Yet more good news for Celtic Romanticist Travel Scholars

At some point I'll return to using Plashing Vole as a dart board for my arrows of opinion (perhaps having grown a beard for a few weeks I was the anti-Samson), but for now, here's another opportunity for all you budding scholars of Romantic travel writing:

The AHRC-funded ‘Curious Travellers’  project is pleased to advertise a fully-funded PhD, to start 1st October 2015, exploring any aspect of C18th and Romantic-period tours to Wales and Scotland.  The post will be based in the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS) in Aberystwyth, and will run for three years.  We invite applicants to offer ideas from a broad spectrum of possible research topics within the main subject of 'The Welsh and Scottish Tour 1760-1820'. Suggestions might include (but are not restricted to): 

Perceptions of Wales and the Welsh/ Scotland and the Scots in written tours, published and unpublished; the experience of female travellers; antiquarian recoveries of early Britain; the writings of Thomas Pennant;  correspondence and knowledge networks; encounters with Welsh/Gaelic literature or song; natural history writing in the tours; enlightenment science and domestic travel; topographical art and artists. A candidate interested in the visual art aspects of the project would have the possibility of working closely with the topographical art collections in the national libraries and museums of Wales and Scotland.  

The successful candidate will work alongside a team of researchers currently engaged in the AHRC-funded project “Curious Travellers: Thomas Pennant and the Welsh and Scottish Tour (1760-1820)”, jointly run by CAWCS and the University of Glasgow, and led by Dr Mary-Ann Constantine and Professor Nigel Leask.  The deadline for applications is 30 April 2015: for further information about the project and details of the award please contact mary-ann.constantine@cymru.ac.uk

Good luck with that

The unpleasant fringe nationalist English Democrats party is running several candidates in… Wales!

Is the Empire back, or is this some kind of attempt at humour?

According to their webpage, they think that Monmouthshire is suffering under the Welsh yoke, while apparently not minding that Wales itself was forcibly incorporated into England by the Act of Union.

It's time for Monmouth to throw off fascist Welsh imperialism! Who's with them?
Er… nobody. 2% in Monmouth constituency, well behind the Welsh Nationalists' 8%! They managed 1% in the region, behind the Welsh Greens and the Welsh Christian Party. Well done, chaps!

Presumably their next move is to run candidates in Calais and Le Havre, given that the perfidious French forcibly incorporated these ports into France in 1558 and 1450 respectively.

One step closer to statehood

It's referendum result day in Wales: the vote was to give the Welsh Assembly law-making powers similar to the Scots Assembly. I have no idea why Wales didn't get them from the start other than Anglocentric discrimination, and it's about time.

Live TV coverage of the results here or an English-language webpage here: final tally at 1300.

Cymru am byth!

Welsh students should be feeling pretty smug at the moment - and English/Scots teenagers should be packing their bags. Why? Because the Welsh government (which doesn't have enough powers yet) has announced that it will pay the fees increase for Welsh students, wherever in the UK they study. Students will pay £3000 as they do now if they're Welsh or have lived in Wales for 3+ years, and if the fees are £9000, the Welsh government will find the rest. Unfortunately, they're taking the money out of the Welsh universities' teaching grant, so we'd better hope that the kids choose Welsh colleges, but it's still great.

The government minister, Leighton Andrews, had some very clear and intelligent things to say about tuition fees.

“We do not support full-cost or near full cost fees. We do not believe that higher education should be organised on the basis of a market.

We have a responsibility to Welsh-domiciled students, wherever they choose to study. We also have a responsibility to ensure that Wales benefits, economically, socially and culturally, from the investment that the Assembly Government makes in higher education in Wales.

“This is a ‘Made in Wales’ policy which demonstrates the benefits of devolution. We are preserving the principle that the state will subsidise higher education and maintain opportunities for all.”

It's also a great idea because it's helping break up the UK. As devolved governments make their own choices, different areas will have varied political and economic priorities, and there will be competition between them. As a fan of breaking up tired post-imperialist constructions (the UK in its current form has been around since 1922) in favour of small, feisty, lefty countries (think Norway), I'm all for it.

Just for yow

An extract from George Borrow's 1862 Wild Wales, just for the inhabitants of the Black Country and Birmingham:

At Birmingham station I became a modern Englishman, enthusiastically proud of modern England's science and energy; that station alone is enough to make one proud of being a modern Englishman. Oh, what an idea does that station with its thousand trains dashing off in all directions, or arriving from all quarters, give of modern English science and energy. My modern English pride accompanied me all the way to Tipton; for all along the route there were wonderful evidences of English skill and enterprise; in chimneys high as cathedral spires, vomiting forth smoke, furnaces emitting flame and lava, and in the sound of gigantic hammers, wielded by steam, the Englishman's slave. After passing Tipton, at which place one leaves the great working district behind, I became for a considerable time a yawning, listless Englishman, without pride, enthusiasm, or feeling of any kind…

I'm not surprised. Next stop from Tipton is The Dark Place, home of The Hegemon! Birmingham was indeed an industrial powerhouse - but the workers came from all over the world, particularly Wales and Ireland. The industry is gone now - between Birmingham and Tipton is a wasteland of abandoned and demolished factories, the only vomit that of revellers - usually Gary O'D - drowning their sorrows, the only hammer the one I (literally) used on my wall on Friday night in a fruitless attempt to get my neighbour to turn his music down…

The Gnome of Zurich

In today's Guardian interview, Lewis Hamilton claims - with a straight face - that he moved to Switzerland because he's

always wanted to live by a lake, and I do now [in Zurich]. I've also wanted to live in a place where they speak a different language. 

Lewis, if that's true, then I have the solution. You can pay taxes like a normal citizen, live by a lake and learn another language, while being closer to your family.

Croeso i Gymru, or Welcome to Wales.

Llyn Bala

Llyn Bala

Llyn Llydaw

Top Tips for Thieves

No, not plagiarists, but advice on how to steal rare maps from books.

There was a man who always came in chewing. He spent an age with books containing maps or prints. Always left buying nothing. We thought he was doing research, completing his MA here in store. He turned out to be chewing string. When this was suitably wet he’d lay it along the inside spine next to a desirable map. The dampness would seep into the paper and after ten minutes or so he was able to slide out the print without making any sort of tearing sound. Up his sleeve it went. Sold on to the antique market the same day.

It's from Peter Finch's blog: he's a fine poet, critic and journalist from Wales who is consistently interesting.

Welsh fiction's moment in the sun

The Guardian has a short feature on Welsh books (in English or translated into English) for cool kids - urban and hip rather than concerned with the loss of land, language and work. I've read most of them and have the rest on order, and will be teaching Freshers (originally Ffreshars) next year.

It's worth a read - non-metropolitan work doesn't often get a look in, thanks to the economics and cultural position of the publishing industry, but new perspectives are always interesting, whether you enjoy the books themselves or not.

Of Trezise's list, I'd recommend anything Niall Griffiths writes. He's interested in the Liverpool-North Wales diaspora and the consequences of community and cultural decay, which goes both ways, and is influenced by Irvine Welsh but I think he's got more depth. So Long, Hector Bebb is a brilliant, technicolor punch in the face (it's partly about boxing) of the dreary Chapel-obsessed moral novels and One Moonlight Night/Un Nos Ala Leuad follows Caradoc Evans in excavating the twisted horror underlying the Nonconformist rural Wales of postcard fame. I'd say that anything Gwyn Thomas (the novelist who described his work as 'Chekhov with chips', not the poet) wrote is stunning, and the same goes for Chris Meredith (men marooned in post-industrial Wales) and Wiliam Owen Roberts, whose experimental novel Y Pla or Pestilence unites medieval Wales and Vietnam to amazing effect. Y Pla has been translated into English and several other languages but his other novels haven't, which is a shame as he's such a brilliant exponent of what might be called postmodern writing.

I notice that these are mostly by men - accidentally. Wales is bursting with talented female writers - Catherine Merriman, Fflur Dafydd (a personal favourite), Menna Elfyn, Kate Roberts (who I think is one of the top ten writers of the twentieth century), Dorothy Edwards, Eiluned Lewis - and I've not even got on to the poetry.

Finally, if you want a laugh (with some suspense), try Malcolm Pryce's Aberystwyth series of noir parodies set in a twisted alternate Wales. Glorious.

Sold! To the Tories!

OK, I'm not invigilating - got the week wrong.

Mark has sent me this: someone, bored by Nick Clegg whoring himself around the main parties, has put Clegg up for sale on EBay (sale withdrawn at £1m due to some petty clause about not selling humans: proud of yourself, Wilberforce?).

In today's irony news, the new Home Office minister and Minister for Equality has consistently voted against equal rights for homosexuals. Well done, Theresa May (but probably won't). She loved the Iraq war but didn't want an inquiry into it, adores nuclear weapons and hunting (voting record).

The Cabinet's up: depressing if you know who these people are, enigmatic if you're normal. I see that Cheryl Gillan (another millionairess with expenses problems - amongst other things, the taxpayers fed her dog), the Secretary of State for Wales left that country at 11 and never came back - she doesn't even represent a Welsh constituency. She opposed Wales's National Assembly and doesn't speak Welsh. Which means we can look forward to a repeat performance of John Redwood's triumph (though to be fair, speaking human would be an improvement on his normal approach):

Welsh wails

I'm sorry, I'm still going on about the election. It only happens every 5 years though (except that a hung parliament makes another one likely much sooner).

In particular, my conception of Wales has been radically altered by the result. I have this delightful idea that the Celtic nations are somehow cleverer, ideologically more sound and less predisposed to capitalist exploitation through their shared histories of colonial oppression and in particular, their suffering at the hands of the Conservative Party. Leaving aside the travails of Ireland, Wales and Scotland have seen their languages basically killed off (though Welsh is now doing well), their industries destroyed (coal and steel in Wales, these plus shipbuilding in Scotland) and replaced with colonialist tourism and second-homes thus destabilising local communities, their economies skewed towards low-paid services and suffering the contempt of a metropolitan elite.

Scotland hasn't forgotten - only one Conservative MP has been elected, on the English border. But poor Wales, abandoning the radical traditions of nonconformist Cymru Cymraeg and the vibrant mass proletarian socialism of the Anglophone mining valleys, has allowed the Tories to sneak over the border to claim 8 seats. Not just in the holiday areas where English rich people have retired, but in bustling towns like Conwy and the rural Vale of Clwyd. The Lib Dems did appallingly, as did Plaid Cymru, a great socialist nationalist party. No longer can the inscrutable Welsh quietly congratulate themselves on being wiser, more longsighted and more moral than their English neighbours. No longer can I speak and write of a country devoid of the selfishness and greed of perfidious Albion.

Ach y fi, indeed.

Harping on…

I'm working on a book chapter about O. M. Edwards's Cartrefi Cymru, a piece of Welsh travel writing. One of the places he visits is Y Garreg Wen, the home of Dafydd Owain, a blind harpist and composer.

This is the piece he supposedly composed on his deathbed (presumably on a smaller harp). The second film uses the words added a hundred years later by John Ceiriog Hughes, the leading Welsh Romantic poet. They're about the deathbed composition and start with 'Carry my harp to me…'.

Yes, but what books?

I know, you're clamouring to discover. Well, the day before, I received Reimer's A Simple Little Tale, another anthology of Anne of Green Gables critical essays, as well as Wodehouse's Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves and Much Obliged, Jeeves, because Roderick Spode (Oswald Mosley) appears in them.

Yesterday, I added too many. I gorged. My eyes are bigger than my brain. I added Opened Ground, a collection of Heaney poems, Paul McAuley's Gardens of the Sun and Pasquale's Angel, because I like intelligent hard SF and steampunk, Brian Aldiss's classic Non-Stop, Margaret Atwood's essays on debt, Payback, Heaney's translation of Henryson's medieval Scots classic The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables, Tom Furniss's Reading Poetry, 4 maps of Wales and the Welsh/Shropshire border, and Spivak's translation of Derrida's Of Grammatology, because I've never read it in English.

Oh dear. I think I'm going to be sick. Greedy boy.

Here's Atwood talking to us about the recession:

How to be effortlessly cool

First, it helps to be a Welsh rock star.
Then, use a magic cape and helmet to transport yourself to Welsh Argentina for a madcap quest for your eccentric Welsh-Argentinian pop star relative.
Make sure to be attacked by penguins.

Easy. Read all about it here.

Bangor. It's no Wolverhampton.

Bangor, like all proper Welsh towns, is a mix of the jaw-droppingly beautiful and the prosaic, not to say seedy. Wolverhampton isn't a mix. Surrounded by sea and mountains, I managed to spend almost none of my time there up one or in the other, which was a terrible waste. Instead, I wrote the union paper, sat in meetings, drank beer and even read the occasional book. What a way to spend my youth.

Now, whenever I go back, the heart lifts on the way, and sinks back again on my return to the Black Country. Here are a few shots of what you've missed (and a lot more here, including the Super Furries gig). Click on the pictures for larger images.

Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle 2

North Wales coast and mountains from Bangor Pier

Ms. Aimée Lloyd

So. Were the Super Furry Animals actually any good?

I've seen them 12-15 times over the past fifteen years. You never know whether you'll get the Rock Super Furry Animals, the Hippy Super Furry Animals, the Nosebleed Techno Super Furry Animals or something else.

This time, we got a cool, relaxed, friendly amalgam of all three. Most shockingly, we got the Beardy, Blues, Fleet Foxes version - under the synths and lasers were blues riffs and gentle harmonies. All conversation from the band was in Welsh, and Gruff waved a succession of increasingly cryptic posters. He also is apparently still as desirable as he was in 1994, according to my comrades Aimee and Vicky. The first half showcased their pastoral, mountain-man side, and the second amped up the volume and the tempo considerably: their subversive hit 'The Man Don't Give A Fuck' got the crowd surfers up and the room, friendly enough already, became euphoric.

Euphoric, that is, except for the guy in front of me, who was engaged in text warfare with his ex-partner, who seemed to believe that he wasn't taking the welfare of their daughter seriously. Perhaps she was right - his final text was 'Whatever. Can't text left-handed. Beer in my right hand'.

The support act was Cate Le Bon - we saw only a few minutes, but enough to convince me that she's worth checking out.

It was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. The crowd was cool, amiable and remarkably diverse (in age - almost everybody was a Welsh-speaker, and Bangor seems to have become much more Cymru Cymraeg since I was a student there). The band were clearly relaxed and happy, determined to make sure everyone had a good time, and they weren't at all self-indulgent, as a band coming home might have been. A triumph.

…the day we went to Bangor

Sorry. Terrible Fiddler's Dram reference there.

My heart lifts when I get catch the train to Bangor. Well, after Crewe, anyway. The landscape turns from pancake flat to coastal and mountainous, one horizon expands while the other towers dramatically. In the foreground, tatty caravan parks in places like Rhyl and Towyn have a seedy charm of their own, while mighty Eryri appears from behind the clouds (if you're lucky). The sun shone for me on Saturday - crossing Conwy harbour, it warmed the walls of the medieval castle and sparkled off the sea. I saw a massive heron lazily perched on a small boat, waiting for dinner to fin past.

Bangor itself is not dramatic or overly picturesque, though it nestles in a narrow strip between the Menai Straits and the foothills. A faux-Norman castle, a lovely old pier, the Cathedral and the university provide some drama and relief from the pebbledash, but it has a small-town charm of its own.

The sunny day wasn't exactly wasted, but Ms. Owen, Ms. Lloyd and I spent it in a sophisticated bar, largely gossiping until Vicky drove us up to the Premier Inn, a soul-destroying place if ever there was one. From the carpark onwards, you could have been anywhere in the world - even the trees weren't local. To emphasise the alienation, Vicky and Aimee forced me to watch something called Animals Do The Funniest Things while we got ready. Sorry to spoil the suspense, but they don't.

In contrast, we headed to the Greek Taverna for a drink. Quite literally, it is a shaggy, maze-like stone-built Greek Taverna hidden in a row of old houses in Upper Bangor - a unique place. The beer is just about bearable, the food is lovely and the atmosphere stunning.

Super Furries review up next - with some photos

All's right with the world

Well, obviously it isn't, but I've had a good few days after the intense pressure of last week. The sun's shining and it's a beautiful crisp autumn day. Leaves are piling up and the chill is invigorating.

Added to that, I've been to the theatre with my friends and then had a weekend in beautiful North Wales with more friends.

The Revenger's Tragedy was… interesting. The play itself is dark, bloody and malevolent - brilliant. The production was… rubbish. Very poor acting for the most part, as though melodramatic lines required melodramatic acting (or in some cases, speaking the lines as though they were in an unfamiliar and unpleasant language). The set consisted of a curtain and four chairs. More than a third of the audience left at the interval, including one of my many bosses, but not including, unfortunately, the drunk posh schoolchildren who talked loudly throughout, despite my feisty chum Hilary requesting them to 'cut it out, arseholes'! After that - a fine curry and a nightcap at my place, where my library was criticised for its shortage of Shelley (guilty).

One more wafer? No. I'm f*&@ing stuffed

I spent Friday night with my brother, his wife and his in-laws near Abergavenny, and Saturday at the Food Festival there, with all the other Guardian readers, second-home owners, Carluccio and Matthew Fort (Matthew: the jersey tied loosely over your shoulders is a terrible affectation. Stop it). It was wonderful. That area of Wales is stunningly beautiful, and I heartily recommend the train journey along the border from Aber to Shrewsbury. My hosts stuffed me with Welsh cakes, I had a room of which, on a clear day, the far end could be glimpsed, and a mountain view. Most satisfyingly, I took £5 from the master of the house, having wagered that Leinster would beat his beloved Ospreys… ho ho ho. Quite impressively, he phoned up the two former rugby stars interviewed during the game to share his views on Ospreys' shortcomings!

And thence to town for the festival. What could one say? I bought venison, boudin noir, toulouse sausages, fine Welsh ales, aromatic cheeses, laverbread (not bread but tangy seaweed) and a beautiful Welsh blanket. We tasted ciders, perries, sausages, cheeses, Welsh whisky liqueur and much, much more.

Abergavenny is a stunningly beautiful town, with a classic ruined castle, three mountains (Skirrid Fawr, the Blorenge and the Sugar Loaf) towering over it, and a range of independent shops - walking weekends beckon. Now I'm off to pay for my gluttony with a swim. Ugh

(Pictures not by me - this idiot forgot his camera)

To the point

The Welsh Assembly building - astonishing.

A Welsh epeeist prepares for a fight:

Ben Hughes can't believe what's just happened.

Nor can Steve Cowen (England manager) and Matt Haynes (England coach)

Darren Campbell, Olympic medallist, pays his respects to James Davis!

An actual, honest to goodness, FRIDAY conundrum

This is the first one to fall on a Friday for weeks!

So: confronted with an alien visitor demanding entertainment, what would you show them as the best and worst features of the town or country in which you live?

The best things of Britain have to be cheese and Wales (or Shropshire). For such a small country with dishonourable history of poor food, British cheeses are varied and wonderful. The worst thing? The cities: polluted, filthy, uncared-for and atomised, actively hostile to their own inhabitants, and horrible on Friday nights, which is a shame as places like Manchester would otherwise be great places to live. Narrowing it down to Wolverhampton, the best thing about it is that it's easy to escape. The worst thing is the dreadful, dismal architecture and town planning: the inhabitants treat it badly because it encourages nothing better. I love the multicultural nature of the UK - but hate the British attitude to education and languages (roughly: they all speak in English really, why should we bother?)

A lot to love, a lot to improve. Your turn!