Osborne - The Heir To Brown and his Stealth Welsh Cake Tax

Osborne is truly the heir to Brown, although I doubt Gordon was big on coke and hookers in his student days. He's the heir in that the tax rises only become apparent in the days after the budget, couched in terms like "simplification" (a great phrase for his granny tax) and "correcting anomalies".

The "Greggs Tax", which adds 20% to the cost of food if it's bought hot (effectively taxing a pasty from the bakers like a restaurant meal), will, apart from wiping out the supermarket rotisserie counter (but good news ! when the chickens are stone cold there'll be no VAT!), do terrible damage to Swansea.

At the literal and metaphorical heart of Swansea Market (itself the heart of what the developers have left of the city) are the two stalls which make Welsh cakes on hotplates. There are other stalls selling the cakes, but aficionados like them hot. Whenever I'm there (quite often) I'll pick up some cold ones to take home and for work colleagues, and hot ones to eat within the hour at a relative's. Round the cake stalls are laver bread, cockles, local butter and cheese and other goodies. You may gather I'm fond of the place.

Hot cakes are already more expensive than the cold ones on other stalls, which are baked offsite. Adding a 20% tax to these cakes is a cruel blow to these small but historic businesses and to Welsh cake lovers all over the civilised world.

I doubt very much that Osborne has ever set foot in Swansea Market. It may not be his fault, but in the Commons he has the air of someone who at school might have delighted in holding lower-form boys heads in the toilet then pulling the chain.

I hope that the Welsh Assembly will be in uproar over this iniquitous tax. Let's see what the Plastic Parliament in Cardiff is made of. If ever a tax strike could command overwhelming support it would be here.

Limeslade Bay

If you want snaps of punky herons, Harpy is your only (wo)man.

Her views of the turbulent sea off Mumbles inspired me to take the camera when I was down there today.















It was pretty grey and getting dark, so it looks black and white. But Laban's no Ansel Adams, that's for sure.



















The magic of digital effects turns a slightly blurry shot :
















Into something a bit more more pointilliste :
















(I know it's all going to hell in a handcart ... but I'm too tired to blog political and cultural reality. Harpy and I look at the world from very different angles, but she blogs herons for the same reason I'm blogging Mumbles. At this moment I agree with Molesworth 2 :)

'How beautiful,' sa your mum to your pater. 'If only you could be noble like that ocasionaly.'

'It is only a world of makebelieve,' he repli. 'You must face up to reality.'

'Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.'

Sunday Sadness

Left, the monstrous East Stand, an Eighties addition to a previously open terrace which ruined the view of the pitch from the landings of Swansea Prison, seen in background. Front, a gaping void in the North Bank, the large terrace which could hold 10,000-plus fans in pre-Taylor Report days.

They're finally demolishing the Vetch Field, former home of Swansea Town, which has been standing empty for six years. The turf trodden by Ivor and Len Allchurch, John and Mel Charles, Terry Medwin, Cliff Jones (not to mention Dave Gwyther and Tony Millington), will become a 'landscaped area'.

Someone's pinched the clock.

There's something awfully sad about an abandoned football ground. I felt the same about Park Avenue, which for years remained empty in Bradford 7, the posts gone and the grass growing a yard high.



















Photo by ronaldaroo on flickr.

"Where now are the coaches and people ? where is the rattle a'rattling?
Where are the shirts and the scarves and the two sides battling?
Where is the roar and the chant, and the toilet roll throwing?
Where is the hand round the pint, and the cigarette glowing?"

The sporting landscape of a Swansea childhood is vanishing - at neighbouring St Helen's, the disappearance of the Mound Stand destroyed one of cricket's great pleasures - the ability to watch the sea and the shipping between deliveries. Then the old East Stand, recipient of a couple of Gary Sobers' six sixes, was demolished and replaced by what looks like an aluminium bus shelter. The stand overhung the Mumbles Road and was supported by pillars on the pavement, giving a cloister effect and shelter from rain. During the early Sixties wave of Welsh nationalism, the letters F R E E W A L E S ! were painted on the pillars. Within weeks some wag had painted out the W, and the pillars advertised free ales until demolition.

How Greenbaum Was My Valley

A fascinating history of the Jews in Wales, from a 1975 edition of the Jewish Chronicle. Interesting for the light it shines not only on Jewish but on Welsh culture as was :

"The brooding hills and green valleys of South Wales are evocative of so many things. To the Jewish traveller they speak of a life's story exceedingly strange and affecting. He sees an alien figure bent low under his outsize pack, walking up hill and down dale for mile after lonely mile. At the mining village tucked away beneath a dark hill, children greet him with: "The packman has come!" He knocks on doors, his only English words, "anything wanting?" (Welsh is a double-sealed book.)

Come Friday, he makes for home and family, Sabbath in synagogue and the Chevra Shass, the talmudic study circle. He is a learned Jew, among the few precious possessions he has brought from in der heim is his shass, his well-fingered volumes of the Talmud, and a desire to 'learn' more. He has brought his determination to keep 'the Law' whatever the difficulties. And so if he was caught on his way by the advent of the Sabbath, he would leave his pack and the small pile of money he had earned on the table of a friendly miner's cottage, and come back for his treasure on Sunday knowing it would all be there untouched."

A little like the story of the Mohammeds of Stornoway, that - their patriarch walked the hills of 50s Lewis with a suitcase. But the story in Wales is of communities growing with the boom years, then decline and in many places disappearance as economic opportunity shrank and (as with the Mohammeds) the younger generation moved away.

Among the other gems are the shortage of marriageable youth in Swansea, Jewish miners, the first Welsh-born Jew (Levi Michael, 1754, in Haverfordwest of all places), the sad decline of the Port Talbot synagogue (derelict in 1975, now built over) the Welsh-speaker who tells the author, only half in jest: "To be a real Welshman, you must be chapel", and the fact (new to me) that Churchill sent troops to Tredegar in 1911 after anti-Jewish riots.

Being a 1975 piece, there is no mention of the most famous Welsh Jew of all, a man who saved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, from burglary, assault and crime of all sorts by his decision, as 1995 Home Secretary, to start locking up criminals- the Blessed Michael Howard.

Men At Work

The Aluminium Wire and Cable Company, Jersey Marine, Swansea, in (I think) the 1960s.

Amazingly, we still manufacture both aluminium metal and aluminium wire in the UK. Just don't get me started on Anglesey Aluminium.

Immigration: the need for controls

I don't think I can disagree with a single word of this WalesHome piece by Michael Jones, a former open borders advocate. Here's a paragraph or two, but read the whole thing :

Some people say soothingly that one should relax about this. The whole history of Britain’s population, they assure us, is one of ebb and flow of different peoples and tribal groups. All of these facts are correct, but the way they are presented is thoroughly questionable. Past migrations, of Jews and Jutes, of Celts and Romans, of Angles and Saxons, have never been on anything like the current scale. Around 95% of Britain’s pre-war population had been born here, and the other 5% was mostly made up of English and Scots whose parents had happened to be serving the Empire.

Historically, we have been a country of emigration, not immigration. Ashkenazis entered Western Europe by the tens of thousands, not by the millions. The Normans, although they seized land and power, were a tiny elite. The Dutch who arrived in the 16th Century were, in proportion to the whole population, a much tinier group. Even the 50,000 Huguenots from France only ever amounted to a hundredth of Britain’s total population, and they arrived over a period of 50 years.

Today, immigration adds 1% to Britain’s population every two years, or more than 5% every decade. Inevitably, this has led to changes in the queuing system for council housing, which once kept established working class communities together, but has now been adapted to meet the needs of new arrivals, who have tended to occupy housing units in higher densities and have settled in enclaves, cut off from their neighbours by great walls of ignorance, by impossible language barriers and by a growing, cold dislike. In the south east of England and around the Pennine towns in the north, there are places where people from different racial origins never meet, never talk, never go into each others’ homes. The result is the worst of both worlds: stoking up resentment against foreigners: and stoking up resentment against the authorities. The question that pro-free movement advocates should ask is: will the descendants of today’s huddled masses join the middle class or form a new underclass?

Of course, we have no crystal balls, but leaders with sound judgment on core policies don’t play dice with the fabric of organisational life. We’re lucky to live in a country cautiously built up by our ancestors through institutions like Parliament, the monarchy, Magna Carta, the system of justice and, at a more modest level, the pubs, chapels, local choirs, co-operatives, county regiments, trade unions, local rugby teams, and thousands of other local voluntary clubs and societies. Without a stable population there cannot be the values, habits, understandings and loyalties that enable us to live as we do and perhaps sometimes to act for the benefit of others in less fortunate places.

I chipped in with a comment about the secondary impact of immigration on Wales - the westward shift of the English which is damaging so many Welsh-speaking communities - and which I have blogged here, here , here and here.

The Mumbles Train

I blogged the Mumbles train a couple of years back :

Any fule kno that the world's first passenger railway, the Mumbles train, would have been 200 years old this year. It was scrapped in 1960 by the local council, all of whose members are now being toasted here. Ever since I can remember, Swansea councils have been corrupt, incompetent or both - and according to this blog the tradition lives on.

Had it survived it would have been a World Heritage site and the biggest tourist attraction in Wales.

I'm just old enough to have ridden the beastie. The terminus was at the back end of the long-gone Victoria Station, in what used to be a fascinating hinterland between station and docks. Railway lines ran in the roads between the warehouses and docksides - the Swansea of Kingsley Amis' novel 'That Uncertain Feeling'. Alas all gone, replaced by dual carriageway, retail sheds and a sanitised marina.

The journey - along the sea front past the prison, the Vetch, the Slip (with its station, floral gardens, bridge and beach funfair), Patti Pavilion and St Helens, to Blackpill (where the accompanying main railway line turned off towards Gowerton), Oystermouth and the Pier - is still pleasant now, as a walk or bike ride on the path where the line ran. But it doesn't compare with a pasteboard ticket, a box of Paynes Poppets from the machine at the terminus, and a gloriously rackety journey. In winter the ride could be scary. The train always rocked a bit, but in a gale it would move disconcertingly. Upstairs, where the motion was accentuated, you'd wonder if it was about to fall over into the sea. Downstairs, with a stormy high tide the spray of breaking waves would slap against the windows - if you left them open you could get wet. We loved it.

I'm pleased to see that someone has put this excellent video tribute, showing then-and-now video of the line, onto Youtube. The first part's soundtrack is Spencer Davis' (of this lot fame) lament 'The Mumbles Train', from his latest 'So Far' release. A Swansea boy (didn't his mum work in the Lewis Lewis department store ?), Spencer is still playing .

At 4:58 you can see children retrieving their flattened pennies from the line after the train has passed.



I said that in a storm at high tide you could get wet unless you shut the downstairs windows. This recent video, taken on a stormy day near the end of what was the line, shows that you'd sometimes need to shut the upstairs ones too. The line ran right alongside the water. You can see why a ride on a stormy night was an adventure.

I trust Sarah and Liz will enjoy the video, if they've not seen it before. More stills of the Blitz and (near the end) the train here.

Darwin Nominees

It's pretty much traditional now. Some young scallawags get killed doing things that are perhaps foolish, perhaps criminal, or perhaps both, and their friends who pop up to mourn the deceased are, to a man or woman, incapable of writing in English:

"at t end ov t day 2 young boyz av died , av u never wen u was young was daring n willing 2 do things tha no1 else wud do??"

Compare the comments - and the mourners, above, with the much poorer community Gwilym Rees Williams grew up in - and wonder what's happened to our culture - and our education system - in the last 50 years.

The Way We Were ...

I noted a while back the memoirs of Frances Roper, (nee Hubbard), an upper-middle class Englishwoman of good Christian family, describing the first twenty-odd years of her life in Ealing, the Forest of Dean, and her aunt's orphanage in South London.

More comprehensive, and illuminating a totally different society, is Gwilym Rhys Williams - The Story of My Life. Lord knows what it's doing on a Canadian blog - did someone emigrate ? Ah yes - Ruth Hartnup, Aberystwyth to Vancouver. Nice family pictures here.

This memoir incorporates descriptions of a boy’s memories of life in the colliery villages of Cymmer and Gwaun Cae Gurwen before the First World War; a remote Carmarthenshire farming community (Panteg) between 1914 and 1935; life as a Grammar School pupil in Carmarthen and a student at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth 1925-29; a life-long teaching career at Llandeilo Grammar School (he probably taught some of my mother's relatives - LT); life and travels as a member of the Army’s Education Corps during the Second World War; and a description of a social life in Llandeilo centred around Capel Newydd; ending with a post-retirement period in Rhuddlan.

Here's some Original Sin from the early years in the 'Waun' :

These days there is a great deal of talk and press-reports about the increasing vandalism and lack of social conscience among children. It seems to me that there was little social conscience among the children of my childhood, even though, as I have mentioned before, parents had the Victorian attitude towards the up-bringing of their children. Children, indeed, may have been well-behaved at home, but once out of the sphere of its influence, moral standards were influenced by gang behaviour...

One example of vandalism in our childhood was the game of counting who had smashed the greatest number of what we called bottles on top of telegraph and electricity poles. One does not see bottles today. They were ceramic bottle-like fittings on the cross-bar of the poles, around which the wires conducting electricity were wound.

Another example of violence was the gang warfare between the boys of the Waun and the boys of Garnant. On many Saturday mornings, the Waun boys, equipped with rubbish-bin lids as shields and having a stock-pile of stones, stationed themselves on top of a viaduct facing another bridge, where the Garnant boys had congregated, similarly equipped. We then threw stones at each other. Sometimes the Garnant boys wilted and we were able to chase them as far as the bottom of the ‘cwm’. Once we had a serious problem on our hands. One of our boys had a facial injury, with a copious flow of blood, the result of being hit by a half-brick. The problem was how to carry him back to his home. I remember our trying to tie together some kind of stretcher, but I can’t remember whether we had any success.

I can also give more examples of behaviour which showed a lack of moral conscience These examples may give you, the reader, the impression that I am even now a man of doubtful moral and social conscience. No, I’m fairly convinced that children can go through this phase in childhood, and yet become responsible and morally sound citizens.

Looking back, I sometimes think that I should have been ashamed of certain irresponsible and inconsiderate tricks that we played. There was a sweets shop on the main road, not far from Gron Road. It was owned by the Hicks family, the son of which family, by the name of Haydn, I became very friendly with during my College days. There was a long passage leading from the shop to the kitchen. We were able to see through the glass door of the shop whether anyone was in the shop. If there was no-one there we assumed that the person on duty would be in the kitchen. We would then open the door a quietly a possible – there was no bell announcing an entry. There in front of us was a long row of glass-lidded boxes of sweets. So, before knocking for attention, we would lift the lids of several boxes and stuff our pockets with sweets. Then we knocked and when Dorothy – usually it was she who appeared – came to the shop we would ask for a pennyworth of sweets. A despicable act indeed! But did we have a conscience about it? Hardly, because it was repeated several times. It was no worse a crime than stealing apples from gardens!

There was another despicable piece of behaviour which was repeated several times. In a nearby street there lived on her own a woman, who was considered rather ’simple’ or ‘not quite sixteen ounces’. We used to play tricks on her, such as leaning a can full of water against her front door, and after knocking running round the corner to see what happened when the door was opened. Usually, the can of water tipped inside, accompanied by a loud scream. At other times we tied a black thread to the knocker, and pulled it from around a corner. As soon as she appeared and then closed the door, the knocker was pulled again – this being repeated several times.

He's right. Children have little social conscience and are much now as they were ninety years back - or a hundred and ninety, if it comes to that. And note the almost automatic compulsion to torment the weak (as in the memoirs of Frances Roper and Laurie Lee), or take advantage of the unworldly, not to mention the appeal of gang warfare (as in George Borrow). The difference between those days and our day is not in the way children are, but in the way adults respond to their behaviour.


How many more of these wonderful memoirs are out on the Web ? Please drop any you know of in the comments.

Abertawe News

via Edwin Greenwood, this wee tale.

Mass brawls broke out between Muslim and white groups on the streets of Swansea on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Around 60 people were understood to have been involved in the two connected incidents outside Swansea City Mosque on St Helen's Road and Sin City nightclub on Friday night.

Police, who arrested two men, said they did not believe it was a racially-orientated crime.

Pah ! A Friday night skirmish. Far more important is this :

The ex-girlfriend of Ospreys star Mike Phillips has told of her heartbreak over his alleged relationship with chart-topper Duffy.

Former Miss Wales Claire Evans told a Sunday newspaper that she was devastated when the British Lion dumped her for the singer.

Miss Evans, aged 26, had been with the Ospreys' scrum half for eight months before the break-up.

"his alleged relationship with chart-topper Duffy". Hmm. Tall, powerfully built, strong-featured - have they ever actually been seen together in the same room ?


Good hands, likes a bit of niggle at the back of the scrum and to wind up the opposition.



Powerful singing voice. Can drag a number out of the Bacharach and David songbook by its collar and dump it forcibly on the turf.



While we're in the Land of My Absent Fathers, who's the cretinous chav who bust the Big Apple?

Photo : Maggie Jones.

The owners of a landmark snack bar in Swansea Bay, which dates back to the 1930s, say its future is uncertain after a car crashed in to it. The 'Big Apple' has welcomed visitors to the Mumbles' Bracelet Bay for generations, selling gifts and food from the concrete kiosk.

But it has been left extensively damaged after being hit by a Ford Fiesta car on Monday. Its owners say engineers are still assessing whether it can be repaired. The apple kiosk was originally built as a stunt to promote a drink at sites across Wales and England. It is thought to be one of the last of its kind still in use.

But the owners, operators of the Mumbles Pier, say they are now waiting to see if the apple can be repaired. "It has basically demolished the whole front half of it," said John Bollom, the manager director of the pier company, Ameco. "We can't work out how to put it right at the moment - the construction of it was very unusual. It would appear that it was made in some sort of big mould with concrete and steel poured in to it. It's a very substantial structure and repairing it is not going to be easy at all."

South Wales Police said a 21-year-old man is being investigated for possible driving offences in relation to the incident.

There's a video here. But the BBC have merely reported on the Apple. The point is to save it.

Facebook group "Save The Big Apple"

Sign the petition to save the Big Apple.

So Soon ...

Can it be Six Nations time already ? And can it really be four years since our Murrayfield trip ?

And more to the point, can it only be this time last year that Wales went in at half-time against England hanging onto the ropes at 16-6 after a first-half battering, with Boks coach Jake White predicting the opening of the floodgates in the second half, before ten disastrous, error-strewn minutes saw England hand the game over ?

Not that I'm sanguine about today's game - you just can't tell with the Scots, capable of anything on the day and with a pretty good recent record against Wales at Murrayfield.

We're not going this year - because next weekend we're off to what will hopefully be the best Scottish skiing for twenty years or more. Snow is coming down by the ton over the Highlands - even Glenshee, the most extensive Scottish area but with (I think) the worst snow record, is plastered with the stuff. I've just checked the sites - Cairngorm's had another two feet at car park level, while snowploughs are still clearing the roads to the Lecht. At this rate we'll be looking to hire cross-country skis.

Trouble with Scotland is that since climate change kicked in, you can have good skiing one week and it can be melting the next - especially on the lower slopes like the Lecht and Glenshee, or the westerly areas, Glencoe (my favourite) and Nevis, where south-westerlies can bring rain. Only Cairngorm is high enough to keep its snow - and there the trouble is often high winds. But surely this lot can't all have gone by next week - especially given the forecasts.

Nonetheless it's been terrific value over the years - although most of the landlords have now realised that they can raise the house prices by a good 30% over half term. Seven or eight years back they still hadn't cottoned on - I used to budget £200 for a house, £200 for ski hire, £200 for lift passes - not bad for six people. It's a fair bit more now - not least because our children are a lot older.

Let's just hope we can find somewhere decent to eat !

Gone To Swansea ...

Back in a day or two ...

Whatever Happened In Llanbydder ?

'Twas two years ago that a number of people were arrested after allegations of what was believed to have been a sexual assault on a mother and daughter in Llanbydder, on the Carmarthen/Cardiganshire border. A pub which had become a hostel for Polish workers, the High Mead Arms Hotel, was cordoned off.

Then it all went terribly quiet. Anyone know what happened ?

Words Fail Me ...

Welsh AM Adam Price. Give me David Pryce any day.

What I actually suggest is that this touring ‘home nations’ occasional side is superseded by a standing European team which would play a series every two years, alternately home and away, against a Southern Hemisphere XV: a sort of Ryder Cup for rugby. I have to confess that my motivation for this is half sporting, half identity-politics. For me, it’s difficult to identify fully with a Lions side which even with the name change in 2001 is something of a (crooked line-out) throw back to a by-gone imperial age ...

This kind of posturing really gets on my wick. This son of Rhys is AM for Carmarthen East, a constituency which, like all of South-West Wales, is being transformed by English refugees moving along the conduit of the M4. Culturally, linguistically, demographically, the area is being changed - becoming less and less Welsh.

This guy is supposed to be a nationalist. One who doesn't care about what happens to his people or their land, but thinks its really important that the Lions shouldn't be 'British'.

And if you can't identify with this (no matter that I'd like to see more Welsh players) then I don't think you actually love rugby.


(via Sam Tarran)

Laban Is At The Seaside ...

Hoping for better weather and a few waves in the land of laver bread. Golf clubs packed for the kids (I keep telling them it's an old man's game), surfboard for foolish overweight fiftysomething papa (they keep telling me it's a young man's game and I think they're right), a hefty historical tome to get through of an evening - what more could one want ? And I'm bringing down a PC for my 81-year old aunt, who's just getting broadband !



Blogging will therefore be even lighter than recently.

Look At The Clock !

I told you my darling was a precocious reader. For the last five or six years she's had bedtime stories read to her, and we've pretty much done the 'classic' children's classics - Magic Faraway Tree, A.A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Wind in the Willows, Little Wooden Horse, Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, Treasure Island (twice), Lewis Carroll, Moonfleet, King Arthur's Knights, Robin Hood, Arabian Nights, Oliver Twist... she liked poetry too - the Nancy Bell and Ancient Mariner sparked an interest in the old ballads - particularly those with unhappy endings. Patrick Spens, Long Lankin, the Inchcape Rock - she can't get enough of that sort of stuff.

I wasn't sure about throwing a few of the Ingoldsby Legends at her - the rhymes, while the most inventive I know, are sometimes complex, the Reverend Barham likes to digress, and all the poems are full of allusions to the popular culture of the (early Victorian) day. I'm sure there's room for a copiously footnoted edition explaining all his allusions.

The Ingoldsby Legends - a collection of poems, legends, and ghost stories supposedly written by Squire Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, were tremendously popular in their day (Churchill and Hardy, among others, quote them in their own work) but are now out of print. A pity as I've never read anyone else who can rhyme like he can - puts Ogden Nash in the shade.

She loved the shorter ones - like the Ingoldsby Penance, and surely a contender for the three best rhyming lines in English, Look at the Clock !

'LOOK AT THE CLOCK!': PATTY MORGAN THE MILKMAID'S STORY

FYTTE I.

'Look at the Clock!' quoth Winifred Pryce,
As she open'd the door to her husband's knock,
Then paus'd to give him a piece of advice,
'You nasty Varmint, look at the Clock!
Is this the way, you
Wretch, every day you
Treat her who vow'd to love and obey you?
Out all night!
Me in a fright;
Staggering home as it's just getting light!
You intoxified brute! you insensible block!
Look at the Clock!-- Do!-- Look at the Clock!'

Winifred Pryce was tidy and clean,
Her gown was a flower'd one, her petticoat green,
Her buckles were bright as her milking cans,
And her hat was a beaver, and made like a man's;
Her little red eyes were deep set in their socket-holes,
Her gown-tail was turn'd up, and tuck'd through the pocket-holes:
A face like a ferret
Betoken'd her spirit:
To conclude, Mrs. Pryce was not over young,
Had very short legs, and a very long tongue.

Now David Pryce
Had one darling vice;
Remarkably partial to anything nice,
Nought that was good to him came amiss,
Whether to eat, or to drink, or to kiss!
Especially ale --
If it was not too stale
I really believe he'd have emptied a pail;
Not that in Wales
They talk of their Ales;
To pronounce the word they make use of might trouble you,
Being spelt with a C, two Rs, and a W.

That particular day,
As I've heard people say,
Mr. David Pryce had been soaking his clay,
And amusing himself with his pipe and cheroots,
The whole afternoon at the Goat in Boots,
With a couple more soakers,
Thoroughbred smokers,
Both, like himself, prime singers and jokers;
And, long after day had drawn to a close,
And the rest of the world was wrapp'd in repose,
They were roaring out 'Shenkin!' and 'Ar hydd y nos;'
While David himself, to a Sassenach tune,
Sang, 'We've drunk down the Sun, boys! let's drink down the Moon!'
What have we with day to do?
Mrs. Winifred Pryce, 'twas made for you!'--
At length, when they couldn't well drink any more,
Old 'Goat-in-Boots' show'd them the door;
And then came that knock,
And the sensible shock
David felt when his wife cried, 'Look at the Clock!'

For the hands stood as crooked as crooked might be,
The long at the Twelve, and the short at the Three!

This self-same Clock had long been a bone
Of contention between this Darby and Joan;
And often among their pother and rout,
When this otherwise amiable couple fell out,
Pryce would drop a cool hint,
With an ominous squint
At its case, of an 'Uncle' of his, who'd a 'Spout.'
That horrid word 'Spout'
No sooner came out,
Than Winifred Pryce would turn her about,
And with scorn on her lip,
And a hand on each hip,
'Spout' herself till her nose grew red at the tip.
'You thundering villain,
I know you'd be killing
Your wife,-- ay, a dozen of wives,-- for a shilling!
You may do what you please,
You may sell my chemise,
(Mrs. P. was too well-bred to mention her smock,)
But I never will part with my Grandmother's Clock!'

Mrs. Pryce's tongue ran long and ran fast;
But patience is apt to wear out at last,
And David Pryce in temper was quick,
So he stretch'd out his hand, and caught hold of a stick;
Perhaps in its use he might mean to be lenient,
But walking just then wasn't very convenient,
So he threw it, instead,
Direct at her head.
It knock'd off her hat;
Down she fell flat;
Her case, perhaps, was not much mended by that:
But, whatever it was,-- whether rage and pain
Produced apoplexy, or burst a vein,
Or her tumble induced a concussion of brain,
I can't say for certain,-- but this I can,
When, sober'd by fright, to assist her he ran,
Mrs. Winifred Pryce was as dead as Queen Anne!

The fearful catastrophe
Named in my last strophe
As adding to grim Death's exploits such a vast trophy,
Soon made a great noise; and the shocking fatality
Ran over, like wild-fire, the whole Principality.
And then came Mr. Ap Thomas, the Coroner,
With his jury to sit, some dozen or more, on her.
Mr. Pryce to commence
His 'ingenious defence,'
Made a 'powerful appeal' to the jury's 'good sense,'
'The world he must defy
Ever to justify
Any presumption of 'Malice Prepense;'
The unlucky lick
From the end of his stick
He 'deplored,' he was 'apt to be rather too quick;'
But, really, her prating
Was so aggravating:
Some trifling correction was just what he meant; all
The rest, he assured them, was 'quite accidental!'

Then he called Mr. Jones,
Who deposed to her tones,
And her gestures, and hints about 'breaking his bones.'
While Mr. Ap Morgan, and Mr. Ap Rhys
Declared the Deceased
Had styled him 'a Beast,'
And swore they had witness'd, with grief and surprise,
The allusions she made to his limbs and his eyes.
The jury, in fine, having sat on the body
The whole day, discussing the case, and gin-toddy,
Return'd about half-past eleven at night
The following verdict, 'We find, Sarve her right!'

Mr. Pryce, Mrs. Winifred Pryce being dead,
Felt lonely, and moped; and one evening he said
He would marry Miss Davis at once in her stead.

Not far from his dwelling,
From the vale proudly swelling,
Rose a mountain; it's name you'll excuse me from telling,
For the vowels made use of in Welsh are so few
That the A and the E, the I, O, and the U,
Have really but little or nothing to do;
And the duty, of course, falls the heavier by far
On the L, and the H, and the N, and the R.
Its first syllable, 'Pen,'
Is pronounceable;-- then
Come two L Ls, and two H Hs, two F Fs, and an N;
About half a score Rs, and some Ws follow,
Beating all my best efforts at euphony hollow:
But we shan't have to mention it often, so when
We do, with your leave, we'll curtail it to 'Pen.'

Well,-- the moon shone bright
Upon 'Pen' that night,
When Pryce, being quit of his fuss and his fright,
Was scaling its side
With that sort of stride
A man puts out when walking in search of a bride,
Mounting higher and higher,
He began to perspire,
Till, finding his legs were beginning to tire,
And feeling opprest
By a pain in his chest,
He paused, and turn'd round to take breath, and to rest;
A walk all up hill is apt, we know,
To make one, however robust, puff and blow,
So he stopp'd, and look'd down on the valley below.

O'er fell, and o'er fen,
Over mountain and glen,
All bright in the moonshine, his eye roved, and then
All the Patriot rose in his soul, and he thought
Of Wales, and her glories, and all he'd been taught
Of her Heroes of old,
So brave and so bold,--
Of her Bards with long beards, and harps mounted in gold;
Of King Edward the First,
Of memory accurst;
And the scandalous manner in which he behaved,
Killing Poets by dozens,
With their uncles and cousins,
Of whom not one in fifty had ever been shaved.
Of the Court Ball, at which by a lucky mishap,
Owen Tudor fell into Queen Katherine's lap;
And how Mr. Tudor
Successfully woo'd her
Till the Dowager put on a new wedding ring,
And so made him Father-in-law to the King.

He thought upon Arthur, and Merlin of yore,
On Gryffth ap Conan, and Owen Glendour;
On Pendragon, and Heaven knows how many more.
He thought of all this, as he gazed, in a trice,
And on all things, in short, but the late Mrs. Pryce;
When a lumbering noise from behind made him start,
And sent the blood back in full tide to his heart,
Which went pit-a-pat
As he cried out, 'What's that?'--
That very queer sound?
Does it come from the ground?
Or the air,-- from above or below, or around?
It is not like Talking,
It is not like Walking,
It's not like the clattering of pot or of pan,
Or the tramp of a horse,-- or the tread of a man,--
Or the hum of a crowd,-- or the shouting of boys,--
It's really a deuced odd sort of a noise!
Not unlike a Cart's,-- but that can't be; for when
Could 'all the King's horses and all the King's men,'
With Old Nick for a waggoner, drive one up 'Pen?'

Pryce, usually brimful of valour when drunk,
Now experienced what schoolboys denominate 'funk.'
In vain he look'd back
On the whole of the track
He had traversed; a thick cloud, uncommonly black,
At this moment obscured the broad disc of the moon,
And did not seem likely to pass away soon;
While clearer and clearer,
'Twas plain to the hearer,
Be the noise what it might, it drew nearer and nearer,
And sounded, as Pryce to this moment declares,
Very much 'like a Coffin a-walking up stairs.'

Mr. Pryce had begun
To 'make up' for a run,
As in such a companion he saw no great fun,
When a single bright ray
Shone out on the way
He had pass'd, and he saw, with no little dismay,
Coming after him, bounding o'er crag and o'er rock,
The deceased Mrs. Winifred's 'Grandmother's Clock!!'
'Twas so!-- it had certainly moved from its place,
And come, lumbering on thus, to hold him in chase;
'Twas the very same Head, and the very same Case,
And nothing was alter'd at all -- but the Face!
In that he perceived, with no little surprise,
The two little winder-holes turn'd into eyes
Blazing with ire,
Like two coals of fire;
And the 'Name of the Maker' was changed to a Lip,
And the Hands to a Nose with a very red tip.
No!-- he could not mistake it,--' twas She to the life!
The identical Face of his poor defunct Wife!

One glance was enough,
Completely 'Quant. suff.'
As the doctors write down when they send you their 'stuff,'--
Like a Weather-cock whirl'd by a vehement puff,
David turn'd himself round;
Ten feet of ground
He clear'd, in his start, at the very first bound!

I've seen people run at West-End Fair for cheeses,
I've seen Ladies run at Bow Fair for chemises,
At Greenwich Fair twenty men run for a hat,
And one from a Bailiff much faster than that;
At foot-ball I've seen lads run after the bladder,
I've seen Irish Bricklayers run up a ladder,
I've seen little boys run away from a cane,
And I've seen (that is, read of) good running in Spain;
But I never did read
Of, or witness, such speed
As David exerted that evening.-- Indeed
All I ever have heard of boys, women, or men,
Falls far short of Pryce, as he ran over 'Pen!'

He reaches its brow,--
He has past it, and now
Having once gain'd the summit, and managed to cross it, he
Rolls down the side with uncommon velocity;
But, run as he will,
Or roll down the hill,
That bugbear behind him is after him still!
And close at his heels, not at all to his liking,
The terrible Clock keeps on ticking and striking,
Till, exhausted and sore,
He can't run any more,
But falls as he reaches Miss Davis's door,
And screams when they rush out, alarm'd at his knock,
'Oh! Look at the Clock!-- Do!-- Look at the Clock!!'

Miss Davis look'd up, Miss Davis look'd down,
She saw nothing there to alarm her;-- a frown
Came o'er her white forehead,
She said, 'It was horrid
A man should come knocking at that time of night,
And give her Mamma and herself such a fright;
To squall and to bawl
About nothing at all,
She begg'd 'he'd not think of repeating his call,
His late wife's disaster
By no means had past her,'
She'd 'have him to know she was meat for his Master!'
Then, regardless alike of his love and his woes,
She turn'd on her heel and she turned up her nose.

Poor David in vain
Implored to remain,
He 'dared not,' he said, 'cross the mountain again.'
Why the fair was obdurate
None knows,-- to be sure, it
Was said she was setting her cap at the Curate;--
Be that as it may, it is certain the sole hole
Pryce could find to creep into that night was the Coal-hole!

In that shady retreat,
With nothing to eat,
And with very bruised limbs, and with very sore feet,
All night close he kept;
I can't say he slept;
But he sigh'd, and he sobb'd, and he groan'd, and he wept,
Lamenting his sins
And his two broken shins,
Bewailing his fate with contortions and grins,
And her he once thought a complete Rara Avis,
Consigning to Satan,-- viz. cruel Miss Davis!

Mr. David has since had a 'serious call,'
He never drinks ale, wine, or spirits, at all,
And they say he is going to Exeter Hall
To make a grand speech,
And to preach, and to teach
People that 'they can't brew their malt-liquor too small!'
That an ancient Welsh Poet, one Pyndar ap Tudor,
Was right in proclaiming 'Ariston men Udor!'
Which means 'The pure Element
Is for the belly meant!'
And that Gin's but a Snare of Old Nick the deluder!

And 'still on each evening when pleasure fills up,'
At the old Goat-in-Boots, with Metheglin, each cup,
Mr Pryce, if he's there,
Will get into 'the Chair,'

And make all his quondam associates stare
By calling aloud to the landlady's daughter,
'Patty! bring a cigar, and a glass of Spring Water!'
The dial he constantly watches; and when
The long hand's at the 'XII,' and the short at the 'X,'
He gets on his legs,
Drains his glass to the dregs,
Takes his hat and great-coat off their several pegs,
With his President's hammer bestows his last knock,
And says solemnly,--'Gentlemen!
'Look at the Clock!!!'

Kelly Hyde verdict

A teenager has been found guilty of murdering a young woman as she walked her dog along a bridle path. Adrian Jones, 17, beat Kelly Hyde, 24, from Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, around the head with a barbell. Jones did not know his victim and police said they still did not know his motive. He sobbed in the dock as the verdict was read out.

I should think he did. His previous evidence gave the impression that he never really thought anything could happen to him. I'd wondered if there was a backstory. Turns out that although only 16, he already had a conviction for stealing a car and using it to chase cattle round a field until he hit and killed one. Once he'd have gone to Borstal for that - and Kelly Hyde would still be with us. Her poor mum and dad.

Is that a face stud under his lip or a particularly nasty spot ?

"police said they still did not know his motive"

The things that go round a teenage male's head are not always the nicest thoughts in the world. If you smoke skunk alone I wouldn't think they'd improve. I doubt the internet has improved things either - too much dark stuff out there.

However, all is not lost for her killer. I would be amazed if he's still inside in ten years. And while he is he'll have all the dope and barbells he wants. It was a majority verdict, btw - which would not so long ago have meant a not guilty verdict. Of course there's no saying there would have been the same outcome then.

UPDATE - 11 years before release (12 and he's already been on remand for one). The good people of South Wales think it's nowhere near enough. More background - he also had a previous conviction for dishonesty. And I wonder where Mr Jones' father is ?

The court heard that Jones had been living at Mill Terrace with his mother and younger brother and sister for about six months before the murder. Also living there last September was his mother's boyfriend.

Because of his age, neither the judge nor barristers wore robes or wigs during the trial - and his mother was allowed to sit in the dock with him.

Hmm.



Remember Kylee Dibble ? The good-time girl from Barton Hill who let the wrong chap into her flat some three years back? She was beaten to death, her piggy-bank broken into and the flat set alight. The jury couldn't agree a verdict in the trial of Nicky Robinson, a 23-year old from the same estate, who in evidence admitted that he'd been there the morning she died. There'll be a retrial.

"I am 16"

Therefore I didn't do it.

The teenager was arrested within a week of her death and a search of his home found a dog lead belonging to her, which was stained with her blood. Forensic tests also confirmed that her blood was on the teenager's training shoes and a barbell used to kill her, which matched one found at his home.

Hmmm.

"I have told you I have no knowledge of this girl. You can ask me the same question but I will keep telling you the same thing," the teenager said during police questioning. "I am no murderer. I would not murder anybody. If I did I would not be standing here. I would top myself first ... It has been, like, tough, for three days now. I am 16, I am locked up with people telling me I have murdered someone ... This is beyond a joke. I am 16, I have got a job on Fridays, I enjoy the weekends and I party with my friends ... I am trying to be honest, but I do not know what the hell you are on yourself ... It makes me disgusted - I cannot believe that my name is down there for murder. I am upset ... I feel this is disgusting that I can basically be questioned like this... I would not be out of my house the next day laughing and smiling with my friends, partying basically... I am not a murderer, I would not have a clue. What would a murderer do, do you know what I mean. It's berserk."

Hmmm. In fairness, when you're 16 the world does tend to revolve around you. It's the mixture of truculence and self-pity that strikes me. But what about that evidence ?

The jury heard how during days of initial questioning by detectives after his arrest, the youth did not mention the lead. In police statements read out in court, officers then told him it had been found at his home and that the blood on it came from Ms Hyde. During the police interview the youth replied: "I do apologise. I panicked. I should have said from the start that I picked it up." He said he had discovered it while out walking along the bridle path where Ms Hyde was attacked, adding he had taken it home "and forgot about it."

Hmmm.

Officers also questioned him about blood stains on his Lonsdale trainers, which, tests showed, had also come from Ms Hyde. But he was adamant he had not seen any blood on the path. He told detectives: "I walked the path and now I'm here for murder. There is something wrong here." He demanded that police test the paws of his own dog, and the hooves of a horse he had seen on the bridle path, to see if they had also walked through blood without anyone realising it.

He demanded ? There is something wrong here, isn't there ?

In an interview, the transcript of which was read out in court, the teen said he had seen the lead lying on the path as he returned from walking his own dog. He also claimed for the first time that he spotted a small amount of blood nearby. "When I walked down the path I did see blood and picked up the dog lead and put it in my pocket," he said. "I thought I had just found a dog lead." He told interviewers that when he heard of Kelly's murder three days after his discovery he did not come forward because he feared that he would be blamed. He also maintained he must have walked through a pool of the victim's blood as he made his way home. When told that more than 40 officers had conducted a fingertip search of the area and been unable to find a single drop of blood he said he could offer no further explanation. "Why would there be blood on my trainers?" he asked interviewers.

Why indeed ? I imagine that there's a bit of a backstory to this young man, which we'll find out about with one verdict, and not otherwise. There's a bit here.

The boy told officers that he had got out of bed at around 10.30am, ate breakfast and watched part of the police comedy movie Hot Fuzz. He said that although he was feeling a little under the weather he was delighted when his step-father received a phone call offering the teen work the following day ... He said that he left the house at around 11.40am to take his dog for a walk and to secretly smoke a cannabis joint away from his home. He claimed that he walked along the bridleway just metres from where Kelly's battered body would eventually be discovered. The teen said that he reached a concrete bridge some distance beyond the bridlepath where he smoked the joint and then returned home the same way.

Not every dope-smoking, unemployed teenager is a murderer, or there'd be an awful lot of them. But Huw Davies QC appears to be playing a pretty thin hand.

The Rattlebag

via No Good Boyo, this English translation of the Dafydd ap Gwilym (approx 1320-1360) poem "Y Rhugl Groen". Enough to make you want to read in the original.

George Borrow devoted a whole chapter of "Wild Wales" to him.

It's a beautiful, day, you're out, hope springing, with an excellent girl (Dafydd was a bit of a lad, to put it mildly) - then something totally ruins the atmosphere and your chances. And you're bloody furious !

The Rattlebag

As I was (easiest praise)
one day of summer
under trees between mountain and field
awaiting my soft-spoken girl,
she came (it's worthless to deny)
to where she had promised, an undeniable moon.
We sat together (splendid topic,
a hesitant thing), the girl and I;
I exchanged (before a claim should fail)
words with an excellent girl.

And as we were thus (she was modest)
the two of us understanding love,
there came (a feebleness bereft of nurturing)
with a cry (some stinking feat)
a small ugly noisy (the bottom of a sack making a sound)
creature in the guise of a shepherd.

And he had (hateful declaration)
a rattle-bag, angry, with a withered cheek, harsh-horned.
He sounded (yellow-bellied lodger)
the rattlebag; woe to the scabby leg!

And then without gaining satisfaction
the fair girl was frightened, woe me!

When she heard (breast made brittle by a wound)
the winnowing of the stones, she would stay no more.

Under Christ, there was never a sound in Christendom
(a sow's fame) as harsh:
a bag sounding on the end of a stick,
a bell's sound of small stones and gravel;
a shaking vessel of English stones making a sound
in a bullock's skin;
a basket of three thousand beetles,
a surging cauldron, a black bag;
guardian of a meadow, cohabitor of grass,
black-skinned, pregnant with dry wood-chips.

It's voice hateful for an old roebuck,
a devil of a bell, with a pole in its crotch.

A scarred scab with a stone-bearing gravel-womb,
may it be buckle-laces.

Coldness be on the shapeless churl,
(amen) who frightened my girl !

Y Rhugl Groen

Fal yr oeddwn, fawl rwyddaf,
Y rhyw ddiwrnod o'r haf
Dan wŷdd rhwng mynydd a maes
Yn gorllwyn fy nyn geirllaes,
Dyfod a wnaeth, nid gwaeth gwad,
Lle'r eddewis, lloer ddiwad.
Cydeiste, cywiw destun,
Amau o beth, mi a bun;
Cyd-draethu, cyn henu hawl,
Geiriau â bun ragorawl.

A ni felly, any oedd,
Yn deall serch yn deuoedd,
Dyfod a wnaeth, noethfaeth nych,
Dan gri, rhyw feistri fystrych,
Salw ferw fach, sain gwtsach sail,
O begor yn rhith bugail.
A chanto'r oedd, cyhoedd cas,
Rugl groen flin gerngrin gorngras.
Canodd, felengest westfach,
Y rhugl groen; och i'r hegl grach!
Ac yno heb ddigoni
Gwiw fun a wylltiodd, gwae fi!
Pan glybu hon, fron fraenglwy,
Nithio'r main, ni thariai mwy.

Dan Grist, ni bu dôn o Gred,
Cynar enw, cyn erwined:
Cod ar ben ffon yn sonio,
Cloch sain o grynfain a gro;
Crwth cerrig Seisnig yn sôn
Crynedig mewn croen eidion;
Cawell teirmil o chwilod,
Callor dygyfor, du god;
Cadwades gwaun, cydoes gwellt,
Groenddu feichiog o grinddellt.
Cas ei hacen gan heniwrch,
Cloch ddiawl, a phawl yn ei ffwrch.
Greithgrest garegddwyn grothgro,
Yn gareiau byclau y bo.
Oerfel i'r carl gwasgarlun,
Amên, a wylltiodd fy mun.

A Free Media

I found myself in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, a few weeks ago, and I was horrified by the political bias in the state controlled press.

The Herald had this banner headline on the front page :

MDC'S CITY ELECTION BID SPARKS OUTRAGE

and the following "story" :

The news that opposition politicians will once again be fighting for votes at next month's local elections has sparked outrage in Harare.

Council leader Musiiwa Chikorobho (ZAPU) said the announcement that the MDC is targeting the area in next month's council election has left him "devastated".

As nominations for the May elections closed yesterday, the MDC had registered four candidates in Harare and two in Chitungwiza.

In Harare, Alex Gweru, of Seza Road, Timba, is standing in Timba township and Alicias Denhere, of Mangisi Heights, Mutare, is standing in Madziwa.

Johane Masowe, of Lon Gutu, Manatsa Town, is hoping to be elected in Manatsa, while Samuel Moyana, of Rhodes Settlement, Chavhunduka, is appearing on the Makomeke ballot papers.

Councillor Chikorobho said: "I am absolutely devastated.

"I think the ordinary people of Harare will be absolutely devastated that these particular people have been able to get a nomination paper signed.

"I think the citizens of this city will be wise enough to see these individuals do not, and will never, represent their feelings."

ZANU-PF group leader Councillor David Phillips said: "It is regrettable the MDC thinks Harare is fertile ground for them.

"I sincerely believe they are mistaken.

"Neither I nor any ZANU candidate will share a platform with them.

"This is a party that deserves no support."

In Chitungwiza, Adie Kembo, of Manicaland Road, Honde Valley, Penhalonga, is standing in the Penhalonga ward and Kevin Netsai, of Tokoloshe Drive, Raphela, Lalapanzi, is standing in that ward.

Two things struck me about the story - the main headline in the weekend edition of the paper.

First, it was essentially a non-story - or a manufactured one. Stripping out the outrage and devastation revealed the fact that two politicos didn't like a third party that was about to stand against them in the elections. Giving them a free front page for this non-story was ostensibly journalism, in practice a non-declarable donation of election publicity that would have cost them tens of thousands to buy themselves, and which would have broken electoral funding rules.

Secondly, and most sinister, the addresses of all the opposition candidates were published - on the front page of the main local daily. The "devastated" ZAPU and ZANU politicos were also standing, but their addresses weren't published. The addresses of all candidates are public, but are rarely splashed (in a negative story) over the front page. It looked as if the intention was two-fold - to remind opposition candidates that "we know where you live - and so, now, does everyone else", and to make it easier for ZANU's politically motivated thugs to attack them.

The editor of the Herald may be a despicable dirtbag, but he's a paid hireling of the government. We in Britain should be thankful for our free press, the tool of no political party - and should be both grateful that this doesn't happen here - and vigilant to ensure that it never does.












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... I say ! Where am I ?


Gosh. I've just had the strangest dream ... sorry, I'm still half asleep ... all about Zimbabwe and the elections ... whatever made me dream that ? ...







Oh Lordy. I've just remembered. I wasn't in Harare. I was in Swansea, this weekend.


And the paper with the front page story was the South Wales Evening Post.