Yesterday I was with a working party of volunteers who went to the Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans, Cardiff, to clear out some woodland ready for Bird & Bat Boxes to be placed. We had to watch out for newts, because of the weather they were late this year and as they are a protected species, like bats, should we see one, then it was down tools.
I think I had only been back to St Fagans only a handful of times since I had worked there one summer as a warden on the houses in the Summer of 92, when I started as a mature student at the University of Glamorgan.
We kept our tools and had our briefing at Hendre-Wen an old barn that had been moved down from Llanrwst. Apparently it housed the Tardis in an episode of Doctor Who but I remembered the Barn immediately from a Site specific Theatre performance that had been undertaken in the 1990's on the theme of World War 1 and the Suffragette Movement. It is a very vivid memory of being escorted from the main entrance by a soldier to the War memorial where the Last Post was played and the Roll of Honour of the Dead were read out. We moved to Oakdale, to the Tannery, to the Cockpit and to Penrhiw, the Unitarian Chapel and to the Barn at Hendre-Wen where we had watched a scene involving deserters/shellshocked from Battle hiding out in the little crog-lofft.
So here I was back again almost twenty years later and nothing it appeared had changed. Time stands still at St Fagans. We were treated to a lovely lunch in the café above the Gwalia Stores and then on our way back to the wood clearing I saw a man in his seventies standing tall and erect in a black suit and baseball bat with 'Espana' written on it. He smiled at me and looked at my badge thinking that I worked there as staff and he engaged me in conversation immediately.
"They should never have pulled these down" pointing at the prefabricated house at the end of the terrace at Rhydycar. "They would solve the Housing Crisis" now he went on. It was as if he had a pre-prepared monologue that he wished to impart.
"I'm waiting for Yasmin and her son, we've come down from Bryncethin, I remember the Gwalia Stores. I'm an Ogmore Vale Grammar Boy. We both go to Church. Mam was Chapel, she was a Welsh Speaker from Ammanford and Dad was from Carmarthen but I lost the Welsh, I had it as a child. I think it is very important. We must never lose it".
I had only imparted a couple of grunts in response when Yasmin and her son came out of the Prefabricated House. I recognised them then as a threesome that had been having tea in the Gwalia Tearooms.
"I've just been telling this gentleman about Welsh"
"Oooh don't start swearing at me" she said in a very broad Bridgend accent
"I don't speak it and don't understand it"
"Hwyl Fawr" I said to the old gentleman.
Yasmin held her hand up, face palm out and abruptly said "Goodbye"
For me in that one exchange at the Museum of Welsh Life encapsulated the attitude towards the Language. The attitude is on a spectrum but here was a dignified gentleman who had taken the trouble to give fellow church members a lift down to St Fagans. A man who had 'hiraeth' a yearning for his lost heritage and language accompanied by a lady who viewed it quite honestly as a threat. It was dismissed with pointed words and a hand gesture.
I returned to the Gang a little shaken but then got on with the work and finished the afternoon conversing in Welsh with a Frenchman who had learnt Breton and then Welsh but who also spoke perfect English.
I left St Fagans wondering whether it was the Museum of Welsh Life or the Museum of Welsh Death. When the exhibits are brought to life as in that Promenade site specific piece then history is brought to life. People in Costume relay information of the age because it is people that make places after all.
Wardens on a little bit over the minimum wage shivering bilingually wishing they were working at the BBC...perhaps
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