2011: Wrexham and District: Monologue Featured at Theatr y Maes.
2010: Blaenau Gwent and Heads of the Valleys, Ebbw Vale: Helping out on a stand for a day.
2009: Meirion a'r Cyffiniau, Bala : Monologue Featured at Theatr y Maes.
2008: Caerdydd a'r Cylch : No Concessions for the Unemployed.
2004: Casnewydd a'r Cylch: Free Ticket
1998: Penybont ar Ogwr : On the Wales Y.F.C stand
1997: Y Bala: On the Wales Y.F.C stand
1992: Aberystwyth : Working as a Security Guard with GRW Security of Blaenavon
1990: Cwm Rhymni:
1988: Casnewydd
1982: Abertawe
1981: Machynlleth
1979: Caernarfon
1977: Wrecsam
1973: Rhuthun
No Blog about Wales could proceed without mention of the Eisteddfod. I went last year in Wrexham because a Monologue that I wrote was performed at the Theatre on the Eisteddfod Field. I got the train up from Cardiff. I had gone the year before in Ebbw Vale to help out on a stand and that was an excellent site because it was linear and flowed but generally the sites are square and concentration camp like and on my return to the 'Diff' I felt that I had been somewhere where there had been a concentration, a mass of people. These people were certainly not starving! Many appeared comfortably numb, well off, having made a living on the back of the Language. As a child and teenager, I felt two oppressions keenly, the oppression of the Welsh Speaking Chapel on a Sunday where 'adnodau' or verses were learnt to be read out verbatim and the other oppression was that of my English Language, Rugby playing Public School. I didn't fit in at either and the thought of both still make me feel bitter and nauseous! I was caught between two languages and cultures. The Religion of the Hymnal and Psalter and of singing 'Jerusalem' and the Religion of Non Conformity. At my confirmation classes when asked where God was I said "that I hadn't met him". Well I have met him now but that was through a Spiritual Emergency and through Faith rather than through forced Bible Bashing.
Out of my 46 years I have attended 15 Eisteddfods. Not an 'Eisteddfodwr brwd' by any standards! As an adult I would only go if I had reason to go, if it was very local or I could get a free ticket.
At the 1982 Eisteddfod in Swansea we stayed in the University Halls of Residence and it was here that I set my own personal record for simultaneous masturbation. I wanked 6 times one after the other. I was 16 and now at 46 I can only dream of such virile endeavours. It wasn't even a Mayfair or Playboy, although I had quite a sizeable collection stacked in my chemistry set under my bed. It was the Centre Spread in a Magazine called Football Kick.
It wasn't over this edition that I set my record but over the August 1982 edition and I have a feeling that the Model was a Norwich City Fan although that wasn't high on my list of concerns at the time.
The year previously I had been to see 'Gregory's Girl' at the Cinema in Theatre Clwyd, Mold.
I digress. Anyway what has Eisteddfodau got to do with Masturbation? Well quite a bit in my humble. It is self-congratulatory. The Information giving in terms of leaflets and other ephemera from the stalls feels pointless, again like Masturbation. You leave the Eisteddfod Field feeling dirty and guilty! I wonder if it has to do with being in the shadows, conversing in tents!
When the Eisteddfod was last in Cardiff, I went along at 2.00pm hoping to get in, but there were no concessions for the unemployed.
Perhaps they weren't expecting a Welsh Speaker to be unemployed.
They talk a good game but that's all it is in my opinion, a talking shop. A huge competitive hierarchy with accountants and celebrities dressed as green, white and blue druids. You've seen one Eisteddfod, you've seen them all.
A oes heddwch?
I don't think so.
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