"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 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...
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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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Sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com is two months old today. In that short time, the blog has been visited 1971 times. I am a Perfectionis...
Friday 31 October 2014
LLADD PRYFED/KILLING FLIES
Thursday 30 October 2014
Brown is the new Black
My Blog has had a makeover! readership numbers are dwindling, the novelty is wearing off. People are voting with their feet and shouting 'There's nothing here for me". Well good, F Off! This blog is for me. I like blogging, I like blogging, I like blogging and I like to blog. I wanted to be a journalist when I was 13 but I failed my exams so I became a Printer and then a Teacher. I haven't darkened a classroom entrance for 10 years but there is a slim chance that I might be back in one next week. I've had the call. They're desperate, they need someone to cover 'English' in a Welsh Medium School. An Oxymoron if ever there was one. Teaching the language of the Oppressor, the language of the Western Mail but what am I saying? It was the only exam I passed, I passed English Language, English Literature and Welsh as a second language. After six years in an oppressive, imperialist outpost in North Wales where my father spent a small fortune on my education and I come out with 3 O levels.(GCSEs) So my dreams of writing the editorial for the Daily Mirror or the Denbighshire Free Press were dashed at 16. I left after two terms of A level study after making a mockery of my mocks, with the History teacher phoning home and saying to my mother that he had never had a pupil take such a disrespectful attitude to an exam in all his teaching career. There were questions about Catherine the Great and Maria Therese and I could see others writing away like loons(the irony) and I proceeded to 'pleasure myself' by writing out a comical satire based on these two characters claiming that they were both members of a clog dancing troupe from Oldham. My fate had been sealed, I began work at 17 years of age in a Dickensian Printers called Gwasg Gee, Denbigh, North Wales on £25.00 from Margaret Thatcher's own purse on the Youth Opportunities Programme. Here I am 31 years later on only double that amount a week, working tax credits, but the difference is, that today I am a free man.
So my blog has had a 'makeover'. Brown is a very comforting colour. The colour of old things, the colour of gravitas, the colour of safe shoes and it is also the colour of Poo. Although a follower of Jung I must declare an interest in Freud's anal phase. I am fascinated by poo because it's something that we all do, that we all have in common. We all block the sewers with our detritus. I can actually remember my own potty and toilet training days and my dear mother promising me oodles of Cherry Corona Pop if I moved from the potty to the po to do my poo. I bet you thought this post was going to be about race didn't you? Well naughty, naughty you!
Thursday 23 October 2014
Jimmy 2
Wednesday 22 October 2014
Circuitous Route
So I'm walking up Bute Street like one of Baudelaire's Flaneurs like, making sure not to maintain eye contact. Quick darting glances can surely do no harm. They have sanitised Bute Street. They've made it neater, cleaner, squarer. It's obvious that now they have no time for the old buildings. Caerdydd is Car Country. The Capital City where the Spontaneous Combustion Engine is king and where Central Library is shut on a Wednesday.
Just as I start muttering to myself, Jesus whispers to me from the bushes. 'Get a job mate. You've got too much time on your hands. You're noticing all the shite things that Pilate doesn't want you to notice" "Right ho Jesus", I says and makes my way to the Job Centre in Charles Street cos they're bound to have jobs in there and I forgets to get my printing ink and my dreams of becoming a writer.
Monday 20 October 2014
A short Psycho-geographical tour of Cardiff
"Go out into the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go, in whatever medium you favour, film, photograph, manuscript, tape. Catch the textual run-off of the streets; the graffiti, the branded litter, the snatches of conversation. Cut for sign. Log the data-stream. Be alert to the happenstance of metaphors, watch for visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, family resemblances, the changing moods of the street. Complete the circle, and the record ends. Walking makes for content; footage for footage."
Robert MacFarlane, A Road of One's Own From the Times Literary Supplement, October 07, 2005
Today on the pretext of looking for work I did a short Psycho-Geographical tour of Cardiff to see some places I haven't seen for ages and to document in pictures this short journey. I started off at the recently painted mural on Coburn Street in Cathays featuring a poem from acclaimed Cardiff poet and one of the followers of this Blog. Mab Jones.
This was a wonderful example of what can be done with a wall, facing terraced houses, and the poem and wall eulogised an elderly and long standing member of the street. Howard Gardens Bowling Club next where the R.N.I.B used to play bowls. Overgrown. An example of one of the very few green areas left in the city centre, being primed for development. Vulnerable adults used to play here!!! How many offices and flats does a city need for Chrissake! Re-Green this City and Re-Green it now.
Cutting through then the 'metal' streets of Adamsdown, moving towards Splott, I spied the old Tredegar Arms where I had a pint once, many many moons ago but was glad to see that it was now being put to a better use. It was now the Headquarters of the Cardiff Anarchist Group, the Red & Black Umbrella.
I first lived in the City from February 1967- August 1969 before we joined the pogrom north and before man stepped foot on the moon. In those days I remember that the Buses were dark red, perhaps maroon and the radiator grills on the front made them look as if they were crying. Returning to the City in 87, the Buses were Orange and then at some point in the late eighties or early nineties they changed into their present turquoise.
Today I was on Shanks Pony and I realised how long it had been since I had been down to the Peoples' Republic of Splott. This building which is now a Christian Church of some sorts must have been a Cinema/Picture House. Again style wise, I'm not sure of the era but took a photo in case somebody else does. By this stage I was starting to feel concreted out and was gasping for air because of the lack of green spaces. So I stopped in a Portugese Cafe on the Splott Road for a Cup of Tea.
Walking from Splott to Roath across Broadway, I was reminded that I should really be looking for work because on Broadway I had a short lived job in 'The Printers' in 1988 where I met a couple of long standing friends although one is on sabbatical at the moment. Pubs had gone and flats had taken their place. People are now drinking in their flats, now twice the strength of alcohol but with less of the social aspect to it. Over to brightly covered Elm Street (left) where it appears that street had come together and said that they will all paint the fronts of their houses colorfully. It reminded me of Aberaeron in West Wales.
I checked in at Plasnewydd Gardens where I had been at a gathering on Saturday just to see one of the few green and growing spots in the centre and then rounded off at Mackintosh Gardens via the mural below. There are too many cars in Cardiff. It took too long to cross the road. A pedestrian's quality of life is being reduced by a car drivers who come at you at speed, they are bigger, have four wheels and can do some damage and they know it. They won't reduce the production of cars because it is keeping people in jobs. If televisions were thrown out of windows and cars taken to the scrapyards then community and greenery could begin to grow again in this city. Television or Colour Television has only been with us since 1952, it's launch to coincide with our reigning monarch so the first thing we saw was someone who was better than us, getting ready to reign over us and we have been getting smaller and more scared ever since.
I had a very knowledgeable guide for today's tour but he wishes to remain nameless but he is a mover and shaker in the community cohesion arena. This is happening with 'Made in Roath' and much kudos to them for what they do. This needs to be spread out across the city. Perhaps the more people who do Psycho-geographical tours of their cities, documenting as they go might re-invigorate interest in surroundings rather than the fear inducing square box in the corner of the room.
Thursday 16 October 2014
Sick City Centres
You've probably got used to my non-scientific observations by now but it is my contention that city centres are sick. You've heard of sick building syndrome? I'm sure that there is sick city centre syndrome. I am familiar now with the city centres of Cardiff, Liverpool and Manchester. I've been to Birmingham and I'm familiar with Bristol. Where is the exact centre of a city centre? Of course no two days are the same in a city centre. I went to the same destination two days on the trot, yesterday and today. The weather was nicer today and I took a different route. It was earlier and there were less people. If there are a lot of people, a critical mass, I start to shut down. My energies detect their energies and I start to sag.
Today I laughed out loud when I heard an aged busker, older than me even, try out "I am the Walrus" looooooooong pause as I continued walking and then "I am the Egg Man" What made it funnier was the broad Cardiff accent. I realise today that I have a soft spot for the city even though I slag it off something rotten. A friend from North Wales asked me recently which was the better city centre Liverpool or Manchester and I said "Manchester" by a shade but all that there are in city centres are shops. Where are the Green areas? The last green area in the centre of Cardiff has been taken by the Admiral Insurance building. You cannot hug concrete in the same way that you can hug a tree. Liverpool and Manchester ooze with character as does Bristol but then there are the SHOPS! Shops don't add character. One Primark or Top Man is very much like the next one. Directions Sir? Certainly, turn left at Paddy Power, right by McDonalds, passed KFC, down by Burger King, left by Bet Fred, down then to Starbucks and you'll see the Church of the latter day retailer down there on the right. Even our smaller towns have been dumbed down. Shallowness, artificiality, the lowest common denominator. Booze, Piss and Chips.
When I lived and worked in London, I would take Psycho-geographical tours most weekends. There are areas of great character in London but the city is so busy that there is very little peace and tranquility and if I asked you where is the Spiritual Centre of London? What would you say? I could never find it or feel it, perhaps the closest was Brick Lane but you might reply what do you mean by spiritual? Do Dublin and Edinburgh have spiritual city centres? What about Glasgow?
What are Cities and City Centres for? Trade, to make money, to provide employment, entertainment, restaurants? It must be my age or the way I dress but I am starting to feel like an outsider, walking through the fair. I watch behind my sunglasses! I prefer it when the sun's out because I then have an excuse to wear my specs to observe the human creature in all its glory and ignominy. Everyone's happier when the sun's out but we now have the four months of winter and the long nights before us so it might have been the last gasp of relief that I was sensing today. The young appear to the untrained eye to accept reality as it is and to take all around them for granted but I still feel that this is an alien landscape and that I am just visiting. Dai Mutant is awaiting the call to his home planet.
Wednesday 15 October 2014
Shwmae Su'mae?
Eisiau dweud o ni bod fi'n meddwl bod y gymdeithas Gymraeg ei iaith yn rhy gul. Dwi feddwl fod 'na ofn mawr yn perthyn i'r Gymdeithas Gymraeg. Ofn llond trol o bethau. Efallai fy mod yn son amdanaf i fy hun fan hyn wrth gwrs a dim ond 'projectio' ydw i. Wps gair Saesneg, i waelod y dosbarth a fi.
Beth wnewch chi ag adar brith yn eich mysg? Dioddef nhw a gwenu, anwybyddu nhw, y rhai sydd ddim yn cydymffurfio gyda'r meddylfryd teuluol, papur bro, capel, S4C. Ac i son am y 'cyfryngi' bondigrybwyll yma, beth am y syniad sydd wedi cael ei grybwyll eich bod yn rhoi 10% o'ch cyflog i Gymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg oherwydd oni bai amdanyn nhw a bygythiad Gwynfor Evans i ymprydio tan farwolaeth fase da chi ddim gwaith ond na fe, byw yn y byd tymor byr, ffwrdd a hi, Eingl-Americanaidd i ni ac mae hyn yn amlwg wedi treiddio i'r Gymdeithas Gymraeg. Y Gymdeithas yna sydd mor hoff o'i sefydliadau, Yr Eisteddfod, yr Eglwys yng Nghymru, Y BBC, Y Capeli. Cydymffurfiwch bois bach neu Dduw a'ch helpu chi. Byddwch yn neis neis rŵan a pheidiwch â thrafod iechyd meddwl er mwyn dyn. Y gymdeithas glos yna yn cadw ei chyfrinachau teuluol.
Blwyddyn nesaf fydd dathliad 150 o flynyddoedd ers yr ymfudo i'r Wladfa. Efallai yn lle ymladd yn erbyn y llu ddi-Gymraeg a UKIP ai Brydeindod ddylwn gadael am Batagonia ac ail greu Cymru newydd gan ddysgu oddiwrth camgymeriadau ein gorffennol a bois bach, mi wnawn adael y sefydliadau nol yng Nghymru ac mi wnawn ail adeiladu Cymru newydd ar seiliau sosialaeth gydweithredol. Wrth Gwrs dwi'n disgwyl i chwi anwybyddu'r sylwadau yma oherwydd fy mod yn wallgofddyn ond gofynnwch y cwestiwn "tybed pam mae hwn yng ngwallgofddyn"?
Tuesday 14 October 2014
A Manifesto on behalf of the Manic Depressive Liberation Front
Thursday 9 October 2014
Tuesday 7 October 2014
My life as a Jay
Monday 6 October 2014
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.