Jobiee!

I have just Googled 'What am I going to do with the rest of my life?" I kid you not! As if a computer choc full of html and binary code could answer that one for me. Only God can answer that question. What am I talking about? There is no God. I'm on my own with this one. I'm in South Wales and there's a recession on and I'm 47. Why the Job Centre and the Department of Work and Pensions won't allow me to carry on with my career of fantasist, wannabe playwright and very part time volunteer, God Knows! I think they are losing patience now. I've talked to people about setting up a business, I've talked to a Careers advisor about doing an M.A and I am cultivating the thousand yard stare from poring through the Universal Jobmatch for Jobseekers.  I just don't know what to do about earning money! I know what I don't want: Stress. I don't want to turn up to the same place of work every day. Variety is the spice of life. I don't want to be around negative people for too long in case I lapse back into being one. I have been fighting that battle a long time. I better do something soon because I will be swopping my Jobseekers Allowance for an Old Age Pension. I am trying not to be bitter but I am pretty fucked off with the situation. I am just not motivated enough to put myself in shitty circumstances to earn a crust. I don't want to sell things to people over the phone or otherwise. I don't mind people but I don't want to be paid for working with them. I am re-hashing old searches like Teacher, Further Education Lecturer but my heart isn't in it. I would have to move which I thought I really wanted to do but I don't know if I want to start again somewhere else. I mean I am one of the select few who speak Welsh! I should be able to jump on the gravy train somewhere but appears you need more than that these days, you need talent as well. One thing I value more than anything is my freedom. My freedom was taken away from me, literally, after my Mental Health deteriorated in 2005, a lot of that was work related, so you can understand my reluctance about compromising both my freedom and my mental health. I associate work with oppression and indentured labour and wage slavery and doing things you don't want to do. It appears that we are all economic commodities without even realising it. We are meant to be contributing to the 'whole' but they never asked our permission. We were just press ganged into it! That's why so many people get off their faces on the weekends to forget their working week and to anaesthetise the pain of the forthcoming one. If you are in a job or career that you really enjoy and can't wait to get into work in the morning then your a lucky one especially if you live in Wales. We have been conditioned to see ourselves in terms of what we do for a living! A living? It's an existence. I know we have to do something but it's vital that it is the right thing! These positive affirmations keep banging on about 'you only get one life' and 'this is not a dress rehearsal' . If so then why do so many of us spend much of our lives in work that does not satisfy our souls? Lack of Imagination, self hate, lack of confidence. The work I ended up doing in the past was challenging but stressful and made me ill, mentally and physically. The fact that now I am faced with earning less bucks because I am unable to do a stressful job, really pisses me off and makes me not want to work at all. I have lost interest and I have lost motivation. I have no references. I don't want a Job!

You won't know yourself!

Three different people have said this phrase to me recently
"You won't know yourself". All referring to the work being carried out in my adobe! "How long have you lived here then"? asked the man from Tredegar who was installing the boiler.
"25" years I replied. That was the old life sentence for murder. I have spent that length of time in a two bedroom terraced house in the salubrious suburb of Cardiff, 'Grangetown'. The name itself strikes fear in to the hearts of pirates and the mafia. That length of time without adequate heating. That length of time minus four years where I escaped to London and Amsterdam for a brief sojourn. Tredegar, home to Aneurin Bevan, founding father of the National Health Service and from what he was saying, it had seen better days. "It's rubbish there now, all the shops have closed. It was great when I was growing up mind". When somebody says "You won't know yourself" they are suggesting that you won't recognise the life that you were living before. It's certainly warmer in the house now but that is down solely to the Welsh Assembly Government, who I campaigned for in 1997.
They have a scheme for those in 'Fuel Poverty' quaintly called 'Nest' and I am one of those. 
Pulling up the floorboards was a 'potch' according to the Tredegar Ironside and Thursday sees work beginning on a new kitchen. I have slummed it here for a long time because in some strange way I felt that I deserved to live an uncomfortable life. I didn't have the finances to do the place up and I don't now but it appears a final part of the jigsaw is falling into place. I always said that I didn't  want to live here when I was 50. Three years minus a month to make good my mistake/escape.

 

I also said that as I left, I would sing the Roger Whittaker song

Durham town and replace the word town, with the word Street. It is the street where they've gone and plonked a Greggs Bakery on the corner. Yet another reason to stay and become fat and fifty. With a Central Heating system and a new kitchen it appears that 'I won't know myself' therefore it is better that I plan my escape now so that perhaps 'I can find myself'.



Gwalia!

Yesterday I was with a working party of volunteers who went to the Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans, Cardiff, to clear out some woodland ready for Bird & Bat Boxes to be placed. We had to watch out for newts, because of the weather they were late this year and as they are a protected species, like bats, should we see one, then it was down tools.

I think I had only been back to St Fagans only a handful of times since I had worked there one summer as a warden on the houses in the Summer of 92, when I started as a mature student at the University of Glamorgan.

We kept our tools and had our briefing at Hendre-Wen an old barn that had been moved down from Llanrwst. Apparently it housed the Tardis in an episode of Doctor Who but I remembered the Barn immediately from a Site specific Theatre performance that had been undertaken in the 1990's on the theme of World War 1 and the Suffragette Movement. It is a very vivid memory of being escorted from the main entrance by a soldier to the War memorial where the Last Post was played and the Roll of Honour of the Dead were read out. We moved to Oakdale, to the Tannery, to the Cockpit and to Penrhiw, the Unitarian Chapel and to the Barn at Hendre-Wen where we had watched a scene involving deserters/shellshocked from Battle hiding out in the little crog-lofft.

So here I was back again almost twenty years later and nothing it appeared had changed. Time stands still at St Fagans. We were treated to a lovely lunch in the café above the Gwalia Stores and then on our way back to the wood clearing I saw a man in his seventies standing tall and erect in a black suit and baseball bat with 'Espana' written on it. He smiled at me and looked at my badge thinking that I worked there as staff and he engaged me in conversation immediately.

"They should never have pulled these down" pointing at the prefabricated house at the end of the terrace at Rhydycar.  "They would solve the Housing Crisis" now he went on. It was as if he had a pre-prepared monologue that he wished to impart.

"I'm waiting for Yasmin and her son, we've come down from Bryncethin, I remember the Gwalia Stores. I'm an Ogmore Vale Grammar Boy. We both go to Church. Mam was Chapel, she was a Welsh Speaker from Ammanford and Dad was from Carmarthen but I lost the Welsh, I had it as a child. I think it is very important. We must never lose it".

I had only imparted a couple of grunts in response when Yasmin and her son came out of the Prefabricated House. I recognised them then as a threesome that had been having tea in the Gwalia Tearooms.

"I've just been telling this gentleman about Welsh"

"Oooh don't start swearing at me" she said in a very broad Bridgend accent

"I don't speak it and  don't understand it"

"Hwyl Fawr" I said to the old gentleman.

Yasmin held her hand up, face palm out and abruptly said "Goodbye"

For me in that one exchange at the Museum of Welsh Life encapsulated the attitude towards the Language. The attitude is on a spectrum but here was a dignified gentleman who had taken the trouble to give fellow church members a lift down to St Fagans. A man who had 'hiraeth' a yearning for his lost heritage and language accompanied by a lady who viewed it quite honestly as a threat. It was dismissed with pointed words and a hand gesture.

I returned to the Gang a little shaken but then got on with the work and finished the afternoon conversing in Welsh with a Frenchman who had learnt Breton and then Welsh but who also spoke perfect English.   

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans/buildings/prefab/

I left St Fagans wondering whether it was the Museum of Welsh Life or the Museum of Welsh Death. When the exhibits are brought to life as in that Promenade site specific piece then history is brought to life. People in Costume relay information of the age because it is people that make places after all.

Wardens on a little bit over the minimum wage shivering bilingually wishing they were working at the BBC...perhaps

Advanced Directive

 

Advanced Directive

 

If I should play the Ukelele, naked in the snow and rain.

If I should continue banging my head despite the pain.

If I should scream in Russian at passing cars.

If I should play the Grand Piano in smokey old jazz bars.

If I should dress like Napoleon and wear Wellington’s boots.

If I should jump on shooting stars and wear lime green zoot suits.

If I should join the army at forty two, raid the pantry and paint my head blue.

If I should cry God for Harry, England and St George whilst on a day trip to Cheddar Gorge.

If I should write a sonnet then place a black tulip upon it.

If I should drink white lightning and say something rather frightening.

If I should take the neighbour’s cat on a world cruise, bet her in poker and then lose.

If I should write abusive letters to the Western Mail.

Christen vicars and end up in jail.

Then Dear Sir/Madam

 

Please let me.

 

Message from Masters

 

 

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/

Some Easter Thoughts!

I believe in God but I have doubts about Jesus Christ being the Son of God or being God on Earth in the form of a Human. Why I should believe in one and not the other! I find the idea of the Holy Spirit very attractive. I know the Lord's Prayer in English but I couldn't recite it all the way through in Welsh which is shameful.  



I believe that a Spiritual Awakening is required globally but especially in UK PLC and perhaps it will start in Wales, land of ancient myths and legends. If only to stop our collective insanity in its tracks. Something is required to slow down the never ending consumption and short term thinking.   A Secularist would call the Bible a work of fiction. I am not comfortable with a book written by Men professing the word of God. A Belief in a Higher Being is a personal thing so why am I writing a Blog Post about it? I suppose because it is a universally personal thing. On occasion when the 'sap' has been high and I have felt particularly in need of spiritual replenishment I have attended a church service. As a teacher in London I would make a pilgrimage to a Chapel near the Barbican called Jewin, the chapel where my parents met when it's services were held at the London Welsh Centre in Gray's Inn Road. I went for an opportunity to be in the presence of my mother tongue and worship in Welsh. I was a desperate man. My mood swings and intrusive thoughts were getting the better of me. Stress levels were high.  I am less desperate these days but you need to fill the God shaped hole. Some people do it with drink and drugs. Some people do it with...God. I have never felt comfortable in the Fellowship of the Church and was always the first to leave and tried to be the last to arrive at any service. I couldn't do small talk then and even now I find it a waste of time. I think I began following God because I got fed up of Man and what Man was doing in and of the world. I had a Spiritual Emergency in 2005 where I bargained with God. I prayed to a Higher Power. He/She kept their side of the Bargain and is still doing so and I am trying to hold my end up in the negotiation. It would be wonderful to see a Spiritual Revival start again in Wales like it did in 1904 with Evan Roberts at the helm. It kickstarted the Pentecostal Movement in America with the Azuza Street Revival.  If I attend a service now, it is to the Pentecostals I go because in my opinion if you are going to believe then you need to do it with a bit of 'hwyl' with a bit of singing and dancing in the aisles.

I always feel sorry for Jesus especially at this time of year and maybe we are meant to pause for reflection. Well we do get two days holidays in lieu of his crucifixion and resurrection so he's definitely worth a thought as we push our shopping trolleys around the Temples of the Moneylenders  I feel sorry that Man has put such a burden of belief upon him. Was he just a Man, a special Man or was he indeed the Son of God? Perhaps we shall never know.

Streipiau bach person da

 

 

 

Y lleisiau boreol ar Radio Cymru

Yn gwthio trwy fy ngwythiennau mawr

Fel saim a braster

Y llais bach miniog yna ar fore Sul

Yn son am beth ysbrydol mewn ffordd mor faterol

Yn atgoffa fi o'r pulpud, oedolion yn perswadio plant

I fod yn blant da, i gredu mewn Duw ac i gydymffurfio

Well, dwi yn credu mewn Duw, credwch neu beidio

Ond dim fel y Duw yn y Beibl,

Llyfr a gafodd i sgrifennu gan ddynion

Does dim rhaid i mi fynd i gapel neu eglwys i ddangos fy lifrau Cristnogol

Fy 'Streipiau' bach person da.

Oherwydd addoli yn gyhoeddus ydy hwnna, rhag eich cywilydd chi.

A waeth i ni siarad am gywilydd ar ddiwrnod Saint Padrig

Gyda'r Pab newydd da i slippars coch dan fwrdd yn y Fatican

Dwedwch wrthyf y rhai ffyddlon, pa ddaioni ydynt yn ei wneud?

Fel bob sefydliad arall mae ei chysgod yn fwy gwnâi het

Rydym ni bobl gyffredin, y werin, wedi ein gorthrymu gan grefydd

Yn gweiddi 'Thou Shalt Not'.

Roedd yr addoliad yn fawr ddoe yn Stadiwm y Mileniwm.

Digon o 'Hymns and Arias' a ffydd, gobaith cariad i bara tan flwyddyn nesaf

Ond dyn ni yn genedl o ragrithwyr dweud?

'My People'

No I don't think so, I am not one of them.

A hwnna ydy'r unig ffordd i guro'r gormeswyr?