I'm not sure what Claustrophobia is in Welsh but I am feeling Claustrophobic in English and in Welsh. It is a feeling that creeps up on me every so often, linked to my over thinking. I am feeling smothered by the country that I am writing about in this Blog. I feel smothered by Cardiff and by Aberystwyth because I am so familiar with them. The two places, South and West where I am obliged to be, or more accurately where my conscience obliges me to be. I feel that my senses have been dulled and my movements are slow. I could I suppose move to London or to Manchester, places that I am familiar with and where I know people but I have been there before and there is a part of me that requires novelty and variety. Everywhere is very much the same if you drag your tired, worn out old psyche with you. I've done the 'Grass is always Greener' bit. This feeling of Claustrophobia is heightened when you are faced with mortality, not so much your own but that of your family members and perhaps that of your country. Wales will never die of course but the idealised Wales that each one of us who lives here carries with them is destined to die. I don't know if I can accept Wales as it is because it is not dynamic. It is dull. It is a country marking time between Rugby Internationals. It is a country that reads the Western Mail and Wales Online. It is a country that will be voting Labour and UKIP en masse in the next general election. Even though I turned 18 in 1984, the first time I was able to cast my vote was in the General Election of 1987
I remember being desperate to vote. I was living in a flat above a clothes shop in Colwyn Bay at the time and travelling to work in Kinmel Bay in North Wales. I remember voting Plaid Cymru, another attempt to stop the 'smothering' of Wales perhaps. The same year I moved down to Cardiff and it is here that I have been ever since with a few escape attempts namely to London, Amsterdam and most recently Manchester. Now my attitude to voting has come full pendulum. I am almost desperate not to vote because of how disillusioned I am with the present 'Two Party' system. The alleged Representative Democracy. I probably will vote but in the part of Cardiff I live in it will have to be a protest vote for the Green Party or the Communist Party. The present 'political party' obsessed situation makes you literally want to gasp for air. You cannot help but buy into the cynicism of 'They are all the same', 'My vote wont make any difference'. I suppose that now it might be a case of go where you are celebrated, not just tolerated and I realise that by writing this post that my grandiose self is just being tolerated here in Wales. I need air.
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