Father & Son

On Monday at the top of town (Aberystwyth) right beside Siop y Castell I saw a man place a plastic gun around a child's head. I presumed that it was his father and the child was about five. It looked like a Kalashnikov rifle. I was stunned. A woman came out of the shop with a bag of sweets and the child mumbled something and the woman laughed and said 'Bullets'. They woz your 'white working class'.  Like Tintin I walked swiftly passed. 

This was three days after Paris. So three days after the atrocities in France, this is what is happening in a sleepy Mid Wales town. It didn't occur to me that he might have won or bought it at the fair which has brought its own sense of sinister to the ghost town. Empty dodgems and wurlitzers, donut stands and enough opposition to Poundland from the covered markets. It was like something from a David Lynch film. Children learn what they live so give it twenty years and we'll have a 'Bataclan' at the Academy Night Club where a man had his earlobe bitten off two weeks ago by another man in an Orange wig! As you can imagine, the Cambrian Snooze had a field day! The front page stories of this rag had up until last week been 'Human waste dumped on road at Bow Street' ' Man trapped under Grass cutter in Cemetery'. Now there are stories of global importance that are having repercussions in Birmingham by Sea. We played with toy guns as kids but seeing and hearing this was perhaps more shocking than the 24 hour rolling news which after 24 hours actually loses its shock value. Well one kid in Aber has already had his gun and bullets for Christmas, Dear Santa, please don't forget the grenades and rocket launcher next time.