Just a few weeks back the 3 Molas - namely myself, Eric Ngalle Charles and Ifor ap Glyn - set off on a visit to Cameroon, a Welsh delegation ready to launch the anthology Eric edited 'Hiraeth / Erzolirzoli' ( Hafan Books), make contacts with writers there and build for the future of Cymru-Cameroon ( all supported by Wales Arts International).
   So, I entered the utter darkness.....no, I don't mean Africa, but Sophia Gardens bus 'station' in Cardiff. Park gates locked, no lights....overnight express to Heathrow ( loosely 'express', as it goes through Chepstow!).
   Screaming kid all the way recalled the new TV drama series 'The Cry', especially when a woman yelled - 'Give him some bloody water!'
   At the airport Eric's case was seriously overweight with copies of the book, but sharing and a new case sorted that.
   Africa before us, first time for myself and Ifor.....a Continent shaped in my consciousness by the likes of Achebe, Jack Mapanje and Conrad. Cameroon itself hatched in my head by Eric's own inimitable performances ....a part of that country already in Wales, as Ifor put it.
   We landed in the commercial capital Douala and very soon at the cafe opposite our hotel, Eric's many friends and family gathered : sister arriving with her baby on an okada (motorbike taxi) and his mother, as larger-than-life as he is, so even Sion Tomos Owen's cartoons would find it hard to pin down.
   There were immediately many tales of his home near Buea, across the river and not so far away : tales of the guerilla war fought by Ambazonian secessionists for an Anglophone state ( Cameroon is 80% Francophone and 20% Anglophone) and brutal army response. How even Eric's mother wanted to move and his friend, the film-maker Palmer Ngale Mbua had run 3 kilometres when shooting broke out. 
   This starkly contrasted the celebration and feasting of this first evening.
   The first of countless times, Eric patiently explained that I was a 'vegeterien' and, as in France , he might as well have introduced me to waiters as a 'Martian'.
   While they tucked into snails, chicken, fish and tripe ( avoiding the viper and python on the menu), I ate the furlong ( Garden huckleberry) and plantain that would become my staple diet.
   Languages criss-crossed and leapt about the tables : Bakweri of Eric's tribe, English, Pidgin ( a hybrid dialect of English and some German),and some French ; though Eric is from the Anglophone south-west.
   Next day we embarked on the long car journey to the political capital Yaounde, inland and more tropical, for the launch, media appearances and to meet Cameroonian writers who appear in the anthology.
   The main road symbolizes the state of the country : a place thronging with hard-working, busy traders, a timber industry paying no heed to the environment and a collapsing infrastructure. It often became a rough track or was so full of fissures and pot-holes it was like there'd been an earthquake. 
   A new stadium's being constructed outside Douala in the hope that Cameroon will host the next African Nations Cup: incongruous amongst the dirt tracks.
   Few buses were on the road and , despite teams of whistle-blowing safety-men, many vehicles were being driven with broken screens, lethal loads and black fumes from exhaust from the cheap fuel sold in plastic canisters by the roadside.
   The country's rich in resources from timber to coffee, tea to cacao : where was all the revenue going to?
   Certainly not roads, transport or toilets which consisted of ( as Eric put it) 'dangling your parts' beside a bush or ditch. Caught short in the middle of Yaounde, I had to do this and provoked many car horns to my complete embarrassment! 
   Our Yaounde hotel was welcome comfort after Douala's dubious dwelling and that evening we met several writers from 'Hiraeth / Erzolirzoli', including Douglas Achingale, Joffi Ewusi and story-writer Tiffuh Esther.
   Douglas is a brave poet of protest and I gave him a copy of 'Red Poets' ; I sincerely hope he submits as his work would be the perfect fit.
   It was wonderful to hear Ifor , our National Poet, talk so eloquently about Welsh history.
   Explaining Cymru became a vital task just as we were learning so much about their country. It wasn't enough to reference Gareth Bale either and our language and degree of self-government had to be placed into context.
  If there was ever the perfect choice for National Poet then Ifor must be it : he adapts so readily, writes notes furiously about the culture and place and even won the great Achu challenge, a one-finger style of eating this yellow soup in a crater of coco-yam, while I swallowed a chilli whole and spluttered ! On Facebook, one wag described that meal as 'a ring of meringue with curry sauce inside'!
   For our launch the next evening at the Chamber of Agriculture he had even written a celebratory englyn, which he duly read out after addressing the audience in Bakweri.  
   The launch was due to begin at 4 pm so, as Eric had warned, we kicked off well after 5 , just as the rain poured down and thunder erupted. Soon as I heard it I said to him - 'There'll be a power cut!'
   Sure enough, a black out just after the start. Luckily, his sister had brought torches and our voices carried down the large hall.
   Ifor's poem 'Y Ty Hwn' which was written especially for the last opening of the Welsh Assembly was read out in Bakweri by the translator Efange Protus Esuka. This was a moment of sheer magic, as was Eric's performance in front of most of his village for the first time . In the intervals between readings and speeches, the wonderful ChaCha dancers even managed to involve two rather wooden Welshmen.
   Douglas Achingale's reading of 'The Honourable Minister' was particularly pertinent in such troubled times.
   Each of us was interviewed that night for national tv and in the ensuing days we were interviewed for the national press and radio; the latter by Charles Tembei, who actually did an internship under Channel 4's Jon Snow in 2007!
   Despite being government owned, the radio station building was much like the rest of the country: toilet flooding, ceilings gaping, an entire theatre space disused and a subterranean darkness pervading.
   Defying these surroundings, Tembei was master of the mic and we had a meal with him afterwards as the Presidential election results were announced on tv. They would take several hours and had no running totals he explained.
   When the incumbent President Paul Biya was declared victor with over 70 % of the vote nobody seemed shocked, though everyone expected trouble.
   There had been many allegations of fraud and malpractice and a very low turn-out in the Anglophone south- and north-west where the secessionists operate.
   Biya is 85 and spends an inordinate amount of time in Geneva. He has never addressed the people in English, despite the contentiousness of the issue, a legacy of colonialism. He has held power for 36 years and the first country to congratulate him was the so-called liberal Macron of France, the former colonial power who still benefit considerably economically and maintain a security presence.
   His face ( well, a much younger version) is everywhere on billboards, official offices and the museum and his party are all-powerful. I later learnt about the many Cameroonian writers detained or exiled for their alleged criticism of the regime; surely cases which PEN Cymru must pursue.
   One billboard slogan reads 'THE FORCE OF EXPERIENCE' , an apt mistranslation from the French! 
   Wealth and poverty are strange neighbours here, as they are in India. Right next to a city community like a 'village' without sanitation and with corrugated iron roofs,we came upon a palatial house with high walls and iron gate.
   Yet when I reflect on the people I met  and came to know I admire so much their ambition and drive, despite these stark inequalities and violence lurking.
   I think of the film-maker Palmer who has so little support for his many projects , yet is determined to enter next year's Cardiff Film Festival and, even after watching us lose 4-1 to Liverpool is an honorary Bluebird!
   I think of poet Joffi Ewusi with her three young children, who still finds room in her house for two 'displaced' young people from the war zones ( there are many such 'internal refugees' in Cameroon).
   I think too of the postgraduate Raoul Djemili with French his first language, telling me about the plight of Cameroon's writers ; a subject I hope he'll write about for 'Red Poets'.
   I think also of our indomitable driver 'Benji', a man of few words but many Vimtos, who steered us through so much mayhem with great placidity and who appeared on national TV at our launch to much acclaim from friends and family.
   Above all, I think of the 3 Molas bringing those two words 'hiraeth ' and 'erzolirzoli' so close together they have become inseparable, one Welsh and one Bakweri.
   Who would have imagined it?
   Two countries so far apart, inextricably joined. 


                                      OUT  OF  THE  DARKNESS

                                        ( for Eric Ngalle Charles)


A resounding explosion like shock of news
travelling fast from troubled territories,
lights out so we could no longer view
that framed face as it peered
on every street, promising 'THE FORCE OF EXPERIENCE'
( mistranslation telling much).

With torchlight, as in a cave, the ceremony proceeded :
poetry and speeches bringing light.
All his village had journeyed for his homecoming:
for them , a tunic of many colours,
black hat and stick ; applause for returning son. 

From the depths like beams through a cleft
came Cha Cha drummers and dancers chanting,
so Cymru-Cameroon joined together one expression.

Rain ceased its troubled nattering
and the cockerel crowed both dawn and day-time
when we later shared palm wine
under the gentle shade :
two friends, two lands learning.            

   I've recently joined a choir called Merthyr Aloud/ Merthyr Yn Uchel and we sing world music / cerddoriaeth y byd.
   Felly, dw i'n wrth fy modd!
   It's not as if I have a wide experience of choral music though. I reached the heights at the age of 11 when - the Aled Jones of Milton Road Juniors - I soloed on 'Once in Royal David's City'.
   I was duly spotted by my mother, who had designs on dispatching me to the nearby King's College school in order to make way for her lover, our lodger.
   But I was having none of that.
   In Grammar I was  a choir member ( apart from voice-breaking years)  and we once performed in Coventry Cathedral, having spent the night in the creepy crypt.
   Later, singing bass baritone, I especially enjoyed our carol singing from house to house to raise money for charity. We ended up at the Head's house for mince pies and the notorious 'Twitch' suddenly became human.
   When my children were young I loved singing them to sleep and knew well the ones to lull like 'Witchita Lineman', Randy Newman's 'Marie', plenty of Beatles and the selected songbook of Leonard Cohen; though 'El Condor Pasa' was maybe a little lively.
   I'd like to think that our communal love of the Beatles derives from those early years, though Cohen never made a lasting impact.
   So, in one way or another, singing has always played a part in my life : from our staff choir singing rock spiritual 'Holy Boy' at two Merthyr churches, to annoying those same teachers end of term in a mini-bus with Cor Cochion Caerdydd anthems like 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika'. Only the pleas of my leftist mate Arwel Davies stopping the inebriated teachers from throwing me onto the roadside!
   My most memorable singing moment came in Merthyr precinct one Christmas during those anti-apartheid campaigning years.
   Cor Cochion were actually being arrested for obstruction when , impulsively, I joined them for 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau'.
   I was left standing alone still singing, as they were hauled away into a black mariah!
   With Merthyr Aloud I was wary at first, finding it tricky keeping to the bass parts and switching languages.
   But soon my confidence grew and the director Tanya is so encouraging, enthusiastic and talented.
   Some songs, such as Cohen's renowned 'Hallelujah' are all too familiar , though not the bass part however.
   Others are new to me and after only three weeks I was delighted to lead the way on 'Long road to Freedom' from the Nelson Mandela film ( mainly because the other basses were away).
   This song took me back to the best days of Cor Cochion when Tony Bianchi's booming bass resonated so strongly.
   Soon I'm off to Cameroon with Eric Ngalle Charles and Ifor ap Glyn to launch Eric's anthology ' Hiraeth / Erzolirzoli ' and Tanya told me her daughter did a project on that country and found it had the biggest frog in the world. I'll keep a look-out!
   It's fascinating changing languages and also styles : from rousing negro spirituals to purity of carols, Shakin' Stevens to Laughin' Lennie.
   Some members of the choir ( plus a cameo appearance by everyone) will be on S4C after Christmas as part of a programme about the recording of 'Atgof Angel' featuring opera singer Rhys Meirion.
   On November 24th you can catch us at Pontsticill Xmas Fair in the Village Hall at 12.30.
   When I sing I become that boy again in Milton Road school, standing in a semi-circle around the piano singing folk songs and sea shanties ( though my voice is a little deeper).
   Music can make us ageless.


                                 MERTHYR YN UCHEL
                                     i Tony Pritchard  

We shake off the days
we shake off age
we reach for apples
up in the clouds,
become Tarzan tongue-twisters,
learn to breathe again


we travel by song
from land to land
Zimbabwe, Mexico, Slovakia
returning in our hiraeth
to Cymru and the river :
changing keys of water


standing in a crescent
light from the harmonies
sometimes fractured
sometimes flowing,
touch fruit of Tir na Nog
taste of sound glowing.     

  Walking. So vital to verse : rhythm and breath. Seeking the changing seasons, glimpses of animals never seen before. One day the kingfisher.
   As a teenager in East Anglia those fields of barley and sugar beet ; isolated copses. Transistor radio in hand, listening to 'Pick of the Pops'.
   Or in the flatlands closer to the city , searching for a river-bank to hide from the huge horizon.
   In Aber as a student re-visiting my past daily down the prom, on the half-pier's machines, or over to Tanybwlch's storm beach where I once learnt to swim in freezing, wave-crashing Bay.
   ( Seeing a Cornishman pop up from the long grass, book in hand.....what a place to read, to learn!).
   Pen Dinas bound by paths where I wandered wild as a kid  playing kiss chase and hide 'n' seek till the sun went down and my brother was sent to haul me home.
   Walking. The metre and the line. A forest track or a footpath.
   In Garw Nant in the Beacons all the animals seem to have gone and left their understudies : wooden imitations sitting by the route, fossilized before their time.
   Yet in the Valleys you suddenly discover a place passed many times, some of it reclaimed from the old mine, where waste is kicked up.
   Parc Penallta, Ystrad Mynach : wasteland being slowly taken back and forests of deciduous and evergreen.
   Single spark of a green woodpecker as the sounds compete : buzzards above while, from over the valley, the road-rush of incessant traffic.
   There'll be dog-owners, Nordic walkers and ardent runners later on, but for now this place is virtually deserted, as we tread tentatively on the grass form of Sultan the pit pony, a profiled shape which makes you join those raptors and gaze down.
   Blackberries rot in the bushes, yet gorse flames even as autumn begins its colours of dying.
   Returning to Merthyr over Gelligaer Common, where horses, sheep and cattle wander over the cropped , bare moorlands and a quarry looms on the skyline like a strange, out-of-place volcano.
   The Valleys are full of places like Parc Penallta and sometimes we forget to laud them, living close to cosseted National Parks.
   Walking. Sentences punctuated by birds and squirrels. Burying images for another, hungrier time.


                            GRASS PONY, PARC PENALLTA

                                for Julie, Tog and Debbie  

Scrabbling up the flanks of Sultan,
you'd need to be a buzzard :
in the distance hear them mewling.

Whispering into his wire ear :
'How dark deep down,
how damp in the narrow gallery?'

Standing on a nostril
clinkered with pit waste,
a memory of thick dust.

Walking along the pony's body,
his hair of returning grass
and mane with slag exposed.

With his hooves of coal
and the wind whinnying,
Sultan's a twmp protruding.

With eye of split stone
peering into a clear sky,
come at last into light.
   

   Recently we launched issue 24 of ‘Red Poets’ magazine at the Imp in Merthyr Tudful, now an annual ritual.
   We’ve actually been going 25 years as we managed to skip a year while suffering a prolonged hangover from all the collating and stapling of issue 1.
   It was a wild and stormy night in Cymru and some contacted me with apologies, saying they were lost in the floods.
   However, Harry Rogers made it all the way from Castell Emlyn, John Williams had come from Lewisham and Leon Lazarus had been re-born while trudging up the valley and emerged looking like he’d nearly drowned!
   It was another great night of music and verse and wonderful to welcome poets such as Adele Cordner from the Port and Paula Denby with her surfer son, both making their debuts. When Paula sang ‘Ar lan y môr’ it was a moment of sheer magic.
   The issue’s so packed with fascinating contributions that I can’t mention everyone…..opening poems by the Buddhist Boyz Barry Taylor and Al Jones reflect wryly on the Red Poets themselves.
   There’s much masterful satire from the likes of Dave Hughes, Martin Hayes and , of course, Phil Knight whose ‘I love Wales’ refers repeatedly to our many types of rain –
    ‘I love its rain.
    The hard rain, the soft,
    The acid rain, the carbon rain,
    The salt and sand rain
    Of lost Saturday afternoons.
    The rain, the glorious rain.’
…..read marvellously by Heather Falconer to the soundtrack of that very rain crashing down outside in Merthyr.
   There is a poem by the eminent poet, essayist and critic Jeremy Hooker who – for the first time in his life – recently joined a political party, namely Corbyn’s Labour and who shows his passion and praise in ‘Aneurin Bevan Memorial Stones’ –
‘ …this young man with a stutter
     declaiming Shakespeare or Marx,
     correcting his voice, and honing it,
     like a tool, useful as a miner’s pick.’
  Such precise description and so apt.
  Fittingly there are 4 poems dealing directly with the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower : Merthyr’s own John Williams went to help in the aftermath and ‘Fully Furnaced Flat’ is a frighteningly stark response. Then there’s the anger of Des Mannay and Tim Evans’ poems and the righteous indignation of J. Richardson –
     ‘  The media carefully avoids the bottomless vault
        Of anonymous horror
        The un-glamorous deaths of the poor.’
   One of my favourite poets on the scene today is undoubtedly Becky Lowe of Swansea and it’s high time a publisher in Cymru brought a book out by her, because her work is always imaginative and thought-provoking ; ‘This Pen’ is no exception –
     ‘ This pen contains
        Love or poison,
        Can amputate hearts
        At a single stroke
        Can make you disappear
        Or become immortal.’
   Another poet who, like Becky, reads regularly at Talisman in Swansea, is Teifion Hughes, so underrated and unassuming. His ‘ A Single Spark’ tells of Che and Fidel in Mexico, a narrative poem yet full of strong descriptions –
    ‘ Here comes the wind to mimic
      Che’s asthmatic : his drug left
      dry on a Mexican shelf.’ 
   I feel proud and honoured to give poets like Teifion this opportunity.
   Then there are the old-timers such as myself, Alun Rees  and Tim Richards who’ve been here from the beginning ( well, almost in Tim’s case). Tim’s ‘Being Welsh’ is as pertinent today as it would’ve been when we were all members of the Welsh Socialists , Cymru Goch the very group who gave birth to the Red Poets in Clwb-y-Bont, where Alun Roberts must have been mid-wife!
   Tim questions our allegiances and how easily these can be cast aside –
     ‘ So I loyally vote Labour
       and get English Tory governments
      ‘cos when it really comes down to it
       I am a True Brit.’
   Red Poets remains a multifarious collection of voices from all different parts of the Left : SWP to left Plaid, staunch Corbynites to anarchists.
   As I say in the Intro to this issue, referring to young poets like Rufus Mufasa and Kate Tempest –
   ‘ Despite the blandness of much of the literary scene, I’m heartened by young artists taking poetry onto the main stage and challenging the predictability of so much popular culture.’
   Indeed, we have both Leon Lazarus and Patrick Jones who often use spoken word and music so effectively.
   From red to green to black and back again, 25 years after our first ‘one-off’ magazine.
 
 
                                        RED  STORM
 
 
A storm blew them in
bedraggled and blasted ,
up the flooding High Street
past flying branches
and clogged-up drains.
 
A storm with innocuous name
like that of an Aunt
visiting over the summer ;
but here they gathered
wet and wound up
by the one-way system,
to take a stand.
 
A storm they didn’t shake off
or change like damp clothing,
but which became their words :
bringing down barriers and walls
and lifting everyone like seabirds
in a full-feathered freedom.       

   Conversations – ones I’ve had or overheard – have always been a major source of inspiration.
   At times these two overlap and I momentarily join in with people at the bus-stop or, alternatively, I’m involved in a conversation yet feel an outsider.
   More and more I sense myself avoiding direct conflict with views and observations I find totally wrong and that can leave me ashamed.
   Why didn’t I intervene? Why hadn’t I expressed myself forcefully with candour?
   This was the case not long ago on the Cardiff-Merthyr train when a man got on ( in his early thirties) wearing a FREE TOMMY ROBINSON sweat-shirt.
   He was not your typical alt-right character at all, with long hippy-style hair and swotty specs; he looked thin and under-nourished.
   He began an animated conversation with a black fella sitting opposite me ( the neo-fascist was standing by the exit door).
   They appeared to know each other and the black bloke was totally supportive – ‘Yeah, you’re right! Free the man!’ and with no indication of fear.
   I was ‘on pins’, wanting to shout out how wrong, how misguided, how appalling! But remained silent.
   Then the Robinson supporter disappeared from view ( must’ve been squatting on the floor) and I noticed a woman along the carriage staring at him curiously.
   We soon arrived at Ponty and the black guy got off with a ‘See ya!’ as Robinson-man took deliberate steps to the opposite exit and paced emphatically towards the open door, only for it to shut automatically.
   He pressed the OPEN button like a panic one. The Guard was alerted and soon appeared on the platform.
   Robinson-man returned to the closed door opposite, braced himself and counted out purposeful steps, halting at the open door. He took a long, deep breath as if ready to sky-dive, and made it onto the waiting platform and the concerns of the Guard.
   It reminded me of ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’, when the protagonist was on the London underground.
   I wondered if anything I could have said would’ve mattered.
   Occasionally I overhear things so bizarre I’m unsure if I’ve actually heard them.
   Only the other day a woman was talking about the Holocaust on the bus up the road ( not an everyday topic, but she’d just attended her regular History class). She mentioned Holocaust denial , when a  man who I’d spoken to several times and seemed reasonable simply said – ‘ Yeah, just like that Corbyn!’
   I was incredulous, but couldn’t join in because I was afraid I hadn’t heard it right. Looking back, I believe I did.
   There’s no denying I’m afraid of losing my bap in a social setting, as when I recently talked to the epitome of a ‘plastic’.
   Any football fan will know that term : someone who attends games just for the glory or, even worse, to follow the various, glamorous opposition teams.
   With my beloved Bluebirds back in the Prem the number of such fans has rocketed. I don’t begrudge those who really are City fans, but this…..
   I had known him for years as an avid egg-chaser who’d rarely expressed any interest in the round ball game and last time I’d seen him at our ground was four years back when, you guessed it, we happened to be in the Premiership!
   Now he was explaining – ‘I’ve got a season ticket just for the one season, because next year you’ll be back down. The manager will be sacked by Christmas…..that’s what always happens. You go there whatever, don’t you?’
   I swallowed my tongue, bit my lips, breathed very deeply.
   As someone who has always followed teams passionately and truly believe we should embrace Welsh football at all levels, here was my nemesis.
   If I’d had a few pints though, I doubt I’d been so restrained!
   Talking to blatant racists I can’t keep quiet, as I try to be calm and point out how ludicrous their arguments are.
   One man I meet often on our daily newspaper routes ( a senior citizens' ritual, if ever there was one) started a diatribe against the Nigerian team during the World Cup, calling them ‘lazy’ and implying it was an African characteristic. I simply mentioned Cardiff City's two Africans Bamba and Manga and their prevailing work ethic.
   The following poem’s based on an overheard conversation at the bus-station, yet is fictionalised.
   One aspect I didn’t include was amusing, but didn’t fit in.
   During this incident two paramedic vans were parked along the Avenue de Clichy in Merthyr ( see the photo), near the bridge in question.
   Their Cymraeg side faced us with ‘GIG Cymru’.
   ‘Wha’s goin on b’there?’
   ‘Them vans…..must be water or summin.’
   As we passed in the bus later, the woman changed her mind –
‘ Nah, it’s not water, it’s Welsh, innit?’
 
 
                                     MERTHYR  BRIDGE  INCIDENT
 
‘Seen all tha kerfuffle down by-a bridge?’
 
‘Aye, somebuddy ‘ve sprained theyer ankle
tryin t commit suicide.’
 
‘I yeard a car ad driven off of-a road,
there’s fire-engines an cops galore
an loadsa stewdents watchin
an videoin it all live.’
 
‘ Ey, yers Dave, bet ee knows…
Wha’s appnin on-a bridge?’
 
‘Washed up body mun!
Thought it woz a film set,
tv camras ev’rywhere,
I wuz lookin f Richard Bloody Arrington.
Road cordoned off, could be a murder scene.’
 
‘Well yer's-a bus….
Ey drive, wha’s goin on?’
 
‘Fisherman broke is leg,
takin im up Prince Charles.’
 
‘Truth is always borin Dave.’
 
‘ Aye, but I bet
ee wuz ewsin an arpoon.’ 

   ‘ The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.’
   ‘ ….Celtic nationalism is not the same thing as Anglophobia. Its motive force is a belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples.’
   ‘ Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence : in other words it is war minus the shooting.’

•    George Orwell, ‘Notes on nationalism’ & ‘The sporting spirit’ ( 1945)

   At Aberystwyth Uni in the 1970s I studied the works of George Orwell under the expert guidance of Ned Thomas, then editor of ‘Planet’ and activist in Cymdeithas yr Iaith.
   I avidly read all his main works  and found ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’ fascinating, his non-fiction books like ‘Homage to Catalonia’ and ‘Road to Wigan Pier’ illuminating, his lesser fiction very uneven yet always interesting and essays pertinent.
   I especially recall his critique of so-called ‘champagne socialists’ whose values and lifestyle were totally mismatched. Applying Buddhism to their beliefs , he argued that their inner and outer lives should be one, they should live by their principles.
    So it was very disconcerting, indeed galling, to read his ‘Notes on nationalism’and other essays published in a single short one pound volume by Penguin (part of a varied and interesting series incidentally).
   On the positive side, his analysis of anti-Semitism in Britain at that time seems relevant to today when applied to Islamophobia, which is by far the most insidious prejudice.
   However, I found the vast majority of his opinions extremely Anglo-centric and limited in empathy.
   To begin with, he redefines ‘nationalism’ on his terms to include any strong belief system prevalent then, such as anti-Semitism and Trotskyism!
   He does acknowledge everybody’s propensity to be bigoted in a some way, but I’m sure my Trotskyist friends wouldn’t appreciate his analysis which views that movement as purely reactive towards Stalinism.
   He constantly uses England and Britain as if they were the same entity, ironically a trait still perpetrated by those unionists on the British left who fail to see how devolution has created a very different scenario.
   Written as the 2nd World War was ending, his views were no doubt highly influenced by his identification of ‘nationalism’ with the most malign forces : Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Stalin’s Soviet Union, whose tyrannical excesses provided the inspiration for his greater works.
   What’s interesting  is the legacy of his thinking is stronger than you’d expect as still today many on the British left tend to see nationalism as a single force, failing to distinguish between the conquering, war-mongering kind of the British Empire , against that of small emerging ( or re-emerging)  nations like Catalunya and Scotland, whose right to self-determination they summarily dismiss as divisive.
   Orwell’s narrow-minded appraisal of Celtic nationalism as some kind of monolithic movement is ill-informed.
   He initially refers to its Anglophobia and then goes on to condemn its striving for ‘future greatness’.
   Yet ,even then, the nascent nationalist movements of both Cymru and Scotland were very different from that of southern Ireland, a country where Catholic church and state were becoming indistinguishable.
   In Cymru you had the iconic actions on the Llŷn in 1935 of ‘y tri’, the three nationalists who were imprisoned for setting fire to an RAF bombing school at Penyberth. This was a precursor of the much later Meibion Glyndwr arson campaign against second homes and showed a movement willing to use guerrilla acts against property though not people.
   Nowadays there are definite cultural and linguistic links between all the Celtic nations, but devolution and the beginnings of distinct differences makes any idea of pan-Celtic nationalism even more absurd.
   Anyone visiting Ireland can witness how the Gaelic language has been literally pushed to the brink and edges of coastline, yet is thriving in urban Belfast.
   Yet responsibility for its demise  lies with the government in Dublin, even as the Tories in Westminster refuse to stand up to their allies the DUP and give it equal status in the six counties.
   How can small nations comprehend this ‘future greatness’ Orwell’ writes about? They are more concerned with survival, or  the struggle for national liberation and desire to create and flourish free from the strictures and oppression of overwhelming nation-states.
   In short, how can Cymru reach its potential within a British state where it’s forever seen as an afterthought?
   Orwell was a prophet in the likes of ‘1984’, yet captive of his times in these essays.
   This is equally true of his views on sport in ‘The Sporting Spirit’ where he sees boxing and football in particular as microcosms of nationalist expression, manifestations of militarism.
   The only exception he gives is cricket on the village green, that quintessential English pastime.
   Where his argument collapses completely is his assessment that urban populations seek out the violence of sporting occasions due to their passive  lives.
   The fact that thousands of working-class people followed both football and boxing and yet worked in very physically-demanding jobs escapes him.
   He failed to realise the cathartic nature of sport and also remarkable ability to create heroes from their own class : from foundry to field and mine to ring.
    At present, football and politics are linked more closely than ever and recently friend and comrade Andrew Benjamin started the group ‘Football fans for Independence’, just as several Yes Cymru banners were displayed at Merthyr Town’s ground, together with a Welsh republican flag.
   Rugby – ostensibly our national game – needs to come to terms with this and jettison its establishment image of three royalist feathers, demeaning Principality Stadium and submissive German  motto of ‘Ich Dien’ ( I serve).
   Football – with its anti-monarchist chanting and fierce national identity – has lead the way and proved Orwell wrong.
   In the Euros we were simply delighted to have qualified and to take part, fans mixed freely with others from many countries and there was little animosity. We sang anthems with pride : Y Wal Goch was one of bodies not barriers.
   It was certainly worth reading ‘Notes on nationalism’ just to be aware of how profoundly mistaken a great writer can sometimes be.
​
 
                                    NO FLAGS
 
No flags are large enough
to make a tent
for doorways and parks,
warm enough for a blanket
on freezing nights,
firm enough to keep away
predators on foot.
 
But, could be postage stamps
to put on postcards
to a future
nobody can predict
where poles are scaffold
and cloth stretched taut
across the rooftops.
 
 
We may write
and dispatch them
from the republic of hope,
cowed subjects yet
imagining they fly :
a skein of geese
towards a different country.

   It has been 13 years since I was last in Belfast ( in Gaelic Béal Feirste, sandy ford at river mouth). Even then we were slipping through on route to Rosslare ferry.
   In the 1970s when we lived near Ballymena, we’d visit every weekend for the ‘craic’, not so much the heavily fortified pubs as theatre and music events.
   I imagine there are few places in the whole of Europe which have changed as much as this city, since the Peace Agreement of 1994 led to a power-sharing coalition.
   I vividly recall a city of body-checks, army patrols, vehicles called Saracens, spying helicopter beams and ubiquitous ‘Bomb Sales’ in shops.
    A place where the war was on-going and even the most horrendous acts sometimes went unreported in the media.
   Today the city centre is largely thriving and tourist industry evident. The most prevalent uniforms aren’t khaki but the red of workers touting for bus tours. Hotels are springing up like soldiers once did at your feet on the Falls.
   Holiday Inn and Hampton both face directly onto a large gable-end mural celebrating King William III ( of Orange) who, according to the painting, led some kind of international crusade to the battle of the Boyne in 1690.
   This is a recent one, created at the entrance to loyalist Sandy Row to appease business and tourism, who are still paying for it. It replaced the previous one of three masked gunmen and , on one tourist bus, we’re told it was done for the Queen’s visit…..but I prefer to believe a local as Mrs Windsor would hardly have arrived by bus at Victoria Street!
   It’s hard to think of this city embroiled in a conflict which took so many lives with bombs and bullets and even harder to see it returning.
   Yet……on our first day we visited the splendours of Stormont, a palatial building in wide-ranging estate which has had no Assembly since January 2017 and whose only sign of life is an inquiry into the ‘Cash for ashes’ scandal which implicates the Tories’ ally First Minister Arlene Foster alongside her senior Civil Servants. How can devolution possibly resume till this is finished and that is still way off.
   Stormont resembles some grand colonial residence and the debating chamber something out of St. Fagan’s  folk museum.
   Both the Irish language and single sex marriage are other important issues behind the lack of devolved government and Foster’s DUP are sounding the old Paisleyite war cry of ‘No surrender!’
   Gazing from the window of one tourist bus you see the two giant cranes symbolizing the city’s shipbuilding past, H & W , Harland and Wolf  ; now only about 120 work there.
   One guide quips about the vast Protestant workforce who built the Titanic and equally vast Catholic one who created the iceberg. Another tells us of the Trade Union leader Jim Larkin who returned to the city after being shown short-shrift to lay down Union Jack, Irish tricolour and a loaf of bread, addressing the dockers and asking which the birds took to in their hunger.
   Neither mentioned the fact that - especially in the 1920s after the partition of Ireland  - many Catholics lost their livelihoods when they were forced out of those shipyards, some having burning rivets hurled at them by that exclusively Protestant workforce!
   One thing I noticed were the number of UVF flags displayed on public lamp-posts. The UVF was a loyalist paramilitary organisation responsible for killing many innocents just because of their allegiances. It’s disturbing that Belfast City Council should allow this.
   There are versions of the truth and many tales untold, but from tour guides on the buses you’d swear the  British army had never been here, let alone welcomed initially by the Catholic people till internment without trial destroyed trust utterly.
   The taxi driver who took us on a ‘political’ tour kicked with a different foot ( well, both feet…..if you read the poem below).
   Driving up the loyalist Shankill was intriguing as it was the first time for myself and my wife, who had actually grown up a short distance distance away in the Falls Road.
   Murals lauded loyalist paramilitaries and also one killed by his own for having an affair with the leader’s wife ( no mention of that there though).
   One bizarre plaque and sculpture praised republican Oliver Cromwell who also razed Drogheda to the ground.
   The black cab took us to the International Wall of Justice in the Lower Falls, where  murals expressed solidarity with causes from Catalonia to Palestine. While on the loyalist side we quickly passed by their equivalent showing, amongst other things, the Israeli flag.
   I remembered the 70s when the then legal UDA ( another Protestant paramilitary) was  had close links with both  Israel and apartheid S.Africa.
   Visiting the Lower Falls was a revelation and it’s now designated a Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking area, with bi-lingual signs, an Irish language centre called Culturlann and a  Bunscoil ( Irish language Primary) where my wife’s old school used to be.
   A living language still not recognised officially.
   In the City Hall exhibition in the city centre – that oul’ tit-for-tat – it soberly explains how there are two other languages apart from English here : Gaelic of the natives and Ulster Scots of the planters.
   I’ve never heard anyone speaking the latter or seen it written down, yet it is recognised by the EU as a minority language thanks to the efforts of the recently-deceased Lord Leith. No wonder Arlene and her acolytes harp on about it every time an Irish Language Act is mooted.
   A number of Protestants in the north have been prominent promoters of Irish and that son of east Belfast Van Morrison embraced Irish culture when he recorded ‘Celtic Heartbeat’ with The Chieftains.
   Nothing is simple as it seems.
   Belfast has the marvellous Titanic experience, famous fried breakfasts including potato and soda bread and a luscious dessert called a pavlova which you could climb and put a flag on top, if you could decide which one.  
   Our taxi driver takes us to the looming Peace Wall between Falls and Shankill, Catholic and Protestant, republican and loyalist, Irish and British ( the Empire knew expertly how to divide and rule).
   He hands us a black marker and says that graffiti’s legal here.
   My younger daughter finds a rare pale patch to write ‘Heddwch’ and notices the same word not far above it.
   Later the driver explains – ‘Our hopes are with the younger generation.’   
 
                                            THE TAXI-DRIVER’S TALE
 
I’ll close the door
so nobody can hear.
They caught what Micky Brady
told those Americans,
went viral on social media.
Micky’s supposed to be sacked….
‘cept he isn’t really ;
he was sounding off
about that rat on the wall.
 
I’ll tell you my own story….
you can’t help
who you fall in love with,
we ended up in Yorkshire,
fell in love with a Protestant girl….
I know it sounds like Shakespeare.
We got run out of the Falls
then south Belfast did the same,
I even changed my name
to Sammy to hide identity.
 
They found out eventually.
The local ‘boys’ came round
‘Sure it’s Pat, he’s a good Catholic!’
Then came the punch-line –
‘We’ll give you one day
before you get the bullet!’
 
Now I’m back I remember
‘whatever you say, say nothing’,
it has to be tit-for-tat,
will you look at this, look at that.
I’m done with running
but have to keep my tone even :
UVF flags still rule the lamp-posts
and Stormont’s a waiting tomb.
​

     Like my son, my younger daughter is a Bluebird.
   I took my son along from the age of 5, but my daughter still hasn't forgiven me for leaving her behind for our trips to Wembley.
   Nevertheless, she's made up for it since and the highlight of her fandom was the same as mine, with promotion to the Premiership last season, so much better in blue and with the club as one.
   Like me she's an obsessive, collecting autographs and photos much like I did with programmes and stickers.
   So it was we turned up for last Saturday's friendly v. Real Betis ( not Real Bettws as wags would have it) at ridiculous o'clock.
   For once I persuaded her to enter via the old Ninian Park gate on Sloper Road just to check on the state of Welsh writer and renowned supporter Dannie Abse's tree ( we planted a few years ago in commemoration).
   The brick-walk had been cleaned and the one my son bought for me bearing the title 'Bluebirds' Poet' was easily found.
   'Do you want a tree when you die dad?' asked my tactful daughter. 'There are plenty of other Mikes here to keep you company!'
   Dannie's laurel was in fine fettle , though the plaque is a bit chipped.
   Outside the ground the first person we encounter is, of course, Dai Hunt : City Legend or Total Pain, depending. The fella who did the team talk at Kevin McNaughton's Testimonial.
   Who climbed a tree next to our training ground, only for players to hurl balls at him.
   Who fell off his moped driving through Swansea and was taken to hospital ; legend having it that he was doing the Ayatollah at the time!
   Who used to yell out to all the players before every game in Ninian as if he knew them personally.
   In all his wisdom, what does Dai say?
   ' We're going down! We'll be be bottom! I've got a bet on it.'
   Lej soon turned Pain and as the players' cars eventually arrived he intercepted them. New signing and keeper Alex Smithies must've been warned as he nearly ran him over.
   My daughter managed to get almost every signature ( only Hoilett slid in unnoticed ) and, as a left-back herself, had photos with our own left-backs union of Bennett and Cunningham.
   Highlight was undoubtedly skipper Sean Morrison, who signed the excellent cartoon of himself you can see above. He was very impressed with it.
   New signing from Brizzle City Bobby Reid looked a 'twt' and it was a shock to see him as the only recognized striker when our team was announced.
   We played with a false number 9 ! Was Warnock trying to out-Spanish a Spanish team?
   We began brilliantly, with Josh Murphy, Hoilett and Reid high-pressing and Murphy scoring with a great finish.
   From 10 minutes into the game till half time they completely dominated possession, with Sol Bamba dropping back from holding midfielder to extra defender and it was no surprise we went in 2-1 down.
   However, the second half could easily have seen us win : two good penalty shouts for pushing ( both ignored ) and two great chances for Murphy and , right at the end, Cunningham.  
   Our shortcomings are obvious and must be addressed by manager Neil Warnock this week : we need a striker and dominant midfielder at the very least.
   Almost every single pundit is saying we'll be relegated, yet we have a lot of attributes this time which we didn't possess last time we went up : togetherness, fitness and, above all, exceptional pace.
   On the positive side, we also tried to play it through midfield far more and Reid was a key in linking defence and attack, although Murphy and Bennett were the outstanding players.
  Passionate, hard-working players like Peltier and Patterson could well struggle in the Prem through lack of technique ; while others like Manga and Ralls may well surprise.
   The examples of Burnley and Bournemouth show it can be done : the former finishing seventh last season without spending a fortune.
   I'd like to bet on Dai Hunt losing his bet.


          WE DON'T STAND A CHANCE!

We don't stand a chance!
Look at all the money
which hasn't been spent
by our billionaire owner
who, last time, lost out.

Look at all those Big Boys
with their Internationals
even on the bench ;
Fulham and Wolves blowing it
like lottery-winners on a night out.

We're doomed from the start....
except, there's little Bobby Reid
with dreadlocks swinging out
and Josh Murphy, the other twin,
like a kid on the Rec.

Thinking of Bournemouth and Burnley
then there's always hope
that Callum will be doing The Floss
and Mozza rising up to score
( well, I had a dream like that).   

 

  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.