Welsh Lessons-1

WELSH LESSONS

April 1975, on the waste ground where the old abattoir used to be

“S’mae?”

“Sorry, don’t speak Welsh.”

“Just means ‘How’s things? We all say it here.”

“You Welsh?”

“No. But I’ve lived here almost all my life. I’m Nicholas…Nick, by the way. You’re Janice?”

“Guess everybody in the village knows that. Are we the first in this place?”

“First what?”

“Don’t act dumb, Nick. You know. The first black people.”

“No. There was a guy, think he lived up near Craig-y-Rhos. My sister knew him, they were in the tennis club together. Nice bloke, she said. But he was only here for a couple of years - drove a big old Vauxhall Cresta, I think.”

“That would figure.”

“What would?”

“Loads of flash, not much cash. Was it something like bright green with purple spots?”

“No, normal sort of blue and white, if I remember. Why would he drive a bright green car?”

“Dem black people, dey all de same…”

“What colour is your dad’s car?”

“White. Mums’ is grey.”

“That sounds pretty normal.”

“We are normal. But we’re black. Your dad’s head of English at the school, right?”

“That’s right.”

“He’ll be taking me for O-level. He’s away at the minute?”

“Yeah. Looking after my mum. She’s in hospital near Liverpool.”

“He sounds scary, your dad.”

“Scary? Him? NAH!”

“The other kids call him The JAILER...”

“Oh THAT! No, that’s because he looks after the school library. Carries loads of keys for the storerooms with him; they go chink, chink, chink when he walks down the corridor. Can hear him coming for miles off.”

“Oh. Not scary at all then?”

“Least scary bloke in the whole of Llanerchyllwch, I should think.”

“I can’t even say the name of the place I live in. Say it again, slowly.”

“Llan-erch-Y-LLWCH!”

“Choorr-uch-oor-cooktch!”

“Put your tongue up behind your teeth and blow through it. Lluh!-LLUH! Lluh!”]

“Churr-churr-CHRRRUCH! Any good?”

“Better. Now try again.”

“Churry-luch-eee-CHLOOSH!”

“You sound like you’re choking on your own snot…”

“Oh, nice….”

“Say me the alphabet in Welsh.”

“Ah, buh, cuh, duh, eh, vuh, fuh, guh, huh, ee, luh, lluh…              “

“Hang on - you missed out ‘J’…”

“No ‘J’ in Welsh.”

“How can you not have a J?”

“Don’t think they have the J sound. They just never say it. Unless they talking English. Like the English would never say Lluh.”

“Too right they wouldn’t. It’s disgusting. But hang on, isn’t everyone called Jones in Wales?”

“Lots are, yes.”

“So if they only speak Welsh, they can’t say their own name?”

“Don’t think there are any that can’t speak English now. Maybe very young kids, if the parents are bringing them up in Welsh.”

“Why they do that?”

“What? Teach their kids Welsh? Shouldn’t they? Dunno. So the language doesn’t die?”

“Why should that matter?”

“Does to some people, I s’pose.”

“You know, if I try and talk like I was in Jamaica, my mum goes APESHIT. Really mad.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Don’t want me turnin’ ragamuffin, y’know, slack. All dem tings…”

“You going to do Welsh?”

“They’ve put me in the class, yeah. But the teacher said I wouldn’t have to take the exam – not unless I really want to.”

“Could be a bit hard, judging from what I’ve heard…”

“OI! Less of that Nick!”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean it.”

“You’re nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me out?”

“Out? Where? In Llanerchyllwch?”

“Could we try and get served in one of the pubs?”

“Tricky. Everybody in the village knows my dad.”

“And everyone certainly knows me. No, scrub that…”

“I WAS planning to have a look at the old copper mines this Saturday. Like to come along?”

“That the best you can do?”

“Unless I can think of something else.”

“OK. What time?”

“See me here ten o’clock?”

“Deal.”

 

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They could feel the hardness of the yellow and red stones through the soles of their footwear – more so through Janice’s bright red plimsolls than Nick’s chunky black leather school shoes. “OUCH!” she exclaimed, her ankle twisting. “They sure left a load of crap lying about here.”

“You OK? I should have warned you. Bit rough here.”

“S’orlright. I’ll live…Hey, someone forgot to mow this road.”

“Nothing comes up here. Hardly anything.”

Janice thrust her hands into the pockets of her long beige trench coat and strode alongside Nicholas. The sharp Anglesey wind scurried along the stones of the track and whistled across the moorland grass, cracking Janice’s coat-tails against her jeans. It was bright, fresh, but not too cold for April.  They didn’t speak for a couple of minutes. Then:

“How’s school? Settling in OK?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Most of the girls are nice. Try to be, anyway.”

“Any friends yet?”

“I sit next to Blodwyn in French. She’s OK. But she keeps shoving her biros into my hair and leaving them there, like I’m some sort of penholder. Thinks it’s a reet laugh. Mr Jones saw her doing it once and gave her a bollocking.”

“Mr Jones - Jack French?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He’s OK, a bit sad. Not as bad as that Welsh teacher, though.”

“Oh, Fish! Yeah, he looks completely suicidal. Wouldn’t you be if you had his job?”

They walked on. Then he said: “Is everyone OK about…you know.”

“What do I know?”

“Oh, does anyone say anything about…about, well, things?”

“No one’s called me a nig-nog yet, if that’s what you mean. Not to my face, anyroad. But at break, everyone does have this way of, kind of, standing near and looking sideways. Talking among themselves, not saying anything to me, just looking, noticing. And that big tall girl, the one with the long black hair…”

“Bron?”

“Yeah, Bron. She said to me: ‘You speak English reely, reeely well’.”

“Cheeky bitch.”

“I’m not sure she meant it. I think she really thinks I’m … foreign.”

“Well, you are from Manchester…”

“Altrincham, now actually. Broadheath. The nice bit. We used to live in the Moss…Mosside.”

“My sister’s in Manchester now, at Uni. Maths.”

“Yeah, you said.”

Janice stopped, abruptly. They’d reached the top of the ridge. “YEECH! It’s huge!”

“It is quite amazing, isn’t it? Goes on for miles. Well, a couple of miles. All dug out by hand, two hundred years ago.”

The old copper mines stretched away, almost to the horizon, reds, browns, oranges, a pool of chilly cobalt blue water at the bottom; the ruined old windmill perched on top of the highest hill, like a nipple. Not a blade of grass anywhere. Not a single one.

“Fookin’ hell! Like the end of the world!”

“Glad you came?”

“Well, it’s…different, I guess.”

“Sit down?”

“Yes, sure. Let me put my coat down.”

Janice spread her beige coat on the springy, slightly damp heather and patted it. Nick sat down next to her.  She lay on her stomach, legs bent, twisting her red plimsolls first one way, then the other. Away from the old mine were small green fields divided by hedgerows and windblown shrubs – bent over in the direction of the prevailing wind - with the grey-blue Irish Sea beyond, quiet and subdued today. Llanerchyllwch stretched away too, the grey houses of its two large council estates and a clutter of darker, older terraced housing in the middle. The boxy, industrial St Agatha’s church, built during the copper boom years of the last century and now out of scale with the rest of the village.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t have been saying that if you’d been up here a couple of days ago. Calm after the storm; or calm before the storm. Depends how you look at it.”

“By the way, what was that noise going on all day yesterday?”

“What noise?”

“Sort of ‘Burh! Burh! Burh!’ Every few seconds. Mum was going mad.”

“Oh that? That’s the foghorn. It’s to warn ships to keep off the rocks.”

“Ships? In that piddly little port?”

“All the ships into Liverpool come past here. Seen the Liverpool Pilot Boat?”

“Nope. What’s that?”

“Ships can’t just sail into Liverpool on their own. They need a pilot to guide them in and out.”

“Amazed anyone would send a ship into Liverpool. Everything’d get nicked by the Scousers…”

“No one ever nicks stuff in Manchester?”

“Is there a beach here? I mean, a proper one.”

“There’s the Creek. That’s where we all go swimming. Bit dangerous though; if the tide’s in you have to jump straight into the water off the rocks. It’s deep. Oh, and there’s Porth Tawel. It’s pretty. No sand though. You’d have to go to Cemaes for that. You free next Saturday?”

“Not next Saturday. Auntie Nena’s coming up from Manchester. She’s going to do our hair.”

“She a hairdresser?”

“No. She’s a nuclear physicist…”

“Is she going to help your dad out then?”

“COURSE she’s a hairdresser! I was being sarky…”

“What about next Saturday then?”

“Umm, think Mum said we’d be going to Asda in Landudno.”

“Llandudno. Saturday after?”

“Yes! Think so. To where? Another tin mine?”

“Copper mine. Fancy Bangor? It’s cool. We could get the bus. About an hour and half.”

“Cool, eh? Groovy…Sounds a bit long, though. Couldn’t we get the train?”

“Hasn’t been a train to Llwch for over ten years now…”

“I saw one yesterday! Going right through the middle of the high street!”

“That was a goods train. For the chemical works.”

“Ah, right. No trains then.”

“Not unless you’re a chemical. Listen! You can hear it coming now!”

The thup-thup-thup of the diesel rose from the low-lying ground below the hill.

“Sounds like it’s gonna have a breakdown…”

“It’s a Class 24. Only a six cylinder engine; the bigger locos have eight or nine. And a small silencer. They always sound like that.”

“Ah. You want to be an engineer, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You need to meet my dad.”

“I’d like that. Why’s he here in Llwch?”

“Trying to get the nuke station working again. He didn’t want to go, but they sort of told him, he had to. Only man who could do the job, they said. Maybe they wanted to get rid of him from the Manchester office. Hope he’ll be OK…”

“OK?”

“All that radioactive stuff fizzing around. And that station’s never worked properly since they built it…”

“Oh, it’s perfectly safe, I think. Just doesn’t make any electric that’s all. So what are you going to do after school?”

“I’d like to be an actress. Work in the theatre. Or films. Summat like that, anyroad.”

“Is it easy to get that sort of work?”

“Not sure. No, probably.”

 

“Nick!”

“Yes?”

“Lie down next to me?”

“Like this?”

“No, you ninny! Next to me! Properly!”

 

“You know, Janice, there’s a hairdresser in Queen Street. Unisex. Why don’t you go there instead of waiting for your auntie?”

“Do you go there?”

“Yeah.”

“Think that answers your question …”

 

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