G R A P E V I N E contact us: [email protected]september 2012 a m F R E E d d i m digwyddiadau, newyddion a barn llambed bob mis / lampeter’s events, news and views monthly wild wales tourists: obtain them and sustain them listings p2, letters p5, serial p6, he borrowed wales p10, slugs p4
Lampeter's events, news and views monthly digwyddiadau, newyddion a barn Llambed bob mis
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THURSDAY Yoga 10–11.30am Five Rhythms Dance 1st Thursday of Month 7pm Village Improvement Society 1st Thursday of month 7pm WI 2nd Thursday of month 7pm
FRIDAY Art Group 10–12.00am Film Night fortnightly 7.15pm
SATURDAY Seventh Day Adventists fortnightly 10.15am–3.15
Lampeter Farmers
Market
Market Street, Lampeter
9.00am – 2.00pm
alternateFridays
Women’s Workshop
St James’ Hall, Cwmann, Lampeter 10.30am–3pm Wednesdays
The hall has disabled access and toilet, and a free car park
Only £2.50 a session, pay on the day, no membership fee or advance fee to pay, drop in when you please. Come and see if you like our group. New members always welcome. £2.50 includes vege-tarian lunch and all activities More de-tails: 01570 423167 / 01545 590391
religious services and
groups
Lampeter Parish
St Peter’s Church, Lampeter. Main
Sunday Service: 11.00am (bilingual).
Other services: 8am Holy Communion
(English). 9.30am Cymun Bendigaid
(trydydd Sul yn y mis yn unig, Cym-
raeg).
St Cybi’s Church, Llangybi. Main
Sunday Service: 9.00am (bilingual).
St Bledrws’ Church, Betws Bledrws.
Main Sunday Service: 10.45am (English
or bilingual).
St Sulien’s Church, Silian. Main Sun-
day Service: 2.00pm (blingual or Cym-
raeg).
St Mary’s Church, Maestir. Main Sun-
day Service: 2.30pm (second Sunday in
the month only, English).
Times apply to the first four Sundays in
each month. For the few fifth Sundays
there will be a single United Parish Ser-
vice at 10am: the location will be pub-
lished in the local newspapers. St Peter’s Church Hall in Lampeter
is available for hire at £8.50 per hour.
The hire charge includes use of the
kitchen facilities. For enquiries or book-
ings contact Beryl on 01570 422 324.
For more information visit:
www.lampeterparish.org/
Annual summer fete, St Peter’s Church
Lampeter, Saturday 1 September,
10.30am–12.00. Entry by donation for
which you will get a complimentary
drink and naughty but nice cake. Kids’
games & prizes, raffle, cakes & produce,
bric a brac, bookstall. A warm welcome
is extended to all.
Monthly Hunger Lunch in support of
Christian Aid Food Project, St Peter’s
Church Hall, Lampeter, Friday 7 Sep-
tember, 12.00–1.30pm. There is no fixed
fee for this two course lunch but all do-
nations received go to the Christian Aid
Food Project. A warm welcome to all.
Seventh Day Adventists meet fortnight-
ly on Saturdays at Cellan Millennium
Hall, 10.15–3.15. More details:
www.cellanmillenniumhall.co.uk
Lampeter Evangelical Church
meets every Sunday at Victoria Hall,
10am–7pm. Contact Gareth Jones at The
Mustard Seed. Tel. 01570 423344
An introduction to Buddhism group
with Steph Jacques. 2nd Thursday of the
month, 7–9pm, Victoria Hall, Bryn
Road, Lampeter. Info 01570 422273.
4
victoria hall bryn road, lampeter
activities and classes
Monday: 2pm till 3pm Herbalife weight watching session with Hazel Pugh. Tel: 07854 743291 Tuesday: 730pm till 830pm Zumba keep fit session with Julie Lancaster. Tel: 01570 470542 Wednesday: Fortnightly. Young at Heart. Tea and sandwiches for the wiser folk of Lampeter. 130pm till
430pm Wednesday: 7pm till 8pm. Zumba keep fit session with Louise Evans. Tel: 07584 199372. Thursday: 6pm till 8pm Lampeter Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with Mike A. Banica. Tel: 07783 582081 Thursday: Second of the month 7pm till 9pm An introduction to Buddhism Group with Steph Jacques. Tel:
01570 422273 Thursday: Third of the month 7pm till 9pm Transition Llambed ‘Big Gathering’. A chance for all those in-
terested and involved with Transition Llambed to plan and coordinate activities. Everyone welcome! Friday: 430pm till 630pm LYTSS: Lampeter Youth Theatre and Stage School with Annie May. Tel: 01570
423077 Saturday: 2pm till 4pm Boxersize. Body conditioning and toning keep fit session with Andy Jacques. Tel:
07703 722344 Saturday: 2nd and 4th of the month. 10am till 1pm. Lampeter People’s Market. Local food, produce and
crafts. Plus cafe and other various attractions. Sunday: Lampeter Evangelical Church 10am till 7pm Gareth Jones at the Mustard Seed. Tel: 01570
423344 Sunday: 7pm till 9pm Lampeter Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with Mike A. Banica. Tel: 07783 582081
serious about slugs maj ikle
Perhaps the best pest in wet Wales today is our apparently infinite
selection of slugs. Born as tiny clear pinheads, they grow rapidly,
gorging on our favourite green vegetation, until some are as big as
sausages.
Slugs eat everything they can, including taking the odd chunk
out of one another. Given the choice however, they like the most
delicate of plant parts - enough rainfall, and they have the ability to
eat a whole garden crop in less than one night.
These soft-bodied garden community members have become
many a normally pleasant, patient vegetable gardener’s sole hate
figure – forcing them, frothy-lipped, to murder, evict, poison and
maim without apology. Our gardens have become a battleground
with one particular party taking the whole thing very personally.
But consider the cost, when we find ourselves so angry and defeat-
ed in our very own green zone? What herbivores don’t consider, as
they sprinkle the salt, is the damage they are doing to their own
soul.
Slugs are not out to get us, they are just grabbing a quick bite at
teatime, and so what, you don’t like the look or feel of them? Slugs
probably think we take more than our fair shares sometimes too.
However hope of reconciliation is here: salvation and soul dam-
age retrieval could be close at hand. There is something you can do.
Creating a slug sanctuary, in the form of a well-sealed, in-full-
sun compost container where these slow movers can be safely re-
housed, turns every sighting from a gnashing of teeth to a moment
of excitement. Assiduous after-dark collection, and relocating slugs
in with a pile of weedy overgrowth where they can eat away happi-
ly whilst creating pure soil in the process, is as easy as a walk in the
park.
Slugs have as much right to be on the planet as we do – without
their work we would be knee-high in rotting vegetation by now.
Simply going about their daily business of eating and excreting,
slugs could be seen as soil enhancers of the first order. They are
beneficial beings, whose ability to break down plant matter into soil
means that they can speed up the process of composting beyond
many a wildest dream.
Like any creature, they need boundaries to stop them over-
reproducing and running amok, but given a tight-lidded, half-full
composter, they can munch their whole body weight in less than
twenty minutes, and keep on munching for a very long, long time.
Think how much compost they will produce as they chow down
hard in your composter. Unfortunately for them, their eggs will not
survive the heat and it is also even rumoured that the Nematode will
flourish in such environs.
From their point of view, a compost bin is a damp, safe-from-
predatory-bird haven, filled with their favourite munch material. So
as you walk your little charge on a trowel towards its new home,
you can hold on to your heart, knowing that you are taking them to
continuing annie may’s vivid tale of coming to farm in west wales
PART 2: TOWN AND COUNTRY
7
walls of the ancient handling pens look like
rotting teeth. It is a cheerless month; stock
need checking more often as the grass stops
growing and the damp creeps under the
skin; the ewes are come home from summer
grazing in early October, fat and ready for
tupping. Their rumps now glowing with
red, blue, green and yellow raddle from the
ram’s attentions. There’s the usual routine
maintenance to be carried out on the farm;
mending fences, servicing the tractor, cop-
picing and hedging. Working outside you
get soaked to the skin more often than not.
This is West Wales, after all.
Up here in the hills the dogs and I walk
to the drovers’ village shrouded in mist. It
used to be hidden amongst the pine forest,
but now the trees have been cut down and it
has a bare, slightly self-conscious look as if
it feels vulnerable without its clothing of
pine trees. The ruins attest to a life of com-
munity and toil with narrow lanes, little
gardens and gegin hearths. And yet we have
been told that the village itself was only
inhabited when the drovers came through.
The women used to keep it going but it was
home to no-one; just those who passed with
their cattle on the long trek east. They
would maybe stay for a week, maybe a day
getting ready for the long haul over the
Brecon Beacons; drinking in the Half Way
pub, and when they left with their beasts
strung out on the skyline, they could look
down to their right at the Panteg valley and
see the three little farmsteads joined by the
old road that ran all the way down to Cellan
and the great, lush Teifi valley. In those
days, when the drovers took the cattle all
the way to Smithfield, the Drovers’ village
was busy with fires in the gegins; vegeta-
bles for the pot grew in the gardens and the
Half Way pub was just down the lane. Half
Way was a thriving pub until just after the
Second World War. On market day the
farmer who farmed Panteg, docile and
drunk, would be led by a little child, sent to
fetch him down the hill to the farm in the
valley that gave it its name. I’ve never
found out why the pub was called Half
Way. Half way to where? Llandovery?
Brecon? The next pub? Today it’s a pile of
stones.
From my bathroom window at Panteg
the view was of the mountain that curled
stout arms round the house. In the winter
and spring there would be our cattle not five
feet from me as I sat in the bath. Pant-teg,
as it should be spelt, is a fair valley. It is
one of the most peaceful and protected plac-
es I know. There’s a valley on the other side
of the mountain From up there, just past
Half Way on the mountain road, you can
look down on a delightful place where you
can pick elderberries and brambles and
whinberries in summer. more next month
Canolfan Gadwraeth Fferm
Denmark
Denmark Farm Conservation
Centre
Courses Autumn 2012
Make Your Own Pole Lathe Sat 15–Sun 16 Sept: 2 places left. An intensive, practical, hands-on, weekend course taking you through the basics of constructing a pole lathe. Tony Eames will guide you using the sensitive re-sponse of hand tools and rule of eye. You will be learning a variety of carpentry skills to produce a valued piece of equip-ment that has been in use for over 3000 years. During the weekend you will be using age old tools such as brace and bits, draw knives, spoke shaves, and hand saws. Patchwork Quilts – 3 part course
Wed 26 Sept & 31 Oct & 28 Nov 10am–2pm: A three part workshop covering all aspects of patchwork quilting and provid-ing the support to complete a beautiful and unique quilt by the end of the course. 3 monthly 4 hours sessions allowing par-ticipants time to complete tasks in be-tween sessions. Come along and make the ultimate personal Christmas present for someone who you care for. Feel Like Felt? – Learn the basics in a day Sat 13 Oct: First you will make a flat sheet of felt using just soap, water and fleece, mixing lovely wool colours and creating beautiful patterns. Next you will learn how to use the same technique with a resist to create a purse, mobile phone cover, passport holder or glasses case – no sewing required. Soft Shoe Shuffle – Felt to Fit Slip-pers Sun 14 Oct: We will consider the British
wool breeds most suitable for the wear & tear of footwear. You will learn how to cut a resist to the correct size and adjust the shape to achieve a variety of slipper styles from bootie to mule or maybe a curly toed pixie shoe. You will also learn how to make a matching – or complementary – pair. Up-Cycled Textiles Sat 20 Oct: Recycled clothes are all the rage and can cost a lot to buy... but there is another way to get your hands on the latest fashions: you can make your own instead. Simply by picking up a needle and thread you can turn out fabulous clothing which fits your size, shape and personal style perfectly, any way you want. Carys Hedd’s mission is to provide you with the inspiration and know how to make your very own ravishing recycled creations.
Betws Bledrws, Lampeter SA48 8PB
01570 493358
www.denmarkfarm.org.uk
Hanes Llambed programme september–november 2012
Meetings start at 7.30pm in the Old Hall of the Uni-
versity. (See article on Hanes llambed on page 14)
Tuesday 18 September Steve Dubé: ‘My Failings & Imperfections’ (the 1860–62 diary of Rees Thomas, Dôl-llan, Llan-
dysul)
Tuesday 16 October Gwyn Griffiths: Henry Richard of Tregaron,
Apostle of Peace
Tuesday 20 November
Selwyn Walters: From Lampeter to Salonika: Nurse Ella Richards VAD (1887–1918)
LAMPETER YOUTH
THEATRE and
STAGE SCHOOL
Forthcoming events
Stage School registration. 7 September, 4.30–5.30,
Victoria Hall. Children who wish to enrol with the
LYTss stage school are invited to come and register
with us.
Auditions for the Christmas production of ‘A
Christmas Carol’. 13 September, 3.30–5.30, Victoria
Hall small meeting room. Candidates are invited to au-
dition for singing and dancing roles.
Stage School term begins. 14 September, 4.30–5.30,
Victoria Hall.
8
MUSIC
unchained minibar five star soundproofing in the tropics
Spring 2010: Downtown Colombo is a couple of hours drive
from the airport along the Negombo Road, through a shanty-
scape of feverish commerce, feverish transportation and feverish
poverty, constantly punctuated by a rapid succession of vast and
lavishly enshrined roadside idols, mostly Buddhas and Catholic
Saints exuding other-worldly calm and wealth amongst all the
dirt and desire and ambition. My ten-year-old daughter was
fresh out of Europe and gazed rigidly out of the minibus win-
dow, appalled at the intensity of it all. Then the evening mon-
soon hit, potholes turned to splashpools and the traffic grew
even thicker and wilder. Night had come by the time we reached
Colombo. My kid was in a mild state of shock until someone
told her we were at the Cinnamon Lake, and she looked up and
felt safe again.
I didn’t quite feel one hundred per cent safe. Perhaps be-
cause there was a machine gunner squatting on the roof of the
Cinnamon Lake: it was election time in Sri Lanka, and there
were big cheeses passing through and rooming here. The current
ruling party looked set to do well. The war with the Tamil Ti-
gers had been over for a year. There were messages of unity and
renewal on the billboards but it was a guarded peace: a state of
emergency still held, and military checkpoints and roadblocks
abounded.
Yet whatever might be squatting on our roof, inside we were
insulated and becalmed. The hotel was like a temple. People
carry themselves differently in these kinds
of places. They’re designed to be other-
worldly. There’s a trance-like quality to the
movements of guests and staff.
I don’t generally do luxury hotels. Now I
had a string of them lined up. It was a senti-
mental journey organized by others of the
family on behalf of an ageing uncle. A sight-
seeing trip with minibus and tour guide and
of course elephants, and jewelry, and sam-
bol. Bring it on.
I was bored. I had watched Crazy Heart
back-to-back three times on the plane and
wanted fresher diversions. In the lobby a
guy with a Lionel Ritchie mullet was key-
boarding backing tracks while a soberly
dressed girl brought a song to a close. At
first I felt a kindred sympathy when the
handful of guests slumped in big armchairs
let this go without even polite applause, but
this sympathy soon dissolved when Spanish
Eyes entered somewhat mechanically, fol-
lowed by a lumbering Strangers In The
Night, an unconvincing Sealed With A Kiss,
and Country Roads in need of some repair. So this was five star
entertainment. Back in my room, I discovered, dungareed, five
guys not named Mo (I checked) busy changing a lightbulb.
Whatever little thing you need in this country – a lightbulb, a
packet of tea, a box of matches, a door opened – five guys not
named Mo will fix it for you. How many guys does it take to
change a lightbulb? – How many would you like, sir, they all
speak fluent Cricket.
Two evenings later music – in the form of plaintive flute
riffs delivered by a becloaked, hobbit-like character who sat
atop a high timber platform beneath a little straw hut that resem-
bled a dog kennel – greeted us as we checked into an expansive
hill country hotel near Dambullah. Here a sylvan landscape dot-
ted with ‘eco-lodges’ led down to a lake backgrounded by steep
mountain peaks. Playing the dining room that evening was a
little combo of tablas, harmonium, sitar and vocalist. All was
vernacular until about halfway though dinner, when after an
interestingly pentatonic version of Happy Birthday To You for
the benefit of a guest, the band launched into My Way and never
looked back. Suddenly we were at a old folks’ dinner dance in
the Catskills with every standard in the book coming at us, so it
was only a matter of time before we witnessed a brave but ulti-
mately kamikaze version of Neil Diamond’s I Am, I Said. This
was quite unsustainable so I retired to our ‘eco’ chalet, with its
suspect heating, lighting and airconditioning systems. ‘Eco’ in
this case seems to mean ‘has thatched roof’.
I began to suspect that I might be in for a couple more weeks
of badly organized sound, in this case the western MOR canon.
It didn’t look good. We moved on shortly to kultural Kandy. By
this time the dinner music had become more interesting than the
dinner menu. The first evening an elderly woman in a sari sat
down at the old barroom piano and delivered a nice run of jazz
and western classical stuff that mingled with one or two Asian
modalities until you could hear new stuff begin to happen. But
after she’d taken a break the bubble burst, and in trooped the
shades of Neil, Frank, Jim, Tom, Deano and Englebert. Jazz
police! Nobody leaves the room!
The next night a trio of young dudes wearing green ponchos
embroidered in gold with the name ‘Los Kandyos’, shuffled on
with their guitars and congas and once more the canon was
rolled out. Nothing about their act was South American. If
they’d had a lama on bass it still wouldn’t have worked. As for
the obligatory mountain-high climax to Unchained Melody, this
always sorts the men from the boys and these boys never got in
sight of the summit. When we later descended to the bar we saw
with horror that the ponchos had followed us down and were
now performing table-to-table torture. Their persistence brought
to mind the tag line (seen on bumper stickers and t-shirts) of the
Then they were towering over us as we lay in our low-slung,
inescapable chairs like helpless dental patients. First they hit us
hard with a sawn-off I Am, I Said. Now that we were softened
up, they demanded that we request a song. They knew nothing
of a selection of alt. country hits that I ran past them, or Wheels
on the Bus, but they’d sloshed their way through Bridge Over
jazz police: an unfortunate sax player is searched for illicit blue notes at a down-
town colombo checkpoint
9
Troubled Water earlier so maybe they’d have a go at The Box-
er? They were happy to give it an airbrushing. I waited and wait-
ed for those Seventh Avenue girls but they never showed.
We did get to mingle with some street life before leaving
Kandy, when we slipped our guide and went around the market
stalls and got to buy ordinary stuff like umbrellas and saris and
BOP tea. Was a change from the usual expensive emporia we
were used to being shepherded to and from. ‘The trouble is they
think we’re rich’, said one of the family outside one of these
upmarket places, as a truck bearing the family name flashed past
a billboard advertising one of the family businesses.
The Tamil northeast wasn’t quite open for business just yet.
After a sojourn in the hill country and a string of ruined citadels,
bands of macaques on the make, ancient temples, elephant rides
and skyscraping buddhas (I recall a huge one gracing the court-
yard of an infantry barracks), we headed southwest for a final
few days R&R at a big, low-rise five star beachside number with
a meandering pool and a palm tre’ed lawns. It oozed piped mu-
sic from every pore and was peopled with punters who walked
and talked and lounged and ate and swam in that now-familiar
trance, with its hint of the convent and the monastery. As each
afternoon drew to a close I would pass by the dining area and
witness, like a prisoner being shown the tools of torture, the
instruments laid out for that evening – the stark, threatening
shapes of amps, keyboards, mike stands and cables.
Bad turned to worse. The Icelandic ash cloud grounded all
flights to Europe and left us stranded for the forseeable future. It
was decided to ‘tough it out’ at the hotel, and hope the funds
held out. Days of uncertainty, of Stranger On The Shore, Green
Green Grass Of Home, and Please Release Me followed with
ever-mesmerising intensity. At dinner I was a rabbit trapped by
headlamps until the regular late-on rendition of Unchained Mel-
ody sent me reeling roomwards to unchain the minibar and
check out the ash cloud updates. A week stuck in a transit
lounge began to seem attractive by comparison.
Suddenly one evening, a band with no backing tracks, that of
Sam the Man, whose combo rattled out the canon as usual, but
Sax player Sam with his dapper suit and his Bengali style beard
is a bit of a jazzer, and they give things a twist here and there.
He sniffed me out during the break. ‘I know, I know,’ he said,
‘but you have to tailor your product to your audience.’ He went
on to confess that the greatest moment of his life had been at an
international music fest in Berlin where he had once shared a
dining table with Louis Armstrong, Leonard Bernstein and Her-
bert von Karajan. ‘Where can you go after that?’ he asked me. I
didn’t know, but his second half was a definite improvement.
Eventually the Colomboside branch of the family lent us a
flat in the capital. And, ever-generous, most evenings they sent
two big black chauffeured SUVs to run us out to one high-tone
spot or another, which invariably meant running the gauntlet of
the Playlist From Hell while 20/20 cricket showed on TV
screens and my ten-year-old and her cousin frolicked in a pool
overlooked by steel-helmeted soldiers behind sandbags.
Famously, upmarket hotels and tours often work hard to in-
sulate their guests from the country at large, and music is part of
the soundproofing process. Preferred is a music instantly recog-
nized by international visitors: something global. Of the number
of world musics available today, the western canon of twentieth-
century pop standards is the obvious tool of choice. Processed as
elevator, ambient or lounge band music it’s familiar, becalming
and doesn’t excite, engage or elevate, unless you’re like most of
the many Russians on this circuit and wet yourself every even-
ing when Midnight In Moscow makes its usual midnight creep.
Beyond music, equally unengaging is the wide variety of
muzak’d – lets say ‘ambient’ – western dishes always available
in the five star dining room. And you could go on to describe the
entirety of these hotels – their build design, shops, staff, clien-
tele and activities – as exercises in socio-architectural easy lis-
tening, where everything and everyone aspires to the condition
of muzak™, and where the aim and effect is to de-emphasise the
local to a point where it’s almost accidental, and becomes cute
or niche in some cases, or plain embarassing in others (as when
a tour guide feels bound to shoo off those unkempt and inde-
pendent souvenir sellers who crowd around the bus wherever it
stops).
This logic also brings to mind the retail spaces and the oper-
ations of big western supermarkets, not least their famous effect
on local ways of life. It probably applies to other elite circuits of
the global economy. The locality of the Olympic Games, for
example, has become just an accident, a whim, an inoffensive
backdrop, while the sporting events themselves happen in an
insulated, ringfenced world of big global brands and rooftop
security, and are merely a small episode in a year-in, year-out
endless cycle of big deal negotiations held in five star hotels all
over the planet to the sound of busy cash registers and mediocre
music. As this wealthy travelling circus moves on it hasn’t been
noted for leaving localities any better than when it found them.
So long and thanks for all the backdrop.
It was another week before we were released. Meanwhile the
president’s party won the election, his socialist republic sailed
on, and talk turned to using the peace dividend to upgrade the
country’s infrastructure and tourism facilities. These facilities
will doubtless include many more five star experiences. As for
me, once aboard the plane I assumed a trance-like state and
watched Crazy Heart back-to-back all the way home. don van fleet
cardifest 31 august – 2 september
Goldie Lookin’ Chain, The Blims and Foun-
tainhead are headlining at what looks to be a
fun new music festival in Cardigan featuring
several other esteemed beat combos as well as
providing opportunities for local performers to
strut their stuff and attempt to jam their snake-
skin boots in the door of the hospitable and
caring world of the music industry. It all starts
on the Saturday at ten in the morning. Yes
that’s ten in the morning. Count me out for the
opening ceremony.
All the info: www.cardifest.co.uk
black and white lookin’ picture
10
BOOKS
borrowing wales
wild wales
by george borrow
first published 1862
A people sensitive to their language, and
wary of incoming English buying up
property and sending prices beyond the
reach of locals; a land of chapels and
boozers; and newsflashes from a contro-
versial war being pursued by Britain in
the Near East – that’s what George Bor-
row found when in 1854 he visited the
more remote parts of Wales, and if he
had come along today he would have
found things, eerily, much the same. He’s
best known for his reports of his wander-
ings amongst Gypsies, but Wild Wales is
his only book to have remained in print
to this day. It’s informed and it’s funny
too, much of the humour being at the
author’s expense, for Borrow was a Nor-
folk man, and as the reader will soon
realise, something of a cross between
Alan Partridge and Stephen Fry.
Borrow was a walker above all else.
He tramped all over Europe, from Spain
to Russia, as well as the length and
breadth of Britain and Ireland. His other
books – The Bible in Spain, Romany Rye,
Lavengro – are rather tedious. There’s
some clever work in them, but barely a
page goes by without some Ian-Paisley
style anti-papal diatribe, or some etymo-
logical fantasy fetched from further than
Borrow ever walked. He knew a million
languages and walked a million miles,
and translated the Bible into Manchu
Chinese, but he doesn’t seem to have
ever got sufficient perspective on himself
that might relax his stance somewhat and
help him cook with gas.
But Borrow decided to take a walking
trip through north and west Wales in the
summer and autumn of the year 1854,
when he was fifty-one. He’d never been
in Wales before. But he did know Welsh,
and he wasn’t afraid to use it. He learned
it from books when he was a young solic-
itor’s clerk in Norwich, and fell in love
with the works of the medieval bard Da-
fydd ab Gwilym. He also learned some
Welsh conversation from his boss’s
groom, a Welshman who was suffering
the usual anti-Taffy barbs from the locals
until Borrow intervened.
The religious slant to Wild Wales is
interesting because of its context: Bor-
row’s Welsh trip takes place at the time
of a great religious and educational reviv-
al, these two tending to go hand-in-hand.
Calvinstic Methodism had become the
dominant belief system of the north and
west, and so Borrow’s religious repinings
and seige mentality are more to do with
his hostility to Welsh Nonconformity
rather than the pope (who was conspicu-
ous by his absence). And his sense of joy
and relief is palpable on his rare encoun-
ters with a customer of the church rather
than of the chapel.
And then there is the equally palpable
frisson our George constantly creates as a
Welsh-speaking Englishman. For all his
knocking about the open road Borrow
never lost his class-consciousness and
often comes across as a terrible stuffed
shirt, but this adds to the charm. This is
how he goes into a boozer near Llando-
very:
My entrance seemed at once to bring
everything to a dead stop; the smokers
ceased to smoke, the hand that was con-
veying the glass or the mug to the mouth
was arrested in air, the hurly-burly
ceased and every eye was turned upon
me with a strange inquiring stare. With-
out allowing myself to be disconcerted I
advanced to the fire, spread out my
hands before it for a minute, gave two or
three deep ‘ahs’ of comfort, and then
turning round said: ‘Rather a damp
night, gentlemen – fire cheering to one
who has come the whole way from Lland-
overy – Taking a bit of a walk in Wales,
to see the scenery and to observe the
manners and customs of the inhabitants –
Fine country, gentlemen, noble pro-
spects, hill and dale – Fine people too –
open-hearted and generous; no wonder!
descendants of the Ancient Britons –
Hope I don't intrude – other room rather
cold and smoking – If I do, will retire at
once – don't wish to interrupt any gentle-
man in their avocations or deliberations
– scorn to do anything ungenteel or cal-
culated to give offence – hope I know
how to behave myself – ought to do so –
learnt grammar at the High School at
Edinburgh.’
After this priceless comic monologue
and some small talk in English with the
locals, he is asked if can speak Welsh.
For a while he is evasive and toys with
his hosts’ suspicions, but eventually con-
fesses to it. Whereupon one old man tells
him plainly: ‘we don’t like to have
strangers among us who understand our
discourse, more especially if they be gen-
tlefolks.’
‘Especially if they be gentlefolks’:
this old man was as class conscious as
Borrow. But perhaps he really meant
‘Especially if they be acting like a total
prat.’
In memory of encounters like these –
and of many others where he doesn’t play
the fool – and to profit from them and
from this extraordinary and quirky book
and all the social history it conveys, per-
haps a George Borrow Trail needs to be
established. In west Wales it’s easy to
trace: from the Rheidol to Pontre-
fendighaid to Tregaron, Llanddewi Brefi,
Lampeter, Pumpsaint, Llanwrda and
Llandovery. Something for visiting walk-
ers to tramp along, from hostelry to hos-
telry, plenty of which still exist and are
easy to identify (there seem to have been
several all in a row up where Tafarn Jem
now stands). It might be the first tourist
trail to be dedicated to a tourist.
andy soutter
Mae’r Clwb Castenet a reolir gan y gymuned, yn cynnal digwyddiadau misol yn Neuadd Fictoria, gydag amrywiaeth
eang o gerddoriaeth, gan gynnwys jazz, gwerin, y felan a cherddoriaeth fyd. Mae rhaglen y clwb yn cynnwys bandiau ac
unigolion lleol a chenedlaethol. Y dyddiad nesaf yw 1 Medi, rydym yn
croesawi SMUDGER A’I FFRINDIAU.
The community run Castanet Club holds monthly events at Victoria Hall, featuring music from many genres, including Jazz, Folk, World and Blues. The programme will feature both local and national acts, the next date for your diary being 1 Sep-tember, when we welcome SMUDGER
AND FRIENDS.
does that shirt look stuffed?
11
THEATRE the tempest by william shakespeare
longwood players
long wood community woodlands, july 15
Outdoors happens a lot in Shakespeare, and if you’re going to
invoke the open air it it’s useful to have the real thing around. I
imagine playhouses of the Bard’s time like the Globe and the
Swan could have had all-covering roofs put on, but this would
have produced the Wimbledon centre court effect, which there
has killed for good the image of flannel whites, little brown
racquets, barley water and a small thatched pavilion in the
Home Counties, deep in an endless, oak-leaved Edwardian
summer, an image whose faint traces had lingered on that west
London lawn, sustained only by the genuine sky above in all its
genuine dazzle and propensity to produce passing showers.
Down on the Elizabethan riverside their patch of breeze and
sky could lend a fair bit of cred to all those spectacular exteri-
ors Willy the Shake and the rest were apt to come up with.
They were quite right to leave it that way, and besides with a
roof on it might have have turned somewhat pestilent in there if
all those stories about Bankside’s personal and environmental
hygiene are true. It wasn’t fully open air, but there was enough
of this available to drench the groundlings if it chose – the
stage and the circle were roofed – and enough to lend some
realistically putrid odour to a battle scene via the grubby
Thames or despatch a romantic zephyr to tousle Juliet’s tresses.
But if you’re really right outdoors, then you’ve got a prob-
lem with sound. Not the distant whine of an approaching agri-
cultural machine like some conjuration of Sycorax sent to mess
with Prospero’s plans, which we heard that Sunday afternoon
from the bleachers in the Long Wood, but with a team of rela-
tively low-horsepower thespian vocal chords.
Two years ago when the LW players were last here the
sound-deadening qualities of the venue – a forest floor thick
with loose soil and rotting leaves, a canopy of beech tops too
thin to trap noise from below, and a steep rake of front-on seat-
ing made of earth and logs guaranteed to swallow up most of
your lines like a sponge – were unchecked. This year that prob-
lem was solved twice over, first by a simple p.a., and second by
a series of awnings, overlapping from the stage area all the way
up to the back seats, whose sail-like shapes resembled the kind
of acoustic ceiling found in concert halls, and which functioned
in the same way to bounce the Shake’s words all the way up to
the back row. This was made evident whenever the actors
spoke off-mike by accident or design; in fact they could have
done without the p.a.
The blessed clarity of the sound matched the picture book
quality of the production, with performers and props in strong
colours framed by and restricted to the tight confines of the
little stage. It worked perfectly and we enjoyed it all. The awn-
ings I guess were probably to keep the rain off but I kind of
wish it had rained, though: first for a bit of real atmospherics
for the magician’s storm, and second because at one point two
of them didn’t overlap properly, which meant that in the event
of a downpour an entire row of spectators would have been
drenched. I think they would have appreciated this eventually.
a. p. laws
At her regular stall at the People’s Market Lea
Wakeman sells a variety of hand-made crafts using a
mixture of media including fleece, feathers and wool.
She makes and sells pictures and jewellery as well as
producing her own guided meditation CDs.
Kate Wilkinson, who lives in Ffarmers, has been in-
terested in making things with wool or on paper
from an early age. ‘All my creations are one off, indi-
vidual, mostly random designs,’ says Kate, ‘from hats
to rugs and shawls all using 100 per cent natural fi-
bres. I am also willing to share my knowledge of peg
loom weaving, using whole fleece to make your own
rug/mat. Or if you wish I can make one for you.’ For