Blwyddyn Newydd Dda i bawb!

Yes, it's that time of year again when everyone seems to make predictions about and resolutions for the New Year. Nothing earth-shattering from me. I'm just going to take it one day at a time and focus on the simple pleasures of life.

I suppose, as we say goodbye to 2024, we can take some comfort that we saw the back of the Tory pack of scoundrels after we faced arguably the most important election for a generation. So take heart my friends. Push those shoulders back, lift those chins high and steady your hands for this is no time to lose your nerve. There is still plenty of work to be done and battles to be fought, for faint hearts and weak minds will never win the day. Please, please, please, Keir, resolve for 2025 to enthuse us with your vision and leave the moaning about the Tories and fiscal hardship to others. So, as we enter 2025 together remember....

''There may be troubles ahead
But as long. as there is music and moonlight and love and romance
Lets face those troubles and dance".

But we should not forget what is going on elsewhere in the world. We are not alone in facing huge issues and, compared with many, many (most?) others, our trials and tribulations are insignificant. Notwithstanding all of our local doom and gloom, there will be many good things about 2025 that we should not lose sight of. Here are a few from me: add your own to the list.

* The sun will rise and set every day.
* Most people will eat, laugh and love more than they are hungry, cry and hate.
* The natural world around us will continue to provide immense pleasure to those who take time to experience it.
* Many people will practice, and others receive, unsolicited random acts of kindness.
* Communities and organisations will continue to work together and make the lives of many immeasurably better.
* Most of us will continue to relish the companionship and support of our network of family and friends.
* Children will be born and received into the arms of loving parents.
* Most of us will still be around this time next year.
* Healthcare professionals will successfully treat millions of us for a wide variety of illnesses and diseases.
* Other public service professionals and employees will continue to keep us safe and contribute to our good standard standard of living.

Each of us can accomplish something worthwhile in 2025: let's resolve to give it a go. Blwyddyn Newydd Dda i bawb!

 

Barry Island? Been there, done that - long before Gavin and Stacey.

Barry Island? Been there, done that. Long before Gavin and Stacey were born. The finale of the eponymous series has prompted a lot of very fond memories of some happy times. It really is a case of you had to be there to fully understand what the Barry Island Experience was all about. 

My family has had a long association with Barry Island and the earliest photograph I can find is this one. I can't identify all of the people but my grandmother is holding my mother. Mam was born in 1925 and I reckon this photograph was taken in 1926. I think it's my Uncle Les to the front, with a young Aunty Min just in front of my nan. My grandfather is at the back to the right of my nan.

And the next one comes from July/August 1948 and that's me in a rather rustic pushchair, in front of what now houses "Nessa's Slots". That's my Aunty Marj and Uncle John looking after me.

To put a little context on what follows, my memories of this period extend from the early 1950's to the early 1960's, between when I was 5 or 6 up until my mid-teens, after which Barry Island fell off my radar.

In the times I am talking about, very few people in our village had a car and day-trips were unheard of. So, any trip to Barry Island was done in a bus and was generally in a group, associated with a chapel or a social club. It was not unheard of for people to join a chapel a few weeks before a trip so that they could be eligible for it! Of the clubs, the trip organised by the Green Fly was a trip of legend. Practically every child in the village was eligible and, perhaps, 30 or more coaches were needed to take them (plus adults, of course). From what I remember, every child had a small gift (sweets/ an orange) and some spending money (threepence, old money?). If you were lucky, and had multi-allegiances, you might get a trip to Barry Island two or three times a season.

Barry Island was only some 25 miles from the village and the journey probably took over an hour. And what a journey it was. Lots of singing and laughter, which got louder the closer we got to our destination. I can still remember key points: alongside Caerphilly Castle, down the infamous Nantgarw hill, passing under the bucket line for the pit there, along the River Taff at Taff's Well, looking to see if we could spot Castell Coch way up in the woods towering over the road and then through a stretch of open countryside to reach Wenvoe Hill. A notable place for two reasons: firstly, we passed the impressive TV transmitter tower and secondly, this is where we had a first glimpse of the sea. From there, it was just a short haul to the parking places on waste ground just to the side of the causeway to the Island. And then, it was a manic scramble to get to the beach as quickly as possible to pick a spot for the day. This wasn't as easy as it may sound as there were thousands, and I do mean thousands, of other people wanting to do exactly the same.

Barry Island (or, more accurately, Whitmore Bay on Barry Island) when the Valleys descended was absolutely rammed. Not quite standing room only, but every square foot of the sand would be occupied. And the density ebbed and flowed with the tide. It was not actually a traditional seaside resort as it was on the Bristol Channel, a stretch of water with the second highest tidal reach in the world. As such, the tide went out a long, long way and the water was very turbid, with sand, and coal dust from the various rivers into which effluent from the coal mines was discharged completely unregulated in those days. The water was so dirty that I was genuinely surprised when I first went into the sea at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight in 1970 and could actually see my feet! This never happened at Barry Island! I understand that there are still water quality problems there.

Traditionally, we stayed on the beach for most of the day, perhaps venturing up onto the promenade for an ice-cream (not that often as money was very tight). The day was finished by some time on the 'shows' at the Fun Fair. I say 'some time' but it was never for very long as there was never the money for extended stays and never enough for a ride on the ride of rides, the Scenic Railway. We had to make do with the cheaper, and much less exciting, rides.

And after all this, we headed back to bus and the reverse journey home. Again, with much singing and laughter at the beginning but which lessened as tiredness set in. It was always a slow slog going back up the hill at Nantgarw as it was so steep. On one memorable occasion, our aged coach (vintage Caerphilly Gray's?) could not make it up the hill and all the passengers had to get out, walk to the top and get back on again!

For completeness, I should add that there were a couple of times when we went to Barry Island by train, a steam train, of course. The journey was not quite straightforward as there was no direct line from the village to our destination. Get on the train at Bedwas, short trip down the line to Machen, a little shunting and then onto the spur line to Caerphilly, more shunting onto the Cardiff/Barry Docks line and we were off to the 'seaside'. One thing we looked forward to was the long, long tunnel at Cefn On, which grew shorter, the older we got until it morphed into reality at about 5 minutes. Another highlight (rather sad, really) was the steam train's graveyard that was the Barry scrapyard. Row upon row of old, rusting steam trains, amongst which we could occasionally make out one that we had 'spotted' at Newport station. At the end of steam, Dai Woodham bought hundreds of withdrawn steam engines from British railways for his scrap business at Barry. He intended to scrap them but delayed doing so while he focused on scrapping redundant railway wagons. As a result, railway preservation societies flocked to Barry to select locomotives to restore to operate their lines. Out of almost 300 engines sent to Barry, almost three quarters were rescued from the graveyard, and over half lived to steam again. And I think that statistic is fantastic.

That's it. Happy times and the sun seemed to shine each time we went.

Barry Island doesn't need Gavin and Stacey to make it memorable. 

To end on a bizarre note about Barry Island. The ashes of Fred West, the infamous serial killer, were scattered on Barry Island after his body had been cremated on 29th March 1995.

Have you ever wondered where words come from?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary there are generally around three thousand new words added to the English language each year. Have you ever stopped to wonder where on earth they come from? Who designs and manufactures them? Where is the word factory? Whilst engaged in festive preparations recently I've had plenty of opportunity to let my mind wander, and I think I may have come up with the answer to this important question. The mine from which most of these new words are hewed is none other than our old friend the Captcha Word Verification system.

Just think about it. You decide to leave comments on a fellow-bloggers' page, carefully compose a paragraph of almost Shakespearian quality and then it is lost to posterity because you type in "brutlok" instead of "brutlik" and are locked out. How many of those verification words have you ever seen before? Precisely. None. They are fresh off the production line. Captcha has reached an agreement with the powers that be whereby it gets these new words for word verification purposes before they are officially allocated meanings and sent out into general circulation.

Armed with this flash of inspiration, I have invented a new party game - indeed, a new meme (and if ever there was a word graduating from the Captcha Word Verification factory it is "meme"). The next three times you visit a site which uses word verification, make a note of the word. Then invent a meaning for the word and show its use in a sample sentence. Here is my entry based on word verifications I have encountered recently.

1. slyma: a small dribble of saliva (often secreted from the corner of the mouth)
"Robinson Grimshaw threw off his heavy coat and wiped the slyma from his grizzled chin"

2. kersim: a minute part of a larger object (mainly used in relation to food)
"Whilst in the past Amanda would settle down for the evening with a large pie, she now contents herself with just a kersim of pastry"

3. deriesse: the final statement in a long and contracted argument
"With a look of fury Roger spat out a perfect deriesse as he walked out of the door"

Play along if you want but I am afraid you will not find any word verifications on my blog to use. You will need to go somewhere else. With that deriesse, I will leave you.

House of Lords Reform? Not on Keir's Watch

 A while back, I said I'd put writing about politics on the back burner. This is still my intention  but Keir has pressed my buttons on this issue. One that I feel very strongly about and one I really though he would deliver on. Silly me. Time to express my frustrations.

Starmer’s U-turns - or betrayals to some of us - are coming thick and fast. It wasn’t too long ago that he was promising draconian measures for the House of Lords. In 2022 he vowed to abolish it and replace it with a fully elected upper chamber. Yet the Labour manifesto for this year’s general election contained only a promise to get rid of the remaining hereditary peers in parliament, impose a mandatory retirement age of 80 for life peers and hold a wider consultation on the future of the chamber. Only the first of these measures has made it into Labour’s legislative program for its first year in office. Everything else has been kicked into the long grass. Hands up everybody who is surprised by this. Pretty predictably, I see no hands in the air.

This is all very reminiscent of Tony Blair’s promise to abolish the Lords when he won his landslide victory in 1997. The pledge kept being watered down until what we ended up with was the removal of voting rights from most – but not all – hereditary peers and the transformation of the Lords into the unelected Palace of Patronage we have today. Blair and successive governments have continued to stuff the Lords with cronies, donors, and failed politicians who have been turfed out of office by the electorate. In any other country this would be denounced as corruption. In the UK it’s an integral part of the system of government.

Starmer gives every indication of following in this line of corrupt and self-interested British Prime Ministers who have had no intention of abolishing the Lords for two main reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, because the existence of the Lords gives the Prime Minister immense powers of patronage. The potential of a peerage is a useful means of encouraging wealthy donors to give money to the party and an even more useful bauble to dangle in front of party colleagues who might have issues in supporting a particular policy that the Prime Minister seeks to get through.

Secondly, as a chamber bereft of democratic legitimacy whose members owe their position entirely to the Prime Minister’s grace and favour, the Lords provides merely a token brake on the exercise of unfettered power by the Prime Minister. An elected upper chamber would possess democratic legitimacy independent of the Prime Minister and as such could act as a real check on the Prime Minister’s power. Starmer is not about to surrender an iota of the near absolute power he has spent the last few years scheming to get.

We can tell as much as Starmer’s first step is to – in his words – “rebalance” the Lords by stuffing yet more compliant Labour party hacks into an already bloated chamber. With his massive Commons majority, he could have forced through an act to reduce the number of life peers and bring their party affiliation more into balance with the voting habits of the electorate. But instead he’s chosen to pump even more hot air into an already over inflated balloon. He’s balancing an undemocratic pile of ordure by dumping more undemocratic crap on the side that favours him.

Thirty new Labour peers have been appointed to go and get their noses into the trough. One of these is the political reject, Thangam Debbonaire, who had been the Labour MP for Bristol West until the recent election when the voters of her constituency ditched her in favour of Carla Denyer of the Greens. Debbonaire has accepted the peerage despite previously denouncing the awarding of peerages to political cronies. The Greens had warned that Debbonaire would be given a seat in the Lords if she lost the election in her constituency, something she had angrily denied. Talking of political rejects, there are peerages for Sue Gray and Therese Coffey. Hardly political titans, either of them. Take a look at the justifications given in the official 'announcements' and you'll see that most, if not all, peerages are given to party hacks and acolytes. A reward for what has been rather than for what is to come for the country. 

Moving on to something else, it was reported over the weekend that Starmer and Labour ministers are resisting calls to block Elon Musk from donating millions to Nigel Farage and Reform UK. The Observer reports: “There are concerns at the heart of the government that a hurried attempt to introduce rules targeting a Musk donation could backfire and hand Farage the chance to claim that Reform UK was being sabotaged by the establishment.” 

And if you believe that you probably also believe that Thangam Debbonaire was shocked and amazed when Starmer offered her a peerage. I don’t believe for a single second that Starmer doesn’t want to ban Musk from donating millions to Reform because he’s afraid it might backfire. It has everything to do with Starmer not wanting scrutiny of the sources of Labour’s own donations, and overhaul of a system that permits Starmer and his allies to rake in the cash from private healthcare companies or property developers. Party before country as always. But let’s suppose it were true, this very Westminster type of complacency is infuriating, lazy, and reminiscent of the useless Remain campaign in 2016. You’d think by now people would have learned that the lying, fear-mongering and manipulative far right doesn’t play by the same ethical rules as democrats, has no sense of honourable conduct and sees fair play as weakness. Due to his complacency, Starmer is sleep walking us all into a buy out of democracy by the fascist enabling Elon Musk, and that is perhaps his greatest betrayal of all. A pox on all of their houses.

Learning Welsh with Owen and his parsnips

My linguistic journey with Welsh via Duolingo continues, with Owen and his surreal obsession with parsnips featuring regularly. Owen's world is very, very strange. He pops up randomly and adds some humour to an activity that I don’t find particularly easy. But it keeps me stimulated. Here’s a selection of what Owen gets up to. And, I'll admit, I didn’t get all of the exercises correct. Hwre i Owen a'i pannas.