So what is this place?
Grey crags and green miasma in the western British mists. A place
like poetry, where nothing happens. A place of sheep and hairy men.
Where is this land? Most of the world do not know. But if they do
then they can rarely point us out. Wales, I never heard of that place
(conversation between the author and some picnicking black Americans
on the coast of South Carolina). Wales, the invisible, the lost. Wales,
the real Cantre'r Gwaelod. A small island in the Hebrides. A rock
off the west coast of Ireland. A hummock out there in the stormy ocean.
Wales, Grassholm writ just that little bit larger. Floating west,
full of birds.
Blaenrhondda
The great historian Gwyn
Alf Williams said the people of this place had "for a millennium
and a half lived in the two western peninsulas of Britain as a Welsh
people, (and) are now nothing but naked under an acid rain."
The tourist trade sells us as a place of endless singing, long yellow
beaches, rugby rugby and folk in stovepipe hats. Business promotion
says we are a global centre, a land of opportunity, a place to relocate
to, perfect transport, weather like Bermuda. The government says we
have the highest incidence of heart disease in Europe. We smoke too
much. We don't climb enough of our hills. Wales, a fake place made
by Woolworth, cellotaped to the west of the midlands, useful for car
rallies, and as a butt of English jokes. You are a country. You can't
mean that.
Everyone looks for Wales
and so many do not find it. Either like R S Thomas they search for
a Wales which does not exist, moving ever westward, in hope. Or like
the academics find a new Wales right in front of them, constructed
from the past's framework, a place that changes and doesn't simultaneously.
A land of magic. Wave your diving rod. Follow your ley.
Near the northern
border
Defining Wales is rather
like defining poetry. For every rule someone comes up with there will
be an exception which breaks it. Ultimately poems become what they
are because the poet says so. Wales is like this. The bit you think
of as real probably is. The Feathers in Llanystumdwy. The Greyhound
on High Street in Newport. Barafundle. The power station at Connah's
Quay. Splott. The Millennium Coastal Park at Llanelli. The Spar at
Flint. The writers gathered at the Vulcan in Adamsdown. The street
of subscribers to Taliesin in Pwllheli. The coach spotters at Swansea
bus station. Brecon Cathedral. The cairn at the far end of Golden
Road. The Urdd Welsh classes for adults. The sewage works at Aberystwyth.
The place up near Dyfi Junction where there's no platform but the
trains still stop. Pete Davis' Chicken Shed at Brynamman. The left
bank of the river Lugg near Bleddfa. The Codfather of Soul chipshop
on Barry Island seafront. The place where Dafydd Elis Thomas parks
his car near the Senedd. The steps of the National Museum and the
pillars behind which John Tripp hid his bicycle clips. The jetty at
Mostyn from where the Airbus wings set sail. The bridge over the lost
Roath Rail branch on Penylan Hill. All as real as each other.
In a country the size of
ours it should be possible to visit everywhere - some claim to have
- but there are still towns and villages appearing on the nightly
BBC Wales weather maps that I have never been through. And on occasions
there is one of which I've never heard.
Some people never bother.
Cardiffians - and some of them can be the worst - live and die inside
the capital. The Wales beyond is an alien land. Full of workless pits
and mountains. No Asda. No Lidl. I am not going there. Why should
I? What would I get out it? I have also met an extremely well-known
north Wales novelist who claimed never to have visited Pembrokeshire.
The south. Not Welsh enough. Non-compliance as a political act. For
him there are three countries: Y Fro Cymraeg, Welsh Wales, an arc
of land in the western reaches; Wales that might as well be England,
including the capital and the north east and the southern coasts;
and Y Fro Efallai where desire and actuality mix, where reality comes
in like a short wave signal - Myddfai, Banwen, Merthyr, Pontcanna,
Aber out of term time. Trefdraeth when the sun shines. Who is to say
that his Wales is any better than mine? Or that mine is more real?
Wales is a place where
some imagine that no one has raised a sword in anger since Glyndwr's
rebellion went down in 1409 and the Welsh were banned from ever owning
anything outside their borders. A place where others know, for certain,
that the real Wales is waiting, just round the political corner, and
a new day will come. Minorities rise. Nation states fragment. It's
the post-modern way.
The real Wales may well
be a place of people, a land of human intervention, of despoliation
in the search for minerals, of pipelines and power grids, and roads
that mesh the green like fishnet, but it is not an urban country.
The city life of disenfranchisement, dislocation and alienation is
not ours. Wales, land of communities, where decisions reach the surface
through compromise and conciliation. Wales where power frightens and
underdogs are prized. Wales where time slows and life is longer. Wales
where the past actually is important and historians are honoured.
Wales where highrise is feared and there is no navy. The real Wales
is where people always talk about who they are, strive after roots,
want fields rather than mansions, although generally have neither.
The real Wales is the one I've gone looking for. Not sure I've found
it all yet.
In Wales the sheep are
many. The rain is often. The light is brilliant. The skies can be
huge. The past can be picked up because it is often so near the surface.
The past can also never be found again because of what we have done
to it. Broken it, built on it, lost it, thrown it away. And there
is also the matter of the mysteries, that stuff of Wales which makes
things happen, or seem to happen, of which I've found no evidence
anywhere else. Kings sleeping below rocks. Blood in trees. Wonder
in the grass. Future in the air.
Star Wars in Splott
buy
a copy at £9.99
Peter
Finch
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