It began with a Guardian article on the brave, pioneering Swedish journalist Kim Wall , who died in appalling circumstances earlier this year, whilst pursuing a story about a Danish man who'd made his own submarine.
  Written by her friend Caterina Clerici , it showed how Kim had all the qualities required to be a fine reporter : obtaining the trust of her subjects, a fascination for the extraordinary in everyday life and , above all, a genuine sense of adventure.
   Coincidentally, I had an article in the magazine 'The Welsh Agenda' which I'd never seen before, the bi-annual journal of the IWA ( Institute of Welsh Affairs), a kind of on-going think-tank.
   It was a shortened version of my blog 'Music Fights Back!' and the editor cut certain parts, most noticeably my final paragraph condemning all those who'd voted Labour, LibDem and Tory for the dreadful state of education in Cymru.
   Labour for their misguided policies, LibDem Minister Kirsty Williams for failing to counteract these and the Tories for their vandalistic austerity measures.
   Understandably, the editor didn't want to alienate many readers, whereas in my blogs I really don't care!
   It took me back to an integral part of my life which I do tend to forget.
   Whenever I appeared in schools ( never nowadays!) I used to field the question - 'Did you ever want to be something else apart from a writer?'
   The answer is  - 'Yes, a footballer.....but I didn't grow quickly enough.'
   I've always left out my ambition to be a journalist, for some reason.
   At school and home, there was no encouragement. I wasn't expected to do well at 'A' Level and my mother simply looked at my alphabetically ordered bookcase and advised me to become a librarian like my father at that time.
   Since my parents were divorced and my mother hated him, I saw this as something of an insult and was delighted when I got very good results and switched to an English degree. 
   Up to this point I'd been an avid reader of football mag's and, at Uni began to read music ones like NME and Melody Maker.
   In our school mag I'd done a review of The Beatles' Abbey Road and nobody could make much sense of my phrase 'a synthesis of lyrics and music'.
   At Aber Uni a unique opportunity arose when Neil Hamilton ( the boy from Fleur-de-lis) was voted in as editor of the college paper Courier. At that time UKIP's Assembly leader was a right-wing Tory and our response was to form an alternative magazine 'Rasp'.
  It was a strange brew of leftist politics, philosophy, satire and creative writing and one of the regular writers was Gerry McLoughlin, then a member of the WRP, who later became a Sinn Fein councillor in Derry City.
  In 1984, BBC's Panorama did a programme attacking Hamilton and included were stories of his involvement with neo-fascist rallies when he was at Aber.
   Hamilton took the programme to Court and won costs and compensation, yet 'Rasp' reported over a decade earlier that he did attend rallies in Belgium and Italy and he never disputed these facts.
   I especially enjoyed contributing satire and music reviews, even though 'Private Eye' was an obvious inspiration for the former.
   One friend criticised my review of Don McClean for praising a 'maudlin balladeer' and it's intriguing that I lost that friend many years later when he objected vociferously to my blog on the Olympics opening ceremony, calling it 'bile!'.
   ( A shame because he was a rare, regular follower ).
   If I'd had any careers advice at the end of my degree I may well have done a postgrad course in journalism, as my son did over 30 years later.
   Instead, I ended up working on the pumps at a Barry garage....'a gap year' before anyone used the term.
   With my mate from down the road, I was a regular attender of Barry Folk Club and was asked to write their weekly column in the local paper.
   Despite hangovers I somehow managed to convey the excitement of those evenings, when the likes of Rod Tolchock ( not his real name) would thrill us.
   I loved the drunken singalongs ending every evening and quirky entertainers who'd stomp the stage or mouth trombone-sounds.
   My next foray was for the paper of Cymru Goch, the Welsh Socialists, 'Y Faner Goch', with articles on campaigns like anti-opencast , on football and music.
   I was particularly enthralled to interview the Manics' bassist Nicky Wire not long after 'Everything Must Go' had been released.
   I'd met Nicky several years before at the Central Hotel in Cardiff where he'd come to support his brother Patrick and see the Red Poets. At that time I hadn't a clue about their music.
   Nicky was articulate and politically aware......a joy to interview.
   When 'Wales on Sunday' began as a broadsheet the editor asked me to review cds, but he wanted to expand my brief and instructed me to interview Van Morrison, who was gigging in Newport.
   As I was teaching at the time and knew Van the Man's reluctance to be interviewed I declined and that was the end of a brief but enjoyable 'career' .......the free cds were a welcome bonus!
   Afterwards I did contribute to journals like 'Arcade' and 'Celyn', both of which are sadly missed.
   I always tried to transfer my enthusiasm for journalism to education and the most successful example was at Pen-y-dre , Merthyr , where our Rock Music Club produced a mag called 'Bootleg'.
   I still remember the day one pupil interviewed an unlikely English teacher about two of his former students when he taught at Cambridge High School, namely Syd Barrett and Roger Waters.
   It was quite a scoop to discover that Syd was once an enthusiastic Boy Scout and Waters a very stroppy basketball player.
   I'm so proud of my son, a TV journalist ( as, indeed, I am of my three children's achievements).
   It was he who spurred me into blogging when I retired in 2009.
   At times, blogs have alienated people , at others they have produced positive responses ; but in terms of football and music writing it's made possible what I once dreamt of doing.
   I truly like the way an idea for a blog can lead to a poem and vice versa.
   This one came about because of that article about Kim Wall who, as her friend Manski Choksi said - ' It still feels like she's just somewhere without wi-fi.'

                            She's somewhere

she's somewhere without wi-fi
you can't reach her
and she can't answer
but she's somewhere
swimming in the vodou waterfall
she's over and under
she's alone in Cuba
with the freaks in America
there are no signals
that you could measure
but there's energy there
she's water and air
she's somewhere out there
her expression ever-changing
as surely as the weather
without a phone
a tablet or computer
one day she won't return
one day an empty boat
will float down the river -
but she'll still be somewhere    
   

   Last Monday Wales were knocked out of the World Cup qualifiers by a single winning goal from the right boot of left-footer James McClean, of the Republic of Ireland.
   McClean's a left-footer in every sense : born and raised in Derry City, he chose to play for the Republic not the North.
   When he scored a few Welsh fans rose and gesticulated wildly.....I even thought for a second there were Irish among us.
   Then I realised their venom was directed at goalscorer McClean of West Brom. During the game a small number of our fans booed him every time he touched the ball.
   He's well used to this and gets it from all visiting fans, though Baggies' ones have made up their own chant about him to the tune of the English anthem!
   It all began when he was playing for Sunderland and carried on at Wigan, when he refused to wear a poppy to commemorate Remembrance Sunday.
   In a letter to Wigan chairman Dave Whelan, McClean said he had total respect for those who fought and died in two World Wars, but his problem was the 'honouring' of soldiers who'd fought in n. Ireland.
   'For me to wear a poppy would be as much a gesture of disrespect for the innocent people who lost their lives in the Troubles...'
   McClean stands alone, and brave, in taking this stand.
   Many innocents were murdered by the British army in that war : mere suspects by SAS in shoot-to-kill, joyriders who'd driven through check-points and many totally uninvolved like Seamus 'Kidso' Reilly, a well-known roadie who worked for the likes of Bananarama.
    Bloody Sunday is certainly the best-known, where civil rights protesters were brutally killed on the streets of Derry.
   If I were a footballer (not likely to happen, I concur) I'd do the same. Not just out of solidarity with the oppressed republican people of the six counties, but also as a statement about the nature of 'honouring' victims of war.
   The many innocent people - and freedom-fighters in colonial wars - who've died as a result of conflicts are not even acknowledged by a symbol ( the red poppy) inextricably linked to the British military.
   It's odd that the poppy-wearing controversy has become so contentious as many sports give it no prominence and even football has adopted it with such vigour only in recent years.
   Both England and Scotland were notoriously fined large amounts by FIFA for wearing and displaying poppies last year and the media were generally horrified at that body calling them 'political'.
   Ironically, the self-same media ready to castigate McClean's refusal as a blatantly political stance!
   Now FIFA's set to lift its ban, so England's up-coming friendly with Germany will see their players ( with  necessary German approval) sporting them. Will they, I wonder, be honouring the dead of Dresden during the 2nd World War?
   It seems likely they'll be an integral part of the kit , which would leave McClean with no choice in the matter.
   I fully agree with the Quakers, who argue that it should be up to individual players whether they wear red poppies, white ones, or none at all.  
   Another element to this came when McClean's club played an American team in a friendly and, for some strange reason, the 'Queen' was played. McClean turned away and bowed his head in what was seen as a gesture of disrespect.
   It provoked DUP's Gregory Campbell into claiming that McClean should quit English football.
   Now, I've many English friends and quite a few are avid republicans who believe that their anthem should be changed. Campbell should realise it's not just the Irish who are against that iniquitous system.
   After Wales' defeat I spoke to one friend, whose only comment was -
' Why did it have to be that idiot who scored?'  
   If anyone's a working-class hero, McClean is; boy from the Creggan who cares enough about the history of his people to stand up and take regular abuse.
   I had a moment after Ireland scored much like I did when Justin Fashanu scored the winner against my beloved Bluebirds, after he'd been the first professional footballer to come out as gay. 
   Against all my affiliations , I sided with the opposition, who had risen above bitter bile from the terraces from those too ignorant to care or find out.


                                     BOOING  McCLEAN


James McClean from Derry City,
at every stadium subject to boo-boys.

Vilified for not wearing a poppy,
not afraid to enter the fray.

Chose the South not six counties,
Irish not British he would say.

Knows the suffering of people of Derry,
knows of the slaughter on Bloody Sunday ;

knows the occupation by a foreign army,
how civil rights protesters were treated so badly.

Allegiance to his own family,
allegiance to his own country.

Irish blood-shed over many centuries,
as Christy Moore would sing defiantly.

When some Welsh booed him that Monday
I thought of Risings, our shared history.
       
    

   In the 90s Red Poets (then Society) were launching at a Jazz Club in Cardiff, recorded for a Radio Wales arts show and who was playing alongside us but the inimitable Riff Williams from Cardiff Band Little Miracle.
   Riff was to Red Poets then what Barry Taylor and Jamie Bevan are today, a vital musical dimension.
   Miracle's great album 'Birth of a Bison' was not long released.
   I used to think they'd totally disappeared in the internet age till I found this cd on Amazon, a used version at over £16.
   Riff could perform equally well solo as singing and playing lead guitar with his band. He owed much to his heroes Roy Harper and Neil Young : stirring chords from the former, lyrical tones from the latter.
   The cd veers more towards rock than folk and tracks 'The Naked Truth' and 'Jimmy's Dad' top and tail it : the first about the massacre of American Indians, the second about the hypocrisy involving legalisation of marijuana.
   Inevitably, my favourite track has to be 'Chico Mendes', as I wrote the words and Riff did such an amazing job putting them to music ; it's about the well-known Brazilian Trade Unionist who became a global campaigner for the rain forests.
   I met Riff for the first time at a Friends of the Earth Cymru gig in Porthcawl and was delighted when he said he wanted to use 'Chico'.
   At the time there was a smart-looking man who fancied himself as Riff's manager, but nothing came of it. Little Miracle ended up doing mostly cover versions on the pub and club circuit.
   Last I heard Riff had injured his arm so badly he couldn't play guitar again
   His songs could be softer and gentler, but it's the righteous indignation I remember most and in 'Kill the Folklaw' he railed against traditionalists who were killing the music with their stuffiness.
  He believed that folk music should move on, reinvent itself and I wholeheartedly agreed with him.
   I often wonder what he'd make of developments in Cymru and elsewhere nowadays, many of which are enthralling.
   Georgia Ruth for example who - even on her overly poppy second album 'Fossil Scale'  - can produce wonderful songs where the harp sounds thoroughly contemporary,  like ' Sylvia' and 'Supermoon'.
  Then there's the alt-folk of the trio Plu, including the ubiquitous Gwilym Bowen-Rhys, who were the outstanding act of the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow earlier this year.
   The group Ghazalaw have perfectly  combined traditional Welsh folk songs with Indian music to completely transform them.
   But what Riff represented has been especially embraced by Wigan-based folk-rockers Merry Hell.
  Though closer to folk vocals than he ever was, their themes and deep concerns reflect the musical philosophy of Little Miracle.
   I particularly admire their rousing anthems of hope and political solidarity such as ' We need each other' and 'Stand down' ; 'Come on , England' is an alternative national anthem for that country, summoning the land of the Levellers and Diggers, not gentry and royalty.
   They too can be more muted, as on 'When we are old' , but there are few bands like them willing to stand up and be counted.
   Of all the Welsh singer-songwriters it is Julie Murphy who most successfully blends the personal and political without ever sounding preacherly. Her 2015 album 'Every bird that sings' deserved to win the Welsh Music prize.
   When Riff stopped playing with Red Poets we lost an essential ingredient, yet the likes of Hastings / Pudner, Heather Pudner, Barry and Jamie have all more than compensated.
   Meanwhile, 'Birth of a Bison' is a snip at £16........you never know.....one day......
   And Riff, if you're out there gazing in on the digital world, give us a bell.


                                    RIFF REMEMBERED


Riff does not exist on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, or any other.

Google him or Little Miracle
and one used cd on Amazon,

or maybe Red Poets references ;
nothing whatsoever on Wikipedia.

So, he doesn't exist for us,
except those precious albums.

The many times at gigs,
the climbing chords, impassioned vocals

against war and hypocrisies,
for greener times and hashish.

Riff riffing in Swansea, Cardiff, Merthyr,
folk and rock living together :

then going underground so far
that only the finest caver......

a deep chamber, echoing guitar,
that voice leading on.