New Day - New Week

There are only twenty short minutes left of Monday morning and all I have done since I got up (reasonably early) has been to drink two cups of tea and listen to Radio 4.

Listening to Radio 4 is the most exhausting sport in which I participate as it does take it out of you.  For example, this mornings there was the Today programme followed by the news which seems to get grimmer with each broadcast and Book of the Week was about a man’s struggle to define his Welshness.

As I am at present wearing a pair of Tesco (reduced) shorts emblazoned with the Welsh Dragon I feel that this is need to my concerns.  Don’t worry, the wearing of a shirt completely hides the mythological element and merely leaves me looking as though I was wearing a pair of bright green shorts.  Nevertheless the mere buying of such a nationalistic garment on my last foray, or rather pillage, of the clothing department of Tesco’s shows some concern for my ostensible national identity.

Although I remember nothing of my time there, I was born in Yorkshire – though my parents were impeccably Welsh (whatever that might mean) hailing from Merthyr Vale and Mountain Ash – names that sound much more attractive than the grim reality of the places themselves!

Brought up in Cardiff in an exclusively English language-speaking environment it came as a shock to me to find out that my paternal grandfather’s first language was Welsh.  He spoke not a word of it neither to me nor to my father nor any of his other children.  Actually my grandfather must have spoken some Welsh to me as my name for him was Du-cu a version of the Welsh Tad-cu (grandfather) which he must have used when I was a babe in arms. Similarly, my word for my English-speaking grandmother was Dando, which must also have been a lisping corruption of mam-gu – though I am not quite sure how I got there!  My names for my mother’s parents were Nana and Gramp – very straightforward!

In a way which would be shocking today, but then was an obvious course of action, my great-grandparents on my mother’s side decided to stop speaking Welsh (their first language) to the fourth and succeeding daughters and raised them exclusively in English.  The result was that my grandmother could not communicate with her elder sisters in what was their native language!  English was the way forward and, in my grandmother’s case it could be said to have worked as she married an English-speaking accountant who later became town treasurer.  If that is how you measure success!

On the radio the seeker after nationality has spoken with Bryn Terfal who is uncompromising in his definition of Welshness: it rests squarely in the ability to speak the language.  This is a key concept in the modern development of Wales and the approaches to the language define aspects of the on-going political narrative.  The clear implication is that without at least an attempt to learn the language your nationality is, at best, in a sort of cultural limbo.

The radio reader has also attempted to ride? sail? row? a coracle which, while interesting from an historical point of view, does not necessarily give much indication of the aspirations and inclinations of Welsh people today – or help in establishing a definition of nationality.

For me the single most interesting point made in the programme was that the name of Dover, that quintessentially English symbol of Nationality for our eastern neighbours is in fact derived from the Old Welsh for “water” and indicates clearly who was living in the island before the invasions of various groups of foreigners forced the inhabitants into the west and then called them “Welsh” which, with the irony for which the English are justly famous, means “foreigner”!

After an indifferent start to the day the skies are now flawless blue (apart from scattered cloud which is not over us) and the sun is beating down.  I cannot foresee a time when I will ever be tired of such days – there is even a gentle breeze!

Now out for lunch because, after all, there is little point in suddenly going cold turkey on the gastronomic delights that we had with Ceri and Dianne.

If the sun keeps up, I might even consider flinging myself into the foaming (well, gently waved) brine of the Med.  And I could try out Toni’s invention at the same time.

Apart from one or two characteristic outbursts our Scumbag Neighbours have been strangely quiescent.  Toni has only called the police once to complain about the boorish behaviour of the younger element and it is his suspicion that they actually heard him make the call because, no sooner had he replaced the phone than the rowdy element began to softly and silently vanish away!  We fear that they are building up to some sort of cataclysmic act of sonic selfishness. 

We wait in dread!

The only thing I did about The Books today was to read through old programmes from performances of King Lear that I had seen, together with their reviews from the Guardian.  I put them carefully in a large brown envelope labelled “King Lear”.  Better than nothing, I think!