'Capital' by John Tripp

Capital

This will be the last ditch to fall

to the swing of its country.

Significance blowing down the hills

dies on the wind. Here the puffed

clink in their chains of office,

and the hagglers squat like a junta.

It is still as separate as an arm

lopped from its body: a strange sleeve

of territory spilled across the border.

What time has so carelessly mixed

clots here, where the ideals sag

and roots sprout only on the surface.

As long as I remember, the droll warmth

of its people has blurred

when our flag is lifted. Mouths are stitched.

Nothing is put to close scrutiny;

a knotted topic is flicked

into the bin, with a grin for Wales.

But now, in the distance, I think I hear

the young villagers build our future,

laying the first bricks of change.

This capital means less to them

than the land, where everything stems.

'Wait', they are saying. 'Wait for us'.

JOHN TRIPP

Beaut Park

So I failed my exams, I've been sacked twice from a script I sleptwalked into and now I have a failed business under my belt. Enough! Time to take an observer role again. Still didn't know that I had Bipolar Disorder! What do I do now? Well the Bowling Green Gig had been easy enough, why not try again with Cardiff City Council's Department of Leisure and Amenities? This time as a Gardener. I walked through Bute Park today, the Jewel in the Crown of Kairdiff. I started as a Driver/Gardener in September 1989 based at the Castle Mews which is now the Welsh College of Music and Drama. A fine building and suits its present purpose better. Bute Park has changed a lot over the years. When I started as a Park Keeper, there were 56 now referred to as Rangers across Cardiff Parks, now there are only 10. Cost Cutting and all that! The Park has changed a lot in all that time. The Parks were started as Public Amenities! It is the only place to escape from the crass concrete commercialisation and capitalism of a capital city but now you can't escape from the money makers because now two cafes have opened in the park and a third one will be opening soon in the North Lodge by the Animal Wall. Roads have now been run through the Park to allow for the easier movement of gas guzzling vehicles to set up for the many shows that the Park now hosts.

I did a year as a Driver Gardener and then I did a year as the 'Triple Driver'. The little green machine with three blade mechanisms that cut the grass in the parks. This was the summer job and then back on the litter picking gang in the winter. It was a pleasant outside job in the summer but the symptoms of my Bipolar, mostly depression was no more evident than in the Mess Room. It was about the time that Eddie Shah had his Today Newspaper and it was behind its colour pages that I hid while chewing my sandwiches and slurping my tea. The Gang were the salt of the earth but my withdrawn manner I'm sure made a few uneasy. In fact, when I was over Tremorfa, a guy called Trefor, another Triple Driver, a very affable chap actually said to me '"You're depressed aren't you?" It was the first time that anybody had noticed or commented. At a Family Funeral, an Uncle said to me 'You were a strange child'. Well before you start conjuring up pictures of Damien, I know that my Bipolar Disorder began at the tender age of 13. I completely over reacted to a perceived injustice at school and from that day for four years I became extremely introverted. I withdrew from social contact with other children. I went to school, I studied and I went home. I did this for four years. I played Rugby because it was obligitory and perhaps explains my view now that Rugby is a major Oppression in Wales. Now I dread the start of the Six Nations Competition and rejoice that I don't have a television.
You might think that this blog is rather self indulgent and why should we want to know all this but I'm realising that I am writing it as a warning to people to be vigilant with their young people. It is not surprising that Bipolar Disorder is now reaching epidemic proportions in America. Mood Disorders can easily be misinterpreted as  normal teenage behaviour, which is what happened in my case. They were less enlightened times.
Bute Park or Beaut Park as I refer to it is a National Treasure and provided a sanctuary to me for two years. I am grateful for this respite and opportunity. Looking back I now realise that the action of calling into an Off Licence after work and buying a Flagon of Cider, getting back to the adobe in Grungetown and the first action I take after closing the door behind me, was to open the flagon and to start drinking, glugging, in a standing position were the actions of somebody who was seriously self medicating. I didn't bother to sit or get a glass. It was only a short step to the park bench!  

Dinas Studios!

 

After bidding farewell to Jimmy and the bowlers of Maindy I saw an advertisment from a gentleman who was selling the lease and goodwill on a business in the Royal Stuart Workshops, James Street, Cardiff. I was 22 years of age and ready to become a self employed businessman after failing my exams and being sacked twice (Did I mention that before?) Unit 4 Dinas Studios. I started walking down here from the Canton Flat before moving down to my present abode in Grungetown, Cardiff.  So September 1988 I looked out of the back window and saw the fading picture of Lynette White on an A4 Poster on a lampost by ironically enough the old Butetown Police Station.
I have alluded to Mental Health earlier but what I omitted to say was that before coming down to Cardiff from North Wales, I spent two weeks under observation at the North Wales Medical Centre under Dr Dafydd Alun Jones after suffering a breakdown.
"Its got nothing to do with Kairdiff, he brought his misery with him".
 My life, not for the first time imploded after being stopped for drinking and driving on the Denbigh by Pass(Shame)and after losing my licence for eighteen months. I was living in Colwyn Bay and travelling every day to Kinmel Bay to work in a.....Printers(Aaaaaaaaagghhh!) It was the Curse of the Conservative Party again because if the shame of drinking and driving wasn't enough, the drink had been imbibed in the Conservative Club in Ruthin where I knew there was a female I might impress by getting very drunk. I was completely unconscious and depressed and fundamentally unhappy but had no insight whatsover. I thought this was what everybody's life was like. I started cycling a bike and then catching a bus and then as the Crossville was trundling up the hill to Colwyn Bay, I thought I'll return to the land of my birth, South Wales. I wouldn't need a car in Kairdiff. The diagnosis I had been given by Dr Dafydd Alun was 'Extreme Sensitivity' what perhaps might now be classified as 'Hypersensitive'. A 'Bipolar' Label at that age might not have been helpful as I would have started on a medicine regime that would have resulted by now in side affects I'm sure.  I left the Medical Centre and North Wales in denial. I returned to the South Wales of my birth in denial. Not knowing that I had a serious Mental Health Condition, I spent every day with mood swings that might have floored many but which I dealt with by drinking and smoking (Cigarettes) in copious amounts.
Two events stand out in my mind from Dinas Studios.
One early morning I turned on the radio and heard the following.

"Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flightfrom London Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. On Wednesday, 21 December 1988, the aircraft flying this route — a Boeing 747–121 registered N739PA and named “Clipper Maid of the Seas” — was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Eleven people in Lockerbie, in southern Scotland, were also killed as large sections of the plane fell in the town and destroyed several houses, bringing total fatalities to 270. As a result, the event is also known as the Lockerbie bombing. During the 2011 Libyan civil war a former government official claimed that Muammar Gaddafi had personally ordered the attack".


A Global Tragedy that like Lynette White's murder has had reverbrations throughout the following decades. What I couldn't understand was that I started sobbing. I didn't know the victims, it had no personal relevance to me but I locked the Unit's door, sat down in the seat behind the counter and sobbed. Another event related to the radio was hearing on the Welsh News that an elderly lady in Old Colwyn had been attacked in her own home by two intruders. She was my landlady in York Street, Colwyn Bay, after I was released from the Medical Centre. She was a dear, sweet old lady who had moved up to North Wales to be near her sister. She gave me a book as I left 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam' and wrote to Dafydd with kind thoughts in the front cover. I knew immediately from the news flash that this was Mrs Bailey. Like ET, I phoned home to have this news confirmed and went to visit her in hospital. She was black and blue around the head and was 92 at the time.
Dinas Studios was not going well. I was getting phonecalls asking about rehearsal times for the Soap Opera 'Dinas' which was showing on S4C. I was having problems with the machinery, an old Gestetner machine which had been left was now misbehaving and I made a mistake by purchasing a Multilith sheet fed from the Exchange and Mart. I spent hours shouting and kicking this machine much to the mirth and amusement of the stained glass workshop next door. Another neighbour was a very miserable man who fixed fruit machines. He was forever scowling and complaining about me cleaning my ink rollers in the communal sink. Across the corridor, the musician Dave Burns from the Hennesseys had a unit and upstairs was an independent Film Company called Gaucho run by the Musician and Film Director Endaf Emlyn. Ironically years later I sent a Film Script in to them which was accepted as a work in progress. It was called 'After The Asylum'. After closing the doors after each day's disappointments I would meet up with my friend from 'The Printers' and we would waste my money and time in the old Cardiff Pubs.
It wasn't going well. I had to wear many hats and coping with my high and low moods and hangovers proved too much. A kind man from Williamstown in the Rhondda, Bill Cheal, was a typesetter in the Castle Arcade. He offered a partnership and with that brought new machines and more business. I was getting disillusioned. I was thinking about life outside of Printing and in August of 1989 I sold what was left of the goodwill to Bill and wished him well. A couple of years afterwards I was watching the underwhelming Wales Today and was amazed to see the buildings above shown in a news report regarding forged American Express cheques. Apparently a Police Sting had lured Bill's son into a forging scam. The case collapsed but all Bill's hard work after taking over was for nothing. The case collapsed after another example of Police Corruption. Hey Ho! Happy Days!

Commercial Break

We interrupt this blog for a few moments for readers to go and buy some popcorn, hotdogs, sasparilla, paper tissues and hand towels. David Williams understands that this blog may have taken some of you by surprise. Some of you are naturally worried that you might be mentioned. I am finding the process therapeutic and cathartic and I hope you too are getting a kick out of hearing about a man when he's down.
David is in a transitional stage of his life. Due to some interesting experiences he has been allowed the time to assess and analyse what he wishes to do with the rest of his life. He has come to the decision that he wishes to write because that's all he ever wanted to do from a child when he won a Creative Writing Shield (Mark you!) in Primary school. "But there's no money in writing butt! Go and get a proper job"! Well my little voice has been telling me that all along and we have seen the proof a little ways in to this blog that Work doesn't pay. Work pays the taxes to run the country the way some privileged elite with confidence think it should be run. Now nowhere along the story of my life did someone take the trouble to explain to me what taxes are, why we pay them, how much we pay blah di blah! It's all in the small print. "Just accept that this is the way it is butt" There's that annoying little whiny voice again! 
" You're not going to beat them, you might as well join them ". Well NO, sorry little whiny voice, your still reading off some different era's script.
 We don't do that anymore! We question! We protest! And we occupy!  
Thank you ladies and Gentlemen, please return to your seats where sharkfishinginwales will continue shortly.
Please switch off all mobile phones, televisions, credit cards and all other shit that is distracting you from the fact that you are all going to die.

But leave the computer on obviously or you won't be able to read this! 

One Moment Please!

Learned Helplessness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Bloody Hell, where would we be without Wikipedia eh? 
They never had it when I was doing my homework.

Has this guy got a chip on his shoulder or what?
Well before you go into a Four Yorshireman sketch ask yourself the question, haven't you got a little bit of learned helplessness? Had one too many knock backs have you? 

"Duw, I'm not sticking my finger in that fire again."

Aw Diddums! You don't know your born! Well quite likely! None of us do, do we? None of us know that we are born, it's just as we get older we start to have those things called expectations.

 'Where the Ffwc do they come from'? or in Welsh 'O ble Ffwc daeth rheina'?

You fail your exams and then you get sacked twice on the tumble! You've lived in an area where there are more sheep than people so your social skills are somewhat to be desired. You've come down to the big bad industrial city where the signs in the window say 

 'No Welshspeakers, No Shy People, No Soft People'.

 Oh but methinks the lady doth protest too much!

Kairdiff was never as bad as that!

 No it wasn't, but it felt like it to me. So a toxic mix was brewing in one's mind and I did what I seem to have done since, I have become an observer, a spectator. Unlike Captain Mainwaring I am not a man of action.  I took a very untaxing summer job as a Park Keeper. I had met Jimmy in Victoria Park by this stage (Post 3 of the Blog) and was still trying to work out the human condition. All these years later, I am still trying to. So this Blog and you are helping me to realise that I gave up then! That those experiences turned me into a voyeur of life. My thinking at the time was 'Let somebody else learn their lessons. I've learned  mine, I've given up'. That's a young age to give up, (22)!
Running my own business didn't help matters! Are you ready? Hold on to your electrodes then!

On Broadway!

January 1988 sees me starting work (Kairdiff Vernacular) at 'The Printers' on Broadway, Roath Cardiff. It looked less like the one above and more like the one below.

It was run by two partners, John Martenson and Bob Flowers, nice guys, but what I was doing still in Printing I'll never know. Well I do know! Its all that I did know at the time but most of it in theory. Never been a very hands on practical person, more the dreamy esoteric realms type. I had studied for a BTEC OND in Printing Administration after my YOP experience in Gwasg Gee, Denbigh, nye. Your still with me then? You'll have to go back and read the full blog to get the full story but because I had failed my exams at school I was now following an alien script. I had always wanted to be a newspaper journalist, a cub reporter, something at least to do with writing and the creation of words.
I didn't have a plan so I ended up following a Plan B!
My role at the Printers in Roath was a general dogsbody, print finisher, pack and despatch and make the tea. I seemed to have a sense of humor and kept the bosses happy. It was general photocopying in the shop front and I remember the Welsh Language Playwright 'Sion Eirian' coming in to get his scripts photocopied.
It was in this Printers that I met friends that I still have to this day. One a North Walian who came for a week and escaped and another a True Blue Kardiffian. The Printers is no longer there and I believe has been many different businesses in the intervening years. I learnt a little about customers and people in these various jobs and I learnt that I didn't really like them that much. Either my misanthropy was showing itself or the symptoms of the later diagnosed 'Bipolar Disorder' were starting to appear.
I told one customer to F Off! Another from a local Mosque came back down to the shop and Bob came in and said "He wants your head on a plate". Another because I'd made a mistake with one of the Screen Printing Screens told them that I should be sacked on the spot using the words " Why buy a dog and bark yourself?"

On February 14th Valentines Night 1988, Lynette White was murdered above a Betting Shop
in James Street, Cardiff Docks
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lynette_White
This shocking event for Cardiff and which has turned into the biggest Police Corruption case in British History had a profound affect on the Capital's subconscious and on mine.
I went on to write a play called 'Night People' which received a Highly Commended from the Drama Association of Wales in its One Act Playwriting Competition  and also a Welsh Language Monologue called 'Angel y Bore'/ 'Angel of the Morning' which premiered at the National Eisteddfod in Bala in 2009 and then was performed at the Millennium Centre in 2010. As I left the Centre that night I looked up James Street and could see the Bookies sign lit in the neon glow.

http://www.redbuttontheatre.co.uk/angelybore.htm

So shortly after my 22nd Birthday on March 1st 1988 I was given my marching orders once again but this time they did it in a nicer way. I spent that Summer as a Park Keeper at Maindy Bowling club, handing out tickets, sweeping the paths and trying to be polite to the bowlers.
In September a Printing Business came up for sale at the Royal Stuart Workshops in James Street, Cardiff Docks. I must have been mad! Well I was mad and I am mad but I bought into the dream. If I can't work for other people then I must be able to make a go of working for myself.