NOTE: THIS SITE IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING REPAIRED AND REDESIGNED SO IT MAY BE A BIT WONKY
What’s it all about then?
No one’s got a clue really, but we try to do our best.
This website exists to display a bit of one person’s attempts to do their best. When I say ‘best’ I’m not sure if that’s true in the sense that everything here is perfectly crafted, because it’s not. Some of it is roughly hewn or not hewn at all, simply pointed at, but then again, maybe that’s the best I can do.
I dunno.
I reckon that less than 1 in 100 visitors to this website are actual human beings so if you’re one of them and not a bot, and have managed to read this far down the page, I hope you can find something of interest here.
Just scroll and click and search. Turn over some metaphorical stones – there’s quite a lot to uncover even if I do say so myself.
blah blah – you know the score – here’s a poem from 1999 about knowing the score
ninetyfivefive
you know the score
in a movie
or a tv show
the flaws
small flaws
idiosyncratic flaws
twelve flaws
or just one
we’re allowed to be flawed
it’s ok as long as in the end
we’re fucking good at our job
in my real life i’m an artex ceiling of cracks and fissures
with some small redemption
it’s kind of arse-backwards ain’t it?
I read some news
about a huge black hole
that eats a whole star every day.
It is 12 billion light years away.
and its quasar is
7 light years in diameter.
Today I learned that there are
100,000,000,000,000,000,000
atoms in a grain of sand.
then there are parallel universes
and sub-atomic particles . . . .
I live somewhere in between all that
and I’m fretting about whether
to have a cup of tea
or a glass of water.
This is a song based on a poem I wrote some time ago and recorded a couple of years ago, with Dafydd Wyn Roberts. We recorded 2 versions. This is the version with spoken word.
We called ourselves Mwgwd, which is Welsh for Mask. (It was recorded during the height of the pandemic, when Masks were a thing)
More here: https://mwgwd.bandcamp.com/
You can’t be bored when you’re reading (Half an hour in the Arts Centre Café-bar on a Saturday night.)
A poem
This is one of those long tables near the bar.
It’s vaguely lively here now. (If there is such a thing?)
There’s a pint and a packet of crisps.
There’s an all-gender toilet where everyone avoids washing their hands –
unless they’ve been spotted coming out of a cubicle by another person.
Then they make a show with water and liquid soap and deranged hand-drying devices.
There’s hugs between fat men in their thirties wearing lumberjack shirts
and pretentious post-graduate artists stitching pieces of thick unbleached paper together over posh red wine and small packs of nuts
There’s tired staff cleaning up behind the café-bar and distracted bartenders tolerating semi-drunk bores
A trickle of filmgoers leave the cinema and a few of them grab halves of cider
A sad lonely alcoholic, burnt-out and lost, taps his phone hoping to discover the meaning of his life, finding nothing but more of the same banal content.
A bored security guard, hands in pockets, ambles up and down through the gaps between the tables.
The cinema projectionist has left his booth and meanders around the café-bar, suddenly realising he has to put a film on.
The staff are mostly bored and distracted by their phones or each other.
The sad alcoholic goes outside for a fag and decides to give up for the night and grabs a bottle from the corner shop (the booze is cheaper in there) then shuffles home to his empty room.
The Cinderella behind the bar shrugs her cardigan off her shoulder and hopes her Prince Charming will feel the pull.
Two freeloading young women walk in from the streets and glug the free water from the tap on the counter with fake eagerness.
The bored wife reads a library book, and sups a half pint across the table from her boring husband who is cradling a pint and writing crap in a notebook,
She says: “It’s not a library book,” and “You can’t be bored when you’re reading.”
And he thinks, ‘True, I’m reading (and writing) the room.’
In Search of Welshness – or a Welshman’s Quest for Welshness
Blackweir (Cardiff)
*Written in 1999
Huw Garmon and Sue Roderick, better known to some as Steffan and Cassie from Pobol y Cwm, two giants in the Welsh acting profession, and I’m sitting in the Green Room at the BBC in Cardiff rehearsing a scene with them. I’m only a non-speaking extra, but the director has given me a few lines; I’m sweating but my mouth is dry, my short term memory is shot to pieces, we’re on set in a few minutes – HELP! My quest for Welshness has landed me in this mess.
Until two years ago, I was just like the millions of other Anglo-Welsh people who make up the majority of the population of this fair land of ours, but I was lost in a cultural desert, neither truly Welsh or god forbid, English. Defining myself as merely British wasn’t good enough either, I wanted a definite cultural and national identity, I wanted to be Welsh. So my quest for Welshness began.
It’s a long journey and I don’t even know if it’s possible to get to the end of it, after all, R S Thomas has made a career out of the dichotomy of being a non-Welsh Language writer, yet having the heart of a true Welshman. Is it possible to be truly Welsh if you are not completely fluent in the language?
Things defined by the word Welsh surround us, but that word can carry a huge load of nuance and self-doubt for us poor Welsh people who are not masters of the ‘language of heaven’. It’s not easy to learn Welsh as an adult, even as an adult whose wife is a true Cymraes Cymraeg, and whose children were educated in Welsh Medium schools. I think that if I had to nominate one single motivating factor in my quest for Welshness it would be Pobol y Cwm. I’ve watched the programme from my sofa for years, first with the English subtitles, then with the special page 889 subtitles for Welsh learners, and finally with no subtitles, pretending I can understand more than I can, but getting the gist of the thing anyway.
Two years ago I got serious about learning the language, I was born in Wales, of Welsh parents, I live in a typical Welsh village and my house is called Llwyncelyn (Holly Bush), so I thought it would be a relatively easy step to take. Now sitting in the Green Room with these great Actorion Cymraeg, I’m beginning to regret getting off the sofa.
It’s not just Pobol y Cwm of course. It’s cool to be Welsh now of course, but more than that it’s the cywilydd (shame), the feelings of failure, that half-baked feeling that comes when you realise you don’t know all the words of the National Anthem, (in English as well as Welsh). Or, even worse, the isolation that chills your soul when you realise your friends and family share a special secret that you’ll never be privy to.
We all come together on International days, when every channel, in both languages drives home the message, all Welshmen and Welshwomen are equal when it comes to the oval ball. But what happens after that? The two factions go their separate ways, back to the sheep, the committee rooms or the cosy little jobs in the media; back to the council estates, the factories or the double-glazing selling.
I’m not bothered about rugby or double-glazing, and I’m certainly not bothered about sheep, but I’m still Welsh. I’m as Welsh as Shirley Bassey or Bryn Terfel. I’m as Welsh as William Morgan or Ieuan Evans. I’m as Welsh as they come. Why then do I need to chase the buzz that comes from carrying out even the simplest conversation in Welsh? The Welsh Language Society and the Welsh Language Board have certainly done their job on me over the years. I now carry around an extra burden of guilt that can only be unloaded when I achieve that altered state of being truly Welsh speaking.
On the low seats in the Green Room, in the depths of the BBC in Cardiff, I’m nodding at the director as he gives me the lines. I’m a publican who’s come to buy beer from Steffan’s brewery, but the real story’s about Steffan’s preoccupation with some female or other. It doesn’t really matter what I say.
When I get on set the problems really begin, I scribbled the lines the director gave me on a copy of the script. During the rehearsals one of the production assistants speaks to me in Welsh and takes the script away. I just nod and smile, I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about. I manage to garble my way through the scene and run out of the studio and back to the car park despairing at my performance and relieved that I’m out of there. They cut all but one and a half of my lines anyway.
That incident in the BBC happened over a year ago, and I’m still desperately searching for Welshness. My language skills have improved, I even choose the Welsh language option at the cashpoint. The burden is a bit lighter, It’s a long journey this quest, and Steffan is still preoccupied with some female.
I’ve done a bit more television work since then, but nothing in Welsh, they must have sussed me out and blacklisted me, but don’t worry, Pobol y Cwm, I’ll be back and I’ll play the best non-speaking publican you’ve ever seen.
Just scroll and click and search. Turn over some metaphorical stones – there’s quite a lot to uncover even if I do say so myself.
