What was your Moment of Obligation? | Echoing Green

What was your Moment of Obligation? | Echoing Green

Tangerine Dream

Well it was cooler today and the fuel Crisis has eased! I was following the bidding on a second hand car on ebay which ended today but because I haven't had a car for as long as I haven't had a Television, namely six years I couldn't secure insurance for less than the value of the car. The Car was an old Jalopy and would have been useful for visiting family and trips to the D I Y stores but it wasn't to be.

So I bought a Bicycle instead!.

I purchased it from http://www.regbraddickcycles.com/ in Broadway, my first visit back down there for years. I was looking for a Hybrid with Suspension that would get me up the Taff Trail. I've been as far as Merthyr on my old Raleigh but am hoping that the Navy Blue Claud Butler will make my riding experience easier.  
I have to admit to 'Bicycle Rage'. I get Bicycle Rage when I have to wait too long for cars while waiting to cross on Canton Bridge. I get the rage when Pedestrians waddle along like overweight ducks blissfully unaware that they share the Taff Trail with Cyclists. Cardiff is a Car City. Car is King. There are loads of cyclists especially when the weather is like this but the standard of cycling lanes and the volume of traffic just doesn't make it an enjoyable or safe experience.

Even though Francis Maude was a Tory Tit-Head for insisting that people fill their Jerry Cans, the ensuing panic buying reflected our fear and paranoia of being deprived something that perhaps allows us one of our very few freedoms. Our freedom to travel, to go wherever and whenever we want.

The reason perhaps that I have been so critical of Kairdiff is that I have essentially been a prisoner here for the last six years. No spontaneous combustion engine to take me away from here. Buses and trains sure, but I like many, am selfish.  I am selfish because I want to control my mode of transport and my journey.

How long can we carry on like this, with our reliance on Oil and Petrol? Are people changing their behaviors in preparation for future shortages and austerity.
Perhaps we should ask that lady in York. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-17560534

Galloway victory is rejection of austerity and war

Galloway victory is rejection of austerity and war

The Rubik's Cube of Life

I could never get the hang of them myself! They are a pretty good metaphor for life, the old Rubik's cube. 'Poysonally' I think you have to disassemble your own life, look at the bits and put them back in a way more suitable to present day living. You need to be more of a 'Taoist Cube' so that if you are thrown against the wall, you bounce back, instead of shattering into little bits. 'Bend like the Reed' brothers and sisters. 
Yesterday I had to get out of the 'Diff' again. Cheap Day Return to Bristol Temple Meads and then a bus to Clifton. I usually get off by the Museum and walk back down but I stayed on it and got off in a lovely little area. With a take away Latte from Nero's(Oooh la la! Have been boycotting them, since discovering that they don't pay any tax, like me)) to get myself in prime position for the Freebie next time, I sat down on a bench outside Clifton Library which it turns out is not open Tuesdays and Thursdays. I've done this many times, arrived in an alien area and like a dog marking its territory I walk about to get the vibe. I saw a man in a waistcoat looking rather aristocatic and I wrote down in my notebook 'Walking Pomposity in a waistcoat' and lo and behold on my way back to the main thoroughfare I spied a bookshop which was having a closing down sale and who was sitting in the back but the very same gentleman. I gave him a £1.00 for Paul Theroux's Patagonian Express and left thinking about him, his life, his shop, Amazon and Internet Booksellers and my own judgementalism.
On a good day I claim to be a Socialist but I don't know what I am really. I realised yesterday that the wealthy are vulnerable as well. I realised this as I helped push a Rangerover which had stalled at the lights. I didn't think twice as another two hunter gatherers were doing the same and there was a lady and little child at the wheel. The wealthy 'break down' as well but I suppose that they have better support structures and can afford to go private and pay for Counselling and Psychotherapy! Waiting for Cognitive Behavior Therapy on the NHS is like waiting for Hell to freeze over. I have been on the waiting list six years now, since my diagnosis, so I presume that they have forgotten or I am no longer on the list. Good thing it's not an emergency eh? Well it was back then. I suppose what I've had, that others don't have, is the luxury of time.
Since the age of 39 when I had my second 'breakthrough' I have had the opportunity to disassemble my Rubik's cube. Take it apart, blow out the dust, shine a light on the dark and dusty corners inside. Very few have this luxury! I think it's a necessity actually and not a luxury.
After calling into the Folk House for my copy of Spark Magazine I discovered Bristol Central Library which was open till 7.30 and had a Juice Bar inside. How civilized! I read books on Personal Finance and on Bipolar Disorder and on Mental Health Nursing. I'm either getting ill or better because I'm entertaining the idea of helping other people with their disassembled Rubik's cubes....yes, even the wealthy! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik's_Cube

Taxi driver arrested as seven men are injured in Cardiff incident - Wales News - News from @walesonline

Taxi driver arrested as seven men are injured in Cardiff incident - Wales News - News from @walesonline

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-20591302

The Wife of Bath

"Whan that April with its shoores a saught" 

And that is all that I remember from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales that we studied for O level. It was a glorious sunny day today and with the lack of a plan and feeling a little claustrophobic on the mean streets of Cardiff, I hopped the A Train to Bath. Bath is not too far from Cardiff and is a classy place with some gravitas and grain. It is also a wealthy place. Tory or Lib Dem I would imagine. I felt like a tourist. I have been a few times before and like a dog marking its territory I made a circular walk from Bath Spa Station. I took my notebook and pen in the hope that the muse would strike. I asked a couple of people where the Job Centre was and they didn't know. They were locals as well. Evidently a Middle Class town, the chavs and chavettes stood out a little bit. They appeared self conscious. There was a 'cafe culture' in Bath which would wipe its derriere on Mill Lane. Its unfair to compare Kairdiff with Bath. But I'm going to anyway! I wonder if it has got to do with History. Bristol and Bath have a history and heritage. Cardiff's only goes back as far as the Industrial Revolution. Merthyr was bigger than Cardiff at the beginning and now oh how the tables have turned. I wonder what response Ian 'Dunk the Spunk' Smith would have if he told the people of Cardiff to travel to Merthyr for work. There is no work in South Wales. No work of any class and gravitas. As an experiment I went into the Job Centre and spent some time on the Job Search Machines and it was as fruitless as if I'd done it in Cardiff. On the Train, I received a call telling me that I was to attend a Job Fit Information session on Wednesday! Oh Goody! A line from the Big Issue screamed out at me after the Phone call. In an article about George Orwell's 'The Road to Wigan Pier, the author and journalist Stephen Armstrong visited Wigan in August of last year. He spoke to Richard who said to him " What do you do if you are a 45 year old man with few skills, and you're told, 'If you work really hard you could be the one wearing the orange apron saying "Welcome to B&Q". Richard concluded with "I don't know why people aren't rioting?" The next day, in Tottenham, the riots began.

I can't imagine a riot happening in Bath, unless it's the return of the Roman Ninth Legion. Bath like Abergavenny, Penarth and Cowbridge is twee, quaint and wealthy with loads of Middle Class Punters milling about. I have to admit that I got done in Debenhams walking past a sign offering a Ploughman's Lunch. I won't tell you how much I paid but for ingredients that didn't come in at a 1/6 of the full price. I then had one of my many ideas that never come to anything. Re-introduce the Ploughman's Lunch into the British Culinary Calendar but proper ingredients and you could still make a decent profit if you sold it at a Fiver. I left like a wounded Welsh fox. I should have walked about to Roy Orbison's 'Only the Lonely'. There were plenty of buskers about, I'm surprised that one didn't follow me like Alan a' Dale.

I felt alone in Bath but not lonely. It was glorious down by the river, next to the Rugby club and looking over to the Cathedral and the waterfall. I am savoring my last moments of freedom because even though I have what is generally considered a serious mental health condition, (at least amongst the dinner party set), the forces of Toryism are closing in. I overheard obviously well to do's passing along on the river bank spouting some nonsense about benefit claimants. The Charity Shops of Bath were a dissapointment. There was plenty of stuff but none of it authentic and real like the stuff that I had purchased in Newport. They say that someone who is given a heart transplant starts to take on different characteristics, perhaps the personality of the person who had the heart originally. Maybe I just didn't want to put on the clothes of the Middle Class. There is a problem in UK plc. The Middle Class are too educated and comfortable and the old working class, or by now the underclass, are deprived a decent education and become trapped. Like Kensington and Chelsea, Bath is a Middle Class Ghettoe! There won't be any riots here.

Cardiff on my return felt warm and comfortable like an old pair of slippers. They say that you always hurt the one you love. I know I slag it off 'something merciless'. It's just that I want it to be better.     

The Forgotten Space - A Film Review

http://vimeo.com/14987749 

For one afternoon only in Chapter 2 when 'normal' people were out enjoying the sunshine, the founder member of the Grungetown awkward squad was indulged in 112 minutes of pure, unadulterated socialist propaganda. It was my first time in Chapter 2 since the re-furbishment and a WoW is required for the plush seats in fluffy red and a ceiling like a poor person's planetarium with little stars of light. I only found out about the film this morning and what took me up the Taff Trail and across Pontcanna, avoiding the lay-line was the promise of a world tour on a Container Ship. We begin in the Port of Rotterdam, a place I know well and which features in my book to be published in 2012 'Amsterdamned'. I walked around the port of Rotterdam whilst undergoing a Psychosis or Brainstorm. It was rather uncomfortable, watching the Containers being moved and handled mechanically, everything automated because in the words of the Port Manager, they don't go off sick, they don't go on holiday and they don't have a Union. Watching the Forgotten Space was like being a Ship's Captain on a Container Ship with the Cinema Screen like the Window of the Bridge. The Film is a collage of various cities and ports around the world Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Bilbao. The people who are interviewed are like Dresden dolls, fragile in their humanity as they co-exist and live within the borders of this Capitalist Profiteering. The saddest stories came from America with three people who mesmerised you with their story and personality. They were living in a Container Yard and they couldn't get out. Human Psychology and Poverty had conspired to keep them prisoners within its walls. The Chinese Story, although sobering does not persuade, that the people are not content, even though to the Western eye, their work conditions and tasks prove mundane and soul-destroying. The film did not really succeed in painting the Global Shipping Industry as an evil, although you were always aware of the ecological effect on the environment and if the film succeeded anywhere it was in showing the indomitable human spirit in face of the oppressive drudgery of their work, no more so than the Fillipino Domestic Maids and Nannies meeting for one Sunday afternoon underneath the escalators of Hong Kong. The film ends in Bilbao and shows how the Titanium covered Guggenheim Museum despite the glowing accolades from an urban planner do not persuade that it is anything other than a Capitalist's plaything. It is people that make places and this film should really have been called 'The Forgotten People'. It was meditative and persuasive and perhaps the Chinese Academic and the Dutch Historian provided the best 'vox pop' and commentary. I was indulged. My confirmatory bias was confirmed.

  

Gorgeous Librarians!

I am still tamping! Tamping is a Wenglish word meaning angry, furious. Tamping fires down maybe? Well the Revolving Doors of Cardiff Central library seem to be working again but today's library story involves Penylan Library which is a Library come Community Centre come gym on the corner of Roath Park Recreation at the bottom of Wellfield Road. I was over there this morning with my friend and his two children, we played football, had an ice-cream and then went in to the library to do some reading. I found a Welsh Vocabulary book for children and we started to read. Whether my booming voice was too loud, whether it was the Welsh that was not appreciated but the Librarians' assistant asked us what we were doing! When told that we were teaching and learning Welsh, she said "I think you might need permission, I'll have to wait for the Librarian to come back" With that I rose, the shackles on the back of the Bipolar Beast rose to meet the challenge. I said "And I thought Libraries were meant to be the seat of learning". With that we arose and left! 

I now realise that after my limited dealings with this cities' librarians, that libraries are there for the benefit of Gorgeous Librarians and not for the General Public. I mean really, if they wanted to deal with the great unwashed, would they have introduced the machines that now scan and record your library borrowings? Machines that on their introduction caused a lot of confusion with the elderly population. 

I have reason to be grateful to one librarian in particular, a librarian who was so helpful when I was in captivity! well I felt like I was back in Captivity this morning but the librarian had morphed into a woman with ashes on her tongue. 

This morning, I am tamping less and in re-draft I feel that perhaps it was more a matter of noise than the actual language used, however this little incident goes to prove what I mentioned very early in the blog, that I have a trigger switch and I scan the environment for anything that will confirm my bias. I have observed too much apathy, and I am guilty myself of apathy but the moment I get my arse in gear and do something, like Teaching Welsh Vocabulary, I am told that I need permission.   

Ok scrub that last paragraph, it had nothing to do with noise. I was there yesterday and the noise level was a lot louder than when we were reading out loud and we were there today and in the Computer Suite we observed the same 'librarian's assistant with attitude' admonish someone for eating.

I don't know what it is but this is getting pathological. I'm starting to see Cardiff's Gorgeous Librarians as miserable killjoys. I appreciate that order and decorum must be maintained but there is no consistency of behavior and attitude across the Capital City. In some libraries, the librarians themselves are so loud that you want to shout shush!

After the Bradford  Spring under George Galloway if the Shark Fishing in Wales Party get elected at the elections in May then I shall demand that Kairdiff Librarians undergo attitude training. 

I thought it was just me that suffered from 'Delusions of Grandeur'

House dust mites, nasal polyps & a singer from heaven

My N.H.S Story happened today. I was early. I caught the No 38 Bus up to the Heath Hospital for an appointment with the Ear Nose and Throat Department. I have been up to the Heath a few times and it is like a mini city, within a city. It is so busy even at that time of the morning. I have had the symptoms of perennial allergic rhinitis for as long as I care to remember but today I get confirmation that I am allergic to House Dust Mites and that I have small nasal polyps growing that I can choose to have removed if I should so wish. All this on the National Health Service. Why do we take the National Health Service for granted? What is it within the Human Form that only thinks about them when they are unwell and in need of help. You get fixed up, throw away the crutches and you are on your own sweet way. What was great as well, was that the nurse doing the allergy test spoke Welsh. She had a little badge with 'Cymraeg' on it so after a few pleasantries in Olde Englishe I tried my luck and the effort was rewarded with enthusiasm. It is such a pleasure when you meet an 'ordinary' person who speaks Welsh, not a media type or academic but a down to earth nurse who was very proud of her country and language.
I walked back because the weather was gorgeous and on nearing the city, the hustle and bustle of consumer capitalism got louder and louder. I know Men are not meant to be over struck on shopping anyway but the older I get, the less time I am able to spend in any shop before feeling distinctly uncomfortable.  After checking out the price of anti-allergy bedding in Argos I walked down the steps from St David's 1 and was greeted by the most amazing sight and sound. It was profound. There was a busker playing a piano accordian and next to him was a tall black gentleman singing. Well his voice was incredible. Paul Robeson-esque. The singer was just a passer by and was accompanying the busker. I had to stop. It was so haunting that a number of mostly elderly people stopped also. I observed him through the railings and walking through St John's he carried on but suddenly became self conscious at the attention. It was a wondrous voice. The gentleman then disappeared  into Central Market appearing rather sheepish. He had been able to release something out there in the sunshine with humor, happiness and a smile. It really was so profound but so short lived. 
I had to go and process what I had just heard and seen in Waterstones.
I felt incredibly sad. Saddened by the human voice that has been stifled but that can still be as beautiful as an angel when the spirit is released. 
These were two 'lost souls' united in song and tune.


This isn't really an observation that you can bring up in conversation because the reply you're likely to get is "He's being Bipolar again".

Two Tribes

This is a post that was going to be written at some stage! An observation and analysis of the two main tribes that make up present day Wales. Who better to write this post than a member of both tribes. Someone from the Geographical South is referred to as a 'Hwntw' and someone from the Geographical North is called a Gogleddwr or 'Gog' for short. I was born a Hwntw in Bridgend, South Wales and I was raised and reared a Gog in Wrexham and then the Vale of Clwyd. I was a North Eastern Gog as opposed to a 'Bog Gog' ie one from the North Wales Veld incorporating Caernarfon, Pen Lleyn and Sir Fon/Anglesey. I am also the product of a mixed marriage, Father a Gog and Mother a Hwntw. 
Some of my fellow shark fisherpeople might suppose that my sympathies lie in the North with my vehement and acidic attacks against Caerdydd/Cardiff. This is not a scientific study obviously but I do sense a mistrust and misunderstanding and that lies mostly with the 'Hwntw'. The 'Hwntw' or the 'Sioni Bob Ochr' is a very different beast to the Gog and there is much diversity within the ranks of the Hwntw. The West Walian Hwntw is different from the South East Walian Hwntw. It is presumed anecdotally that North Wales begins just north of Tal-y-Bont, a village outside Aberystwyth. Once you have reached Machynlleth, you are in North Wales. People from Machynlleth which was once the Capital of Wales might refer to themselves as Mid Walians. For the purposes of this non scientific post they are 'Gogs'.  Having lived in both North and South I can't say that I have a preference. I have been miserable in both places but that perhaps has more to do with my Bipolar Disorder than it does with the geography and logistics. Bipolar is a useful metaphor in my shark fishing circles because it is a world of extremes. Wales is a land of extremes. You live in the North or the South, you speak Welsh or you don't. Offa's Dyke keeps two tribes in at the Western part of the Dis-united Kingdom. 
If North Wales had a border horizontally instead of vertically, then a line from Machynlleth might take in Shrewsbury, Telford, Cannock, across to Leicester and then Kings Lynn and ending up in the fishing village of Cromer. Who knows the 'Gog' might have more in common with the peoples of this area because Cardiff is a very long way away from Sir Fon and the language of North and South Wales might be the same on Radio Cymru but the accents are different and the mentality is different. I find regional accents fascinating and the UK has such a diverse number. In North East Wales, our accent would be tinged with the Scouse of Merseyside, 'All right der laa?' We looked to Liverpool as our Capital City. Shopping in Liverpool and Chester was a big day out. How can the people of North Wales be served adequately by an assembly in Cardiff Bay? They can't is the simple answer because the geography of Wales does not allow for a unity and a togetherness.
I do not support a motorway or faster road network to North Wales because it is the geography of this glorious, hideous country that has maintained the ancient tongue. I maintain that if Wales was as flat as the Netherlands, then there would be no Welsh Language left. The fact that it has survived as well and as long as it has is a miracle and it has survived for a reason, which must be spiritual. (Told you this isn't scientific didn't I!)
So Gog and Hwntw! Which would you choose? We are so bloody parochial. Instead of 'pleidiol wyf i'm gwlad' in the National Anthem, it should scan 'plwyfol wyf i'm gwlad'.
Who are these sharks you're on about then butt? The sharks are the ones in charge of the hierarchical institutions, the ones who put profits before people. A quiet sea change is happening across the globe! People have had enough of competing, capitalism and making money at the expense of others. The 70,000 in the Millennium Stadium last Saturday would have been better off getting to know eachother, shaking hands, singing a lot more hymns, instead of blinkers on and watching the pig's bladder being thrown about. 


'dyrchafaf fy llygaid i'r mynyddoedd: turn my eyes and attention to the mountains. It is on the Mountains of Wales that the answer lies, not in the Valleys.


How can we unify Gog and Hwntw?


Your answers on a postcard from either Llandudno or Porthcawl if you please.  

We shall Overcome - red button theatre and film workers' co-operative

We shall Overcome - red button theatre and film workers' co-operative

My Baby is Two Months Old Today!

Sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com is two months old today. In that short time, the blog has been visited 1971 times. I am a Perfectionist so I was hoping that it would have made the 2000 mark but perhaps I've sat back on my laurels. This is an opportunity to assess what has been going on so far.

Some might consider sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com is just a grumpy old man venting his spleen. A Post Mid-Life Crisis for a specimen often ignored on the streets. That grey middle aged man that you looked through a moment ago might have been me, so what? Do I count? I might have looked through you. I'll admit that now I do walk about with blinkers on. I can't take it all in because it would phase me. I had one too many coffees this morning and even though my tolerance has risen for the bean, caffeine is really a bit of a no no for us Bipolars. Oh you'd forgotten I was Bipolar hadn't you! Well so had I! But when I do and something happens then I quickly remind myself of all the unpleasant experiences I had as an undiagnosed Manic Depressive and then I just walk on by! Now I let life happen to other people. I'm scared to take any risks or to let my hair down (don't laugh) in case I get into trouble with the police.

They say "If you want to be wealthy, what in your present life are you prepared to give up ?"

I realised that having had my freedom taken away, my liberty stolen because of my Mental Health Condition, then I would forego wealth to be free. You don't appreciate your health till you've lost it and the same with your freedom. I won't go into details here. The story of my life in captivity is covered in another blog and I am hoping ( I've signed the contract) that it might appear in ebook and paperback book form in 2012/2013. Soooo you might say that sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com is a wee sweetener! So the reader might a get a feel for my writing style. Do you like my self depreciating writing style? At times our thoughts can appear so dark that the only way to change perception is by injecting some humor. I'm hoping that whoever reads my blog posts thinks about  'opinions'. Mine have certainly changed over the years but its wondering what to do with them.  Being Controversial is easy behind the anonymity of the odd shark or seven as A.A Gill might attest to. Maybe who I am trying to reach through these short missives are the people who used to think like me. There can't be many of them. It was unsophisticated black and white thinking, someone who was described on more than one occasion as an extremist. Now I hope that because I have died and been re-born in the Spiritual but not Judeo-Christian sense, that I am hoofing it in the shades of grey. What does piss me off is my psychology and how I was swimming in Treacle for so many years, decades.

Is it a feasible wish, to want people to wake up sooner?

The Way We Were.

Mervyn 'the Swerve' Davies R.I.P

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/16439582

I Bob Un Sydd Fyddlon

Vive La France!

The French were walking around St Mary Street this afternoon and they couldn't believe how shit it was. I could tell by the looks on their faces and the Gallic shrugs and the fact that they were having difficulty finding something to photograph.   I've been away for a bit in the Hinterland and I've forgotten how shit St Mary Street is. St Mary Street is shit. Why don't they rename it 'On the Piss' Street because that's what its there for. There is no Book Shop, that says it all. We've only got one dedicated book shop in the center. For Fuck's sake Cardiff is meant to be the Capital City of Wales. Whether it wants to be or not, it is! 
There is no such thing as a living culture in Wales, in the English speaking part of it anyway. The Welsh Language has the remnants of its chapels and Eisteddfodau and it has an old and ancient culture. In Wales, it doesn't matter how you dress it up, its English Speaking Counterpart does not have a culture.
Pubs and Sport, oh and a bit of Theatre and Opera (for the odd ones) but nothing that makes them specifically Welsh. 
We might beat France in the Rugby on Saturday but who gives a Fuck because the French will still be going home and saying 'Merde'. 
The Anglo or Vichy Welsh is an artificial construct:
Discuss! Duck First. You 'Welshy Bastard'
I was talking to a friend in Jacob's Market this morning and he said a cup of coffee in Paris is 6 euros now, so he doesn't bother going anymore. He and his family went every year.  Football and Rugby are the religions in Wales now because many can't be bothered with organised religion in the God & Jesus format because they either can't get their head around it logically or they were turned off it as children.  Now before you go and brand me the Marshal Petain of Wales I want it to go on record, that I want it to be better. I want Cardiff to be the Capital, I want it to be a Capital worthy of its name.  It's only people like myself who've got too much time on their hands, because of the Recession, who can be bothered, being a tourist in their own city. 
If Cardiff was asked,
"So what do you think of that grumbling Welshy in Grungetown, moaning all the time about you, making pointed remarks without substance in his blogs?"
I'm sure Kairdiff would reply 
"It's time for him to shape up or ship out, it's time for him to drinks his Brains grow his belly and put his Bluebirds scarf around his neck cos if he doesn't shut up, I'm gonna strangle him". 
That's what Cardiff would say if it could speak back to me.    
Mock, Faux, Shallow, Concrete. You couldn't use these words to describe Paris, Dublin or Edinburgh and you couldn't use them to describe me either. Even if I close my eyes, turn around and blink ten times, these are the words that come to me about Cardiff.
Sorry Like! Oh and Vive La France for Saturday.  

Bridge Building at Builth

The Bridge at Builth Wells.

So you're still with me then? The old 'Bipolar Bastard' has just qualified with a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (F.E) from the University College of Wales, Caerleon. It lasted a year and a very kind tutor kindly offered to help me improve my written Welsh. The year 1995.Why did I take this route after graduating? Fuck knows, but I did. Again, no plan Stan! I saw a job as a Basic Skills Tutor advertised with Rathbone Community Industry and I went for it. It was in a Unit over on Ely Bridge! It was to encourage young people excluded from school to engage with basic worksheets in Arithmetic and English. I was alright with the English, the language of Oppression but numbers and figures whoosh! I then saw another advertisement for a Full Time Field Officer with the Young Farmers' Clubs of Wales. Well I was working with young people part time, why not give this a go! I must have had some altruistic wish to be that adult who really understood what it was like to be an unhappy young person.
Young Farmers though? and you having been a city boy for 10 years. Aye, but I was raised in the country, in a village, outside a town in North Wales.  My father was from farming stock and I must have thought subliminally that this move would please him. I thought I was getting back to the land, the earth, 'y pridd'. I lived in Grungetown, Cardiff and I travelled 3 hours a day, there and back to Builth Wells whilst also travelling to all the County Headquarters around Wales. Urban/Rural, Welsh/English. I was driving around in a fog of self loathing and low self esteem. The  car had 125,000 miles on the clock when I started in 1996 and had 205,000 miles on the clock when I finished at the end of 1998. I was fucked by the end of this job and it cost me my physical health. I don't blame the job but I blame my Mental Health whilst doing the job for causing a serious physical illness the following year. I was a worrier, I didn't eat properly. I was snacking on food in garages and I was binge drinking on the weekends. I couldn't relax. I would attend meetings and run training events around Wales with an un-diagnosed Mental Health Condition.  I used to dread the Royal Welsh Show. I had been a Security guard on the show in the early nineties, again Why? Why? Oh yes for the pittance of pay and that had been a sobering experience. Trying to stop somebody on a quad bike from driving around the showground, I made a grab for him and his little son on the back spat out "Hit him Dad, Hit him". I was actually flooding my anxiety later on by doing a job that involved meeting and working with a lot of different people. For a 'Normal' person, this would have been stressful but for somebody with high and low moods it was too much. I bailed out at the end of 98 and in the debrief was asked "Was there anything you enjoyed about the job"? I'd seen another job, working in the Arts and I tried for it, but I was ill already.   Was I being selfless? Was I bridge-building? Or was I just fucking myself up? Tune in next time 'Shark Fishing in Wales' fans to find out. 

Avanti Azzurri!

Well the Italians are in Kairdiff tomorrow. I shall time my arrival back in the Capital after the fuss and furore is over. As some of you know by now I am a signed up member of the awkward squad and I abhor the dominant paradigm. In Wales, that is the W.R.U and the Welsh National Rugby Team. I used to follow the team of the Seventies, yes, hands up, baby hands up until I got older and became political. I must be unusual in that I find politics far more interesting than X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing, another reason not to have a Television. A man who has recently resigned from the Italian Political limelight is one Silvio Berlusconi. A man who made his name in the shady world of television. His name has become associated with the worlds of soap opera, pantomime and farce.
One certainly cannot say that Wales' First Minister is as colorful or charismatic. The 'Grey Lady' as Carwyn Jones has been affectionately nicknamed by members of the Taffia Paparazzi seems to be trundling along without much razzamattazz. 
I feel sorry for the Italians especially as one of their citizens has just been killed in a botched rescue attempt in Nigeria by the Conservative British Government. They weren't told about it! Shades of America not telling Pakistan about Osama Bin Laden?
I believe it was a Conservative Member of the Welsh Assembly a 'Signore Alun Cairns' that was forced to resign after using an unfortunate term to describe the Italian Race.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7454545.stm

I  feel sorry for the Rugby team because they are perennial losers. I've played for Rugby sides like Italy and have a caulifower ear to prove it. That is my loser's trophy. You can sense my frustration can't you? Its a frustration with complacency and the status quo. When the 'Shark Fishing in Wales Party' are elected to the Assembly in a landslide victory at the next election, the Six Nations will be cancelled, the Prince of Wales Feathers will be torn off by the teeth of screaming Harpies with herpes on the banks of the Taff and the Millennium Stadium Pitch will be turned over to Allotments. There is a hell of a waiting list in Kairdiff for them you know!

AVANTI AZZURRI

The Television Years

I haven't had a Television or its accompanying licence since 2005. That's a Fat Seven Years. I catch glimpses here and there of what I might be missing in the homes of family and what friends I have left after the 'Tsunami of Bipolar' swept over me. I'm not missing much! I am triggered by visual stimulus and stick me in a room with 24 hr non stop news on a 'slow' news day or a 'good' news day for the television networks and I will have become so stimulated  by nightfall that I would either need medicating or a punchbag. So I do what they tell you not to do in the CBT self help books, I avoid things.I avoid things that trigger me.
Watching BBC Wales in the Nineteen Nineties was enough to make you ill! The Nineties I refer to as the lost decade.(What do you mean Wuss? We got Devolved Power to the Bay in 1997)
I think back, and I just have a Metallic taste in the mouth.
I think of Oasis and Ladi Di's funeral.
I was hungover on that Sunday and watched the news coverage. Nobody could have foreseen the outpouring of grief but the subjects were not grieving for Ladi Di. They were grieving for themselves and who they had lost previously. Princess Diana's death was a convenient vehicle in which to do this.
I have swopped my television introspection for a Facebook habit which is costing me a good few hours every day but I will not become addicted to that. I will become bored eventually and move on to something else but for the moment, it will suffice. All these technological delights are a displacement activity. They take our mind off death and dying until these media bring death and dying into our subconscious. Now the Noughties were a bad decade for this with the abbreviated dates of destiny, turned into some texter's shorthand. We witnessed 9/11 and 7/7. We the 'collective unconscious' watched this on our different media and then in the words of the old propaganda posters "We kept calm and we carried on". At what cost?
Baroness Warsi claims that Islamophobia has passed 'The Dinner Table Test'.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/20/lady-warsi-islamophobia-muslims-prejudice

Has Pornography I wonder? Is anything taboo around the Dinner Tables of the world? We see enough death but we never talk about it! Unless it is a curt, "well at least she didn't suffer" or "oh it's a blessing". We are relieved at Funerals because we know that it isn't us lying in the coffin at the front of the church, but we do know that one day it will be, so what do we do? Go home and Fuck! 
Sex and Death. There's not much difference these days!
What's this got to do with Shark Fishing in Wales though?   

Musings on Mental Health.

I like the American Philosophy of letting it all hang out when it comes to Mental Health. It's the buttoned up, stiff upper lip attitude that is causing so much grief in this country. I'm afraid I have to point the finger at yon Saxons again or Victorian England with its emphasis on hypocrisy behind frock coats. Large  families where cousins married cousins were not a healthy aspect of this past  The Celtic fringe's 'Joi de Vivre' has been neutered into put up and shut up, and drink yourself to death. Hey,we are all one people, citizens of the world! We don't get enough Sun! That might have something to do with it. I don't mean Rupert Murdoch's rag but the huge yellowy, orange thing that your not meant to look at with the naked eye, for fear of blindness. Well we've all been blinded when it comes to Mental Health!
Maybe we do live in more enlightened times, but only just. The lunatics and the mad and the insane and the mentally unwell are now tolerated. They are medicated and tolerated. Whereas before there was outright discrimination, in the freak shows and the lunatic asylums and the concentration camps, now there seems to be tacit acceptance that, "As long as they don't cause me and mine a problem, that's all right".
Your meandering like a Ronnie Corbett Monologue! Get to the Point! 
Oh yes, Mental Health! How do we measure Mental Health? The degree to which we are able to socialise and get on with other people, I have heard. Well that has confirmed that my own Mental Health is not up to scratch. Avoidance of social situations and strangers at all costs, has been my motto! Probably wrongly, I feel naked to the gaze of others. I feel that the effort required to mix, mingle, small talk, flatter and deceive is rather beyond me these days. I don't want to meet any of my social media friends in real life, that's too dangerous. Real life social interaction with persons not of my immediate family, doesn't really float my boat. I see argument, danger and the most heinous of all, compromise. Pick me up off the floor somebody, no stop, don't you dare, stay back, I don't know you, I don't trust you. We have been force-fed this canned garbage about human nature since the year dot. Trust, fear and faith. If we lose faith in human nature, we lose faith in our selves and our mental health is compromised. I'm sure you don't take your mental health for granted.....do you?

You must see through your own mask if you want to take it off - Deepak Chopra

The Road Less Travelled

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck

'In planning the trip it had seemed to make sense to spend this first night in Cardiff. Was it not the largest city of Wales? The Capital City? It did not concern us at first that we had never talked to anyone who had ever been to Cardiff. So what if the city looked unprepossessing upon our entrance by rail? Wasn't that par for the course of railway routes? And so what if we encountered the same problem of stairs to get from the train to the taxi stand? And so what if there was no taxi there? One would surely come along by and by. Besides, we knew that we'd be soon ensconced in the Angel Hotel, which our Fodor guidebook informed us was unquestionably Cardiff's best, with recently renovated, high ceilinged rooms of bright pastel colors. The renovation of the Angel Hotel, when we finally reached it, however, was incomplete. Its entire entrance and facade were under construction. This meant we had to carry our bags a block through and around all manner of scaffolding. There was no doorman. No bellman. It was hard for us to discern whether the young woman receptionist was speaking Brythonic or gum chewing Cockney. The concierge desk at the other end of the grand foyer had clearly been vacant since the turn of the century. The elevator did not work. Carrying our bags up the palatial staircase, we finally arrived at our seventeen foot ceilinged nest. Its other dimensions were ten by ten. The walls were pastel brown. If the room had been renovated, the results vaguely reminded us of Calcutta. It was hot and stuffy. We threw open our our second story window that looked out, through the scaffolding, upon Cardiff's main and noisiest circle or circus. Our quarters were immediately filled with gasoline fumes. The cold I'd arrived with in London had turned into asthmatic bronchitis during our train ride and stair climbing. I unpacked antibiotics before anything else.

The hotel's sole redeeming feature was its central location-if the center of Cardiff could be considered redemptive in any fashion. It did mean that Cardiff Castle was just the other side of the circle surrounded by a large park. So after unpacking and a failed attempt at a nap, we went for a walk. The park was as littered as Paddington Station. Its shrubbery was desperately in need of pruning. Those few paths that were paved and cracked and growing crops of weeds. We could discern that it had once been a fine park, just as the Angel had once been a fine hotel. It is sad to see a poor city. It is sadder still to see one that had originally been wealthy. It was clear to us not only that Cardiff was deep in an economic 'recession' but that that it had been in it for decades.

Around the square castle was a four-sided moat. Three sides were dry. The other , at its bottom, contained a modicum of parasitic sludge. From the outside, the castle itself was remarkable only because of its phoniness. In fact, Fodor told how most of it had been built by donations in late Victorian times so as to look like a medieval castle. The external result was colorfully ersatz. As to its inside, we cannot attest since there was an entrance fee. 

But that was just the beginning of of the problem. We wouldn't have entered Cardiff castle if it had been for free. The real problem, we realised, was that we wouldn't pay an entrance fee to get into hardly any castle, no matter how ancient, authentic or historical it might be, or palace or museum. It began to dawn on us that we had stumbled into a potential predicament of alarming proportions.

We returned to the Angel where, because there seemed no better place in town, we ate a progressively inedible dinner. We attempted to console ourselves that the despair we were experiencing was the result of very temporary culture shock, which we would soon get over. After all, what else could be expected in entering a land where people spoke Brythonic? Croeso i Gymru? But as we finally drifted off to sleep, amid the noise and the fumes, we seriously wondered whether this trip had been even a slightly rational decision on our parts.'      

Passage taken from the above book which I borrowed from Cardiff 'Super Duper' Central Library.

Free Theatre Movement

Well I've been tweeting about it in an abstract way, I might as well get some thoughts down about it. As mentioned before I am a Benefit Scrounger but when I frequent Chapter or the Sherman or any Theatre Producing venue for that matter I am expected to pay admission prices that are only a couple of quid off the full admission price! Benefit is not a couple of quid off a full salary however! I am neither economist or mathematician therefore I propose a 'Free Theatre Movement'. There has probably been one before in history and I'm sure Googling will reveal something. (Dramatic Pause) No there has been no such thing. I know that the San Fransisco Mime Troupe of the sixties and early seventies would  pass a hat around at the end of the performance. I propose this because the last two offerings I have been to, I have been sadly disappointed(that word again) and on leaving the theatre, wished that I had saved my money for food. When I was not a Benefit Scrounger and on a full salary in London I would go almost every weekend to replenish my Drama Teaching batteries to see a performance at the Royal Court, The National, The Tricycle or Soho Theatre sometimes the Almeida, sometimes the Donmar Warehouse, perhaps the Arcola in Dalston or the Lyric in Hammersmith, the Young Vic also!(I got arrested for name dropping once)The Royal Court had a policy that at the Saturday Matinee, that you could stand for 50pence. You could see quality theatre at a competitive price. You were guaranteed quality. 
It would be very unfair to compare the Welsh with the London output so I won't. What I will do, is in this time of double dip recession put forward a manifesto of sorts for a 'Free Theatre' so that the spectacle is Free. Free for Benefit Scroungers like me! One performance is held over for Concessions only, the elderly, students and of course Benefit Scroungers. What a lovely mix of audience that would be! Or perhaps, the leviathans that are the producing houses make a habit of putting performances on for free, to ostensibly encourage Theatre attendance. We've been told this week that Rugby is better Drama than Theatre. That is a sad indictment on Theatre whether you are a Rugby fan or not! So from deepest darkest Wales where the Arts are subsidised but not as heavily as England, I propose that a 'Free Theatre Movement' begins where students and aspiring actors and creatives and bohemians and free spirits et al, throw off the chains of capitalism and pretend that there isn't a fourth wall stopping them. I suggest that with the coming of Spring and Summer that ad-hoc performances spring up around the towns and cities of Wales. Let them be agit-propaganda, let them attack the politicians and the institutions, not worrying that it will affect their career prospects in the future. 
Surely it is better to have a riot of color and theatre, than a riot!
Let the People Play!
Should it take off, you heard it here first.

Birthday Blog!

dis·ap·point·ed/ˌdisəˈpointid/

Adjective:

(of a person) Sad or displeased because someone or something has failed to fulfill one's hopes or expectations.

My name is David Williams! It is St David's Day, March 1st and I am 46 years of age today. I am also a Failure. Life hasn't gone according to plan and I am disappointed. Disappointed in Cardiff, Disappointed in Wales and perhaps the clincher, disappointed in myself. A side effect of the Bipolar Disorder perhaps, that I was so kindly diagnosed with 6 years ago, because I am stable at the moment. So stable, that I still feel what I felt when I was going high and euphoric towards Mania, that I have a role to play in the future of Wales. Don't you think it's a sign? March1st.....David.......Savior of 'Cymru'. Delusions of Grandeur?

 A Bipolar or Manic Depressive knows that they are stable because their life is so exceedingly dull and boring. You can't have fun, you can't drink and smoke drugs like all the other unhappy people because you will upset your balance. Its all about balance. The world needs failures like myself to self-admit! We cannot all be successes. I admit that I am a failure and that I have failed. I have failed to be what I wanted to be at 13 years of age when the Bipolar first took hold. I wanted to be an award winning journalist as an adult and a book that I read from cover to cover many times was 'Don't quote me..... but' by Derek Lambert .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Lambert_(author)
Now I am a Citizen Blogger who, on a good day, can look forward to 20 readings per post. It might sound that I am looking for sympathy but I am a self proclaimed survivor, and not a victim.(But it's my birthday and I am having a whinge)
I am a failure in that I haven't realised or fulfilled the expectations I had for myself. I have failed my 'ego' my driving force, but hang on perhaps that isn't a bad thing. If you fail your 'ego' the thingummy whatsit that drives you down dead ends, then perhaps you can succeed in dying to the self and becoming re-born.

 As Eckhart Tolle says 'Die before you Die'. 

http://www.inner-growth.info/power_of_now_tolle/eckhart_tolle_pon_quotes.htm

Well I died 6 years ago and have been re-born! But I am still dissatisfied with my achievments and consider myself a failure, therefore, the chippy little 'ego' is still there pecking away like a 'peckerhead'. I thought life was going to be better than this! Why? My fault again? So I must sublimate my anger and frustration and turn it into something that will benefit others, not just myself. Perhaps this is the lesson that I have been trying to learn. It's not about me! It's about us. I have wasted too many years thinking that it was about me. I need to apologise to the Universal Energy for being so selfish and thinking that I could be somebody, when so many people are suffering, I only cared about myself. I am ashamed. We do learn valuable lessons as we age and we feel that we should be able to share them with the younger generation so that they don't waste their lives. We're not meant to obviously. We're just meant to learn our own lessons! Blow out the candles, kick back the chair, life starts again today.