'N ANHUNOG I MEWN LLANGOLLEN
By Matthew Craig
So, we made it to Wales yesterday.
FINALLY.
And it only took us three weeks.
Like an idiot, I had convinced myself that we wouldn't be going. So I stayed up through the night, writing (and surfing for pictures of Katie Puckrick - for editorial purposes, filthy beasts), thinking that I wouldn't need to be 100% for the lazy day ahead.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I can hear Dave Prowse berating me in a Cornish accent for my lack of faith.
So, thirty hours after getting up on Tuesday, I jumped in the car and we made our way across the border.
(For the Americans amongst you: this is almost exactly like walking over the threshold of your house. Remember that, despite what you may have been taught, Wales is, indeed a different country. That said, we have no border control.)
The journey went relatively quickly, because I kept nodding off in the car, and drooling.
The times when I was awake (or semi-awake, which is much more dangerous: a semi-conscious Mattscrew is a disturbing Mattscrew. The Sainted Mother once rang me late at night, only partially waking me. I answered the phone, only mildly registering who it was, and insisted, in a half drunk way, that I needed money for "...mmnuh...crawling...crawling the walls...and...swinging...buildings...." Even my dreams are spidery, it seems. The Sainted Mother was quite upset, she said. She later told me that she was worried that I'd gone mental, or been ripped off my tits on something pharmaceutical (my words).), I made sure to enjoy the view. While Wales doesn't move me as much as, say Scotland does, the greenery and rolling hills are a beautiful sight.
That's one of the advantages of living where I do: it only takes a couple of minutes to walk from my front door to a dairy farm, and it's only a short drive to the countryside. It's also only a train ride from most major UK cities. I don't even have to change trains much.
Trust me to be stranded here without any damn money.
Sometimes, I think it might be fun to bum around the country, doing odd jobs to pay my way, and writing about it. But, then, I don't really know how to do anything. And you don't see many people outside Boots with signs saying "Will Sequence Eukaryotic Genomes for Food."
Llangollen is set in a little valley just over the Welsh border. It's famous primarily for the Eisteddfod it holds every year. Lots of music. Lots of song. Lots of fun. Naturally, I've never been.
It's a small town, but a beautiful one. Or it would be, if you took all the bloody tourists out of it.
Seriously. We were on a car park merry-go-round for about a half an hour. Driving between car parks, scrambling to avoid ignorant pedestrians or oblivious coach drivers. The Daddy, bless 'im, was getting mildly agitated.
A word about the Daddy. He was born to drive. No, no. That's not it.
He was cursed to drive.
He's held a few jobs in his time, but the greater part of his adult life has been at the controls of one wheeled conveyance or another. I could probably fill a book with all the stories of near misses and near-crashes he's told me about over the years. There are few lampposts in Glasgow that don't have a bus-shaped dent in them somewhere.
Not that he's a bad driver, you understand.
One time, he was driving old people around for Help the Aged, a job he quit because it was too depressing (people were dying like flies: again, not due to his driving!). He brought them into the car park I was working in, just to say hello. The living ones. Obviously.
It was faintly embarrassing. I felt vaguely like one of those baboons you see in the safari park. I had to restrain the urge to jump on the bus and start tugging at my arse in front of shocked octogenarians.
So this work experience, combined with the number of times that he's fetched me to and from remote parts of the British Isles, means that he's got a fair few (million) miles under his belt.
But he hates parking. And he hates being hassled by parking. So he gets more stressed. So he hates it more. So he gets more hassled. And so on, until we either park or go home.
So we drove around and around for ten minutes (doesn't seem long, but try being dog-tired, trapped in the car, and in dire need of a piss, whilst driving past public toilets which my serotonin-depleted brain is reimagining as gleaming pillars of convienience. And a raging river.), until finally, some nice lady let us take her space.
Another quick word on the other attraction that Llangollen has to offer: the Doctor Who Museum.
Quite what the connection is between Llangollen and Doctor Who, I don't know. But for some reason, the town is home to both a fantastic museum of memorabilia and related tat (Sit in a Dalek! Freak out when A Big Giant Head Winks at You!). You can even watch them build Dalek toys. I bought a Black one: very senior! It's full of authentic stuff - the walls even wobble! - and it's well worth a visit.
There are far too many hills in Llangollen for real Daleks...
So we parked, and I piddled, and we went for a little wander. The shops are kind of limited to Buns, Crafts (or "Tat") and Charity. With some notable exceptions.
Fans of Reeves and Mortimer should take note: Uncle Peter, having fallen on hard times, has opened a Fudge Shop. This, combined with seeing a League of Gentlemen-style "Nice Things" shop, a van marked "NIPS," and my surreal state of mind, was starting to make me believe that I had stepped into the Twiglet Zone.
Or something.
Uncle Peter yesterday. Donkey woof bark.
He hides a picture of Bob Mortimer inside his smoking jacket...
Don't they see? They can't call it the Northern Ireland Police Service! No-one would take them seriously!

"Oh, no, not McPhee! He's been grabbed by the N.I.P.S, so he has!"

"Sounds Painful!"
It took a bit of negotiation, but we managed to walk across the road without incurring any Rrrroad Rage (as they call it in Wales). Took a bit of doing. People would stand in your way, and look at you funny as you tried to get past them. I had to check to see if my fly was still open.
I took the Parents into a second-hand bookshop, in the hope that I could pick up some comics cheap.
Seems the owner had a strange opinion on just what "cheap" actually meant. He seemed to think nothing of charging �8 for a �2 book.
I nearly left the shop in disgust. But I just got too deep into the search.
The shop looked small from the outside, but revealed itself to be a veritable TARDIS (guess that's the connection: I was buying books from a Galllifreyan Time-Lord, whose time sense was fucked, which was why he charged more for a book the older it got) on the inside. And it was labyrinthine with it; you could be searching for hours, and still not look at the same shelves twice.
He had some good books, though. Most of which I had, I'll admit. But a good selection, nonetheless. With a copy of Troubled Souls, by Ennis and McCrea, and a book for the Mother, I left, muttering under my breath about the price of second-hand books.
Right up until the Daddy reminded me that he'd paid for them, of course.
Moving on, we stopped at a cancer charity shop called Tenovus (which probably referred to the number of people behind the counter), and from there to a craft shop. This shop was typically naff, being full of dragon and Celtic logo t-shirts, and was only really worth noting for its dolphin statue.
This statue was of a dolphin jumping through a hoop. It made me think of the dolphins in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I got a bit sad.
These souvenir shops, and there were many, were much of a muchness. They all sold Welsh memorabilia: rugby shirts, things made out of coal, and fudge. Oh so much fudge. They sold some odd postcards, too: see the gallery below...
One shop even went so far as to sell authentic Buzz Lightyears. Yes, Buzz Lightyear, Hero of the Valleys.
I was as shocked as you.
It says here.
Alongside the Dragons, and the Dragons dressed in Rugger shirts, and the Dragons dressed in Rugger shirts made out of coal, this simple, Chinese-made toy. Designed by Americans, with the voice of an Australian.
Sua Chyneuablwyddyn, doe.
Wouldn't that be sad, if that were your only souvenir of this lovely Welsh town?
On the way back to the car, we stopped to buy a Marzipan Truffle. I thought I'd be on to a winner, because I love truffle and I love Marzipan. Logically, the two together in the same confection should taste dreamy.
Naturally, the two together in the same confection tasted like filth.
The Sainted Mother quite liked it.
But then, the Sainted Mother lets me make her cups of tea.
There's no accounting for taste.
On the way back to the car for a steaming box of chips and a cup of tea, the Sainted Mother stopped for a tinkle. I waited outside, eavesdropping on the conversations around me. By this point, I would have done anything to keep me awake: I had leant over to study a dragon more closely, and had almost fallen asleep, impaling my eye on the sulphurous bastards snout.
A woman stood nearby started to complain about the toilet. It seemed that she had been charged 10p to use the facilities. Hardly "spending a penny."
Then it hit me: that's why women go to the toilet in pairs. To split the costs.
I think I must have really needed that nights sleep.
The chips were better than the truffle, and we had a nice picnic inside our car. Nice apart from the nosy woman who walked past and stopped to look at us over her glasses, like we were some sort of common trash.
For some reason, I was reminded of the baboon impulse again...
After a nice afternoon out (finally), we left Llangollen behind, stopping only to note the number of the Nice Things shop (so we could report them to the Trades Description Act), and also to marvel at the sheep. It's nice to seem them roaming freely again.
Once, a sheep tried to get into our car. I think I might have been tucking into his Uncle Edgar, so it was understandable.
On the way home, we got caught in the Rush Hour, where we encountered a woman reading a novel at the Wheel. It must have been a bloody good book if it was worth risking her (and other peoples) neck for. At least when I read my comics on the street, I'm not moving at a car-damaging speed (I have set off one or two alarms before now, by not looking where I was going, though).
Was it worth it? Certainly. We were only there two hours, but we man   aged to get out of the house, hell, out of the country, for the first time in ages. We got some books, and we got some fresh air in beautiful surroundings.
And I even got some sleep. If you were driving along the Horseshoe Pass on Wednesday at about 4pm, and you heard a sound like a saw grinding though bone and flesh, well, that was me.
And we'll be back next year.
Matthew Craig, Pobol Y Cymru, August 24th, 2001
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