Interview with the Author

Hi Fishy People

Today the Shark Fisherman of Wales or SFOW for the purpose of this interview will be speaking with David Williams or DW about the second in his Ken Frane books,
"The Miners' Strike Mystery" which is to be published shortly by Lulu.Com 

SFOW: Hi, hello David, how are you today?
DW: All Right mun! Feeling every inch of my 53 years today.
SFOW: So that would have put you at the age of 18 when the Miners' Strike started in 1984. Do you have any links to the Mining Community?
DW: None at all. Billy Bragg was a miner and a docker between the wars, well I was a Gog.
I was living in North Wales, well I tell a lie, my home was in North Wales but I was a student at Watford College in Hertfordshire when the Miners' Strike was on.
SFOW: And what are you memories of that time?
DW: Well as a callow youth, I had no understanding really of what was going on. I had no empathy being from more rural stock and actually felt that the whole thing was a nuisance. It was on the news every night and you just got bored of it. Jan Leeming was gleaming but in the living rooms up and down the land, you started to realise after the Falklands Conflict, the Toxteth and Brixton riots and with the Miners' Strike that you were living under a great oppression under Thatcher.
It was only after returning to South Wales a few years after the strike and out of college did you start to realise what impact the strike had had on people.
SFOW: This therefore was the background to your new crime thriller'The Miners'Strike Mystery'? 
DW:Yes mostly, I felt that I needed to exorcise a few ghosts politically about that time and how it has impacted on today. I am interested in the collective unconscious and I feel that anybody who lived under Thatcher has some form of trauma to process through.
SFOW: Tell us about your protagonist 'Ken Frane' 
DW: Well Ken Frane is essentially me, my character, a few years older at 58 but world weary, cynical, hard done by and basically trying to make amends for former wrongs. He is a failure and I as a writer ascribe to failure as a philosophy of life. I do not believe that there is any such thing as success because I have never experienced it or tasted it. Life as lived by Ken Frane is lived through the prism of failure and defeat.
SFOW: You have introduced a Watson to his Holmes in this novella?
DW: Yes, he had a bit of a lonely existence in 'The Leiden Triangle Mystery' and I felt organically while writing the novella that he needed somebody to bounce ideas off. Terry Heston and Ken Frane are the 'newish' old crime fighting duo. They both harbour a grudge against South Wales C.I.D for the way that they were treated after the Lynne Black case in the late 1980's. They are both of an era. They were both ordinary bobbies who policed the strike in 1984/85 and Ken Frane thinks rightly or wrongly that it's time to re-open the cold case of 'Andy Halligan'. One ancient murder turns into a new one and Ken Frane and Terry Heston have a job on their hands trying to break through the 'closed shop' of present day Valleys community life.
SFOW: You've set it in the Rhondda Fach? 
DW: Yes, the Rhondda Fawr always gets all the 'sylw' (attention) so I thought that I would base this in and around Maerdy and Ferndale.
SFOW: Did you have any qualms about writing about something that is still so emotive for many people?
DW:I feel that it's about time that people wrote about this period of time.We had a hard faced conservative government then and we have more of the same now. Thatcher was Satan and these are Satan's children now.
SFOW: Strong Words?
DW: What are the point of weak words to describe a time like this. I became politicised as an older person, youth is wasted on the young type of thing.
SFOW: What research did you do for your new novella?
DW: I read Val McDermid's 'A Darker Domain' which also uses the Miners' Strike as  background to her story. I watched the old news footage on You Tube and I put myself back at the time, seeing striking miners near Lime Street station, Liverpool with their yellow collecting buckets and hearing Arthur Scargill wiping the floor with a young reporter on a mid day news programme on the radio. There were some Bristolians down in the same college in Watford and they wore all the badges and had the socialist labour stickers. I also remember them wearing 'Solidarnosc' badges. I bought Billy Bragg tapes but I did not understand and that saddens me looking back. I should have been wearing the badges and going on marches but I was just a casual observer. I was too comfortable and too scared.  I do not pretend that this is an authentic voice of one who was there or part of it. Mine is the dispassionate eye of an observer. I am writing this novella to bear witness to the time and give testimony,all be it through a fictionalised story and characters.
SFOW: David Williams Diolch
DW: Diolch i chi     

What It's Like to Have a Mental Illness

Frozen Faces

There was a public information film when I was a kid and a fairy godmother popped up and said " Learn to Swim young man, learn to swim" (and funny enough his name was Dave as well) now I am not the greatest swimmer to this day and I can't say that I have really learnt. If there had been a public information film that had said 

" Learn to cry young man"

If you see a woman crying in public it is not an event and she is usually being comforted but if you see a man crying in public it is big news. Crying like domestic violence is something that is kept indoors. Only let out on special occasions. There is laughter therapy and happiness classes but I wonder if it was culturally acceptable to cry, whether more of us would do it?!
I don't know how much notice of other people you take when you are out and about but I the Shark Fisherman of Wales don my frozen face. I used to be expressive and my emotions would be betrayed in my face but not anymore. I have a frozen face in public. Usually I wear sunglasses but if not I usually stare straight ahead not catching any bodies eye. Any extended interaction with a stranger or somebody not known to me can lead to anxiety so I do not tend to seek out anxiety inducing situations. Frozen faces and hard hearts can lead to all manner of health conditions. For somebody who used to be in touch with their emotions, somebody who felt the feels, a cold curtain has now descended. I don't want anybody to know my inner workings, only what I tell them, only what I micro manage. This blog has been a great help to me and I suppose what I write is a form of crying in word form, a cry for help.
Where I think the urge or need to cry comes from is a build up of guilt, shame and frustration. I think, unless we are practising Buddhists that we men are chock full of these emotions. They can be annulled by a night of heavy drinking or by a bout of a contact sport but being a frozen face is detrimental to your physical and mental health or your holistic health to coin a phrase. Our poorly learnt coping strategies begin in childhood and teenage years and the inner shame we feel, we feel it as weakness and how can you be weak when you have to compete with other men all the time? You don't allow yourself to be weak so you find compensation strategies to cover up these self perceived weaknesses. You become a frozen face. We become emotionally detached from our inner workings, we become distrustful of others because we think that they are going to press our buttons and force us to reveal our weaknesses. I am not sure how I manage any meaningful conversations anymore. I don't. I blog about my frustrations and my frozen face.

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2018/03/sobbing-selfies-for-mental-health.html

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2017/07/digon-o-ddyn.html

Green Curious

You've probably spotted them in Llanbedr Pont Steffan or Machynlleth. Walking around in stripey, rainbow coloured hand knitted jumpers, jesus sandals and trousers that are off grid. These are the Greens or Hippies to you and me. These are the white settlers who have come into our not so green and pleasant land and are trying to make it a better place to live, like less pollution and nuclear power plants but oh no, the culturally charged Owain Glyndŵr Brigade lump them all in with UKIP and the Conservatives. If they cannot prove conclusively that they are related to Edwin ap Caswallon of Pennal Farm, Sir Meirionydd then they are no good to us, indeed to goodness. Unfortunately my fellow nationalists Global Warming & Climate Change does not stop at Offa's Dyke so however much you think a constitutional name change would help the Wales Green Party it would actually only help you in feeling more Welsh. Why all the hoo ha and furore on twitter and why make it personal? Just because something is called Englandandwales doesn't make it so! The projection is all in the mind of the beholder. I was one of the most vehement 'anti-English football team' in this year's World Cup because I unfairly ascribed the cultural baggage of British Conservatism and Monarchy to the England Football Team. The Auld Enemy? but I bet you support Man Utd and fly from Liverpool or Birmingham Airport on your holidays? The thin red line has to be drawn somewhere and in this case I feel that the dyed in sheep's wool nationalists are projecting their fears and insecurities on to a political party that are only trying to help you (unlike the Conservatives & UKIP) You want to breath fresher air and live in a more environmentally sustainable way? 

Well stop bleating then Defaid ap Cadno and Vote Green.

Opatija on my mind

"Madam Deputy Speaker, as I have made clear before, we have no disagreement with the English people who have achieved so much through their country’s great history.

Neither should we wish to be in a permanent state of perpetual confrontation with England

Many of us looked at a Pre-Brexit Britain with hope.

We would much rather have in England a constructive partner ready to play by the rules.

But while we should continue to keep open this possibility, we must also face the facts. Theresa May's regime is carrying out acts of aggression against our values and interests within Europe and beyond."

A Speech Delivered at the Welsh Arsembly by a bloke in a Balaclava on March 28th 2018

In 1981 we went on a family holiday to Opatija in Croatia which was then in Yugoslavia. This was really pre mass packaged holidays by air so we went by coach with a crowd of good natured northern folk who had come down to join the coach from Nantwich in Cheshire. It appears that the coach company are still going which says something for them. What I remember about crossing from Italy into Croatia was a Memorial with a  Black Skeleton hanging from a wall. It wasn't Jesus for sure! Now it says a lot that I will be supporting a former Fascist State against Wales' nearest neighbours, England, on Wednesday next in the Russian World Cup Final but it is my contention that post Brexit Referendum, that it is behaving like a Fascist State in insisting that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland leave the European Union with it. If Edward I was alive today, I would be having strong words with him. 

We arrived in Croatia a year after President Tito had died and the same year that the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol was held in Machynlleth. I remember his framed picture being inside the many news and tobacco kiosks on the front of this seaside town. "During World War II, he was the leader of the Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in occupied Europe."  

It is my contention (The Shark Fisherman of Wales) that what Wales needs at the moment is a partisan resistance movement against the British State. If there was, then Alun Cairns and Bruce Robertson of Trago Mills would think twice about opening their mouths. Similar to the United States of America with their body bag phobia I believe that Wales as a Nation State has become so soft that we wouldn't know what partisan resistance was if it parked on our collective foot. It appears that 'Petitions' are the way to go if you are not happy with the State's Decisions these days and we have seen how effective they have been. To be fair, the petition did dissuade Kenneth Skates from building his Ringpiece of Iron at Flint Castle but unfortunately the same didn't happen for the renaming of the Second Severn crossing. Edward I's distant descendant via Saxe Coburg Gotha managed a swift tea in secret with Alun Cairns in secret to have the bridge named after him. Two idiots so clueless and out of touch with Welsh National Feeling that they just went ahead and did what they felt they had to do. They had the weight of the History of the British Empire behind them. Weedy Skates only had a hundred years of history of Welsh Labour behind him so he wasn't prepared to risk it.   

Back in the late 1960s the last Partisan Resistance movement we had, the Free Wales Army was ridiculed by the British Establishment, the discredited George Thomas et al. Very often it is our own Dic Sion Dafydds (of which I have been accused of being one) who scupper any plans of partisan resistance by laying allegiance through the British Media to those who employ them. It is very difficult in practice for those minor celebrities earning a fat cat salary in London to align themselves with the land of their birth because the Corporation would not approve. Therefore a few well aimed tweets have to suffice.

We holidayed in Ostend, Belgium in 1976, another coach holiday and that is why I supported Belgium against England in the World Cup Finals. On Wednesday I will be supporting Croatia. It means nothing and is quite frankly a pathetic gesture on social media to show that you disapprove of your imposed government and monarchy. 

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2018/03/bataliwn-brwynen.html

  

Porton Down

The night sky hung so heavy
The wet road shone so bright
Reflecting back my headlights
As I drove on in the night
To Porton Down.

I drew into a lay-by
My eyes were dark with strain
Turning up my collar
I walked out in the rain
On Porton Down.

I was high on Porton Down
Thinking of my friends below
But they had gone some other way
They did not want to know
About Porton Down

I thought I saw the devil
In the branches of a tree
It was just imagination
But he looked a lot like me
On Porton Down.

The cold moon drew strange faces
On a slowly changing cloud
One looked like God the father
And I shouted right out loud
On Porton Down.

Dream Team

Dim ond Tri from David Williams on Vimeo.

Mr Price said his proposal "remains a practical and progressive way forward and it could have made a traditional contest avoidable".

"However, media statements soon indicated the negotiations were being undermined," he said.

"So we must park the proposal for the time being and revert to established procedure."

He said: "But we cannot put off the irresistible call for defining change.

"Change in the way we frame our politics; the projection of who we are, what we stand for, what we have fought long and hard for and what's ultimately important to us."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/44711264

Well the Shark Fisherman of Wales is 'siomedig' that the Dream Team of Leanne Wood and Adam Price wont materialise but hats off to whoever is behind this carefully choreographed and stage managed Leadership Debate & Challenge. It is raising the profile of Plaid Cymru, a party that has lost more than a thousand of their eight thousand members in the last eight months. A party that outwardly appears to be about Group Speak & Party Line. I thought the Green Party experiment of having Jonathon Bartley and Caroline Lucas as joint leaders was a brave and dare I say 'modern' thing to do. The weakness there was that Bartley was an unknown and Caroline Lucas has effectively tutored him in the Leadership role. She has now stood down and he is now a recognisable figure. Price & Wood would have made a formidable leadership team. Both from solid Thatcher hating stock and both with very good reason to be. They would be able to wipe the floor with the Tories in the next Assembly election of 2021 but if there is a more left leaning, Corbyn supporting First Minister in Mark Drakeford it will make their challenge to Labour more difficult. The sad thing is that now once again it will be about personality rather than policy and politics. Who do the membership like? Whoever wins and it is likely to be Leanne Wood, this election will have raised the profile of Price and Ap Iorwerth so that when Wood stands down in 2021 having not achieved the role of First Minister (but cemented her legacy in Plaid Cymru history) then they will be familiar faces and can stand on their own definitive platforms. It would have been better had it been Price & Wood against Nuclear Energy Jobs supporting ap Iorwerth but there we are, Welsh Nationalism will have to find a way to widen its appeal with all the recent indignities and slaps to the national chops from Iron Ring, Cairns, Liddle & Trago Mills and others too many to mention.  

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-beauty-queen-of-leanne.html