Shakespeare and the Welsh Part I.

The death of Margaret Thatcher and Shakespeare’s Richard II?

For me, this whole month of April 2013 has carried the theme of representation: the way people are represented in the media can make such a huge difference!

It was the death of Margaret Thatcher that primarily got me thinking about this. As the summary line about her ‘dividing the British nation’ became a media-borne meme, and the recaps of her life and history-changing decisions replayed on New Zealand breakfast TV and news programs, the realisations of the sizable impact this woman had had on my life began to enter my awareness like a shower of crap-wrapped pebbles. 

"In the pantomime of Welsh politics, Thatcher is the witch, and the cry is always, 'look behind you!'" (Unattributable quote). 

I was shocked at first to hear that Thatcher had died. It was as if another familiar scrap of home had suddenly been yanked from the beggarly hand of my eager nostalgia, and, to make this sentence even longer, and break yet further clumsy metaphor o’er the shore of thy impatient ear, dear reader, ‘twas as if my longing were a taught harp-string, plucked as rich men looked sad and ruffians danced and leapt on the TV screen. With the costly funeral, well assured were they, my former countrymen, that Thatcher our former leader was indeed most dead.

Dead. In Britain it’s traditionally not-the-done-thing to speak ill of the dead (although Ding Dong the Witch is Dead reportedly became the UK’s number-one best-selling songon i-tunes that week, so maybe decency isn’t what it used to be over there since the noble ideals of fairness and dignity and community in that land of such dear souls, that dear dear land, dear for her reputation through the world, those noble ideals of hers I say were so efficiently made nonsensical by the realities of rampant capitalism). Even if said dead person happened to contain more evil than Iago fully zealed on Nazism, it would still be deemed rather off to slag them off.

Richard Crawshay: "God Forgive Me."

But I don’t think of the Iron Lady when I say that. I randomly think instead of the most insanely wealthy and indifferent ironmaster who ever helped bring hell to the South Wales Valleys during the heydays of the Industrial Revolution, Richard Crawshay – especially as the novelist Alexander Cordell represented him in his brilliant novel, Rape of the Fair Country. In real life, they gave Crawshay a decent Christian burial in Merthyr, but the stone they put on top of him, which allegedly weighs several tons (so he can’t get out again), speaks volumes, as does the three-word epitaph, ‘God Forgive Me.’

Thatcher wasn’t quite that bad; at least her funeral sermon didn’t give the impression that she was. But while the Bishop of London recounted fond memories of dinner parties and the P.M. advising him to refrain from the fattening duck paté, miners from the South Wales valleys will no doubt recall very different things. As Paul Vallely writes in The Church Times (the world’s leading Anglican newspaper), for those people blasted by her policies of mass destruction – those “eggs” deliberately smashed in order to serve a privileged, entrepreneurial elite their tasty “Thatcherite omelette” – Maggie was a monster.

Simply put, the Iron Lady did more damage to the communities of South Wales than Hitler’s Luftwaffe.  This is what I mean about the way a person gets represented, or misrepresented, depending on which angle you’re looking at it from. It was safer for the upper-class – and more decent, perhaps – to extoll Thatcher’s virtues in the wake of her death, provided words like ‘polarising’ and ‘contraversial’ were used to acknowledge the horrendous and long-lasting consequences of her actions. Her actions continue to have an effect not only in Britain but for the world as a whole.

Thatcher's Britain and The Conservative Party.

Margaret Thatcher meets Bob Hope, who's Welsh mother was from Barry, South Wales.

[other famous 'Barrains' here] 

Maggie visited factories in my hometown of Barry, South Wales, in May, 1987. I was thirteen at the time. She wasn’t all that popular there back then of course, but the consequences for me came five years later. On St. David’s day, 1993, my career in the Merchant Navy was very nearly over before it had even begun. I was made redundant without any prior warning and immediately replaced by a Latvian sailor who would do the same job for less than a quarter the wage. Thatcherism enabled and encouraged exactly this sort of treachery and exploitation.

Nonetheless, I cartwheeled down the gangway at Southampton filled with a newfound, joyful optimism. I signed on at the dole office back in Wales with my former schoolmates and former workmates, bursting with national pride as unemployment continued to bob at about six million under the grey-flannelled indifference of John Major. I did not despair, for I knew in my heart as I opened that first foaming can of cheap, commiserating Co-op lager that sacrifices must necessarily be made on behalf of the envisioned, glorious non-society of atomised, self-interested individuals to come.

Thatcher and Falklands War Fervour.

We had successfully retained the jewel of Britain’s Overseas Territories, the Falkland Islands, at the expense of only 255 human lives, six ships (ten others having suffered varying degrees of battle damage), 34 aircraft and 2.778 billion pounds. Phewf! That knowledge alone was enough to get me through those leaner times which were to follow. The future seemed so bright that I took to the streets daily in my wooly pully, jubilantly shouting, “Hoozah! The economy and our grip on the South Atlantic Ocean’s sheep monopoly are saved! Oh, God bless you, Margaret Thatcher!”

But not really. Had I been brought up in a well-off, upper-middle-class home in, say, Surrey, my outlook might have been different, my sarcasm and gen-X whiney-ness scoring a less fatal amount of sardonicums on the Garofalometer.


via GIPHY
As it was, having been raised by a solo mother in a former council flat at the edge of the Gibbonsdown estate, and having experienced first-hand what it was to be conveniently disposed of for the sake of corporate profit margins, at the age of just eighteen, it was hard to hold any sympathy whatsoever for the Conservative world-view.

Anyway, I agree with the Bishop of London when he quotes T.S. Eliot. “Every end is a beginning.” I was lucky enough to begin a new life in a new land. My sardonicum count has slowly decreased over the years and hopefully I see things from a new angle again – a more forgiving angle, seeing, as the Bishop suggests, the human muddle and not the monster. God Forgive Us All. I won’t be joining the Communist Party or guillotining anyone. But I won’t ever be voting for the National Party either.

So what does all of this have to do with Shakespeare and Richard II?

That is what I hope to explain in a series of weekly posts throughout the coming month of May.

Lately in Learning Welsh . . . Procrastination.

What Every Welsh-Learner Should Know About Procrastination.

Procrastination is a common problem, especially when it comes to truly difficult tasks requiring sustained effort over long periods – like writing novels or learning languages.

According to Psychology Today, about 20% of people deliberately put-off difficult tasks and look for distractions. This can create guilt, and can even be bad for some people’s health, with insomnia and stress leading to other problems in the long-run.

Other people think they’re procrastinating when really they’re not. They’re just putting too many things on an already full ‘to-do’ list. They get things done, but not as many things as they’d like. It was a bit like that for me last month.

Last month I seemed to procrastinate a lot when it came to my Welsh-learning. Though I was in fairness busier than a saw-doctor during the Napoleonic wars, I didn’t even get around to making a blog post. (Sorry about that : / Good job I only have about three readers. Hi mum).

It got me thinking a lot about procrastination. Since my main goals in life at the moment are learning to speak Welsh and finishing writing a novel, I’m interested in the science of how procrastination works and in reviewing the causes of diminished motivation . . .

Learning Welsh and Procrastination.

Back at the start of the year I was on a really positive buzz about my Welsh-learning. I had a friend who’d shown an interest in the lingo, which led to the discovery of a few new learning sites and games linked to the BBC Wales Welsh-learner’s page. Additionally, I discovered Hwb on You Tube. 

But probably the most thrilling and motivating factor of all was an actual conversation carried out in Welsh. Here in New Zealand there aren’t too many opportunities for that, but I met some visiting guy from North Wales in a pub, and successfully managed to maintain a reasonable exchange of albeit superficial information for at least ten minutes.

I felt a soaring feeling of victory. It’s true that difficult tasks can have much more rewarding pay-offs. When the guy spoke to me in Welsh, I understood most of the questions or at least the gist of what he was asking or talking about. And when it was my turn to speak, the correct patterns and vocabulary seemed to come instantly. I think I even got the mutations right.

Was this due to my having consumed the perfect quantity of alcohol for memory recall and the facilitation of rapid linguistic gear-shifting? Tidy theory, but probably not. Or wasn’t it just that I’d underestimated my own ability, along with the benefit that’s come from continued persistence, even in the face of some pretty long dry-spells and fairly regular procrastination?

Don’t Lose Heart – Even Linguists Procrastinate.

Dr. Elizabeth Bernhardt of Stanford University’s Language Centre has investigated the problem of second-language-learning procrastination in so far as it affects second-language research.  

In a paper entitled Progress and Procrastination in Second-Language Reading Research, she identifies procrastination as a primary problem which might even be skewing language-learning research results.

On the one hand, Berhardt’s findings offered some comfort. It’s good to know that researchers researching procrastination in second-language research have been researching rather than procrastinating: “this field has come a long way really fast.”  

On the other hand, it was discouraging to learn that the researches actually researching second-language learning per se were on the whole suffering from exactly the same problem as me. Psycholinguistically speaking, studies have shown that they often just can’t be arsed.

Language researchers whose first language is English put-off learning other languages. They feel more comfortable using English and it requires less effort – so they just stay in English. “Those who investigate second-languages are notoriously monolingual,” says Berhardt.

The problem with this is that consequently a lot of second-language research usually gets carried out in English. “If readers are assessed in comprehension tasks in their stronger language (. . .)

their comprehension seems to be much more significant than when it is measured along with their impoverished second-language skills.

When called on this point, researchers lament that since they don’t know the language of the subjects with whom they are working, they are forced to assess them in the researchers’ language. Researcher deficiencies shouldn’t be interfering with the ability to provide solid and trustworthy data.”

The Breakthrough vs. The Ongoing Battle.

Another factor that led to February being a poor month for my Welsh-learning had more to do with morale than procrastination. After my victory conversing fairly well with the North-Walian back at the start of the year, last month I met another fluent gog in a different pub. The experience was pretty negative in terms of Welsh-speaking confidence.

This guy had a quiet voice, a thick, clotted sort of accent, was multiple sheets to the wind, and he spoke faster than a depth-charge shot-glass plopping into a pint. Also, I was a little bit wasted too. I was back to the familiar feeling of falling down a sheer cliff face: like when I first began listening to Radio Cymru online . .

The conversation zipped past my face at a zillion miles an hour. Every time a word stood out – like a prominent stone or a tree root in the cliff-face analogy – my brain would try to seize it, but to no avail. A split-second later it was long-gone, and my mind was already scrabbling for the next thing.

Several days later, when I finally got around to looking up the Irish Polyglot guy on You Tube (who my interested-in-Welsh friend had so kindly recommended), I felt total despair rather than victory. The Irish Polyglot speaks about a dozen languages and he’s learned them all in about six months. I’ve been trying to learn Welsh for years, so what the hell’s the story?

It’s tempting to think I must either be fundamentally crap or else have about as much drive as a pot-addled sloth. The Irish Polyglot has achieved remarkable things – he’s also a really great guy who I’m not going to link to because you can look him up for yourself if you need some additional inspiration (just don’t blame me if you end up inspired to quit learning Welsh altogether on the grounds of your own contrastingly immense linguistic crapness).

Anyway, the point is . . .

Don’t Give Up Till It’s Over: Eight Ways to Slay Procrastination.

Dr. Joseph Ferrari, associate professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago, recommends:

1.)    Make a list of what you have to do.

·         e.g. List item #1: Learn to speak Welsh fluently.

       List item #2: List Irish Polyglot on Mortal Enemies List.

2.)    Write a statement of intention.

·         e.g. “I will speak Welsh fluently,” and, “I may not speak a dozen languages, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills; I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

3.)    Set realistic goals.

·         e.g. Listen to one podcast Welsh lesson every weekday = Realistic | Murder = Unrealistic | Removal from Christmas card list = Realistic.

4.)    Break it down into specific tasks.

·         A.) Create a Christmas card list. B.) List Irish Polyglot on Christmas card list. C.) Remove Irish Polyglot from Christmas card list.

5.)    Make your task meaningful.

·         e.g. “When I learn to speak Welsh Fluently, I’ll never confuse Ni waeth beth, peidiwch ag yfed hyn yma, and, Yfed hyn yma again.☺

6.)    Promise yourself a reward.

·         e.g. “When I learn Welsh fluently, I’ll write a novel in Welsh and win the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize.”

7.)    Eliminate tasks you never plan to do; be honest!

·         e.g. Write a novel in Welsh.

8.)    Estimate time you think it will take to complete the task, then double it.

·         At this rate it should only take me about another forty years to achieve fluency, so . . . is living to 109 a reasonable goal?

Six Reasons for Learning Welsh Outside Wales.

Lately in learning Welsh . . .

Why bother? What’s the point of learning Welsh when you live outside Wales?

The number of people who live outside Wales and who are becoming fluent Welsh speakers is growing. Interest in the Welsh language outside Wales is growing. The number of people who aren’t even Welsh or part of the Welsh diaspora, and who are yet determined to learn the Welsh language, is growing. This trend makes sense in a global era and is a healthy sign for the future survival of Cymraeg – so why do some people still mock or oppose it?

I’ve been wondering. Welsh is the language of the country I was born and brought up in; of the people I feel I belong to. I identify as Welsh – isn’t that enough of a reason? Apparently not, for those who see the language as valueless or as their own jealously guarded ‘possession.’ For both the Dic Sion Dafydd and the Welsh-speaking elitist alike, it’s absurd . . .

“I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so.”J.B.S Haldane.  

Some have seen my efforts to learn Welsh as an unproductive waste of time, a failure to let go of the past, a romantic fancy, a ridiculous ex-patriot indulgence, an admirable but comical sort of stubbornness at best, or at worst, fascism. What claim do I have to this language in reality, when I was raised speaking English almost exclusively, and left Wales over fifteen years ago? And what claim would someone who’s not even Welsh by birth or by blood have?

And, moreover, just to pour on the negative pessimism in an example of the kind of opposition we’re occasionally up against here, what practical use is it anyway, when I presently have no means or intention of returning to my homeland, and when Welsh isn’t commonly spoken in the area of Wales I came from, let alone in New Zealand where I presently live?

And finally, even if I can maintain the motivation and discipline required to learn a new language in the face of all the nay-saying, doubts, and distractions (I don’t always manage to do this, and frequently have extended patches of slacking-off), when am I ever going to get to actually use this language?

These are all valid questions . . . so I’ve come up with six answers . . .

Six Reasons for Learning Welsh Outside Wales.

1.) Learning Welsh Outside Wales Still Helps the Language and Culture, PLUS, the Conservation of Linguistic and Cultural Diversity Enriches Humanity as a Whole.

Recently, Cymdeithas yr Iaith, the Welsh Language Society, reported a slow but steady decline in the number of fluent Welsh speakers from heartland areas of Wales – those areas traditionally seen as strongholds of the Welsh language. This looks like bad news for the ongoing recovery of Welsh after the English attempt at linguicide.

“A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.” Yo Yo Ma at the White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy, 2000.

In the global era, the fate of the Welsh Language belongs within a wider context. The UN estimates that more than half of the languages spoken today have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and that a quarter have fewer than 1,000 speakers. Unless there are some efforts made to maintain them, over the next hundred years, most of these languages will become extinct.

In recent times alone, more than 2000 languages have already become extinct around the world. I don’t want Welsh to join them, so as far as I see it, I’m doing my small bit. It’s a little like recycling – you could argue that one person’s efforts alone will make no significant difference whatsoever. And yet if everyone thought like that, what then?

“The three principles of linguistic revival and survival:

(1) If your language is endangered - Do not allow it to die!

(2) If your language died - Stop, revive, survive!

(3) If you revive your language - Embrace the hybridity of the emergent language!”

Ghil’ad Zukermann (Professor of Linguistics and a leading expert on Endangered Languages).

2.) Justice – the Moral and Ethical Reasons.

The deliberate attempt to exterminate the Welsh language, in combination with migration and anglicisation in the modern and post-war era, resulted in the numbers of fluent Welsh speakers thinning out dramatically over several geneartions. I’m a part of that process of loss and decline, regardless of where I’m located on the planet. If I’m a part of that process of loss and decline, why shouldn’t I be included in the process of renewal and restoration?

I belong to a large number of Welsh men and women who have missed out, on the whole, to anglicisation. I belong to the last generation before learning Welsh was made compulsory in all Welsh schools. My great-grandmother, when she was school-aged, couldn’t speak English and could only speak Welsh. She was ‘corrected’ by being sent home from school, missing out on an education until she could speak the language of the industrialists and ‘colonisers.’ Should I just accept that social injustice – the deliberate, state-sanctioned attempt to destroy my nation’s culture?

Well, shouldn’t I rather just accept that Imperialism and colonialism are facts of history? Shouldn’t I just get over it and move on? Not if there’s something I can do in the present to make some reparation towards those injustices. Boo hoo? Nah - screw you. I’m not crying over what’s been stolen, OR ignoring the fact of what happened. I’m acknowledging the truth of what was wrongfully taken, and making an effort to take it back. There’s nothing wrong with that, and in my opinion, there’s a lot that’s right about it.

3.) Those Working to Support the Language and Culture from Outside Wales Can Make a Big Difference.

Wales, as an emerging European nation in its own right, already has a lot to thank ‘outsiders,’ exiles and ex-patriots for. The Cymmrodorion Society in London, for example, played a large part in helping to found many of Wales’ national institutions.

It has been estimated that the Welsh language was the largest ‘ethnic’ language in England until the recent advent of Hindi and Polish-speakers. Even today, the Welsh Language Board believes there to be some 150,000 Welsh-speakers in England – and that alone is quite a big pool of potential to draw from, even if most of those speakers are scattered, isolated, and disinterested, or are about to die off, marry off, or otherwise become assimilated.

According to the indigenous languages website Sorosoro, taking into account the different levels of proficiency, the total number of Welsh speakers scattered around the whole world could possibly reach over 700,000.

As Sion Jobbins remarked recently in Cambria Magazine, “the heamorrhaging of Welsh talent, culture and language is as acute in Wales as it is for many Eastern European countries, if not more so.” Moving into a century when demography, diaspora and birth-rate will be the bed-rock of politics, he argues that the Welsh diaspora is worth a second look.

So why not reconsider the Welsh diaspora in terms of its potential and ability, rather than in terms of what’s been – and what is currently being – ‘lost?’ The world, after all, is getting smaller by the day. Networks and connections are formed and enhanced everywhere thanks to technological advancement. Geographic space and physical location matter less and less. The diaspora – along with non-Welsh Welsh-speakers from other countries outside Wales – may well, in time, come to be seen as an asset for the language and culture, rather than as a simple loss.

“Without the zealous, obsessive, enthusiastic efforts of Ben-Yehuda and of teachers, writers, poets, journalists, intellectuals, social activists, political figures, linguists and others, Israelis would have spoken a language (such as English, German, Arabic or Yiddish) that could hardly be considered Hebrew.” Ghil’ad Zukermann.

4.) Personal Benefit.

Professor Zukermann claims, “Language revival does not only do historical justice and address inequality but can also result in the empowerment of people who have lost their heritage and purpose in life […] The revival of sleeping Aboriginal languages can result in personal, educational and economic empowerment, sense of pride and higher self-esteem of people who have lost their heritage.

Regaining language is a life-changing experience for many Aboriginal people. One Aboriginal person has told us that he used to be angry, often drunk and in trouble with police and his homelife was a mess. Two years later, when he had regained his language, his situation had turned around and his family life had greatly improved. Through this and other experiences we became convinced that a small investment in language revitalization could yield very significant dividends. Language revival can result in the saving of vast amounts of money and resources going into housing, social services and health intervention to little effect. A small investment into language revitalization can make an enormous difference to society. Public health can benefit from language intervention.”

It might sound far-fetched to some, but anglicisation through colonialism has been shown, time and time again, to be at least partly responsible for many of the social ills afflicting colonised cultural minorities across the globe. For example, just consider the stereotype of the alcoholic Native American. Or consider the crime and gang culture amongst disaffected Maori in New Zealand.

The fact is that deracination and dispossession resulting from the colonial and neo-colonial processes don’t just happen in the one, material dimension. This outlook belongs to western materialism, and to commercial-capitalism, which sees only the cost or price of things, and not the true value in human or spiritual terms. If you can excuse the phrase, these post-colonial injuries and ‘culture-echtomies’ are also an affliction on the level of soul. 

Fortunately, many who are able to reconnect with their own culture and language (or who perhaps discover a spirit of adoption within a welcoming foreign culture) find a personally enriching inheritance, which can be healing on a deep psychological level. That is why the New Zealand government recognises a responsibility towards ethnic minorities such as Maori, who have effectively become second-class citizens within their own land. The government here spends millions each year on re-culturation initiatives for at-risk Maori through drug and alcohol counseling, the mental health system, or the prison system. The well-researched results and positive outcomes are indisputable.

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Nelson Mandela.

5.) Because Language is More Important than Land.

When asked by a Maori journalist why he believed a native language was more important to a people than their native land, Professor Zukermann replied, “When you lose your land, the land is still there. It might be raped or mined by other people but the land is still there. When you lose your languge and culture, you lose your matauranga*. You lose your intellectual property, your intellectual sovereignty. You lose your cultural autonomy. You lose your self-identity. So the loss of language is much more severe than the loss of land.”

Of course, being of Jewish descent, Zukermann knows very well that linguistic and cultural identity, in a sense, needn’t have anything at all to do with being located in a particular land or geographic region. The Jewish diaspora was the biggest diaspora of all time, and prior to the founding of the Israeli state, the Jews existed as a distinct cultural identity, and arguably as a nation, without any recognised territory or land whatsoever!

“We hear again and again 'native title,' but where is the 'native tongue title'? Is land more important than langue and (cultural) lens?” Ghil’ad Zukermann.

*Matauranga is a Maori word without any single definition. It can be broadly defined as the knowledge system that embodies the Māori world view. From mātauranga Māori are derived tikanga (Māori values) and kawa (protocols/policies), the guidelines that shape Māori behaviour.

6.) Because a Smug, Puritanical, Superior, Excluding, Judgmental and Elitist Attitude Doesn’t Help the Cause of Any Endangered Language.

In conclusion, when it comes to learning Welsh in this day and age, ideas about authentic and approximate Welshness, which rest on where a person lives, where a person is from, or what degree of fluency they have, are alienating and unhelpful.

“Language converts from outside [Wales …] are aggravating. ‘It’s so easy,’ they trill. Well, it isn’t – it’s bloody hard work. Sometimes though you’ve tried you just cannot muster the interest or the effort anymore. What’s worse than the trilling is when the converts are smug. That probably puts off more learners than the challenge of the language itself.” Jasmine Donahaye, former editor of Planet Magazine.

“Needless to say, even if there is eventually a sound understanding and awareness of the linguistic/sociolinguistic issues involved and even if the endeavour is well-theorised, language e revival efforts may well still fail. Internal factional politics are likely to be far more influential in  deciding the fate of a language revival movement than any linguistic theory or lack of one.”

Ghil’ad Zukermann.

Some people imagine language itself to be a separating thing. In some obvious ways it is, but there’s an interesting paradox here. Spoken and written language is something peculiarly human and as such, I think, it approaches the Divine. It goes deeper than superficial communication, and, beyond how it scatters and divides people, it's also about connection and reconnection. Another good reason for learning Welsh even though you might live outside Wales.

Memories of the Otira Tunnel.

By H.T.R. Williams.

Passing through the Southern Alps, on the Trans-Alpine Railway, watching my shadow ripple over sidings of gravel, fence posts and fields. These mountains are sobering. Millions of years old, but the result of a constant faulting and folding. The Australian and Pacific plates crush together, moving at the speed of fingernail growth. Forcing the land upward with slow-motion violence. The mountains cast their shape for millennia, but continually erode. Thousands of tons’ worth of rock calving off and grinding away down river.

The rivers wash the rocks to smooth stones. Lying in beds meters deep, they wait, eventually get filtered out to sea and polished to sand. On the ocean floor, they stratify as silt, compact down. Minerals solidifying back into sheets of rock. Buried under further layers, returning to the core, liquefying in furnace-like heat – then the whole cycle repeating.

A life-span seems insect-like in comparison. Here I’m a mayfly, tempted to believe it’s all without meaning. The sidings spring up from the ground, become sheer walls. It grows darker, then black beyond the electric light of the viewing platform. The train’s now entered the Otira Tunnel.

The wheels punch in the blackness, the erratic gangway between carriages squeaks like a tui. Over the tannoy, a tour-guide explains that the tunnel was once the longest in the British Empire. It was a marvel of engineering back then, but now there’s little more to say, except that it will take about fifteen minutes to get through to the other side. Darkness always fascinated me. Perhaps because there are no more outer forms to project onto. No more mountains in the dark. No more trees or faces, or even stars.

I remember how as a child in Wales I went on a school trip to the Big Pit Mining Museum. They gave us helmets with lamps, then lowered us down in a cage lift. The darkness seemed crushing, but I found myself somehow bigger than the limits of my own skin, expanding in that continued moment of imagined pulverization.  

We followed the miner-tour-guide’s instructions and turned off our lamps. The disembodied voice told us to put our hands in front of our faces. Raising my hand, I saw nothing but the sheerest blackness. Felt the cold air of the draft against my wide open eyes.

When the lights and faces returned, I allowed the group to walk on without me – just a few yards around a corner was all I had the courage for. But the mystery of that darkness was irresistible. I had to be further from the irreverent noise of their tramping feet, the long bouncing shadows they cast in desecration of that purity of stillness.

New Zealand darkness seems different, unnerving and prehistoric. Or perhaps it’s because I’m no longer fresh like a child, corroded by time and the world. A mayfly destined for a graveyard, where headstones melt as obituaries shift to Facebook timelines. Like tracks with stations marked, so go the journeys of individual lives, mapped-out in hindsight. Childhoods and possibilities that can never be revisited. One direction only. Every line must terminate somewhere.

But then comes a rush of air, the sounds changing suddenly. Sunlight pops back, the landscape unfurling from the mouth of the tunnel. Fields of yellow tussock. Massive blue skies. The colours all brighter upon return, lancing through my nostalgia.

Mountains may dissolve, but these moments of rebirth occur too. Marvelous things really can be achieved. Aotearoa continues to offer new futures to thousands of immigrants each year; freshness and optimism are hallmarks of the Kiwi spirit. The Otira Tunnel reminds me.

Some Thoughts on Welsh Idioms.

Lately in Learning Welsh . . . I’ve been looking at Welsh proverbs. Previously, I only knew a few of these sayings from childhood, the ones repeated more commonly in Wales; Y gwir yn erbyn y byd – “The truth against the world,” for example. I always remembered my high school motto, Goru arf, arf dysg – “learning is the best weapon,” and for years I’ve tried to reanimate my Welsh language learning with the old chestnut Dyfal donc a dyr y garreg – “constant blows will (eventually) break the stone.” However, a comparable, sneaky English idiom about banging one’s head against a brick wall can often prove just as effective in undoing my determination.

The wisdom in some of these stock Welsh phrases is sometimes questionable and at other times outdated, lost in a modern-day urban context. To say that the best utensil in a house is a good wife might be seen by some these days as a tad on the sexist side. And if you really believe that milk and butter make up two-thirds of the healthiest diet, you might actually die from dairy overdose.

There are quite a few sayings about farming and Welsh weather, which are all well and good if you’re a shepherd living on the slopes of some mountain in Gwynedd, but not so applicable if you’re a writer sitting in a library in sunny New Zealand. One of these sayings did seem to have a wider application though. It came to mind when I was queuing at the crowded local WINZ (government welfare) office the other day:  Gaeaf gwyn, ysgubor dynn – “a white winter, a tight barn.”

        Questionable wisdom? What about the wonderfully rhymed Perth hyd fogel, perth ddiogel – “a hedge up to the navel is a safe hedge?” Unless this is a really obscure metaphor about chastity, it’s little wonder the Welsh got invaded by the Romans, Normans, and English, and frequently raided by Vikings and Irishmen.

      Stating that a fool blames everyone but himself, that long sleeps increase lifespan, that good beer is the heart’s key, that there’s no beauty without women and that a person should take their time getting to work, only seems to confirm my growing suspicion that it’s my ancestors who are entirely responsible for any lazy, work-shy, semi-alcoholic and promiscuous behavior on my part. As I already told my last fifteen employers, it’s genetic. People don’t tend to accept that as a legitimate excuse, but how about Gwell hwyr na hwyrach – “better late than later.” Can’t argue with that, can they?

Here’s my personal favourite: Gorau Cymro, Cymro oddi cartref – “the best Welshman, a Welshman away from home.”  Makes me feel slightly better about daily being peeled between the lingering caricature of a formerly more solid Welsh identity and the true-blue New Zealander I can never really become.