Swansea – do I judge thee too harshly?

Now in Santa Barbara, near LA

Back in the world of fast free internet I caught up with friends online, and enjoyed catching up on the gossip from home. A good friend thought, for those who do not know me well, it might seem that I have a downer on my home town, and the UK in general.

My friend, like me, is one who likes to play characters in jest, trusting that those around can see through those facades to the real person beneath. I recently discovered, it is a form of social play particularly developed in only children, like us. I have also learned that not everybody gets, or appreciates it – with some folks, what you see is really all you get.

I thought to write about home, from this sticky hot room in Santa Barbara some things to even the balance.

There is a Russian word I have heard, but cannot spell, which means “I love you, but I hate you right now”, just one word! It somes up feelings many people have towards their hometowns. One cannot live in any small town all ones life, without seeing both sides. I can see now, looking back how strangers may not know the love I do feel for the place.

Swansea's most famous son, Dylan Thomas - the fat poet with slim volumes, called it an ugly lovely town. He wrote some his most stirring poems of the town without getting overly sentimental, yet was known in temper to say “Land of my father's?, my fathers can keep it!”, and at the time I believe he meant it.

The UK is at least on a human scale, and the old town, Swansea is more human than most. If I wanted to reduce myself to a blubbing mess, there are two pieces that get me by yur every time. One is a quote from the fabulous Hunter S. Thompson describing San Fransisco in the middle sixties:-

"There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . ."

Though I was too young to experience the cultural ferment of those heady days, I have always been drawn to the movements and ideas that came out of the West Coast in that era, and hoped to refine its essential values.

They say the British have no idea of distance, and the Americans no idea of history. I did not stop in Los Angeles, I got on the first bus following the same 101 highway South, gazed in horror at the six lanes of traffic in either direction, the sprawling, smoggy, inhumanness. Though that first wave has long rolled back, new places are going through the same phases, so much of our modern world is the result of those inspired energetic people – who used the emerging technology to develop their beautiful visions.

The internet owes a massive debt to those countercultural luminaries, who saw the potential for switched networks to share tools necessary to implement those visions as books like the Whole Earth Catalogue had done in paper form.

The other piece that gets me "by yur" every time is Dylan's Return Journey, I have a crackly copy on tape, read aloud by a Richard Burton, his Welsh tones lilting defiantly over his trained BBC English. After touring America, Dylan comes home to hunt the ghost of his youth. He takes the listener on a walk through the city from the bombed out shops that are not there anymore, Ben Evans, down flat Gower street, the Kardoma cafe– then on High Street, the Three Lamps, and into some pubs I used to frequent, winding up to park bench in Cwmdonkin.

I cannot be the only one who called it Donkey Park as a little un?

Like the Russian word, there is one in Welsh that captures a feeling like no other. More than longing for homeland, more than nostalgia or yearning is hiraeth.

It describes a feeling I have not experienced so strongly since I heard a recording of Morrison Opheous choir singing appropriately “Swansea Town” in a tea shop in Gaiman, a small Welsh colony in the pampas of Patagonia.

On a sentimental mental journey from this stuffy downtown room full of sleep talkers and drunken Germans I have:-

Walked through Clyne Gardens in Spring,

Sat on the steps joining King Edward Road with Eaton Crescent, where post pub confidences are shared over secret smokes.

Re-climbed each of the Three Cliffs, Britains first area of outstanding natural beauty and first sight of special scientific interest. I maintain Gower has beautiful beaches to rival any I have seen in the world.

Mused that I can walk into any pub between Uplands Tav and the Queens hotel by the docks with its moth eaten bear and be sure of seeing somone I know, even if only to say “Orright!”

Visited The Grand theatre – the majesty of its boxes, set off by the reassuring dullness of their schedule.

Watched Shakespere by the rep theatre infront of Oystermouth Castle in the summer, blankets on knees with fish and chips from Covellis and wine

Flown, near sleep over the pointy self similar rows of houses Brynmill and the old friends living in them

I am not a nationalist, the whole world and stars are as much mine as anybody elses. Though given the scale I am more theirs than they are mine....

Like every county there are things I like and dislike about the UK. But I have ranted enough in other posts of things I dislike, so

Things I do like about Britain -

Sense of humour, the taboo against taking anything too seriously – which I am sure goes some way to keeping our society so peaceful.

Police brutality still shocks most people

Britain is far more tolerant of other cultures that anywhere else I have been

The BBC, especially Radio 4

Curry is available in the smallest of towns until very late

We do not go in for flag waiving much

No experience is legally required to put to sea on a boat

Good range of cheeses


ummm......