Phoneaphobic

I hate talking on the phone, I despise receiving calls. I'm not sure why this is. It wasn't always like this. I think it's linked to my complete loss of confidence. I don't want Supply Teaching Agencies contacting me offering work because even though the money would be useful I cannot multi task. I have been without the mobile for the last 3 weeks or rather I have been without the charger, the unit that supplies the power to allow people to bother me. I'm sorry to say that even when friends phone I am unlikely to answer. Texting is preferable to speaking because I am unlikely to agree to something that I don't want to agree to. People can doorstep you over the phone.

  

It's very rarely that I will answer the door as well. Compared to people I know, I wouldn't describe myself as particularly introverted but I am withdrawn and I am wounded and a political canvasser or Jehova's Wittnesses will, despite their best intentions, receive a F off through the letterbox or a 'non-dom' reply. I don't live here. I think it's linked to my historical inability to say no to people. I was a people pleaser and now I don't want to please anybody apart from myself. Your brain becomes hard wired and in the animal kingdom salespeople can smell a soft touch so I won't go anywhere where my decision making will be compromised. Cold Callers don't call anymore because they know I am really Cold. So if you didn't know before, this is 'Hello-Goodbye'.

Mad Dogs & Englishmen

I am a mad dog and many of you are English men and women. I salute you for following my Blog. You outnumber the Welsh who treat me with the suspicion that I deserve. I can eulogise about England because my Grandfather was born there in Islington, of Welsh stock, but within the sound of Bow bells no less.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2164799/Bow-Bells-mark-area-true-Londoners-drowned-capitals-noise-pollution.html

I went to college in Watford in the eighties and should have stayed there. I should have gone to London, Liverpool or Manchester instead of Cardiff. I am serious upon this point. In England you can become inconspicuous, you can disappear, never to be heard of again but on the Celtic Fringe, there are fewer of us, that there is an urge to make ourselves known, to show ourselves. England is great mate and I wish I was there now instead of deepest, darkest, West Wales on a beautiful sunny day. Out amongst the smog and noise instead of out in the green and nature.  

Now you've probably been watching the televised debates and realise that the 'wee wummin' are bringing an agenda to the table that is displeasing to the Union of the United Kingdom. This union is like a relationship, stale. We are no longer talking to each other! Yeez wud never have heard or seen so much of Ms Wood & Ms Sturgeon had it not been for these leaders' debates, because like nationalists, we only really care what happens in our own back yards. 'Y Filltir Scwar'. Be-headings on a Libyan beach, the drowning of 900 refugees, War in Palestine. We cannot get our heads round these because they are not happening down our street, yet. There have been encroachments, echoes of Great Britain's Empirical past on the streets of Woolwich. I am wondering that if there wasn't such a thing as Britain, Great or otherwise. Just England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If there was no UK, there would be no Nigel Farrage to wax lyrical upon our borders and our immigrants.

England needs to stand alone. It needs to sort out its social inequality and its class divisions. It cannot hope to do that with Wales weighing it down on the western fringe and Scotland sitting on it's 'heed' ready to drop a large, smelly one any minute. England, you must go alone. You must reclaim the flag of St George from the football hooligans and the racists. If there comes a conflict that looks likely with Russia or Islamic State, then we'll all muck in together and in classic 'smoke and mirrors' style, the 'heathen' will not know who he is fighting, the Welsh Long bowmen or the marauding Scots. If we are no longer British, then we can fight a Guerilla war. Even better, call ourselves 'Europeans' and we can fight the enemy as one homogeneous mass.

Perhaps it would be better for me to stop writing Blog Posts and do whatever the 'conditioned' do, whatever nationality they may be. Get a job and marry into a Union that will ultimately go stale.         

Dear Diary

Dear Diary

I have never been as popular as I am at the moment with 411 friends on Facebook and 1,453 Followers on Twitter. I am the CEO and Founding Father of 'Cathod dros y Gymraeg' 'Cats for the Welsh Language' https://twitter.com/CathodDYG  https://www.facebook.com/groups/369525293256069/370762879798977/?notif_t=group_activity which I hope to monetise and turn into a global brand a la Richard Branson sometime soon. 
I am confiding in you this morning, my trusty blog, on yet another Monday in Limbo Land, in case things really take off. We're all just waiting for another beastly government to take power and then we can jolly well get on and enjoy the coming summer which promises to be a corker with lashings of ginger beer and cream cakes. I jolly well hope that those Islamic Fundamentalists don't upset us and Vladimir Putin behaves himself. I've decided to cancel the Mediterranean cruse this year in sympathy with, well I'm sorry but there are just some things you can't joke about. The world is in a perilous place but Uncle Quentin and Aunt Fanny have pulled out the bunting from the dusty wardrobe upstairs where they also found a lion and a witch, huzzah, what fun! V.E Day! Victory in Europe, well we might as well, it's the last bloody victory we'll ever see.

This Diary entry taken from the forthcoming book 'Diary of an unemployed, unmarried, mentally ill, middle aged man' by David Williams. Order your copy now for three shillings and sixpence from 'Upshitcreekwithoutapaddle' Publications of Upper Cwm Twrch. (not far from Glanaman)   

Jobs Miracle

Well it's official, it's one day short of 3 weeks to go before the General Election and I don't give a Flying F**k who wins any more. I wonder if I ever did. Like many, my default setting is anti-Tory because of their oppressive, suffocating tenure! It's Ground hog day here in West Wales. We've been here before. The only thing I could think when catching snatches of the 'challengers debate' while walking through the living room was how magnificent the Methodist Hall looked. It's going to be difficult to avoid until the day but the result on May 8th is going to be like an electoral ejaculation. An anti-climax. Who will be smoking the post coital cigarettes? (or cigars). The Tories are claiming today that there is a Jobs miracle. I haven't got one. I've applied for one, a part time one. I'm not sure if I want one. If I get it, I anticipate bursting into tears on my first day back because I equate work with imprisonment, suffocation, gasping for air. The first job I had after leaving college in Watford in 1985 with an OND in Printing Administration under my arm was selling print for a Polish Printer in Cefn Mawr near Wrexham. I had a dark blue Morris Minor and after 2 days walking around Llangollen in a dark blue suit, getting 1 order, I had a nervous breakdown and ended up in the Llandudno Medical Centre in North Wales under the expert care of Dr Dafydd Alun Jones. To be fair to the Printer, he sent the commission which was about £2.50 sellotaped to a piece of card. It is only by writing this now that I realise that I have an emotional link to work, a link of failure. Every kind of work I have done since then has either ended in failure or with me having another nervous breakdown. I have paid my taxes and you will be relieved to know that I am not claiming yours in benefit. The last time I checked I was on something called Working Tax Credits of £53.00 a week.  Yes I know, it's still public funds propping up the malingerers but don't blame me for the system. I have been moved and manipulated through the tenure of this Tory Government off the books, as have many others, in a far worse state than me. They can then claim that it's a miracle. A Jobs miracle. Look at these desperate 'self employed' people who haven't got a 'f*ck*ng clue' what they are doing. There are no new jobs. There are no jobs. There are activities on zero hours contracts which will pull your soul from within your carcass and put it through a mincer to make a beefburger. "Would you like Fries with that?" There are jobs that will require me to drive around the cities, towns and counties of this overpopulated, traffic choked land, blood boiling in a pressure cooker body with intrusive thoughts shadowing my every move. 
It's Friday. You're home from work. Don't let me spoil it for you. You have a weekend in which to gasp for air.   

Poisoned Pen Letters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Spot_%28Treasure_Island%29

That's it, I ave ad a 'gutsfull' of these poisoned pen letters in the Western Mail and elsewhere slagging off the Welsh language and the use of Welsh. I nearly dropped my copy of 'Tynged yr Iaith' by Saunders Lewis last week, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tynged_yr_Iaith when the Western Mail 'Llais y Sais' published a letter in Welsh. I went public and in medieval English on social media, I said 'Mark my words, someone will complain about this' and true, trew, trw enuff in today's Western Fail we do ave the following letter from a lady from Swainsay.

SIR - When letters from correspondents writing in the medium of Welsh are published in yewer newspaper, would you please provide a transcript in English for the majority of the residents of Wales whose language is English? I feel that providing Welsh-only correspondence is discriminating against the majority, does not provide parity for both languages and does not allow the majority to engage with the topic under discussion. If the Welsh - medium writer has requested that their letter be published only in Welsh then a rider should be added to this effect. 

So lady fach from Abertawe, consider yewerself a recipient of the 'Red Button'.

News from the Cambrian News

Ceredigion County Contains Culture Capital

Controlled 'Cnychio'

Cwps di Cau

Cynghaneddu yn Charlies

Cynhyrfi'r Cardis

Diwylliant Dai?

Duw Duw! Damo'r Diawl!

Gun -toting, Final Solution crackpots driving around

in Tipp-ex covered cars, looking for somewhere to park.

"Use the Park & Ride like everybody else".

"I'm sorry I don't speak Welsh"

"I wasn't talking Welsh"

"Mae'n flin da fi, It must be your accent"

"We could use the Pier!!!!"

"For What?"

Creativity on Constitution Hill

Culture from a pot of yoghurt in the Car Park of the Co-Op

"Oh God, are we going to have to do warm up games?"

"I'm not 'improvising' for anybody" 

"I got my degree in Wenglish from that Piss Pot Poly in Ponty"

"All I can say is, it's not going to Cardiff" 

Tears of a Clown

Tipp-ex gun toting 'Final Solution' crackpots

Tis why I no longer believe in Party Politics. Ceredigion is turning into a farce. Who said what, to whom and when?  The Cambrian News affectionately called the 'Cambrian Snooze' have seen fit to rubbish one of the candidates for the constituency on its front page. I'm not going into the details because I can't be bothered. I'm nearly falling asleep writing this. One of the other candidates launched into a tirade on the former but it turns out that he's got a dark and shady past as well. So it looks as if you are going to enter Politics for a Party, along with a fired up ego, you need a squeaky clean past. You are not going to have a squeaky clean past if you want to enter the political realm in the first place. You are somebody, entranced by the dark corners and have found a place where you can mouth off to your hearts content until a keen little researcher from another tribe chances across something you said when you were 3 years of age and had just finished soiling your nappy.  The campaign here has now been ruined by some 'home truths'. Things that the 'Welshies' feel, but are not able to say. The Lib Dem candidate, the incumbent sitting MP must be smirking across his bum cheeks today because even though he doesn't speak Welsh, he is the Westminster Elected representative of a constituency which 'er gwaethaf phawb a phopeth' (despite everyone and everything) still has a sizeable proportion of Welsh Speakers. Two of the candidates who do speak Welsh have handed victory to the Lib Dems and handed over some votes to UKIP in the process.  As I may have mentioned before I was up here in 1992 canvassing for the Plaid Cymru/Green candidate (Coalition) Cynog Dafis where he overturned a sizeable majority held by the Liberals Geraint Howells at the time. When my Aunty found out, she was not best pleased to say the least as they had a Liberal tradition in the family for years. I was an outsider, coming to Ceredigion to try and foist a different party and 'way of life' upon them. It is different outsiders that have been the topic of conversation in this General Election campaign. Things that the candidates wrote, one for a magazine and one on a message board to do with football. In this election and in this constituency, the old biblical adage from Numbers 32:33 has never been more apposite  

 "But if you fail to do this, you will be sinning against the LORD; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out."

If I live to be 100!

Today I was thinking to myself, get rid of all Guns, not just in America but worldwide. Gun Amnesty. Destroy (War like word) all guns. Then if war is declared, it will be hand to hand, martial arts, jujitsu. No knives either, so basically no weapons apart from your own body. Guns in the arms of a few have killed a lot of people recently, so have aircraft, so I would say, also a ban on commercial aircraft. Stop people travelling all around the globe. We are holding guns and aeroplanes to each others necks. It would take a lot to police and control, the removal of all guns and if war did come down to prowess in martial arts I wouldn't fancy the West's chances if Korea and Japan declared war on us. We are living in an uneasy peace at the moment. Every news story seems to take on an apocalyptic significance. Deaths are now counted in the hundreds. It is a minor event if less than a hundred die. Insanity is stalking the globe wearing the cloak of sanity. All is well, all is normal! As long as we can get to our century without anything major upsetting our own safety because we are all going to live to be a hundred. If I do live to be 100, I will have been unemployed for 61 years. What a drain on taxpayers' money I would be. I would be the most hated elderly man in Wales, the most spiteful, cantankerous blogger this side of the Mumbles.