I travel to Wales a lot. It’s my homeland and all that shit, we can trace my paternal family back to west Wales from 1503 when my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was High Sheriff of Cardigan. And I’m still pissed off we lost that gig, I quite fancy some hereditary ermine or stoat cloaks. Anyway, we ended up farming in St Davids from 1713 in a dung-heap called Trewellwell then building the farm at Upper Treginnis in 1788.
Interestingly enough, Upper Treginnis is now some posh ‘outdoor pursuits’ centre, where they take deprived urban waifs and show them what cows look like in real life and how horses fuck – before explaining that the sea is not made of lots of rain and the Pembrokeshire countryside is not a ‘very big park.’ Their local authority is probably royally ripped off for this (like everyone is in Pembrokeshire, you must of heard of The Pembrokeshire Promise?) and then they bugger off back to wherever to smoke genetically modified weed and stab each other over a Nintendo game.
I’m going off piste, so….I haven’t taken the train down here since the early 80’s, I still call it the 125 and have dangerously fond memories of necking twelve cans of McEwans standing at the little restaurant car bar they once had whilst smoking Disque Bleu and pulling a girl from Carmarthen. You can’t do that anymore!
Looking out of the window between Paddington and Didcot it seems like the entire stretch is now populated by new-build not quite executive housing. The housing also whiffs of King Charles lll’s anti-carbuncle building ideals, Lark Rise to Candleford meets scouse crack den.
The wi-fi doesn’t work of course and the bog flushes outwards not downwards, my expensive outerwear chosen carefully for todays Christmas meeting with ‘the lads’ was in danger of being coated with the last man’s piss. I moved like Nadia Comăneci to avoid the geyser…
The wetlands I love between Newport and Cardiff are indeed wet, the reens invisible under water and the train goes through more new housing. What do all these people do? They can’t all work in service industries, do they manufacture stuff in Wales and have not told anyone in case the Tories close it down?
The fat people on the train all get off at Newport and Cardiff looms. I dread going back to Cardiff. It’s just so shit; full of drunk shouty people – yep, you guessed, that’s us in approximately four hours. I praise Jesus that I’m not on the M23/M25/M4 as there lie monsters and bedlam. The train ride has actually been a relaxing odyssey into my previous life, I’m never driving to Wales ever again. Ever! Phew!
Now to get mightily messed up on SA and pork scratchings before a chicken vindaloo, half-and-half, sixteen papadoms and eleven pints of Cobra.
Wedding rings in the bin lads… session on!
