Sais addolwr

A ydw i yn Sais addolwr? Chwedl Emrys ap Iwan. Sylweddoli heddiw wna'r cyfnodau hapusaf o fy mywyd oedd y rheina pan roeddwn yn byw tu allan i Gymru. Camgymeriad o'r mwyaf oedd symud i Gaerdydd nol yng nghanol yr wythdegau ag yr unig reswm mi wnes i hynny oedd oherwydd fy mod wedi cael fy nal yn yfed a gyrru ar y Denbigh By Pass yn un ar hugain oed. Mi roeddwn yn byw ym Mae Colwyn ac yn teithio bob dydd i fy ngwaith ym Mae Cinmel. Ar ôl colli trwydded gyrru dyma fi yn penderfynu fel yr hen chwarelwyr gynt i fynd i'r 'Sowth'. Mi roeddwn wedi cael fy ngeni ym Mhen y Bont ar Ogwr felli mynd yn ôl roeddwn ni after all! Ond heb wybod i mi ar y pryd mi roeddwn yn dod ag afiechyd meddwl lawr i'r De gyda fi. Afiechyd Meddwl oedd yn gymysgedd o natur/maethu. Mi roedd hanes yn y teulu ag mi roeddwn yn hogyn tawel, 'withdrawn'. Mi wnes i ddechrau ynysi fy hun yn fy arddegau ac mae'r arferiad o gilio rhag bywyd a phobol wedi fy nilyn trwy fy mywyd fel oedolyn. I raddau mae wedi bod yn fecanwaith amddiffynnol sydd wedi cynorthwyo fi i osgoi rhan fwyaf o sefyllfaoedd annifyr a phobol amheus. Ond fel pawb dwi wedi cael fy siâr o rheina oherwydd mi roeddwn yn gaeth i bethau oedd yn gwneud i fi teimlo'n well, fel nicotine, cannabis ag alcohol. Mae'r cyflwr dau begynol yma yn ddisgrifiad da o fy mhersonoliaeth. Cymeriad 'All or Nothing'. "One Pint was too many and eight was not enough". Ar ôl byw a bod yn De a Gogledd Cymru a dod i'r casgliad fod y wlad yn ddau begynol, rhyddhad o'r mwyaf oedd symud i Loegr ar ddau achlysur, unwaith i Watford fel myfyriwr yn fy arddegau hwyr ag yn ail fel athro yn Ne ddwyrain Llundain yn dechrau'r mileniwm. Cyfnodau pan oeddwn yn weddol gytûn. Ddim yn hapus ond ddim yn anhapus chwaith. Roedd yn rhyddhad jest i fyw a bod. Gwrando ar y radio prynhawn yma ac ar y ddadl am gadw enwau Cymraeg ar lefydd. Un dyn o'r Gogledd yn lladd yn hallt ar y Saeson oedd yn dod mewn i'r pentrefi ac yn mynnu cael pethau ei ffordd ei hun. Mae yn hawdd ac weithiau anorfod i gyffredinoli ond beth ddwi'n meddwl ydy fod yr Iaith Gymraeg dan fygythiad dim oherwydd y Saeson ar mewn llifiad gymaint ond oherwydd y Cymry ddi Gymraeg ei iaith sydd yn gobeithio bydd yr iaith yn marw allan iddynt hwy beidio teimlo'n israddol oherwydd hynny. Canran uchel ardaloedd ôl glofaol De Cymru ble ddaeth gymaint o bobol i mewn o'r tu allan i chwilio am waith.Yn yr wythdegau a nawdegau tywyll doedd dosbarth gweithiol Caerdydd ddim am glywed yr iaith Gymraeg a dwi ddim yn meddwl dwi wedi dod dros y siom o weld a chlywed agwedd pobl y brifddinas i'r iaith gynhenid. Dyn ar stôl yn y Westgate Pub yn troi ac yn sythu i fy llygaid "It's nice to hear a dying language". Mae wedi newid cryn dipyn erbyn hyn gyda'r 'bright young things' wedi dod i mewn i Grangetown ond dwi dal ar dan i adael. Mae'n swnio'n rhi’ syml ddeud ond cyfalafiaeth sydd wedi lladd yr iaith Gymraeg. Os i ni am barhau mae rhaid i ni newid ein diwylliant a pheidio efelychu'r diwylliant Eingl-Americanaidd. A oes modd i ni symleiddio bywyd neu ydan ni wedi arfer ar y bywyd bras yma? Oherwydd bod gymaint o'n cyn teidiau wedi cyfaddawdu i'r Ymerodraeth Brydeinig rydym yn y cawdel yma heddiw. Mae yn uffern o gyfrifoldeb ond fel wedodd TH Parry Williams 'Ni allaf ddianc rhag hon"  
 
Rapper with Glasses from David Williams on Vimeo.

One Year Ago Today

I must have a thing for Anniversaries! 1 year to the day, I came away from Facebook. 22nd January 2016. For Five years previous to this, I was its slave. It would whip me daily and I would sit transfixed by the bum fluff. I'm back. I think I've shown that I can stay away. Who knows perhaps I shall write an ebook "My year off Facebook". This time things will be different. I will be keeping my circle small. Ostensibly, the reason I am back is that I want to share my Blog Posts on other medium. Twitter is great but I think there is only one person who ever looks at my stuff so I'm spreading out to Pinterest as well. For me it is not about the Messenger but about the Message. As I stated recently I feel that Facebook bosses you and you boss Twitter. If it starts bossing me again, then I'll be off again but this time I hope to discipline myself to a minimum of bum fluff time. Abnormal service will continue on Twitter but as I say I will be using my Facebook page to share my Blog Posts from Pysgota Siarcod yng Nghymru. Diolch. 

5 years ago today!

5 years ago, the Shark Fisherman put Richard Brautigan's 'Trout Fishing in America' back on the library shelf and set about making his own slice of history, his own piece of pecan pie. 620 Blog posts on I have to congratulate myself for my resilience in continuing with this concept album of a blog in the face of Welsh antipathy and indifference. On average 56 people read each post and only 5 of those are Welsh which shows that my reach is wide. It was more when I syndicated to Facebook but a year on from 22nd January 2016 I will have been free from that soul and life sucking medium. The loss of readership was the cost that I was prepared to pay.  By now you are probably wondering why I have included the 'War of the Worlds'  Well, on Friday you don't need me to tell you what is going to happen in Washington DC. Unless you are insane like me, then you are surely as worried about the next four years as were the Victorians about the prophecies of HG Wells. I have to admit that President Donald Trump appeals to my sense of the absurd. Any man is as horrific as our own fears that we imbue him with. One thing that we lack in our armoury against him is what we had back in the 1980s and that was cutting edge satire in the form of Not the Nine o Clock News and Spitting Image We need these types of programmes to maintain our sanity in the face of potential Armageddon. My concern is that it has been almost 80 years since the last World War, a length of time unprecedented in the history of conflict and wasn't it the European Union that was the glue that kept us together? Many wars between 1939 and now but not a Global Conflict. The signs have been there for a while. With ISIL, Brexit and Trump/Putin we have a potential explosive cocktail. As individuals we are as impotent as we ever were. Our only defence, our sense of humour and our ability to minimise these threats through film, theatre & literature. If Trump is as thin skinned as he appears then one does wonder what will happen when he is insulted by North Korea. Rest assured dear loyal Shark Fishing in Wales readers, you will know what I feel as soon as it happens. Here's to the next 5 years if we're still here... 

May on Mental Health

Now I like Theresa May as a person, she comes across as compassionate and kind, when you do actually see her. I think she is actually quite a private person and guards her own mental health well, unlike her predecessor, the Flashman Cameron who was in your, and every camerman's face day in day out, looking as if he was doing something. What he was actually doing under the disguise of democracy was preparing to allow the people to lance the Brexit Boil. It has been lanced and Theresa May is now concerned about our mental health in the light of this. I've watched a couple of news flashes (on somebody else's TV) and looked on the Internet and read an article in the Western Fail
'May calls for end to stigma surrounding mental health.'

"I was talking to somebody earlier today and they were making the point that, in the workplace, if you break your arm and you go in with your arm in plaster or in a sling, people will come up to you and talk to you about it. If you have a mental health problem people are more likely to try to avoid you. We must get over the stigma, we must ensure that we are providing the services for people with mental health"

Well I'm sorry Theresa but that is absolute drivel worthy of my previous post. It is anecdotal and it buys into the us and them narrative. Other people get problems with their Mental Health. The very language she uses feeds the stigma and I'm not actually so sure that there is a stigma regarding mental health. It is only those who actually see themselves as robots, devoid of a heart, who can actually believe that there can be a stigma related to emotional distress. It appears to me that many of those who work for Mental Health Charities on a very fat salary, in a hierarchical structure that perpetuates oppression also buy into that narrative, but that is another post for another day. What qualifies the Shark Fisherman of Wales to talk of such things? Well he/I ended up in a Foreign Jail because of his/my mental health. No, I'm sorry referring to it in the third person is just not going to work. It makes everything impersonal and puts everything at arms length. Luckily for me, Britain was still in the European Union at the time and the Remand Jail was willing to take me at Dutch Tax Payers Expense. If they had refused to incarcerate me then I would have had to return to Britain and God knows what kind of treatment I would have received here. Well it's not only God knows, we all know what kind of treatment I would have received here, none. 
I, one of Thatcher's children, became an emergency case at the age of 39. I had been hospitalised at 21 for a breakdown that had been precipitated by my first experience of emotional distress and trauma at the age of 13. Mental Health, Mental Illness has dominated my life because it wasn't addressed when I was a teenager.  Theresa May's words today are addressing the needs of today's teenagers but I am concerned that it is a sticking plaster on an open wound. You are asking education factories that hothouse children and put them under unnecessary pressure to pass exams for jobs that don't exist to minister to their spiritual and holistic needs. Hang on, this sounds like a job for the new Chief Inspector of Ofsted. I think she is a brave Prime Minister. That doesn't make me a Tory. I think she is brave in comparison to the cowards that have preceded her. It was Thatcher who destroyed the Mining Community. It was Thatcher who destroyed the Community of the New Age Travellers at the Battle of the Beanfield using Police Officers who never suffer from Mental Illness. These are the robots we are talking about. They are paid enough and promised a big enough pension, not to feel anything in the line of duty. There are some on my Twitter Feed who hark back to the days of the Asylums and bemoan the fact that Care in the Community happened. The Victorians locked people away because they did not conform to social norms.
This was the beginning of the us and them mentality.
1 in 4... If I hear that statistic again.... 4 Barcoded Tins of Beans on a supermarket shelf and one of them has got a kink in it. If you are not a robot then quite likely when you have finally lifted the veil on the lies of this conformed, capitalistic, avaricious, greedy, blinkered, brutal society you might rediscover the sensitive soul that you once were before you had it kicked out of you, but don't tell anybody because the 3 in 4 believe that there is a stigma attached to it.

      

Drivel

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/04/bradford-mp-naz-shah-calls-calm-m62-police-shooting-protests-yassar-yaqub

As if the execution wasn't bad enough what I objected to was the reporting and in the Guardian of all places.

Gemma Wilson, a Conservative councillor who was in the area at the time, said five or six police cars appeared to be acting as a barricade on Ainley Top roundabout, off the M62.

“I was coming back at 6.15pm from the cinema with the kids and you could hear the police cars’ sirens as you approached,” she said. “The police cars on the roundabout seemed to be being used as a barricade but I’m not sure … There seemed to be some other unmarked cars as well, parked up, but I’m not sure whether they were involved in the operation or not. It was an absolute hive of police activity.”People had initially believed the incident was a lorry or bus crash, Wilson said, but she added: “It didn’t look like a normal car crash. We just had a gut feeling that something was wrong.“An hour later I walked to the supermarket and the traffic was absolutely awful, you could see a sea of blue flashing lights. The traffic this morning is getting quite bad on the first working day after Christmas as well, so it’s going to hit the area quite badly.”

Now the above is absolute drivel and is not relevant to the incident. It is anecdotal observation.

Cinema, Kids, Barricade, Hive of Activity, Supermarket, Traffic was awful, First working day after Christmas.  

Why does everything have to be dumbed down to this trite 'Loose Women' rubbish. If the Police and Media wanted this kind of reporting why didn't they assassinate the man outside his childrens' primary school instead of turning it into a spectacle for Conservative rubber necks on the cinema/supermarket trolley dash. We don't have the full details about the incident but we do know that the Police were not wearing cameras. If they knew that they were going to kill him and that it was planned, why didn't they do it in a built up area instead of on a slip road that can be seen by helicopter and overhead cameras? because they knew there would be a full scale riot. At a time of heightened tensions, this is obviously going to do a lot for race relations and religious tolerance. Do not be surprised if this is the first of many such public disappearances with the media and police working hand in glove to present it in a more palatable day time television format so that the Great British Public can digest it easier.