It's all over bar the shouting (and we intend to shout)

The great adventure is over - and it only involved walking a few hundred yards down the road every day ! The Keys to the National Eisteddfod of Wales have been handed over to Wrexham and the great pink pavilion, so visible from our house, will very soon disappear - for good. There won't be another National Eisteddfod in Ebbw Vale in my lifetime - there's simply no space. The 185 acres available for the Eisteddfod was part of the site of the former steelworks, and it's all about to be built on.

It was one of the most exciting weeks of my life and the sense of loss now that it's gone is driving us to think in terms of how we can build on the jolt that the great event has given the area. A welcome surge in the number of people joining Welsh language clases is expected, but we are thinking more in terms of visual art. A reunion of the Eisteddfod Visual Arts Committee members has been proposed, and my secret agenda is to try to steer that in the direction of the formation of a permanent group whose aim will be to encourage and even initiate visual arts projects in Blaenau Gwent. Did you visit our Lle Celf? If so, what did you think of it? It certainly generated some debate, as expected!

The Great Week

In the week leading up to the start of the Eisteddfod Angela and I were kept pretty busy with preview tours of the Maes, and receptions, at which the wine flowed freely. I opened my part of the it all, Y Lle Celf ('The Art Place') officially on Saturday evening, having been to a gathering of the mayors of all or most of the local authorities of Wales at lunch time. The mayors were very keen to chat to us about their mayoral chains - a fascinating field of study and something I intend to find out more about.

The only snag was that there was yet more free-flowing wine, so by the time I had to open Y Lle Celf in the evening, I was feeling a little dopey. It was the first time I'd ever made an amplified speech in Welsh to a large crowd of people, and I sound (and look) half asleep in the film of the event. However, I was astounded to be congratulated afterwards by none other than the Arch-druid ! Afterwards, more wine. Whatever happened to the temperance principles of the Eisteddfod?

Since then, I have done some stewarding in Y Lle Celf, but have spent most of the time enjoying the Eisteddfod in general, including the Crowning of the Bard in the Main Pavilion. Sunday was strange, as that was the day of the 25,000 free tickets distributed to the people of this non-Welsh-speaking area to entice them to come. At least 10,000 of them turned up, plus 15,000 from outside the area. The result was that it was a rather strange day, with a lot of English to be heard, but things were back to normal on Monday. The weather has been fine so far, but there's a drawback in that - the dust. The Maes is on part of the former steel works and attempts to grass the land over earlier in the year failed miserably. The surface consists only of bare concrete chips (from the demolition) and dust. It plays havoc with your ears, nose and throat.

Anyway, I'll be back there today. I've bumped into dozens of people - tutors, students and college staff- that I've met over the past seven years of learning Welsh and that, combined with dealing with the public in Y Lle Celf, has provided an almost non-stop opportunity of speaking Welsh.

Only a week to go!

After two years of planning and hard work by a lot of people, we are now just one week away from the opening of the National Eisteddfod in Ebbw Vale. Everything now seems to be in place and those of us who will be working there throughout the week (in the underground art gallery, in my case) will be touring the site tomorrow. At the official opening of Y Lle Celf (The Art Space) next Saturday, I will be making a short speech and presenting the prizes for fine art and architecture. For the rest of the eight days, I will be working as a steward in Y Lle Celf and sometimes in other parts of the Maes.

Today, I will be putting up some bunting outside my house - the only person in our street of about 100 houses to do so, and one of the very few in the whole town. 20,000 free tickets were given away in this area in a bid to attract local people, but it feels to me at the moment as though most of the 150,000 expected visitors will be coming from outside the Valleys, from the Welsh-speaking areas. Well, apart from all the other things to look forward, there will be a chance at last to speak Welsh all day every day for a solid week.

In the pink

When it was first announced two years ago that the National Eisteddfod of Wales was coming to Ebbw Vale for the first time since 1958, the news was very exciting in itself. Little did I imagine that I was to be Chair of the Visual Arts Sub-committee, which is in charge of organising the two art exhibitions and peripheral art events that are an essential part of this great annual festival of Welsh language and culture.

Well, yesterday, from my bedroom window I watched the erection of the huge Main Pavilion of the Eisteddfod on the former steel works site (I'd watched the five-year-long demolition of the works from the same window). The pavilion has been bright pink for the past few Eisteddfodau - something that's not to everyone's taste, but it was a very bold and uncompromising choice, reflecting the triumphant mood of the great event.

Only four weeks to go to the opening and it will be fascinating to see how the local populace will react. This is not an area noted for its Cymreictod ('Welshness') and it is not known how many of the expected 150,000 visitors will be local, or indeed how a town of 30.000 will react to an unprecedented flood of visitors on that scale. The signs are that local shops are just not gearing up to take advantage. No-one has managed to get across to them what is to come. Those of us closely involved with this year's 'National' are hoping that the coming of it to our town will provide a boost to the language, the economy, the arts and the general level of confidence in the area. All four are certainly in urgent need of boosting. But we must wait and see.

But to go back to Y Lle Celf, the visual arts show, the nature of the site has enabled my sub-committee to pull off a first this year and something which is surely destined to remain unique. Instead of taking placed in the usual visual arts pavilion, the it will mainly be in the vast underground 'bunker' that was formerly the stack annealer, where rolled steel was hardened and strengthened. When the steelworks closed the water pumps were turned off and the bunker flooded. Millions of gallons of water had to be pumped out to enable us to use it. For one week from 31st July-7th August it will house one of the most important annual art shows in Wales and I hope I'll see you there!

St George and the Dragon

I haven't actually seen any ABE (Anyone But England) banners or badges in my part of Wales yet, but I believe they are on sale. About a quarter of the people interviewed in a recent survey in Wales said they would be supporting any team playing against England in the World Cup and another quarter said they would support England. The remaining half said they weren't interested either way.

I get the impression that rather more than a quarter are in fact supporting every team that England comes up against - some people were just a bit shy of admitting it to the interviewers. There's certainly a bit of ill-feeling about the appearance of St George's flags here and there (though very few around here, to be honest). Some of the flags are on vehicles from England, passing through for business or pleasure. It seems a bit hard if they can't fly the 'wrong' flag. In any case, you certainly see a few Welsh flags in London whenever Wales is playing England at rugby, and that seems fair enough.

But I have to admit to a surprisingly strong feeling of resentment on the rare occasions I see an English flag in Wales. This is rather curious, considering that I spent the first 60 years of my life in England and have no no Welsh ancestry, as far as I know. That's the power of the Dragon for you.

Second swan tragedy

Another man-made tragedy has struck the swan family (see post of 31 May). A dog has killed 3 of the 7 cygnets. Last year's cygnets were protected from dogs by the cob, but the pen isn't fierce enough. Notices immediately went up ordering people to keep their dogs on the lead, but the notices were soon torn down again, as were earlier notices telling people not to feed white bread to the water birds. People just don't like being told what to do these days.

For someone with a somewhat rebellious history, I'm surprisingly keen on people being told what to do. I recently composed a mental list of things I would like to see banned and another of responsibilities I would like to see enforced. Both lists turned out to be pretty long. I couldn't think of a single instance where I'd like to see a rule relaxed. Perhaps we banning and enforcing freaks will have more influence if there's a real crisis of some sort (as during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath, for example).

Persecution mania

It was of course unfortunate that those twins were mauled by some animal which was probably a fox, but the worst aspect was the media hysteria about it, which has played straight into the hands of those who are always on the lookout for something to hate and to persecute. The reaction to the alleged fox attack is an extreme example. Such an attack is so rare as to be insignificant compared with the number of attacks on children by dogs, for example. Foxes are timid around humans, generally get on well with cats, eats slugs, are highly photogenic and give many people in urban areas a lot of pleasure.

Grey squirrels are also a source of enjoyment for many people but are the object of fierce hatred by many others who have swallowed the guff about their being an introduced, therefore 'alien' species. After about 150 years, 'introduced species' is a meaningless concept. If you are so keen on the 'native' reds, go to other parts of Europe, where they abound. In some ways the greys can be pests, but then so can cats and dogs.

Badgers? About to be persecuted on very unscientific suspicion of spreading TB among cattle. Don't take my work for it that the 'evidence' is a load of bunkum - listen to people like Iolo Williams, Wales's most distinguished naturalist. During a rest on a recent nature walk led by Iolo, in which I took part, he made a speech defending both badgers and foxes. Get this: foxes do NOT take lambs, other than in exceptional circumstances.

Foxes, badgers, grey squirrels, feral pigeons, herring gulls, rhododendron, ivy, Himalayan balsam, Japanese knotweed - the list goes on and on. For something to persecute, stick to rats - they are unquestionably a bit inconvenient.