I am a restless collector, always trying to sniff out the next Great Thing.
   I've never been one to dwell on past music, to cling to tunes which summon memories, though there'd be plenty.
   I ought to listen to Elfyn and Walton's shows on Radio Wales every Saturday, but Match of the Day takes precedence.
   Though the other week I did so and wasn't disappointed : caught a Merthyr blues singer for the first time, Bryony Sier, singing from the depths of the Troedyrhiw Delta and it got me reaching for the ol' blues harp, key of E.
   For once, I didn't care about the American accent : what a voice and what guitar! The River Taff turned Mississippi in an instant.
   Sier is yet another talent to emerge from Merthyr, this town threatening to become not just the new Newport (circa Cwl Cymru), but maybe Liverpool.
   The Taff beats to very different rhythms of course, like seasons on the river : from jazzy Kizzy, bluesy Byrony, reggae reggae sauce of Upbeat Sneakers, full beam of the Moonbirds and snarl of Pretty Vicious.
   And so many more ( what happened to that compilation album, 'APPNIN'?).
   So it was with excitement but no great desire to be bathed in nostalgia that we embarked on the FabFour taxi tour of the 'Pool.
   We prepared in the car beforehand, listening to a few of the classics like 'Penny Lane', 'Eleanor Rigby' and a live 'I wanna hold your hand' accompanied by screams. 
   I was a 60s child who grew up with the Beatles, Kinks, Who and Stones.
   While those others were important, my devotion to the Beatles never faltered.
   Although the rebellious types went for Jagger, I always thought he was a bit of a poser and was never into all that dancing.
   Early days we'd sing and play along with tennis racket guitars and my first ever single was......'Apache' by The Shadows!
    My first album ( they were a luxury then) was 'Abbey Road' and when I used to sing to all three of my children when they were small, the Beatles made up most of my 'sitting list'.
  With my first proper girlfriend we'd try out snogging marathons to the Beatles ( for me) and Small Faces (for her). The two most popular accompaniments to 'tonsil tennis' being 'Baby You're A Rich Man' and Itchycoo Park'.
   When 'A Hard Day's Night' was released I was staying with grandparents in Aberystwyth and watched it on four consecutive nights.
   Every new single was greeted with wonder and my first ever article was published in the school magazine, a review of Magical Mystery Tour.
   Myself and my sister would sing along to the likes of 'Fool on the Hill' and 'Nowhere Man'; a devotee of Bach, it was the only pop she enjoyed.
    Years after, when I'd discovered so much more music to enthrall, I still opened my ears to their aftermath : Harrison's remarkable 'All Things Must Pass', Lennon's 'Some Time in New York City' with its sheer ambition and political daring and Yoko Ono's much underrated songs.
   It seems strange and fitting that my youngest ( who used to listen to a singles compilation in the car) should now embrace them, especially after her visit to the Beatles Story museum on Albert Docks.
   Although they've become big business for Liverpool's tourist trade, the FabFour taxi tour is not a rip off.
   We did the short one : well over 2 hours in a black taxi called Michelle, who is the belle of driver Gareth who introduced himself with 'Ydych chi'n siarad Cymraeg?' and then asked, in English, if we wanted the tour in Welsh.
   Not sure what the scouse is for 'bullshit artist'!
   Gareth was totally ace like......with a gift of the gab and a wikipedia knowledge of the band.  
   He'd obviously done a PhD in Beatlesology on the uni of the streets, with a thesis on Pete Best and the sacked drummer enigma.
   Unfortunately, we missed Ringo's house due to a 'friggin' cycle race', but took in Paul's, John's, George's as well as all the sights on Penny Lane (even though some of them were elsewhere......Paul took liberties!) ; Strawberry Field orphans' home and Eleanor Rigby's gravestone.
   I wanted to visit the holes in Blackburn, Lancashire but couldn't get a word in and that may well be included in a longer tour.
   Gareth was full of interesting tales and particularly enjoyed debunking myths and stressing the importance of the Casbah rather than Cavern.
   His story about Ravi Shankar commenting on George's sitar-playing on 'Norwegian Wood' was funny: the Indian master was scathing but went on to teach Harrison a great deal about playing that instrument.
   He never glamourised the Fab Four and notably with Lennon, you could tell he was horrified by his bullying nature in those formative years.
    For all that, Lennon's the one I most admire : he was never maudlin, became an international peace campaigner and embraced the avant garde influences of his second wife Yoko.
   I also identify with his dysfunctional upbringing.
   I empathize completely with that teenager who had no real father figure and whose mother rejected him.
   Our guide Gareth liked to stress that Lennon was the most middle-class of them ( 'no working-class hero'), yet does it make that song any less valid? 
   When I think of someone like ex-Liverpool footballer Howard Gayle, the first black player to play for Liverpool and a working-class scouser, the words ring out truthfully  - 'A working-class hero is something to be'.
   Gayle recently rejected an MBE, explaining that it was a protest against the treatment of Liverpool fans in the Hillsborough Enquiry and also against the very idea of the British Empire, with its links with slavery( echoes of Zephaniah there).
   Surely Lennon was singing about the likes of him, rather than trying to create a myth about himself?
   Gareth dropped us at Albert Dock and a shop full of pricey plaques, posters and all manner of memorabilia.
   Yet it's the songs which keep coming back and I recalled 'Baby You're A Rich Man' for the first time in years and the words -
      ' You keep all your money in a big brown bag inside a zoo'
   .......and music to kiss to ! 

                        LENNON AT THE DOORSTEP

He turned up at her door,
wayward, wild, waspish,
a slick of slashback hair,
clutching his best mate Guitar.


A gasp, smile and a start,
she knew that nose, sharp eyes
squinting as they dragged her back
to 'our kid' given away, unwanted.

Not so distant, their Mimi
who'd done her job ; upright
and warning him from the wrong sort,
Council house scallies, orphans of Strawberry Field.


She took him in like a big sister
(too meny others called her 'muvver'),
let them rock before the Casbah,
loud and laughing and long.


He found a family of brothers,
newborn language of song :
music exploding a dynamite temper,
words pointed as the pick of his tongue.
  

   An evening in the Jenkins' household and my wife's watching the latest Scandi crime drama while accessing the news on her laptop ; younger daughter juggles with phone while watching a film on her tablet ; I tap away at my own tablet like some demented woodpecker, involved in an argument with various shades of the Left on Facebook.
   I should really give up social media.
   I love the banter, access to alternative news, opportunity to sound off and also to get my poetry out instantly.
   However, the anniversary of the Olympics opening ceremony is also the sad anniversary of losing a friend because of opinions.
   I wrote a blog highly critical of Danny Boyle's much-praised opening for the London Olympics. I found the spectacle both Anglo-centric and pro-royalty and said so candidly.
   One friend took an exception and condemned it as an outpouring of bile. He declared that he'd never be meeting me for a pint again in Aberystwyth.
   He was a Uni friend and, with a couple of others, we had made contact  and, for many years, staged our own re-union/ piss-up in Aber.
   All of them were left-wing Englishmen and very sympathetic towards Wales; but he was more so than the others.
   He was an avid reader of my blog ( one of the few!) and would even chase up bands like The Joy Formidable on my recommendation.
   He was enthusiastic about the Welsh language, yet cut off our friendship with a sarcastic 'Meiiiiic!'
   I apologized for any offence I'd caused, saying that wasn't my intention.
   We've had no communication since then and I sometimes wonder whether being a Bolshie Blogger is worth it.
   My older daughter would call us 'keyboard warriors' and claim we need to get out and campaign and she's got a point. Yet since the demise of Cymru Goch there's been no movement to join which tallies with my ideals.
   Sometimes I think TV is better, as I can sit and yell at the screen and nobody gets hurt.
   Having said that, I can't resist taking to Twitter when 'Question Time' is on and spouting views like a volcanic geyser.
   Over recent months I must admit that TV has had a profound influence, as there have been a series of fascinating documentaries and other programmes.
   On S4C alone I've thoroughly enjoyed writer and artist Sion Tomos Owen's funny and engaging series 'Pobol y Rhondda', where he interviews characters up and down the two valleys there and draws their caricatures while doing so. The series also focused on Sion's family and showed how vital Cymraeg can be to working-class communities.
   It's good to hear that Sion's doing another series, though (he tells me) with a slightly different angle.
   Several documentaries on S4C were highly informative and enlightening, including one on the great photographer Philip Jones Griffiths which showed  how his stark, compassionate images of the war in Vietnam totally altered people's perceptions.
   Another, on 'Frongoch', was presented by new National Poet Ifor ap Glyn and was very sympathetic towards the IRA prisoners kept in that camp in north Wales after the 1916 Rising in Dublin. It illustrated how Gaelic became a language of revolution and how prisoners even used Welsh to endear themselves to locals. 
   S4C is definitely the channel to seek out exceptional one-off documentaries, yet I've been equally impressed with the recent BBC Wales series of three documentaries 'Battling with Benefits'.
   Set in Bridgend and following the stories of three couples or individuals in each programme, it set out to be very different from the sensationalism of series such as Channel 4's 'Skint', which was very much an outsider's viewpoint.
   'Battling With Benefits' was filmed with considerable sensitivity and chose people for their endearing stories rather than eccentricity.
   Each programme in the series of just three followed their struggle to survive as the benefits system changed greatly.
   The importance of the local Citizens Advice Bureau  was fundamental and I recall how Merthyr's Labour Council could no longer support one in this town.
   Here is a system designed to encourage people to work,but which achieved the exact opposite in many cases!
   One couple constantly applied for appropriate jobs, but were always sent to work they had no training for at all.
   Benefits were stopped for spurious reasons, leaving people in desperate situations.
   Some won appeals, but a young girl with severe hearing problems lost hers despite help from  the CAB.
   My main criticism would be that it didn't expose the many workfare placements jobseekers are sent on : charities, shops and bigger companies who exploit them as slave labour under the pretence of 'training' which rarely happens.
   I wrote the following poem after watching the final programme about a man who chooses not to sign on any more as his wife gets a job and he automatically loses his benefit ( another ludicrous policy).
   Maybe I need to stop getting embroiled in Facebook discussions and seek out more good television.

                             INTA  THE  BLACK

I dropped off of yewer system,
don' afto sign on,
I int no statistic
an yew carn stop my benefit
coz my missis got a job
an I'm sick o disappointment.


There's over a million
jest like me,
fallen off of the edge
of compewter cliffs
an inta the black,
landed on a ledge.


I like it down yer
idin in-a dark,
there's plenty o sharks
like ev'rywhere else,
but least I int chasin
along pointless paths.


Yew carn see me now
or send snoopers down,
rocks below are perilous
as men o war ;
an I'm like a goat
clamberin an leapin over laws.  

  Dyma'r gerdd oedd yn llwyddiannus yn y gystadleuaeth y Gadair ym Maes D ( am ddysgwyr) yn Y Fenni :-

Y  FFIN
 
 
Cofiais i’r ffin
Wedi’i darlunio’n  wallgof
Trwy’r  afon, ty  a fferm
A chanol y stryd.
 
Roedd y milwyr
Yn sefyll bob dydd
Yn y twr fel y castell,
Gyda ‘u gynnau’n barod.
 
Roedd yr hofrennydd
Yn rheoli’r awyr
Fel pryfyn yn y coed
Sy’n aros am  y gelain.
 
Y ffin oedd llinell
Arluniwyd gyda gwaed
Ac yn gwahanu
Un wlad fel ysgariad.
 
Mae’r ffin yn ysgafn nawr
Fel y teimlad o groen
Ond , ym Meal Feirste eto
Y Wal Heddwch yw Wal y Ddadl. 
 

•                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Beal Feirste  -    Belfast , mewn iaith Gwyddeleg

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE BORDER
 
I remember the border
drawn so crazily
through river, house and farm
and middle of the road.
 
 
The British soldiers
on duty each day
in their towers like castles,
with guns always ready.
 
 
Daily their helicopters
ruled the skies
like flies in a wood
gathering on a corpse.
 
 
The border was a line
drawn in blood,
it separated one nation
like a divorce.
 
 
Now, it is much lighter,
like the touch of skin
but, in Bel Feirste still
the Peace Wall is an Argument Wall.
 
(trans. by  the author)