”, Rebecca felt his dress lifting unnaturally and cold steel tickling his whiskers below.

“ Bachgen, cenned yn awr!” (Boys... we need to leave now).

The three , realising they were outgunned decided discretion was the better part of valour.

They turned ‘tail’ and fled.

The door opened and the now confident farmer seeing his quarry running, blasted the closest one in the arse with buckshot.

Poor Rebecca’s first thoughts was how he was going to explain to the Maesteg Casualty Department why he was wearing C & A knickers....besides he had the labels mixed up and had them on back to front.

As they raced passed the Portuguese with the dead horse at the front....England’s oldest ally....they had to dodge pig-shit missiles as the Catholics were terrified it was the ghost of Shergar riding abroad on New Years Eve..

“ Who the Hell is living there?” asked Meirion as he ran for his life.

“ Kevin McAllister?....Macaulay Culkin....Homo Alone?” he asked through panting breath.

“ No, Senor... came the Iberian reply.

“ His letters .....they say he ees called Senor Tony Martin!”

It was the Night Mare after Christmas.