Aberystwyth by Sea

This is a blog about Wales and about my reaction to it. I have strayed into the North West of England recently but I am back to write a blog post about a town called Aberystwyth. Like Liverpool, I know people who eulogise the town. They have been there as students, they live a cosy bi-lingual middle class life there perhaps. They are movers and shakers around Morrisons who currently have the supermarket monopoly in the quaint seaside town. Aberystwyth is the end of the line from Birmingham New Street. I liken the train station to an anal sphincter so that when the escapees from the Midlands climb out into daylight they are then squeezed up the coast to Borth, down to funky Newquay or into one of the drug dens along the sea front. Seaside resort=Drugs. You only have to read the super soar away Cambrian News to find that out. Let me sell Aberystwyth to you! Bronglais Hospital, affectionately known as the Hospital on the Hill. It's quite a riot in frosty weather watching people walking up or walking down the steep gradient to and from A&E to the main reception. There is nowhere to park in Aberystwyth. The town elders want tourists to bring their spondulicks but they don't want them to stay too long. Aberystwyth is a testament to appalling town planning. Instead of sighting a new hospital on a flat piece of land adjacent to the Rugby Club they have built two new layers of bureaucracy to control Ceredigions' Council Tax. A National Assembly building and a brand spanking new Council Headquarters as Bronglais Hospital is added to and built on willy nilly. (I believe there is an operation you can get for that but you will have to go private) If you have elderly family who can't walk very far or very fast then whoa betide you if they should need the services of a public inconvenience. Spend a penny my'n uffarn i! Why don't you spend a pound  Ceredigion County Council. I have obviously been spending too much time in the Metropolis where it appears at least on the outside that you can get things done. As I left Aberystwyth yesterday my parting comment as I shouted out of the window was a "Third World Town in a Third World Country". I feel that I need to apologise to third world towns and third world countries for comparing them to Aberystwyth by Sea. What does Third World Mean anyway? Is it something out of a Terry Pratchett Novel? There is a Welsh Speaking Cognoscenti in Aber who haunt the National Library and other institutions. Quite harmless but they mix with the outpourings from Aber Train station like Oil and Water. Dominoes Pizza, Wetherspoons, New World meets Old and they don't fit. 

Picture this:

Couples on Aberystwyth Seafront

Flags battered by politics

People who cannot reverse

A Monument to the dead and dying

Heaving breasts under ill fitting T shirts

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

To say that you can’t swim here.

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

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

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

The No Vacancies sign is continuously turned by an Obsessive Compulsive

called Lyn

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

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

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

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

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

She hadn’t been seen for months.

Victorian Lamps and College Lecturers

Seagulls and Lobster Pots.

“You could have parked in there Ron.

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

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

carries his animal skin briefcase around from consultation to consultation.

“I built this town”

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

will have it.

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

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

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

When she’s not raking it in from peoples' neuroses

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

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

committed with a wailing widow from Waunfawr sprints passsed her tent

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

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

‘Take it or leave it.’

“Just gives us your money will you”

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

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

by the great white hunters.