"Croeso i ddyfnderoedd fy isymwybod: Welcome to the depths of my subconscious. Shark Fishing in Wales is one man's odyssey to understand the land of his birth through anecdote, observation and reminiscence! By learning about his country, perhaps he can learn more about himself. A process of individuation which Carl Jung suggests we should all go through. Less assuming one nationhood and more working towards one nationhood before we become Independent." Daf Williams
Cymru/Wales: Bipolar Nation
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My second spoken word event in 4 days. I am turning from an anti-social moth into a social butterfly all in the name of 'Spoken W...
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As a Ffrinj Nutter who had a dalliance with the Welsh Nationalist Party/ Plaid Cymru/ The Party of Wales many, many years ago I was p...
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So what are we going to do about Exams and the Education system? Yes you! You and me, what are we going to do to change the Education ...
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I am an endomorph of the Ronnie Barker variety from the Class sketch above. At the moment I weigh in at 15 stone and at 5 foot seven and a h...
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http://www.stevieriks.net/ Conclusive evidence this morning on Page 7 of the National Newspaper of the West of England that Wales is ...
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I shouldn't really go there but the Shark Fisherman of Wales tends to go to places that others fear to tread. Anti-Semitism is the new P...
Saturday 31 March 2012
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.
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.
Friday 30 March 2012
Wednesday 28 March 2012
The Rubik's Cube of Life
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!
Tuesday 27 March 2012
Monday 26 March 2012
The Wife of Bath
Sunday 25 March 2012
The Forgotten Space - A Film Review
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.
Saturday 24 March 2012
Gorgeous Librarians!
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'
Friday 23 March 2012
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".
Thursday 22 March 2012
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.
Monday 19 March 2012
My Baby is Two Months Old Today!
Saturday 17 March 2012
Friday 16 March 2012
Thursday 15 March 2012
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.
Monday 12 March 2012
Bridge Building at Builth
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.
Friday 9 March 2012
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.
Tuesday 6 March 2012
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?
Monday 5 March 2012
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?
Saturday 3 March 2012
The Road Less Travelled
Friday 2 March 2012
Free Theatre Movement
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.
Thursday 1 March 2012
Birthday Blog!
dis·ap·point·ed/ËŒdisəˈpointid/
Adjective: |
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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.
The fact is, the poet does not want admiration, he wants to be believed.
— Jean Cocteau Quotes (@CocteauQuotes) September 21, 2020
Fruity old fruit bats
Hello my fruity old fruit bats! That is a term of endearment by the way. I thought I would treat you to a piece of prose rather than the b...
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Bottom of the Ottoman
Bottom of the Ottoman from David Williams on Vimeo.
Crying in your Beer from David Williams on Vimeo.
Hitler navigates the A487 from Aberaeron to Aberystwyth
I shall never wear tweeds from David Williams on Vimeo.