I grew up in England from the age of seven. All those who've had a pop at me recently on social media for not supporting their send-them-victorious football's-coming-home (' only joking' according to Lineker!) team, please note.
   My family moved there from Aberystwyth.
   My mum hailed from Gwlad yr haf ( Somerset) but grew up and went to Uni in Aber, where she eventually settled as well.
  She was a weird combo of lefty and bigot : pro-Soviet yet furiously anti-Welsh language; she would've been a member of CND at the same time as campaigning against Welsh language education and dubbing the Urdd the 'Welsh Hitler Youth'!  
   My dad was equally anti-Cymraeg : though a Barri boy through and through , his job with the Ministry of Agriculture involved communicating with a lot of Welsh-speaking farmers and , a monoglot, he couldn't abide by what he saw as their mockery.
  Ironically , both his parents were from Welsh-speaking families, one from Cilfynydd and the other Wenvoe. 
   Just about the only thing they shared ( apart from our council house in Penparcau) was a loathing of Welsh.
   At first I really liked Cambridge simply because I could cycle everywhere, support the team just down the road ( Cambridge City) and, for a while, explore the wildness of an area soon transformed into a new housing estate.
  I disliked the piss-taking of my strong west Walian accent, though never adopted the cockneyfied speech of the city ( I was normally a starling when it came to such matters).
   It now seems strange to imagine my heroes wandering the self-same streets and that I could've passed Syd Barrett on his 'I've gotta bike', or under the window of a college room where Ted Hughes was ravishing Sylvia Plath. On Granchester Meadows we swiped away wasps and my mum talked about one Rupert Brooke, who I mistook for a fictional bear.
   My dad soon lost his safe-as-houses Civil Service job and was delivering booze  for an offie for a while. 
   I recall him almost knocking a policeman flat when driving in the city when he got into one of his notorious explosive tantrums, which could be particularly scary if there were knives around.
   I was such a good singer at 11 that my mother wanted to enrol me for the famous King's College Chapel school ( actually, I knew she just wanted to elope with our lodger, who later became my step-father).
   I played football for the City team and that was the height of my career : a right-footed left-winger long before they became fashionable. 
   In 1966 everyone supported England, even the Welsh boys like myself
( though most only played rugby)and having switched allegiances to Everton ( just because I liked the name), it was more a matter of following the unsung left-back Ray Wilson.
   Until I discovered Dylan Thomas's story 'Peaches' at Grammar and  R.S. Thomas's 'Cynddylan on a tractor' ,I saw my country of birth as a place of holidays : the Knap, the Island and the paddle steamer over to my mother's country.
   However, one school trip was organised to Aber itself , where my grandparents still lived and where we stayed at a Junior School just outside.
   Despite being Grammar boys, we marauded the shops like a pillaging tribe of invaders and when they talked sincerely about locals living in caves I didn't correct them.
   It was only when when my parents separated and my mum and I moved to a small village on the Suffolk border that I discovered the true meaning of community.
   Until I was 16 at least, my friends were working- and middle-class :the sons and daughters of farm workers, factory workers, vicar and shop-keeper and only the posh daughters of the wealthy landowner stayed clear.
   Cymru was confined to that story and poem, to my mother and sister orating Dylan and myself responding with R.S.
   It exposed my mum's contradictions : besotted with Dylan yet hating Cymraeg.
   When my mother eventually did elope with my step-father leaving me virtually homeless, I had no choice. I simply looked up at the noticeboard on the station, saw 'Cardiff' and thought 'Barry'.
    Likewise, Aber was the obvious place to go to study.
    I was ,indeed, going back to the future ( or, more accurately, forward to the past). 
   With my parents, I had learnt to do and think the opposite of their example.
   I hardly conceived of myself as having a 'nationality' or strong identity in those terms then. I had accepted in England that English and British were much the same, yet there were always yearnings, stirrings ( what could be called 'hiraeth') in the spell of those writers' words and in my desire to return.


MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME HOW TO STEAL
 
My mother taught me how to steal ;
our garden path made from bricks
carefully laid towards the tree,
we filched from the builder’s yard,
a dusk raid across a busy road.
Our garden bloomed rare
with exotic plants she’d concealed
furtively from the city’s Botanic Gardens,
her first class Biology degree
useful when it came to Latin names.
 
My own bricks and plants
were books rapidly tucked
into my duffle coat, literature and history,
even a fad for Agatha Christie ;
pens and pencils from Woolies
never believing I’d be caught.
I trod their unsteady ways
in many strange countries,
tended and cultivated characters
who grew within me.
 
My mother taught me how to steal
but not how to give :
I never once handled a present
as I did that high wooden gate
in torchlight, nervous and excited,
outlaws gloved in the dark.
​     

   A few years ago I was staying in Portland, Oregon with Ceri Shaw, who runs the americymru website and was organising readings for three visiting writers, including me. During my spell there he suffered the most dreadful toothache and was trying all manner of remedies as treatment was far too costly.
 I realized just how invaluable our NHS is, even though the reality with devolution is that we now have four different, distinctive health services.
 Of course, dental treatment is often not free here and it remains problematic for many to find a national health dentist. I only stayed with mine when they went private as I'd had horrific experiences elsewhere, including nearly dying in the chair from swallowing Novocaine!
 The great act which Nye Bevan began 70 years ago still has a long way to go. It's very much an unfinished symphony, awaiting a similar composer.
 Like teeth, toes aren't generally covered by the system and when I went to the GP recently(I won't say 'my GP' as I see a different one each time) I was advised to pay to see a Chiropodist.
 Like many others, my own experiences range from positive to extremely negative, yet I can't imagine what it would be like to revert to paying for prescriptions (which do accumulate with age) or the regular eye checks  I attend.
  What was disconcerting recently was that I had to chase up the hospital's Eye Clinic for an appointment, being told several times of a 'serious back-log'.
  I wonder if this is a common problem.
 Too many people I talk to are forced to go private for hip and heart surgery and cataracts.
 This should not happen.
 Consultants should work wholly within the NHS and not compete with the very institution which employs them.
 Nurses trained by the State and paid for with our taxes should not have the option of working in the private sector and the same goes for doctors.
 The manner in which health and social care are gradually being integrated in Scotland under the SNP is exemplary and makes sense both economically and in terms of well-being.
 Patients can be visited or deploy hi-tech machinery at home, therefore releasing hospital beds. More social care for the infirm and elderly gives them increasing independence.
 In Cymru, with our very high levels of obesity, exercise and nutrition in schools are fundamental. We need school allotments and pupils cooking their own dinners ;also sports which are far more inclusive and which emphasize enjoyment over competition.
  I hear you ask , where is the money coming from?
  A great amount can be saved by scrapping educational inspectors and the bullying challenge advisors and replacing them with teacher-advisors on sabbaticals. In health care equally, power and decision-making need to be implemented by practioners.
  Regarding mental health, our children's well-being is not being addressed.   Educational psychologists too often have little contact with the pupils they are asked to assess.
​   Under the Labour/LibDem administration in the Senedd levels of stress on our children have become intolerable, with a system obsessed by testing and exams and failing totally to consider the effects on mental health.
 Doctors, social workers and teachers need to have far more opportunities to work together. The earlier a problem is dealt with the better, yet pupils struggling with anxiety, depression and other mental health problems are brushed aside, with one agency blaming the other.
  Health, social care and education should be a trio : sharing and harmonizing. Too often, only dissonance is heard.
  From my own experience, it's sadly the negative which tends to stick in memory. My Gran was literally incarcerated in a psychiatric ward when she had Alzheimer's.
 Today she'd probably lose all her assets (house and some savings) to keep her in a private home.
 Yet on the positive side, my sister has generally received excellent treatment for her serious epilepsy and on-going psychiatric disorders.
 There's no point glamourising the NHS in Cymru, but we certainly take it for granted.
  Nye's great work of art has some way to go before it's completed.
​  He struggled against the odds to create it, yet we are too busy preserving what we have , to imagine an even better future.


 SAVED

When I came round
didn't know where I was,
thought I was a hospital DJ again
spinning songs all day long.

I had fallen,see,
only had a few this time,
out of the bus
and onto paving stones.
​
I was often doing it
though never like this;
they operated on my head,
saved me, kept me alive.

Those doctors in theatre
had been like directors
and I was the drama;
nurses script-perfect actors.

The play itself changing
from comedy to tragedy,
but with an ending
to please the audience.

They were quietly applauding
my missus and children
and I could see how much
they belonged in the scene. 

This was a work of art,
everyday and extraordinary;
not a brush but a scalpel,
​unsigned, beyond value.