I Hate it When a Plan Falls Apart

In which The Author is at home

This afternoon, I should have been on the way to Victoria Coach Station in London, in time for the 1830 departure to Cardiff. Instead, I'm in Aberdare. It's a long story, so let's start at the beginning.

In November 2012, I had the great pleasure and privilege of recording a heat of Brain of Britain, the long-running general knowledge quiz, for BBC Radio 4. (I told you the whole story of my trip to Manchester – and its disappointing epilogue – in It's Grand Oop North.) I didn't progress any further in the 2012–3 series, and there's a five-year embargo before one can enter again. Thus it was that I logged on to the BBC website in the summer of 2018 and requested an application form once the new series went into pre-production.

As before, the audition took the form of a phone call, on the afternoon of 29 November 2018. I'll admit that I wasn't exactly prepared for it. In fact, I was in the Glosters after an old friend's funeral, nursing a pint and enjoying some memories of our time together. But I took the phone into the lounge, chatted to the production assistant for a while, and managed to pull out some answers and make a few guesses. I must have done all right, because a few weeks later I had an email confirming my place in the next series. The recording was scheduled for the end of January 2019. They booked my hotel for me, and I'd sorted out my coach ticket as soon as the dates were pinned down. The game, it seemed, was afoot.

A few days before I was due to travel, I was struck by the flu virus that had taken most of Aberdare out during the preceding couple of weeks. I emailed the BBC from my bed, apologising that I probably wouldn't be well enough to make the journey. Even if I had made a miraculous recovery over the weekend, I wouldn't have given my best performance on the evening. It seemed I wasn't alone, because a number of contestants and a few of the production team had also been off sick. Unfortunately, my heat was one of the last to be scheduled, so I couldn't even swap with someone else and go up later. Instead, they offered to keep my place open for the following season.

By the time Xmas 2019 rolled around, I was starting to wonder if they'd forgotten about me. A good few of my friends had asked whether I'd heard anything from the BBC. It crossed my mind to drop them a line, to be on the safe side. But I didn't need to bother. As soon as everyone went back to work in January, I had an email asking if I was still interested in taking part. I told Lizzie, the production assistant, that I definitely was interested, and a few days later she confirmed my recording date: 2 March, in London. Soon after that she confirmed my hotel booking. It was right around the corner from the British Museum – perfect, because I wanted to check out the exhibition on the Trojan War on the Tuesday. I booked the coach the same morning and started making plans for the rest of the Tuesday. Today, in other words …

On 15–16 February, Storm Dennis came along and wrecked much of South Wales, including Pontypridd town centre and a fair section of the Valleys. Needless to say, public transport was particularly badly affected, with railway lines flooded and bus services cancelled. In fact, it took until last Wednesday (26 February) for the trains to start running from Aberdare to Pontypridd again. A half-hearted and chaotic Replacement Bus Service had tried to plug the gap in the meantime. My friends didn't have anything positive to report about the emergency provision, so I was already dubious about the idea of travelling any great distance. Can you imagine getting off the bus in Pontypridd and running up the steps just in time to see the Cardiff train pulling away from the platform? It happened to a few people I know. Then you'd have to get off the train at Cathays and force a path through the crowd on the footbridge to Park Place, undoubtedly in time to see the London coach pulling away from the stop about 50 m away. I wasn't optimistic.

Last Thursday lunchtime, the weather forecast gave a yellow warning in advance of Storm Jorge, which was – apparently – due to hit Wales on Saturday morning. Call me pessimistic if you like, but I emailed Lizzie and said I might not be able to travel up on Monday after all. I explained about the fuck-ups with the Replacement Bus Service over the previous fortnight and outlined the possible situation in Cardiff. Lizzie replied shortly afterwards; she'd seen the forecast herself and thought I might be right. She said she'd try and contact the other contestants to see if anyone could swap with me, and offered me an alternative date in April as a Plan B.

In the end, Storm Jorge arrived early. By Friday afternoon the roads around Aberdare were in chaos and the newly reintroduced train service was at a standstill. Again.

A gang of us from the National Tap were meant to be travelling to Chepstow on the Friday evening, for a 'tap takeover' at the Queen's Head. I phoned the bus company and we agreed that we were doing the right thing by pulling the plug on the trip. (Incidentally, our trip to the Brecon Tap in January fell apart as well. Everyone thought someone else was organising the bus. In the event, no one did. That's 0 from 2.)

Then Transport for Wales announced that there'd been a landslide on the railway line between Mountain Ash and Abercynon. Apparently it took ages to sort out a Replacement Bus Service – to the extent that my pal Martyn E. bit the bullet and slept in the pub where he works as a chef.

I emailed Lizzie just before close of play on Friday to update her. She got back to me straight away. Unfortunately, they hadn't found anyone who was able to swap recording dates with me. Instead, they're holding my place open for next year. Sound familiar?

Who knows what fun the Goddess of Chaos will have in the run-up to the next recording date? Watch this space …

A Found Poem

In which The Author digs out an old magazine

Back in September, I signed up for a Creative Writing course. Again …

It was a random sort of Monday, really. Chazz and I had been for lunch, and she'd commented that she needed a new dictionary. So we strolled over to The Works, because I knew they'd have the 'Back to school' offers in place. While we were in there, I bumped into David and Andrea from New Horizons. I'd met them shortly before, when I sat in on a taster session for Psychology and Criminology. Unfortunately I wasn't able to sign up for the full course because it took place at an inconvenient time (and venue). But they asked us if we'd be interested in the Creative Writing course, which was starting that very afternoon. I twisted Chazz's arm by telling her that she might get a song out of it (at least), and the two of us strolled around the block in time for the kick-off.

It turned out that I already knew Steve, the tutor. He used to teach a group in Aberdare Library, and also takes the guitar classes that happen there in the evenings. We'd chatted a couple of times, so it was nice to know I wasn't going in cold.

Anyway, I've put in a few pieces of work already, some of which I'm quite pleased with, and one is taking shape into a longer piece which might become an Actual Completed Project. (Don't stake your life on it, though.)

However, I don't like poetry.

I didn't enjoy studying poetry at school; I don't enjoy reading it, listening to it (with a very few contemporary exceptions such as Ian McMillan and Roger McGough), or writing it. My heart sinks whenever Steve says the word 'poetry'. So when he asked us a week last Monday to write a 'found poem', I realised I could do it without too much need for heavy lifting.

A 'found poem', in essence, relies on taking pieces of existing text and rearranging them into a new form. Now, I knew that with over two thousand books and many old magazines at home, I could probably find something interesting to work with. On Sunday, having finished a copy-edit and with Storm Ciara raging in the background, I pulled out an old copy of the London listings magazine Time Out and got to work.

This particular edition was dated 1–8 March 1995, so it's a whisker short of 25 years old. (If only we'd waited a couple of weeks, I could have taken it to class and we could have had some birthday cake.) I wasn't in London at the time, needless to say. I bought it purely because the cover photo was a head shot of the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh wearing a stunning studded collar.

If only I had been in London that week: Kevin Ayers was playing a rare gig that week; so were his fellow Soft Machine alumnus John Etheridge (a free Sunday lunchtime affair), Kevin's former musical collaborator Lol Coxhill, and a young sax player named Theo Travis, who (along with Mr Etheridge) is in the current Soft Machine line-up, when he's not moonlighting with Andy Tillison's band the Tangent.
I was in Aberdare when all this musical activity was going on. Go figure …

Anyway, I'd already decided to adopt the cut-up approach pioneered by William S. Burroungs and Brion Gysin – not literally, because I hate defacing books or magazines. Instead, I flicked through the pages and typed out the odd string of text that caught my eye. There was no structure to begin with; all I wanted were some interesting phrases or lines of text that could be stitched together in a new sequence. The more I read, the more I found. And, after a few hours messing around with the word processor, I came up with twenty stanzas.

In the spirit of 'found poetry', I need to acknowledge my sources, of course. All the text can be found in that particular edition of Time Out, so I won't credit all the people involved. (When I say 'all the text', some of it is so well hidden I couldn't find it again when I came to scan the sections in question on Sunday evening. But I swear to Goddess it was all there on Sunday afternoon.) There's a sidebar on page 3 of the print copy which lists all the contributors.

I've preserved much of the capitalisation and most of the punctuation from the original texts. I've added one or two line breaks and removed a few others. Some of the stanzas are more ridiculous than others; none of them make any real sense. But I think it's an amusing exercise, and it got a few chuckles when I read it out in class on Monday afternoon. Here goes …

'Plastic and TV are our natural world'

or

The next eight days in full

Until 5 March a spectacular full-scale replica of
Oscar Wilde's London
Situated in a herb garret in the roof of St Thomas' church.

So, the Brits finally hit
Men with animal skulls
'I mean, has she got a face?'
Ever been a perpetrator …?

Never mind politics
in this portrait of life in a north Wales village at the
Grace Theatre at the Latchmere pub
Roy Smiles' shoestring musical spoof,
rather than being political statements,
tempts you with a promise to make it all better.

Those who received a copy of
the first season of Danger Man
Wish I hadn't …

A famous de Kooning aphorism:
Why have so many people had a charisma bypass?

London't acute shortage of
A chic Italian restaurant
Serious without being earnest
Defies easy definition.

The thing about the best road movies
If in doubt, add a serial killer.
Preview tapes were unavailable.

Controversial, we know, but
Philosopher, wit, fearless experimentalist and oddball
Pierre Boulez has marked this century both with
This bawdy, modern-day version of 'Cinderella'
and with a taut, swinging delivery.

PARACHUTING, SKYDIVING, BUNGEE
JUMPING, FLYING, GLIDING, HELICOPTERS
Denotes activity or entertainment particularly
suitable for under-fives.

Are you violent? Do you want to stop
Entering the gallery, you'd be forgiven for
Photographing naked people in city streets;
'Flesh is the reason oil painting was invented.'

The Courtauld has a splendid permanant
collection of old masters such as Rubens and
Beveridge, Watson & Crick, and Hancock.

Pentangle founder-member Jansch, one of the finest
exponents of the ornate finger-picking style he
helped popularise in the 60s
When Starr Faithfull's body was
Pronounced a delight by our
Young Gay and Lesbian Writing Workshop

Excellent and always playful,
Two physically identical girls, living in Poland
In this rich, evocative feast of puppetry and
board-game action hosted by Steve, Figs and Mike
on the main floor. Or you can revive the black leather
girl traumatised by childhood rape.

The songs themselves proffer a mildly
affectionate and very funny odyssey through
Getting Away with Murder.

The German audience and critics were
absolutely clear about it: the only film
that deserved to win Berlin's top prize
– the Golden Bear – was Wayne Wang's
Starsky and Hutch

Waxworks of the famous and infamous, now with
Ming Ming, also Nile crocodiles, rare Asiatic lions
and cubs and a large aquarium with sharks and
former Italian leader with a
child's toy arrow attached by its sucker
to his nose

For dirty, fuck-faces and elemental punk,
Exceptionally adventurous female
Jennifer Jason Leigh's filmography reads like
The best of American modernist art.

Lovely, lithe female graduate, 40
years experience as a clairvoyant, proven
slighly scatty, into real ale and good living,
bit scruffy, veggie, lefty, daunted by new capital
surroundings, looking for woman with or without
ANY NATIONALITY for long-term friendship.

Following last night's orgy of marijuana.
In the best surrealist tradition, Buñuel
involves shifting disembodied brains from
a compendium of favourite elements
and the same two old stalwarts as before.

Beirut bombshell
Abbot still a Virgin
Game for a group blind date?
Bad sex
Love and Bullets
Wee-wee in the wind
Reefer Madness
All slap and no tickle
AIDS memoirs
Next Time I'll Kill You

Solstice Silliness

In which The Author has a random afternoon in Llantrisant

A couple of months ago, I signed up to become a platelet donor with the Welsh Blood Service. This has involved making a few trips to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, just outside Talbot Green. By a happy coincidence, my Iraqi near miss Karin relocated to Talbot Green during the summer. As my first appointment was shortly after she moved, we decided to meet up near the shopping centre and walk up to old Llantrisant, high on the hill above Talbot Green. It's a medieval town in a stunning location overlooking the upper Vale of Glamorgan, with steep, winding cobbled streets lined with quaint cottages, a fine church, a guildhall (recently restored and now the town's museum), the former workhouse which is now a base for artists and craftspeople, some old-style shops, a lovely little cafe which Karin and I visited while we were there, a smattering of chapels and a handful of pubs. There's also what remains of the castle, the base of the Welsh longbowmen who became England's secret weapon at the Battle of Crécy.

Anyway, I signed up for the Llantrisant page on Facebook after our visit there. As it's only a short bus ride from Pontypridd, with regular services running into the night (for hospital visits), I started wondering about visiting the place more often. For various reasons (mainly work commitments), I haven't been able to find the time. But I put Mark Alder's new book away on Saturday lunchtime, having reached a convenient point to down tools, thus freeing up the rest of the weekend. And yesterday was a perfect excuse to visit Llantrisant again.

One of the music groups I'm connected with on social media is the Llantrisant Folk Club. They shared something a few weeks ago that caught my eye. They were planning to be out and about in the pubs with the Mari Lwyd on the weekend before Xmas. On the Sunday, in fact.

You're probably wondering what the Mari Lwyd is. Well, all will be revealed …

I checked Traveline Cymru and, lo and behold, there are buses on a Sunday. They don't exactly mesh with the trains from Aberdare, but it still made a nice afternoon a real possibility.

I set off from Aberdare on the 1053 train yesterday, with patches of blue sky and brief flashes of sunshine overhead. I arrived in Pontypridd half an hour later, leaving me time for breakfast in Thereisnospoon (opposite the station) before catching the bus. So far, so good … until I stepped onto the platform and the heel of my right boot came off. It didn't break completely, but managed to cling on by a narrow strip of material. I got as far as the pub without losing it altogether, ordered my breakfast, and managed to scrounge some duct tape from the back office. It was a running repair at least, and I knew it wouldn't last long. Then the waitress told me they'd run out of Quorn sausages, so we had to arrange a substitute breakfast. Fortunately, she was tall, slim, very pretty, with gingerish hair and a good personality, so I was quite happy to chat to her for a couple of minutes.

I left to catch the bus, just in time for the heavens to open. I didn't exactly hobble to the bus stop opposite St Catherine's Church, but the water didn't do a great deal for my temporary repair. I got on the bus, paid my £6.60 return fare to Llantrisant, and sat back to enjoy the journey which I'm starting to know now.

[A digression: £6.60 is the same price as the daily cap on Oyster card fares in Zones 1 and 2 of the Transport for London map. That buys you unlimited travel by bus, Tube, and train in a fair area of the capital. Here in Wales, it gets you a half-hour bus journey between two neighbouring towns and back again. Go figure …]

Anyway, I got off the bus at the Wheatsheaf, a pub which has recently closed down, and made my way into the centre of town. My first port of call was the local shop, where I was able to buy a roll of tape, and then I walked around to the castle and guildhall to take a few photos. But my heel was coming undone again, so I repaired (geddit?) to the nearest alehouse for a second attempt at a repair job.

I should mention that, for yesterday's expedition, I was wearing a white turtleneck sweater (a British turtleneck, not an American one), a black pleather skirt to mid thigh, black tights and my boots, which come to just below the knee. I also had on Karen's old purple velvet jacket, which she gave me when she outgrew it. I wore a skirt the day I was with Karin as well – in fact, today marks six months since I ditched the jeans and T-shirts and adopted female attire as my default option. But I didn't know how my change of image would go down in a pub in a strange town.

I strolled into the New Inn and ordered a glass of Pepsi without a murmur from any of the customers or staff. In fact, one young woman who came in with a group of friends just after I sat down told me she loved my boots. That was pretty cool, I thought.

I sat by the window, wondering what the mobile reception would be like. That solved one problem that's been preying on my mind since the start of the Vanishing Valleys photographic project (see Where Do We Draw the Line?). Llantrisant definitely isn't in the Valleys – there was excellent 4G coverage from EE. That seems to be as good a benchmark as anything else. Then I messaged Carys to let her know I'd arrived.

Carys, last seen in this blog some years ago (see Educating Nancy), is an Aberdare girl I met between finishing work and starting university. She moved with her young son to Tynant, near Beddau, a few years ago and I haven't seen her since. Like me, she also went back to university as an immature student, in her case to study Enviromental Conservation Management. She's always been passionate about green issues, so it was the perfect degree for her when she took up the reins again.

We're still in touch and, in fact, she tipped me off about last year's Mari Lwyd event. If I'd had a bit more notice (or a lift), I would have gone over. Tynant is a short drive from Llantrisant (it's even on the bus route), so it made sense for us to arrange to meet up for a pint this time. She replied, 'I love the New Inn', which was a good start. I found a corner table with two seats and watched groups of people coming in for lunch. It was really busy (unsurprisingly) and the staff were working flat out to try and cope with the orders at the bar.

Carys walked in just as I was about to get a pint. She nudged me from behind, and then we gave each other a big cwtch. She was with an older woman named Julie, whom I recognised from Carys's photos online, and a chap named Ray whom I didn't know. They are friends of Carys's from Tynant. Carys and Julie have been recognised by the local authority as Community Environmental Champions (which is how I recognised Julie). Julie bought us a round, and four people got up and left just in time for us to grab their table. I got my jacket and we sat down for a good chat.

It turned out that Julie and I have a mutual friend in the form of Rowland, the former editor of my local paper. He went on to be a press officer in the Wales Office, and then did the same role for an Assembly Member in Cardiff. Julie was a news editor with BBC Radio Wales. (It's a small world, isn't it?) She was very interested in my work, which is rather different from the sort of editing she used to do. Carys told me that Julie's involved with just about every committee you can imagine, and Carys is pretty much her protégée.

The conversation was rambling, the beer was going down a treat, the bar was full of people chatting and laughing, and then the door burst open and Carys shouted 'It's here!' That was the start of the weirdest ten minutes of the entire day.

I promised you an explanation of the Mari Lwyd. To save me the trouble, here, borrowed from Facebook, is a contemporary take on things, followed by the photos I took yesterday.

 

This silliness lasted for ten minutes or so, and was great fun to watch. I'm going to try and network in with the people from the club in the new year (because Carys is getting to know everyone around the area now) and see if we can tempt them into Jacs at some point.

Julie and Ray made their excuses and left after a second pint, so Carys and I made our way to the Bear, in the Bull Ring – the little square at the centre of the town, where the main road runs. There's a statue there of one of the town's famous Victorian inhabitants: Dr William Price. I won't try and sum up this remarkable man in a paragraph. Instead, I'll link to the official Llantrisant website, where you can read about him for yourself.
It's a great statue, and my good friend Alwyn Isaac (a very gifted artist, orginally from Tonyrefail but now living in Aberdare) did the slate carving on the information plaque. We asked a family who were coming up from the Bear if they'd take a photo of us with the good doctor. One of the daughters borrowed Carys's phone and here's the result:

Please note that I was standing on the ground and Carys was standing on the plinth. It's the first time she's ever been taller than me.

Sitting in a cosy armchair in the Bear with a pint of beer in front of her, Carys told me how her life has turned around since she moved to Tynant. When she was in Aberdare she was unemployed, taking a lot of drugs, getting into bad company, and generally losing track of her life. Since moving away (only a few miles as the crow flies), she's cleaned up her act, she's working in a local shop (for local people) and doing some bar work as well; her son Jac (now eight years old) is doing well in school; she's involved in all sorts of community activities and environmental groups. The more she told me, the more pleased for her and the more proud of her I felt. She's always been a great pleasure to spend time with, but the new positive, focused, forward-looking Carys is a true delight and an unsung Welsh success story.

I'll be spending more and more time in and around Llantrisant in 2020, with platelet donation being possible every month (not just every three months, as with whole blood donation). Depending on the clinic schedule, I might not be able to catch up with Carys every time, but we're sure to see a lot more of other now that I'm getting to know the area. It's the sort of place where you'd need a car in order to live (semi-rural, and with only Pontypridd as the nearest big town), but after yesterday I felt I could easily move there and not really miss Aberdare too much. And what's not to like about a place where a bunch of mad people take a horse's skull on a pub crawl?