The Ley Line

What this Google Image doesn't show is that this Ley Line extends up to Cowbridge Road East in Canton, Cardiff. Now I have been convinced since I moved back to the diff in 1987 that this street is on a Ley Line.
I was unconsious in 1987 and not as finely tuned as I am now. Now its more obvious than ever to anyone that walks up or down it that there are dark energies at work here. There are Powers and Principalities at play here. Now I don't know whether its possible to exorcise a whole street. Today I circumnavigated the whole area by coming through Bute Park and out across Cathedral Road. Instead of walking up it I turned off to the right up Severn Road. A cold chilly day with frost on the air. Twenty minutes in Canton Library where they are starting to recognise me as the soon to be published author and then for a 'slash' in Chapter. Canton is cold. Even in the Summer, its cold. It must be all the Concrete. After my slash in Chapter I went to catch the Number 2 Bus back to Grungetown. The bus stop is between Iceland and the Police Station. 

Canton Police Station

The Police Station always reminds me of one Saturday morning in 1987, I was walking by on the other side from my salubrious flat above what is now the Salvation Army Shop. I was approached by a tall gentleman who asked whether I would mind taking part in an Identity Parade. At the time I was an honest citizen, I had no qualms and as we walked back to the Police Station, he said they were looking for men with blonde hair. There had been an attack on a wedding party at Canton Community Hall by men wielding baseball bats and the ringleader was blonde. The main suspect was able to get rid of people he didn't want in the line up. I was dismissed. I think I would have received £10.00 for my troubles if I'd been retained. Today a tall community police officer walked past the bus stop and a newly arrived Grandmother and Grandson were imitating his walk. " Did you see him then?" says Granny!     
My theory is that 'The Ley Line' carries energy into Kairdiff City Centre from Ely. It is energy that is filtered through the cafes and the buses, its an energy that bypasses 'posh' Canton, Victoria Park and Pontcanna. These areas are very well self policed by money. I think the energy that I am noticing and have always noticed in this street is the energy of poverty, poverty of money, poverty of aspiration and poverty of spirit. Human shipwrecks seem to be a lot more noticeable down here.
 Maybe I am a closet snob! If I was at one with the 'Posh', the Arty Pseuds up their own botties, I would relax and be happy in Chapter Arts Centre, but I don't and I'm not.  

The middle window facing above the door was that of my first flat, rented out by Estate Agents Watts &Morgan of Laleston in the Vale of Glamorgan. From September 87 to December 87 I walked from here up Clive Road to Romilly Road where Five Arts Printers was situated. It was run by a Gentleman called Hans from Switzerland. Hans was a little bit like Alan Sugar, a man of few words! In fact I don't think he spoke to me once, until he informed my namesake in the office two weeks before Christmas to give me my cards with the reason "When we employed you, we thought you could do more than you actually can". And a Merry Christmas to you too! Croeso i Gaerdydd. 

 Do I sound bitter? I'm bastard citrus butt! 

Language

The language battle has been lost in Grungetown, at least in the Tesco Extra in Grungetown. The Electronic machines that you swipe your consumer goodies across now inform you that there is an alien item in the bagging area in Welsh. Crossing the road to 'Ocset' (Sounds more like a Toxic Gasoline now) I was nearly run over by a Refuse wagon which was warning me "Rhybydd, mae'r cerbyd yma yn symud nol" (This vehicle is reversing) in an electronic voice of which S4C would be proud. By the time you'd been hit you wouldn't know what language you were speaking. Nawr dwi'n siarad Cymraeg like the next man (woman) but chwarae teg if this is a pitch for hearts and minds, well, it's not working. If I wanted to converse with electronic machines in Welsh, then I'd go to Clwb Ifor Bach or Y Mochyn Du (The Blackest of Pigs) but then again I'm on the wagon so I don't want to be in an atmosphere where I feel that I have to drink in order to speak Welsh. Well you could go along to 'Menter Caerdydd' and learn how to bake cakes in Welsh or play guitar in Welsh or bring up your child in Welsh but I haven't got any kids. I'm a sad old bachelor. So what I'm trying to say is that the context in which any language is spoken is all important. The context in which it is spoken in Kairdiff doesn't feel authentic. It feels plastic and it feels as if it has been foisted upon the indiginous Kairdiffians. If you were from the Welsh Speaking heartland then you would know what this felt like but there is no parity when it comes to language in Wales only Bi-polarity. It is a land of extreme attitudes. You are either for the language or against it. You cannot be indifferent towards it you cannot 'potch' like a lukewarm. Now I am sick to death of extremes! I have done the rights of passage, I have protested and been arrested. I have tried to teach Welsh in Kairdiff Schools. I consider myself a language lobbyist. I am passionate about the language but I won't roll my sleeves up and get down and dirty because 'My Welsh isn't good enough', that oft heard refrain that is symptomatic of a nation of low self esteemers. 'My Welsh isn't good enough' to rub shoulders with the hoi-poloi in the Eisteddfod or at Talwrn y Beirdd. Language, be it English or Welsh is stratified. If you've got the confidence you can use them, if you don't have the confidence then you just shop in the language or watch Pobol Y Cwm! What good is that? 

Rhybydd mae'r blogiwr yma yn symud nol.    

Warning this blogger is moving backwards.

Non-Conformist

If I was a stick of rock, then you would find the words non-conformist running through me. It hasn't made for a particularly smooth journey. It is so much easier to be a Yes Man. However we in Wales have a fine tradition of non-conformity. From breaking away from the organised church into the old denominations, Wales has had its Rebecca rioters and the tithe wars of 'Rhyfel y Degwm'. It was one of Wales much maligned sons 'Caradog Evans' who wrote 'My People' in 1915. He was taking revenge on the locals of Rhydlewis in Ceredigion who had pilloried his father, an auctioneer who agreed to sell the farms of those unable to pay tithes. We like our wild children, Richard Burton and Rhys Ifans but we're secretly glad that we are not them. We much prefer the anonymity of being one of the crowd!

Being different is difficult. It takes time and effort. Being part of the amorphous mass of civilisation is so much easier! Sundays is the day of the week like marmite, you  either love or loathe. It was made for man (as in woman) not woman (man ) for the Saboth " Thou shalt not". "Yes we bloody shall", we shouted back.

Well to cut a long Blog Post short I will admit that I am a seeker. I am looking for spiritual sustenance from somewhere. It is probably a rights of passage for all middle aged men and women, perhaps more so for women who seem more fine tuned to the spiritual realm. As a proper Calvinistic Non Conformist I didn't find it in the Chapel Oppression of my childhood. As an adult I have been to the Pentecostal Halls to sing and rejoice but the God shaped hole that I used to fill with booze and cannabis, remains. Maybe the God shaped hole is the fear of death. I find reality desperately difficult to deal with so escape into the esoteric realms when I can by reading about such affairs. It leaves you ungrounded and looking for someone else to pay the bills, but somebody has got to do it. To be a member of the awkward squad and to ask those questions. Most children stop asking questions when they get to a certain age! I haven't and it has got me into a lot of trouble! Why? Trouble is I often ask the wrong people who tend to be wearing uniforms.

People who wear uniforms are visually proclaiming to the world that they are part of one whole. They are part of a school or part of the police force. They are part of a pattern of doing things. They display a uniformity of character. We know what to expect of them! Unpredictability ain't what it used to be!

Booh! You didn't even jump!. Yes I am a seeker. Now and again I get the spiritual pull. I go and find a church and join an act of collective worship but knowing that the uniformity of  religion is not for me. At this stage in my spiritual development I cannot tell whether it is the symptoms of the label that I have assigned myself and very often hide behind (Bipolar) or whether it is part of the universal human condition. There is something called  Religious Mania where the individual will believe very often that they are Jesus. I've never had that but I have been close. Doubt and fear seem to be the universal religions. It's sexy and swinging to be a secularist but you wonder whether this is just a backlash to the fundamentalism of religion over the years. Whatever we get up to in our day to day existence, whether you work or you are a Shark Fisherman like myself, questioning the meaning of life must be as common as eating, sleeping or defecating. Do we carry on through our darkest hours because we believe that there is an answer? Can we ever be happy knowing that there are no answers and that life would not be worth living if we did have them. Dunno? Whatdoyathink?

Goodbye Mr Chips!

Education is not working in the UK. League Tables, Michael Gove and Examination Boards jumping overboard, the sacred cow which is the WJEC has become a laughing stock again and a by word in schools for those who want an 'easy' exam board. Goodness knows it has courted enough controversy in the past. "If you enjoyed school, you'll enjoy work" goes the old urban myth, well in my book there must be something congenitally defective with you if you did enjoy school. I was educated in the last century but it might as well have been the century before that, in North Wales, in a school straight out of Goodbye Mr Chips, unfortunately there weren't any Mr Chips there unless you count Biffo, the old Latin Master, who had Parkinson's Disease and was teaching us as he trembled. So I who now have trouble 'speaking the spoke of yr Iaith Gymraeg' or rather writing it was doing Lladin. That singled me out from my peers if nothing else did. School never prepared me for anything. It was so competitive with its emphasis on Sport and Cross Country Running that my silent non co-operation was not appreciated.

So I have been a pupil and I have also been a Teacher, before I became a professional mad person. My contention is that school, like any other institution will make you mad. I don't know enough about Summerhill and the Free school experiment to expand on its success or failure but the word free and school from my memory is an oxy-moron. The fact that I became Mentally unwell early in my teens combined with a Draconian education system has left me in middle age rather hostile to schools and the idea of exams. Schools are for Fish, swimming together with the tide! God Help the little tiddler who decides to swim against the tide. You could do well in coursework throughout the year, you could work hard, become an introverted reader and still fail your GCSE's or O levels as we called them in those days. " Oh Grandad, shut up". We did the Oxford and Cambridge examination board where I was schooled and even though I worked hard I didn't pass my exams and that is why I am now earning £62.40 a week from this Fascist Government for my blogs. It was Herr Thatcher who was in power when I was in school and I remember one of the teachers coming into class and saying "We've got  one of them, we've shot one of them down" during the Malvinas conflict and I remember thinking then, 'What do you mean, We'. I'll have nothing to do with your colonialist, Imperialist nonsense thank you very much. The fact that the course of your whole life can be decided by a few sweaty hours up against the clock, whether you go to Tech, College or Uni. Whether you drop out and do drugs! Whether you self medicate and have a breakdown is in my contention all to do with exams. We are examining you! We your wise elders, we who know better, little tiddler, we are examining you to find out whether that sponge of yours can retain enough information for a couple of hours to enable you to go on and be a whizz in your career. Instead of Teacher leave those kids alone, it should be Michael Gove, leave those teachers alone. Get rid of the formal academic structures, get rid of league tables and competition in education. Get rid of pushing square pegs into round holes and lets get some holistic education shit going here, shall we?

Advanced Directive

advance directives and advance statements are important mechanisms for safeguarding and promoting a patient’s interests and health. An advance directive allows a person to refuse specific treatment in the future should they lose capacity to consent. Advance statements are a means of giving details of the care and treatment a patient would like to receive should they lose capacity at some time in the future, including whom they wish to act as a nominated 
person.

If I should play the ukelele, naked in the snow and rain.

If I should continue to bang my head despite the pain.

If I should scream in Russian at passing cars.

If I should play Grand Piano in smokey old Jazz Bars.

If I should dress like Napoleon and wear Wellington's Boots.

If I should jump on shooting stars and wear lime green zoot suits.

If I should join the army at forty two, raid the pantry and paint my head blue.

If I should cry "God for Harry, England and St George" whilst on a day trip to Cheddar Gorge.

If I should write a sonnet, then place a black tulip upon it.

If I should drink White Lightning, then gurgle something rather frightening.

If I should take the neighbour's cat on a World Cruise, bet Tiddles in Blackjack and then lose.

If I should write abusive letters to the Western Mail, christen vicars and wind up in jail.

Then Dear Sir/Madam...please let me.

The Home

Mary stands, shows her knickers to visitors,

who nod their heads and shout "How are you today?"

"I'm dying"

Lillian waves weakly to Matron, who growls behind her own teeth,

rubber gloves, suppository, halitosis, hallelujah nearer my God to the.

Florence, with head bowed, cries, skeletal hands hold the sepia tint of a handsome sailor and prays for her release.

Whistling 'Deeply Dippy', Fred the caretaker lays another white sheet over an artist's drawn 

face, as Jingles the cat laps nearer an incontinence bag.

In striped pyjamas, the Major reads the Obituaries.

Old Joe greets with a broad smile the bonfire smoke on an autumn evening.

It reminds him of cremation.

The great, grand kids come and see 'hen nain' viewed through tears of envy.

'Underneath the arches they dream their dreams away'

As the needle sticks again on the repro gramophone.

Trying to hitch a ride with the Meals on Wheels, Arthur stands at the entrance with a packed suitcase.

Life seeps through the cracks in the walls.

(First Published in Roundyhouse Magazine, Swansea, Issue No3)

Sacred Cows

One of the positives, if you can call it that of having 'Bipolar Disorder' is that you can get away with insulting people or institutions without having to be duly concerned about it. You have nothing to lose but your bad name. Mental Health is stigmatised anyway so why not take a few prisoners with you. Many in a new Wales are scared of  upsetting the apple cart. It might affect their job prospects, their career paths. Many folk have to compromise and bite the bullet. This used to cause me so much internal strife that in the end I didn't think it was worth keeping it in. Then it all came out and it wasn't a pretty sight.  We in Wales have a number of sacred cows, the Untouchables, usually of the Institutionalised variety. Now I haven't had a television for seven years, since my diagnosis. I think I mentioned before that I am triggered by visual stimulus! I am quickly and easily angered and over stimulated. I am over stimulated by the World News and under-stimulated by Wales Today.
In exchange for a Television Licence/Money bartering system we allow numerous visual images to invade our grey cells. The Revolution may not be televised but war certainly is.
The TV Licencing HQ is in Bristol, and one quiet soulless morning in Grungetown I was disturbed by the Card carrying Feds.
"I don't have a TV Licence!"
 " Is that a live feed to your computer?"
 "Que?"
 First and only visit in seven years. I'm surprised they don't come around every two weeks because they know that like narcotics, Television is extremely addictive.
Thankfully I am not addicted to S4C. You'd have to be desperate to be and this recent furore about not paying the TV licence because it was going to get less funding and being taken under the wings of the BBC. Now if I remember rightly it was the members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg and Gwynfor Evans's threat to fast to death that forced William Whitelaw's hand to set up the Fourth Channel in the first place. From my privileged perch of insanity it appears that many have done rather well from it. When this recent funding crisis hit again it was the young students of Cymdeithas yr Iaith who were out protesting. Where were the cast of Pobol Y Cwm, where were the celebs who have been getting fat paycheques from the UK Taxpayer. In my book, language is more important than making a fast buck. The worry is, that the Welsh Language is now in the hands of the Middle Class and these Pontcanna Triangle officianados know a thing or two about making money.  No longer 'Llais y Werin' the ghettoisation of the language amongst a people that bare very little similarity to those who speak the language in its heartlands. Sell your soul to the devil, why don't you?
I've swopped my addiction from TV to Facebook, like when I was undiagnosed and self medicating my mood disorder, I swopped booze for cannabis. All these addictions will catch you out in the end.
Amongst the 'Sacred cows' of Wales, top amongst them must be the Assembly! The body that went in and confiscated the sacred cow from the Hindu temple in Carmarthenshire and is still intent on culling the badgers of Wales. A striking building in what is now referred to as the Bay. Well it was the Docks when I first lived and worked down there and where are the Mermaids in the cold and commercial Mermaid Quay?  You can read about the Machinations of the Assembly in another sacred cow 'The Western Mail' which has been serving the people of the servile Principality for over a century. My beef (oops!) with both the Western Mail and Wales Today is that they dumb everything down. They pander to the Anglo/American Obsession with celebrity culture which again is just another displacement activity for not thinking about death and your own mortality.
So I have criticised the Assembly and the Western Mail and then you have the Welsh National Health Service also known by its other name The Welsh Rugby Union. These are Committee Men in shiny blazers who control the saline drip and the bright red blood supply of the biggest circus in town. The six nations is about to get underway and the cold, unwelcoming concrete pavements of Kairdiff will welcome the Match Day Nationalists, more concerned with raising the share value of Brains Brewery and singing 'My Hen laid a Haddock'. Sacred cows a plenty in Wales and I have just swiped a muddy hand across their brow. I don't suppose they have done anything personally to me..yet, but they are there and just like any self respecting Goliaths, they must have their Dafydd.

The Doors

Well in that case, I want to be the doors on Cardiff Central Library. The new super duper Cardiff Central library at the bottom of the Hayes which has five floors and is meant to be one of the seven wonders of the world or so the Western Mail would have you believe. Now amongst the shisters and low lifes that I associate with, common agreement has it that there was nothing wrong with the old library and even with the interim one. The Portakabin at the top of John Street had some character with all the colorful book signs down the side. Now this one would have character if you could get in through its revolving doors. Revolving doors don't work period. Especially electrically powered ones, sensitive to the touch and movement! Having been absent from Kairdiff over the Christmas festivities I returned and found that we were now being ushered through the side door and the fire escape. The language of heaven (Yuk, gyfoglid yeah!) is on the fifth floor, far enough away for those who don't speak it and consider it a nuisance. Tannoy announcements are in the Queen's English, very pukka, pronounced by the IT Superintendent followed ever so sweetly by the Welsh Speaking Librarian. Surely all announcements in Wales should be in Welsh first, like on Cardiff Central Railway station. The puzzled faces after every bing-bong make you realise that you are in a different country with a different language and the scurrying from platform to platform can be quite fun to watch.

The Psychology of doors. Doors are an entrance and an exit to a building. They are your first experience. Sensory, visual and otherwise. If the doors don't work, they make you think that the building or the institution don't work. They make you think that something is broken inside. So come on Cardiff City Council, you built it, fix the doors. Take the revolving ones out and have ones that open and close with a swish. Have a little cubby hole with TV monitors for your security personnel so that they are not breathing down your neck the moment you've managed to get through the doors. Why would I steal a library book if they are free anyway? For someone with delusions of grandeur I would also like a red carpet the next time I visit. I'm sure Ghandi had no idea that I would use his passionate philosophy to make a point about the doors on a library but I thought well, the world has gone shallow and we seem obsessed with the minutiae over the bigger picture, I thought I would just dive straight in there.

That's me walking past, refusing to negotiate the revolving doors of Cardiff Central Super Duper library!

SW3

SW3

The Obscenity of the King’s Road.

Pinched skin and dead eyes.

Home from home,

Perhaps.

What’s going on here?

Move your feet you.

Can’t you see that the Posh Lady wants a seat.

Happy new year, belated as it is.

Thank you, smile drops.

Thank God they’ve gone.

No room at the Inn

No room on the bus.

A lime green duffle coat

Whatever next!

Nana Mouskouri dressed as Kermit the frog

The white thorn of Athens.

"Put your teeth in dear" says Chelsea hard man

"Or I’ll put them in for you, hehaw, hehaw."

"You’re not from up there are you?"

Says Tony the Barber in broad sparrow

"Tw reight" says I

This was a gentleman barber from Mayfair who trotted out the old chestnut

"You walk into a shop and they start talking their bleeding language it’s rude.

I says to them, if they don’t want me business, fine."

I didn’t take offence as I’d heard it all before and after all

Tony had had a nervous breakdown

Four years ago.

‘Me wife found me on Catford Bridge, sobbing me heart out’

"Call it a Breakthrough", Tony says I

As Lady Muck throws a wine box in the bin outside the Kensington and Chelsea College where you can go on an Improvers Course.

Improvers in life.

Will do.

Will have to do.

Just passed Bootsy Brogans in Fulham Broadway

 where we had the craic all those years ago.

Did we?

Suppose so.

Old rubber neck again there checking the dead

PC611

Stands over a man whose had a stroke or epileptic fit.

I look on impassively from the back of the bus as the staring eyes pierce my very dark glasses.

No fun here.

Talk somebody, so I can mark you down

With a cross.

Picture This!

Picture this:

Couples on Aberystwyth Seafront

Flags batterred by politics

People who cannnot reverse

A Monument to the dead and dying

Heaving breasts under ill fitting T shirts

As the life/death guard uses a traffic cone to plant a flag

To say that you can’t swim here.

A distress flare breaks over Pen Dinas fired by a woman in

The top floor window of a Bed and Breakfast who has just

Spotted another little Midlands person being swept out to sea in Khaki shorts and flip flops.

The No Vacancies sign is continuously turned by an Obsessive Compulsive

called Lyn

Who shakes his head and dribbles and wishes that he was John Travolta

Flying that plane over there, see it, to Boston.

Mrs Myfanwy Pierce is having a Tea Party and all the little brains have been invited.

She has placed jars around the room in case of an accident

Huge stained panes of glass force gales back and keeps Gail locked under the stairs.

She hadn’t been seen for months.

Victorian Lamps and College Lecturers

Seagulls and Lobster Pots.

“You could have parked in there Ron.

I don’t know why I married you, you’re an arsehole”.

The great architect of the town who prefers to be called God

Carries his animal skin briefcase around from consultation to consultation.

“I built this town”

Terry Waine farts loudly as dad splutters on the icecream, one slip and the seagulls

will have it.

Terry announces “Kicking human heads is far superior to kicking a beach ball”

Another little cosseted psychotic is growing up on an edge of town housing estate.

Rosa Jane, the Gypsy from Devil’s Bridge has a second home in Islington.

When she’s not raking it in from people’s neuroses

She likes to tan crisply and uses a brand name oil to slide across. 

The local minister head bowed by the wind and by an indiscretion that he

committed with a wailing widow from Waunfawr sprints past her tent

On his way to the sad building syndrome library to have a go on that Internet thing.

Buena Vista, Dunroamin, Belle Vue have a choice of two on the menu.

‘Take it or leave it.’

“Just gives us your money will you”

“Oh and yes we hope you have a good time.”

A dead donkey is washed up on the shore and photographs taken

by the great white hunters. 

Picture This from David Williams on Vimeo.

A sense of place

Where we live is important! Why we live there! Wherever you are in the world, ask yourself that simple question. Why am I living here at the moment? Could be for a number of reasons.
"I moved here for work, I was born and raised here,this is where my significant other is from".
Waking up in the morning in Wales, thoughts turn to the mundane, grocery shopping, bill paying, how long am I going to live and is it always going to be this way. I am obsessed with dying. I spend a lot of time thinking about death, my own and the demise of significant others. I think more about dying than I do about living. I don't know whether this is normal. That great word that means nothing. I have nothing to compare with. Probably not a great idea to do a vox pop on the streets of Aberystwyth and ask people. I often wonder that the activities we pursue and the busyness of our lives is a reaction to mortality. We cannot face the thought so we don't stop long enough to think about it. Perhaps as children we thought less of the possibility of dying but we knew that people did it, because we heard every day on the news that it was happening. Rather than a counter telling my narcissistic self how many souls have called passed and visited the blog I should have a counter that tells me how many days I have left to live! Would that make me become more focused and pro-active? Would it make me more determined to achieve my goals? I doubt it. I would just become mesmerised by it and look at it, as I look at the fish at the top of the page. Sleep, eat, facebook, blog, anxiety, travel,  twitter, shit, wank, piss. Just about sums up my life at the moment. I am very weary of doing age appropriate things. Should be settled now with a career and a couple of sprogs (children, if your reading this in America) Statistically I am at the age when many are getting divorced for the first time. Taking Action is a popular mantra of Self Help Books. Well the action I have taken in the past has not exactly reaped the rewards that I had expected so for now, the only action I will be taking will be Sleep, eat, facebook, blog, anxiety, travel,  twitter, shit, wank, piss. 

Aneurin Bevan Nye!

There are two towns in Wales, one a town and one a city where residents will put 'nye' on the end of a sentence as a confirmation.  For example a person from Denbigh or Bangor in North Wales might say 'Aneurin Bevan was the founder of the National Health Service nye'. Nye instead of isn't it! My first job out of school was on Thatcher's Youth Opportunities Programme where I earned a whopping £25.00 a week for being an immature prick in one of Wales oldest Printing and Publishing Houses, Gwasg Gee in Lon Swan, Denbigh, North Wales. I would be sent up, as the teaboy to the bakers at the top of town to order, "two hot pasties and a pork pie, anye". The rising inflection in the voice adding a piquance to the request.
This was 1983, the Falklands was over and a Recession was in Full swing! I remember going to Rhyl. I was 17 and had just passed my driving test. Rhyl was so depressing that on my return journey to the Vale of Clwyd, I pulled over in a lay-by before Rhuallt Hill in St Asaph and started sobbing! Now I don't know whether it was purely the fact that what I had seen on the streets of Rhyl that day had been so upsetting but I do know that I equate my life-long depression with Conservatism. My Bi-Polar Disorder which would be finally diagnosed at the grand old age of 39, started at the age of 13 in 1979, the same year that Margaret Thatcher came to power. Coincidence, I think not! Rhyl, situated on the Costa Del Crime. The Gold Coast pre A55 bringing the flotsam and jetssam from Manchester and Liverpool. The Gangsters and Drug Dealers and their addicts. I think what really triggered me was seeing a fat, bald, man in a leather jacket, with Tattoos with what would now be described as a Karaoke Machine. An Amplifier and Microphone singing songs of the Second World War. So White Cliffs of Dover and We'll Meet Again in 1983. Bizarre! So I was Four years in to my Mood Swings and with no insight at all! This was what being a teenager was all about! Every kid was like this! To this day, I am triggered by visual stimulus. If I see something that I vaguely interpret as depressing, sad or oppressive, I have to close my eyes and move on very quickly. That is why you won't see me on any high street at Christmas Time. Retail Hell would send me running up to Whitchurch Hospital or the Denbigh Mental asking to be put in a white coat!
So the riots of the early eighties and the hungers strikes and the Falklands and then the Miners Strike of 1984/85. It was a cheerful little time to be a Teenager! I wasn't fully politicised then. The environment was one that fermented a deep seated mistrust and hatred of the ruling elite. The Government were your school and your parents rolled into one! They needed to be challenged nye!

O'Brien

Before the Bus Station in Kairdiff was re-organised the National Express Office was situated on the first concourse! I was walking past one day when a man came out and looking me directly in the eye, said " I don't know whether I've done the right thing! I've bought a ticket to go home to Ireland for Christmas, I don't think my family want to see me". He sat down and started sobbing! I sat with him for a moment, then left to go home and write this.

O’Brien

Well, it’s like this, I was born in Tralee.

I have a wife and six children in Manchester.

I have one sister in County Kilburn.

So you might be asking why I’m sat on a yellow metal seat outside the National Express Office in Cardiff Central Bus Station.

Well you see, I can’t move no more.

I’ve been on the move all me life and now I feel that I have found my final resting place.

As a child playing in the West of Ireland we’d know when the old farm dogs had reached the end of the line, they’d just slope off the field of play and find a spot in one of the whitewashed buildings to go and lay down and die.

But you see, I’ve been hiding all my life, hiding in the shadows because I don’t have such a quick brain and it takes me a while to keep up.

People don’t have a lot of patience, well you know that!

You wouldn’t be sitting on your seat otherwise would you.

So how does it feel for you in the Goldfish Bowl?

I’ve grown so many skins in my life and that’s what I’m doing now, peeling them off, one by one.

I never thought it would be like this……my life.

I didn’t think as a boy in Tralee that I would die on a seat in a bus station.

Sure we’d heard about Cardiff and Newport, how our families had been chased up Bute Street by locals carrying sticks and stones.

They do break your bones you know.

I notice you looking intently at me, now that’s a luxury for me.

You want to see evidence of my drinking to prove your prejudice right.

‘The Pissed Paddy’

Well I’m sorry, no cans or bottles. I can’t stand the affect. Commercialised Anaesthetic! Oooh Big Words from a little Brain.

Talking of which I can smell their Brewery from here, it makes me want to heave.

I smell the vomit, the toilet floor, the bleached cold pavement.

I wonder why so many of the boys back home succumb and become Pint Pot Heads.

Their sponsoring your gallant boys in red. The men with Big Brains and even Bigger wallets.

What is that you wear on your shirts? Three little white feathers!

Old Kitchener would send white feathers to those he saw as cowards and deserters in the First World War.

The War to end all wars.

Oh I’m trying to be clever here!

Trying to make a few points to keep you on your seat.

What colours your seat? Mine’s bright yellow, yak!

I’d prefer a nice emerald green. Ah well as long yours is not black and tan I don’t mind.

I know one thing for sure it’s not as uncomfortable as the one I sat on in the schoolhouse.

Mr Rooney, the schoolmaster would tell us of his visits to London, to the theatre.

He said he saw Lawrence Olivier in the Entertainer at the Royal Court.

A good few years later I myself entertained a crowd down the bottom of the King’s Rd.

Ah yes, I was in my bright yellow jacket and I was banging out a few Jigs and Reels on me old Jack Hammer.

Maybe that’s why I’m a little deaf now, building roads for the Brits.
The Yuppies, do you remember those?
They'd drop a £5.00 note and wouldn't bother to stop and pick it up 

They used to shout all sorts to me, Thick Mick, Paddy Prick and then Fenian Fucker.

I’d smile in my bright red mask because I did drink in them days and at close of play I’d head up the Kilburn High Road to sing the ’Mountains of Mourne with the boys from back home.

So you see I’m stuck on this seat.

Do I go home to Tralee where my family don‘t like me, up to Manchester where the wife is now my ex wife and the kids think I’m their uncle or back to my sister’s in the Kilburn High Rd.   

Well you might well be thinking this guy has lost his sense of humour but as I make me decision I leave you with an Irish Joke.

Irishman walks on to a building site to see the gaffer.” I’m looking for a job gaffer“.

“Well, competition is fierce now and we only want to take on men with Brains” says he.

“I’ll ask you a question and if you get the answer right, the job is yours”

“Fire away Gaffer,says the Irishman”

“Right what is the difference between a joist and a girder?”

“Ah sure, Gaffer, that’s easy, Joist (Joyce) wrote ’Ulysess’ and Girder (Goethe) wrote ’Faust’.      

Booze

"If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered"

Stephen King

One of the reasons that Kairdiff has a problem with me, is that its drinking culture now rivals that of Newcastle in North East England. The Western Mail described it as the Hen Night and Stag night Capital of Europe. At no particular time of day you will see women dressed in skin tight black lycra, looking like condoms stuffed with walnuts,in pink cowboy hats corralled into a seating area with plastic chairs and ashtrays, more suitable for a nursery school than one of the less salubrious hostelries at the end of St Mary  Street. A street that has now been mostly pedestrianised to allow for more drinkers. The City Planners have made it a concrete paradise with a few uncomfortable benches for the confused and bewildered to rest while they contemplate their next move.

The reason that I drank was to alleviate symptoms of low self esteem and to anaesthetise my, as yet undiagnosed, mood disorder. I never drank to be sociable and to enjoy myself. I drank, because it lowered my inhibitions enough to slur at the opposite sex.  Now I need  to avoid preachiness here but I will rail against the City Fathers and the W.R.U who must make a pretty penny from the profits of 'Firewater' especially on matchdays. I would be interested to find out how much Brains and all the other Breweries fund alcohol rehabilitation programmes. I write from the complacency of my middle age with my alcoholic rights of passage behind me. It was a waste of time and it was a waste of money and Kairdiff like every other city and town in the UK and across the world allows this state sponsored lunacy because it brings in profits. Who knows if I will drink alcohol again? I hope I don't. but hope was always the last refuge of a scoundrel.

I drank in old Kairdiff, in the Cambrian, the Custom House, the Park Vaults and down in the Docks, the North Star and the Docks Non Pol! It was vibrant and alive and was full of characters, none least of all myself, either high on life and booze or down amongst the depths. Much of my mid to late twenties and early thirties were spent in the Welsh speaking, speakeasy known as Clwb Ifor Bach! It wasn't so much a speakeasy as a speak 'anodd iawn'/very difficult. Language in Wales brings its own complexities and I will cover this in another blog post. Sticky Floors and Plastic Glasses and the more you drink, the more you spend. It was in here, in 1997 that we celebrated like we had never celebrated before a 'Very Good Morning' in our newly bi-sexual nation! There were tears from an old Irish Socialist as we marched on to the Welsh College of Music and Drama where Wigley and Ron Davies 'came out' to thunderous applause and 'Hen Wlad fy nhadau'. I was a Nationalist in those days and probably am a closet one to this day. The drinking alleviated the feelings of confusion that I felt at having to feel like a second class citizen in a second class capital city. I had to go to a sleazy speakeasy  to speak my mother tongue and get pissed like all other indiginous peoples around the world. 'Firewater'. It's the old game of Bread and Circuses. Give them something to cheer and support, give them food and ale to divert their attention and then they won't question. Then they'll just believe its their fault!

Its that old Victim Mentality again.

The Victim Mentality

I am including in this Blog Post an email I received from Henrik Edberg in Sweden. Those of you who have read  thus far in 'Shark Fishing in Wales' might have come to the conclusion that I suffer from a Victim Mentality. Blaming the City where he lives for his unhappiness and paranoia! Well you may have a point! In that case I am going to even out the scales of justice and am posting this in case there are others out there in the Blogosphere who might be experiencing a Victim Mentality at the Moment.


So Shark Fishing in Wales has turned into a Self Help Blog Now then ? 

This is Henrik's Website and it is an excellent resource!

http://www.positivityblog.com/


"If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim."

Richard Bach

"Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality."

John W. Gardner

One big problem a lot of people have is that they slip into thinking of themselves as victims that have little or no control over their lives. In this headspace you feel sorry for yourself, the world seems to be against you and you get stuck. Little to no action is taken and you get lost in a funk of sadness and self-pity.

So how can you move out of that mindset? In this newsletter I'd like to share a few things that have helped me.

1. Know the benefits of a victim mentality.

There are a few benefits of the victim mentality:

• Attention and validation. You can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out. On the other hand, it may not last for that long as people get tired of it.
• You don't have to take risks. When you feel like a victim you tend to not take action and then you don't have to risk for example rejection or failure.
• Don't have to take the sometimes heavy responsibility. Taking responsibility for your own life can be hard work, you have to make difficult decisions and it is just heavy sometimes. In the short term it can feel like the easier choice to not take personal responsibility.
• It makes you feel right. When you feel like the victim and like everyone else - or just someone else - is wrong and you are right then that can lead to pleasurable feelings.

In my experience, by just being aware of the benefits I can derive from victim thinking it becomes easier to say no to that and to choose to take a different path.

It also makes it easier to make rational decisions about what to do. Yes, I know that I can avoid risk and the hard work of taking action by feeling like a victim. But I also know that there are even more positive results if I choose to take the other route, if I make the better choice to take a chance and start moving forward.

2. Be ok with not being the victim.

So to break out of that mentality you have to give up the benefits above. You might also experience a sort of emptiness within when you let go of victim thinking. You may have spent hours each week with thinking and talking about how wrong things have gone for you in life. Or how people have wronged you and how you could get some revenge or triumph over them.

Now you have to fill your life with new thinking that may feel uncomfortable because it is not so intimately familiar as the victim thinking your have been engaging in for years.

3. Take responsibility for your life.

Why do people often have self-esteem problems? I'd say that one reason is that they don't take responsibility for their lives. Instead someone else is blamed for the bad things that happen and a victim mentality is created and empowered.

This damages many vital parts in your life. Stuff like relationships, ambitions and achievements.

That hurt will not stop until you wise up and take responsibility for your life. There is really no way around it.

And the difference is really remarkable. Just try it out. You feel so much better about yourself even if you only take personal responsibility for your own life for a day.

This is also a way to stop relying on external validation like praise from other people to feel good about yourself. Instead you start building a stability within and a sort of inner spring that fuels your life with positive emotions no matter what other people say or do around you.

4. Forgive.

It's easy to get wrapped up in thinking that forgiveness is just about something you "should do". But forgiving can in a practical way be extremely beneficial for you.

One of the best reasons to forgive can be found in this quote by Catherine Ponder:

"When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free."

As long as you don't forgive someone you are linked to that person. Your thoughts will return to the person who wronged you and what he or she did over and over again. The emotional link between the two of you is so strong and inflicts much suffering in you and - as a result of your inner turmoil - most often in other people around you too.

When you forgive you do not only release the other person. You set yourself free too from all of that agony.

5. Turn your focus outward and help someone out.

One question I use when I get into the victim headspace is simply:

"How can I give value right now?"

Asking that question and making that shift in what you focus on really helps, even if you may not feel totally like doing it.

So I figure out how I can give someone else value, how I can help someone out.

And thing is that the way you behave and think towards others seems to have a big, big effect on how you behave towards yourself and think about yourself. For example, judge people more and you tend to judge yourself more. Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself.

A bit counterintuitive perhaps, but that has been my experience. The more you love other people, the more you love yourself.

6. Get constructive.

Don't drag yourself down by dwelling on an issue.

Instead ask yourself: What can I do to overcome or solve this situation? Who can I ask for help? Where can I find information that will help me to solve this problem?

By being constructive you don't get stuck in victim thinking or analysis paralysis but start moving forward towards a solution instead. And that feels and works a whole lot better.

7. Give yourself a break.

Getting out of a victim mentality can be hard. Some days you will slip. That's OK. Be OK with that.

And be nice to yourself. If you have to be perfect then one little slip is made into a big problem and may cause you to spiral down into a very negative place for many days.

It is more helpful to just give yourself a break and use the tips above to move yourself into a positive and empowered headspace once again.

I hope this email will help you to overcome victim thinking and enable you to live a happier life,