The last 18 months have been financially very difficult, but paradoxically my quality of life has leaped a hundred fold with the fresh air, the castles, cathedrals, churches & priories, walking in the forests and next to the rivers & canals, my efforts to become a market trader, more time for music and reading poetry, tales of Arthur & Merlin, history, and travelling Brittany taking photos. The pub will be re-opening in the spring, but briefly & directly I need help until then to keep the wolves (solicitors & baillifs) at bay; I need a loan of 750€ now in all urgency and a cushion further on, to split a metaphor, to keep my head above water, no point in having a drowned mine host at the open door of a newly refurbished tavern!

 Normalement si tout va bien je vais retourner au bar au printemps/If all goes well I'll be back behind the bar of 'Ty Elise/Chez Byn' in the spring, giving me an objective and bringing a bit of certainty back into my life.

 Went for a walk, took a chance with the weather, put on a pullover against the cold, walking warmed me up so took it off; caught in a light shower; 1.20pm to 4.43pm, satisfactory for my diabetes, went in the direction of Poullaouen and back: House > Bourg > Croix Breton > Le Hars > Trobescont > Tremelec > Pont de Pierres > Kergadiou > Kerbrat > Kerbrat Vihan > Bourg > House > food > Bowl of water for feet.

Building Bridges

Partly due to the mountains and lack of good road & rail connexions many Gogs North-Walians don't relate to the Hwntws (South-Walians) and vice versa; I write in my story "North Wales was foreign, strange, not like us.", so much for multiculturism! At the moment I'm reading The Island of Apples' about a boy growing up in a fictional Merthyr, written by Merthyr author Glyn Jones and first published in 1963; as if to confirm this, in his story on page 97 he states "He had some sort of foreign accent, he sounded like a Frenchman, or a North-Walian, or a German perhaps, but not guttural at all." So much rule from London and its east west roads has diverted attention from our national malaise, that we can't get on with each other, and different people have different perceptions of what it means to be Welsh, so long as we never met and lived parallel lives on parallel roads it didn't matter, and the decisions were made for us, now most of the important day to day legislation is in our own hands; in working together we have to trust and respect one another, we have bridges to build and a road & rail network to develop that works for the benefit of the whole of Cymru/Wales. 

P.P.S. Mr Lewis

In all fairness to English speakers it's not their fault that their language is a sponge going all around the world soaking up foreign words, which, when uttered in fashionable places, the real English words not to be spoken in polite society, they enter the dictionary with nobody asking from whence they came, it's not important, it came out of an English throat therefore it's an English word; it doesn't matter that it's French, German or even Indian, from the moment it comes out of an English larynx then it's English. If there's no comparative word or translation it becomes just another word in the thousands of its foreign counterparts that are added on to make up the language, and why not, but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and the English language is the biggest glasshouse on the planet. I've been given an example today of someone saying that the Welsh don't have a word for sputnik, I ask you, if Welsh borrows 10s of words and English 10s of thousands, who should be putting down whom? the answer; nobody.

Borrowings & Mr Lewis

Last sunday before heading for the granite saints I wrote that I was setting out on my 'treck' which seemed logical, but it was bugging me after I'd written it because in the back of my mind I knew there was no c, the reason being that although it's used in English it's really a South African Dutch word, which brought me to this: a week ago in the  Daily Mail Roger Lewis an author from Caerffili wrote a review of Jasper Rees's new book 'Bred of Heaven'; besides generally denigrating  his country of birth in a way that only the Welsh can do, he picked up on Welsh borrowings of English words, now we know that Welsh is a very old culture having shared their country with the Romans and spoken latin as a living tongue, English history & culture begins with the pagan Anglo-Saxons. For some reason deracinated Welsh such as Mr Lewis grow up not only to hate the country they left behind but try to prove their superiority by climbing to the pinnacle of the country that educated them and berated their perceived inferiority, we have exaggerated examples in the Corsican Napoleon, the Austrian Hitler, the Georgian Stalin & the Breton Le Pen. The world revolves around their adopted home, everything is seen from its perspective. Taking England as their base and looking at things from its standpoint it must seem strange to hear English borrowed words in Welsh, but if one takes Latin, French or German as one's starting point one wouldn't notice borrowed words in Welsh their being infinitesimal, but one would notice the thousands upon thousands of borrowed words in English without which the language wouldn't exist; Welsh can stand on its own as a language, English cannot. The Welsh didn't miss out on the classical world and built Britain's first university in Llanilltud Fawr before having the misfortune of having the English moving in next door raping & pillaging, destroying civilisation; the English having missed out grafted it on later at their own universities of Oxford & Cambridge creating their own lie, the great pretenders camouflaging the past by writing their own history linking Greece, Rome & England. If the truth were told Roger Lewis & people like him turn the world on its head.

P.S. in some cases modern 'English' words like 'car' are Welsh in origin, whilst there are latin words in English that have been in use in Cymru/Wales since before England was conceived.

Marching to the Saints

For thirty years I stood behind a bar, when I was released in february last year I discovered that I'd lost the ability to run and walking up & down hills was problematic, then I started taking my camera to the canal & riversides, over fields and through forests. Today I rushed my breakfast and pulled on a pair of socks, one I noticed had a hole but I was in a hurry, I put on my walking shoes then I drove to Karaez to meet up with the group of marchers, no rambling, before setting out for Carnoet, the sock was pulling on my toe hurting but I didn't take it off until we arrived at a prearranged refreshment halt, after that my skin rubbed into the leather becoming raw. There were murmurs that they were walking too quickly with no time to take photos. It was a long stop at St Catherine's and just as they set out someone called to me a chat making it difficult for me to catch up. Rushing along the country lanes played havoc with my leg muscles leading to my getting severe & painful attacks of cramp, I had to stop to try and ease the pain but it kept moving from muscle to muscle making it almost impossible to walk, I struggled along until fortunately the organisers' minibus came back in case there were stragglers. There are 21 giant saints statues, today saw the official unveiling of 7 of the latest of 14 below the seven founding saints or archbishops, 5 of them Welsh, situated on the medieval motte above, in those days there was no difference between Welsh & Breton, but this is lost on the new generations of French Bretons, the saints are Celts ipso facto Irish because Wales is in England and they weren't English. I asked the driver if there was anyway of getting back to my car because I wasn't staying for the evening festivities including a fest-noz with Ar Breudeur Morvan, he told me that he was taking a group back after the unveilings and that I could go with them. The last statue unveiled was that of Saint Teilo which attracted many people from the village of Landelo, nearest village down the road from Plouie where I live. I took photos, had a chat, went to where the minibus was parked only it wasn't. The countryside outside Carnoët is not easy to escape from, however I began walking down a road  with my legs hurting from cramp and the skin of my toe rubbing raw, I didn't have to wait long before I was picked up and taken to a bridge over the Hyeres next to the camp site where with only a few hundred yards to walk I retrieved my car. On our way back through Karaez I asked what was the bustle was causing the road to be fenced off, before realizing it was the Breton schools fundraising market for which I'd telephoned to have a place to sell my photos but didn't fill in the application form. I got back to my house & kitten, put my feet in warm water, switched on the telly and watched 'Carry on Screaming', only because I didn't feel like moving to change channel then Elise came in bringing me a basketful of home grown vegetables. I left the house with 2€ and returned with 2€.

I get up early for the markets but I can't go anywhere when it rains because my tent is too big for my placements; I am limited to 2m40 x 2m40 while my tent measures 4m x 3m. I need to swap it for a smaller one more convenient, purposely designed for the markets with a central pole, anyone for a swap?

Exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English - one man's ambition to become Welsh | Mail Online

There are notable exceptions, but on the whole most of the twisted minds that come out with these equally twisted denigrations tend not to come from the English but from natives getting on in the world, subconsciously perhaps striving to be posh, or believing themselves to have been given a bum wrap, when, after all the teaching of their proud history & literature, the only culture they are able to identify with is 'foreign', marking them for life. These tormented souls often overcompensate by moving to the home counties, particularly to places like Chalfont St. Giles or somewhere of equal characteristic value in their pathetic perception, in some cases radically altering their accents to deracinate themselves, yet over sensitive to anything positive (negative to them) touching on their deliberate disinheritance. I find that this mindset belongs more to the Labour Party soi disant intellectual elite or working class hierarchy than to the real Conservatives.

One of the most important dates in Merthyr, Cardiff  & the industrial revolution was the founding of the Dowlais Ironworks on Sept 19, 1759. News travelled fast, on hearing that the furnace workers were collapsing with the heat and urgently needing something to quench their thirst, water was out of the question as it caused cholera epidemics, Arthur Guinness saw his entrepreneurial chance, he signed the lease on his brewery in Dublin on Sept 22 1759, sent his beer over to Merthyr in boatloads, but caused riots when the Irish thought it too good to waste on the Welsh, keeping it all for themselves, resulting in Mackeson filling the void in Wales; this is why my gran mulled her Mackeson for her health and not Guinness.

Sept. 22 at 17h59 in Dublin start of global celebration of Arthur Guinness signing the lease to his brewery in Dublin Sept. 22 1759.