… and then you get the people who let the side down.

I had a response to my blog yesterday (not on here) that said that because I was born in England, I am not Welsh and cannot call myself Welsh. This cheerful and welcoming response came from a Welsh person, and revealed one aspect of the Welsh culture – although I’m sure there are aspects of it in each and every culture, and thankfully it is only a small minority who behave this way – that I dislike, and that is insularity.

I was born in England, yes. I spent the first two years of my life in England, yes. But I’ve spent the subsequent sixteen years in Wales – I have been raised in Wales, all my memories are in Wales (I don’t remember anything from the first two years of my life!), I speak the language and have done since I was three, I will live here (if possible) for the rest of my life, my children will be brought up to speak Welsh, I will always champion the Welsh language wherever possible – but, apparently, I am still English and have no right to call myself Welsh.

Alright then. So, everyone who has come here from England, and now speaks Welsh fluently, and pays into the Welsh economy, and has a house here, starts boycotting Welsh schools. We boycott anywhere with Welsh-language signs or Welsh products – or we leave Wales altogether, taking with us a substantial amount of money from the economy. Of course, I don’t want to do that – but is that what people want us to do? Up here, a lot of the pupils in the Welsh-speaking schools have come from England and made the effort to learn the language, and the schools are struggling for numbers as it is – the amount of pupils in schools will decline if everyone who wasn’t born in Wales boycotts them, and lots of schools will have to close. Small businesses who pride themselves on offering a Welsh service and Welsh products will inevitably close because there aren’t enough people to use them, and the economy in Wales is going to take a sudden tumble.

I’m not sure if these people are Welsh nationalists or if they’re just small-minded, insular, village-mentality people who have this idea that if your grandfather’s grandfather didn’t live in the village, you will never be welcome here, but visiting the Eisteddfod yesterday assured me that the majority of the Welsh are welcoming people who are happy to see you make the effort to learn the language – they have categories in the competitions for Welsh learners, which just emphasizes the fact that they welcome people trying to learn – but to see a comment like that (particularly when I know I was never intended to see it!) is disheartening.

So, if we’re going to be pedantic, I’ll call myself a Naturalized Welsh Person – I have acquired my nationality. If people are so determined that the country we were born in determines how we should identify ourselves for the rest of our lives (a family friend was born in Dubai whilst her father was there on business but has lived in England for most of her life and has the strongest Durham accent I’ve ever heard, are we going to suggest that she isn’t English?) , perhaps we should all walk around with our place of birth and the nationality we associate ourselves with tattooed on our foreheads, so that if anyone hasn’t got anything better to do they can accost us and “set us straight”. Or, alternatively, the people who care so much can go and live on top of a mountain somewhere, where the nasty “English” people won’t bother them with their silly ideas of wanting to integrate and help the language and culture survive, and allow normal people to get on with our lives.

Yet another post about why I am proud to be Welsh.

So, today my boyfriend and I went to the Eisteddfod. For those not familiar with it, it’s basically a mass gathering of Welsh people, mainly for competitions (in this case, as it was the Urdd Eisteddfod, for primary/secondary school pupils and those under 25) in singing, dancing (folk and disco), instruments and also art and design, poetry and other things like that, as well as being a chance for people to meet up and celebrate Welsh culture and the Welsh language. There are also lots of stalls selling Welsh goods and promoting services in Wales.

It was amazing! If you live in Wales and you’ve never been to an Eisteddfod, I definitely recommend it – this year is the first time I’ve ever been to one, because my school wasn’t big on entering people for the Eisteddfods so I never got a chance to perform at any other than local ones which were basically concerts in the village or school hall – because there’s so much to see and do – lots of displays, lots of stands to do activities at, a funfair and the tents and studios where the preliminaries and final competitions take place. The talent is such a high standard and it really is amazing to see so many people who are so young, performing so well in the Welsh language. It provides some hope for the survival of our language and culture, something I will always support (one of the main reasons why I’ll be taking some of my degree through the medium of Welsh).

So, I will always be proud to be Welsh, and when I have children, they will be brought up to speak Welsh as their first language, and if they want to, I’ll give them every opportunity possible to perform at the Eisteddfod, because I wish I’d been able to be a bigger part of them when I was young enough.

Pwdu Monster…

For those of you who don’t speak Welsh, a “pwdu” is to sulk, and apparently, my pwdus are rather frequent and quite funny from the way people seem to laugh when I’m sulking. Today, I would say I am in a pwdu of epic proportions, and I have no idea why. Well, I do sort of know why – I’m struggling without co-codamol, I’m on ibuprofen but it doesn’t quite have the same effect as the co-codamol did, so the withdrawal effects are taking their toll on me.

I’m snappy and miserable, there’s nothing I want to do and even my boyfriend seems worried I’m fed up with him. I’m supposed to be helping my brother with his revision because it’s in Welsh and our parents don’t understand it but the mood I’m in, if he got a question wrong he’d probably find the textbook being launched at his head. I’m tired but I don’t want to sleep and I need to drink more but I can’t, I don’t even want to eat (which is unusual for me), and I just want to throw things at the walls. My laptop is safe because I will never throw Lucy at anything, I love it too much, but my phone is fair game which is why it’s safely hidden away and I’m refusing to let myself get it because I’d be lost without it if I did break it.

So, there’s not going to be any fiction writing done today, I think that’s pretty certain. I’m struggling just to write this blog because my words aren’t coming out right and I know how I want them to sound but they don’t sound like that when I write them down. If something really annoys me today, expect a very angry and incoherent post from me, but otherwise, I’m not sure how much writing I’ll actually get up to today, because I can’t see this pwdu fading any time soon….

My Titanic Connection.

It hit me today that I haven’t fully explained my connection to the Titanic, even though I’ve told you all I’ve been on television and radio about it (more on that later). So, with the centenary of the ship setting sail today, and the centenary of the sinking on Sunday, I think it’s time I explained my personal connection to the Titanic.

For most people, their connection begins a hundred years ago, when their ancestors set sail on the Titanic on its fated maiden voyage. For me, it’s slightly different. I don’t have a familial connection to the ship – my story starts over ten years ago at my Nan’s house. She had the James Cameron film “Titanic” on video, and whenever we went to stay at her house, I’d sit and watch it, sometimes twice, at night. The story itself was rather lost on me – I was only six years old and didn’t really understand the romance between Jack and Rose, but the historical side interested me. I’d already decided, by this point, that I wanted to be a historian (of course, that isn’t my aspiration anymore, but I was fairly set on it at the time), so I devoured any information about the Titanic that I could find. I remember badgering my Mom for a book at a school book fair one year, called “My Story: Voyage on the Great Titanic”. She was convinced that I only wanted it for the little blue necklace that came with it, but in all honesty, I wanted to read the book. I absolutely loved it, and I think I only took it off my bookshelf last year, having read it many times.

I noticed, even that first time when I watched the film, that there was a character who did something very brave, and he had a Welsh accent, although I didn’t think much of it at the time. As time progressed, I kept watching it at my Nan’s house, and eventually my curiosity got the better of me, and I went on the internet and looked up the Welshman whom I’d seen rescuing another character in the film. I had no idea of his connection to my local area of Wales, but I was interested nonetheless. Still,  I found that he was Fifth Officer Harold Godfrey Lowe, and although he had been born in Eglwys Rhos, he spent some of his childhood in Barmouth, the nearest town to my village, just down the coast. I was only eleven, and although I was very interested, I still didn’t think much of it.

Two years ago, I was in a local cafe when I heard a man talking about the Titanic, and a man from Barmouth who had been on it, with my dad. I joined in the conversation, and we got talking about how it was surprising that there was nothing in Barmouth to commemorate Harold Lowe – so, when I went home, I wrote a letter to a local newspaper and started a facebook campaign, and it all started from there. Two years later, a plaque to him has been unveiled today in Deganwy, the town to which he eventually retired and where his grandson now lives, and a plaque will be unveiled this Sunday, the product of two years of this campaign, at the harbour in Barmouth. I feel immensely proud to have been a part of the campaign, but more than that, I am pleased that he’ll finally be commemorated in Barmouth and people will learn about him for years to come.

So, that’s basically what this campaign has all been about. The newspaper articles, the radio, the television – it’s all been leading up to this Sunday, but it doesn’t end on Sunday – the plaque will mean that, for decades to come, there will be a lasting memorial to the local hero many people didn’t know about until recently. You can find the television programme I filmed for last year, “Titanic With Len Goodman”, on BBC iPlayer, and I am on Episode Two.

Why I’m Proud To Be From The Land Of Song…

I have never found a country that produces such beautiful music as Wales does, and this is one of the factors which makes me very proud to call myself Wales, to live here, speak the language and, more than anything, to sing the songs. To prove my point, I have a video of a choir – called “Only Boys Aloud” – singing in Welsh. If you’re in Britain, you’ll probably recognize them from the current series of Britain’s Got Talent. In the first episode, they stunned with their audition in which they stormed the stage (there was about 125 of them!) and sang “Calon Lan”, one of the most famous Welsh songs as far as I’m aware. For those of you who haven’t seen it, this is the video of their audition –

 

and this is them at what I think is the National Eisteddfod last year although if I’m wrong feel free to correct me 🙂

Listen, enjoy and realize why I am so proud to be from gwlad y gan 🙂

Naming Characters

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about how I do something – I think the last one may have been writing about first kisses ages ago? – so, I shall do a new one today, about how I come up with the names for my characters.

Usually, in all the books I’ve attempted to write before, I’ve picked ones that have specific meanings, or are literary names – for example, in a previous one, the heroine was called Hero Bronte Murphy (before I developed a deep-seated hatred for whichever Bronte sister wrote Wuthering Heights [I really should figure this out before I sit the Wuthering Heights exam in June]) – Hero because of the character from “Much Ado About Nothing” (again, before we started studying it in English) and Bronte because of the literary connotations (my justification for this is because it’s set fairly far in the future and deals with humans away from Earth, the parents would want to keep the memory of classic literature alive).

Then, when it came to this one, naming characters came very naturally. There was no looking online or searching for fancy meanings – all the names just occurred to me when I was writing about the characters. The two main characters are called Lilly and Adam – Lilly because I was reading Harry Potter at the time, and Adam because it seems to sound nice with Lilly and is a fairly modern man’s name, which is what I was looking for. There is a Welsh Celtic warrior called Daeron Pentraeth – Daeron was just a celtic-sounding one, and I wanted it to begin with a D because of the person his character is very loosely based on. Pentraeth is Welsh for head of the beach, and to be honest there’s no real meaning behind it, he isn’t the head of a beach or anything, I just wanted a Welsh surname and that’s the first one that occurred to me. Another character is a young girl, Imogen Love – again, just because I like the name “Imogen”,  and Love is a cool surname which completely contrasts with her family life.

There isn’t actually anyone with an out-there name, I don’t think – my characters this time have names like Charles, Ella, David, Bryce, Aaron, Joe, Harry etc compared to when it used to be ridiculous names I couldn’t even pronounce, because I set so much store by the meaning of it. Obviously I try not to pick names with stupid meanings that make the name ridiculous, but for many of them, I haven’t actually looked at what their names mean – obviously Lilly is after a flower, and I think Adam is Biblical, but Daeron is completely made up and I haven’t the foggiest about the rest of them, and the meanings had no influence on what I chose.

I hope that’s a sign that my writing skills are improving and maturing, because I want to focus on making a more natural, believable story than one where I’ve picked names I’m really pleased with, but possibly to the detriment of the story itself!

However, if you do want to pick names with a meaning, a website I’ve found to be absolutely invaluable is behindthename – http://www.behindthename.com – because you can search for names by meaning or words in the description, and you can also search by language and origin. I don’t want it to come across that I’m saying picking names with a meaning is wrong all the time, but the way I did it was very wrong – even if the name didn’t suit the character at all, I’d pick it because I liked the meaning, which made the stories quite bad to write because I didn’t like writing about the characters.

The village-mouse and the city-mouse.

Sorry for that crude re-hashing of the title of an old story – I think it’s one of Aesop’s Fables – “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse”. My attempts at writing witty titles are, so far, failing miserably.

I’ve lived in a really small village in Wales since I was two and a half, and before that, I lived in a town in the West Midlands (for those of you who are geographically challenged, like me, it’s somewhere near Birmingham). Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my village (well, apart from most of the people who live here), but sometimes you just can’t beat a city. So, this is

MADDY’S CITY VS VILLAGE LIST

Basically, I’m going to write down what I like best about cities, vs what I like best about villages. Just because I can.

First of all, I’d better say what cities I’m basing my opinion on. The cities I’ve been to are –

• London
• Birmingham
• Cardiff
• New York
• Madrid
• Manchester
• Bangor (a very small city!)

And my experience of villages is basically that I have lived in one for as long as I can remember.

 

WHAT MADDY LIKES ABOUT CITIES

• It seems that very few people know you. If you’ve ever lived in a village, you’ll know why this is a very good thing.
• There are so many shops to go to! Including Primark! *sigh*. The nearest Primark to me is two and a half hours away in a car! It’s against my human shopping rights 😦
• Starbucks. I am determined that my village needs a Starbucks; it has been so long since I’ve had my old favourite (caramel frappuccino with extra cream and chocolate sauce).
• The hustle and bustle. There always seems to be something happening, compared to villages which are usually boring. The good news never gets spread because apparently that’s not worth knowing about, but the minute something bad happens to you, you can guarantee you’ll be the hot topic of conversation at the post office *cough*, school gates and everywhere else, and suddenly everyone will have an opinion on you (and it’s rarely a kind opinion).
• All the different things you can do – cities usually have big cinemas and big theatres where tours of musicals perform. Our nearest cinema that has more than one screen and actually shows new films is almost two hours away, and the same for our nearest big (as in has touring musicals) theatre.
• You can walk to places! The nearest school or college is a walk or a very short bus ride away, you can get to the shops easily etc. Our nearest supermarket is five miles away and tiny, the nearest secondary school is five miles away, the primary school is in the village but the nearest sixth form/college is my college, half an hour away! Villages are isolated.

Now, here is my list of village advantages. Note that I live in a village/near a town which are both fairly popular in the holidays with tourists from the Midlands because we live on the coast, and the town is apparently the closest town geographically to the West Midlands, which is why we all end up calling it Birmingham-On-Sea in the summer months.

• In the summer, you might be able to get a job on a holiday site or in a restaurant because of how many people are there.
• In the winter, the roads are pretty empty.
• It’s quiet (in the winter).
• We sometimes get sunshine. (but not in the winter).
• The countryside is beautiful, no matter what time of year you see it 🙂 this is probably my favourite point about living on the Welsh coast is that we get the best of both worlds – on one side, we have the beach and the sea, about a mile from my house. On the other, a few miles from my house, is hills and lots of pretty scenery.

It’s probably easier for me to explain the drawbacks of living in a village.

• In the summer, trying to get anywhere is a nightmare. Most people who live in places like ours end up becoming hermits for six weeks during the school holidays, because holidaymakers see fit to wander lazily along 60mph roads at 20, tootling along to admire the scenery. They forget that not everyone is on holiday, and a common insult to them is “They forgot to pack their brains in their suitcase”.
• The tourists in general are a nightmare. They’re loud, they’re boisterous, they’re dirty, they think they’re the only ones who matter (seriously, they think that because we live in a holiday destination, and they’ve come on holiday here, we all automatically work for the “Great God Of Holidays”, and our days revolve around doing things for them, giving up our roads for them, putting up with them walking three abreast down a path that’s made for one. They’re rude and don’t seem to give a toss about the fact that other people have lives to be getting on with, they’re on holiday so stuff everyone else.
• In the winter, it really is far too quiet. I mean, I know I complain about the noise in the summer, but the winter is ridiculous, it’s horrible to see the whole village and the town looking deserted, all the smaller shops close leaving only a few open.
• Village life is absolutely horrible. As I said earlier, everyone wants to know everything bad about you, and the second you need help they all mysteriously disappear and make themselves unavailable. People seem to think that village life is all about community spirit and people sticking together, but the most community spirit we’ve seen in the 15 years we’ve lived in the village is from our lovely next door neighbour, who gets my siblings involved in tending to plants and brings around fruit and veg to say thank you – and she moved from near Birmingham a few years ago!
• The schools here are crazily Christian, and don’t even think about not having a religion. In primary school we had to pray twice a day on most days, three if there’s assembly – once in assembly, once before lunch and once before going home. Everything seems to have a Christian basis – and you can’t even choose to NOT go to a Christian school! They’re not church of Wales schools, they’re just regular state primary schools with a massive Christian bias. By the end of it I used to not pray, I didn’t care if I got dirty looks.
• Public transport is stupid. At the best of times, there’s a bus to my college every hour. There’s a bus to the nearest town, which is where I need to get to to CATCH said bus to college, once every couple of hours – and it’s usually late so you miss the connection. In the summer, the trains are always crowded with people who are travelling alone, but see fit to ignore the luggage racks and decide they want a table to themselves, putting all their stuff on them so that when you’re coming home from school (the school I went to was a half an hour train ride away) you have to stand around for ages and crowd up the aisles and get told off for it!
• The weather. I know the Welsh weather is legend for being awful, but it’s not that bad. We do have some really terrible days, but when we get sunshine, it is gorgeous – already this year we’ve had a really lovely, warm day. Plus, when we do get the beautiful weather, we’re only a quick walk away from the beach and the sea!

 

There are probably a lot more I can add, but they escape me now. I hope you have enjoyed my quick foray into the world of village vs city, and if you’re ever thinking of moving to my village, if you value your privacy and don’t want to be living near a bunch of people desperate to ruin your life so they’ve got more to talk about at the school gates and in the post office *cough*, for goodness’ sake, DON’T!

Maddy-o is a radio star?

Well, not exactly. And apologies for that awful, truly terrible title.

I’m not exactly a radio star. I’ve had my first taste of being in a radio studio and it’s really cool! I’ve been recording an interview for a program BBC Radio Cymru are doing on the Titanic (what with the centenary approaching and my campaign for a memorial in Barmouth having received some attention recently), and it meant I had to speak in Welsh. It was a challenge for me – at first, it felt slightly like my Welsh GCSE speaking and listening exam, an experience I hoped to never have to repeat – but when I relaxed and settled in, it seemed to go quite well.

I’m, technically, a Welsh learner. Yes, I’ve been learning since I was three and a half, but never speaking Welsh at home – and only speaking it sporadically at school, i.e since the age of seven I’ve only spoken it during Welsh language lessons, which weren’t exactly frequent either at primary or secondary schools. I’ll never speak it as well as people who’ve lived here all their life and speak it at home, but I am fluent, and was considered to be first-language – i.e on a par with those who speak it at home with their parents – at secondary school.

I think the main problem is that I haven’t spoken it for a while, other than the odd snippet thrown here and there in conversation, and used on Facebook. I think a lot of people hear my accent and assume I can’t speak Welsh – it still seems fairly strong, especially when I do speak Welsh – when really, I’m fluent, but sometimes it just doesn’t flow as well as other people’s seems to – there are certain words I struggle with because of the pronunciation and others, where they’re easily confused with others and I get confused.

Still, I’m fairly pleased with how I did today, and when I find out when it airs, I shall let you all know – although, if you don’t speak Welsh, you probably won’t understand it, but at least you get to hear my voice! And my (doubtful) Welsh abilities! So, all in all, a good day. Let’s see what tomorrow – the dreaded results day and UBER evening drama rehearsal – brings.

Moom’s Views – Being “British”

This blog post is mainly inspired by a discussion on thestudentroom forums, where they’re talking about what it is to be British.

Personally, I don’t consider myself to be British other than the fact that, according to my passport, I am a citizen of Great Britain. As far as I am concerned, my nationality is Welsh, and I am proud of that fact. I am proud of our language and the fact that it is still alive despite the many attempts to quash it, proud of our history and our culture, our patriotism, our music and our poets, our food (if you haven’t tried Welsh cakes, you must! They’re amazing!), our scenery and beaches and so much more.

Now, I am not against English people coming to this country. After all, my family moved here from England, so it’d be hypocritical of me to say that. What I am against, however, is people who move to this country and make no attempts whatsoever to learn our language – in fact, they go as far as to actively slag it off, and slag off all the people who live here (“sheep shaggers” is a popular insult), and say how much they hate living here – and yet, when asked why they live here if they hate it so much, they’re the first to bleat (pardon the pun) “racism” and “I have just as much right to live here as everyone else”. They have the right to live here, but if they hate it so much, surely the good thing to do would be to move back to England, where you don’t have to listen to us speaking Welsh if it irks you so, and free up some of the housing market for the young people and families who want to stay in Wales and want to remain immersed in the culture.

The other ironic thing is that these people are usually the ones who complain the loudest about immigrants who move to England and refuse to learn the language and don’t immerse themselves in the culture. I mean, I do agree with them, I think people who move to any country, regardless of where from, should try to become a part of the culture and at least learn the language, the law and the generally accepted way to be a member of society, more for communication’s sake and to be polite than anything else. However, why is it the English seem to be so hypocritical about it?

Of course, I am generalizing here, and not all English people are like that – it seems to be a minority, but the minority seem to be the most vocal about it. I know plenty of English families who have moved here and the children have all learned Welsh through school, and the parents try to learn Welsh (although it is harder as an adult, because of the fact that children soak up languages better than adults), and even though they may still support the England football and rugby teams, you never get that attitude of “we’re going to smash the sheep shaggers”, shortly followed by (when Wales win, which usually only happens in rugby) “ugh Wales won by a fluke, Wales got lucky, Wales is full of sheep shaggers, don’t get too smug Wales, you only won by a little bit”. Alternatively, if they win, it’s “Ha, we showed them Welsh *****!”. They seem to be sore winners and sore losers. Also, in sports, there is the fact that when a Welshman (or woman, I’m not sexist) wins something, they are “The British sportsman, ________, wins the gold medal!”. When they don’t succeed, it is “And the Welshman, _________, crashes out in last place”. It’s double standards, and the only country it never seems to happen to, funnily enough, is England.

I don’t hate England and I don’t hate English people – I just hate the attitude some of them seem to have towards countries that live, however slightly, differently to their own. We are next door to England (although, I must stress, Wales is NOT a part of England), we share the same Royal Family, most of us speak English as well as Welsh, some of our bands and singers are quite popular in England (Bullet For My Valentine, Katherine Jenkins (the Forces Sweetheart) Duffy, Funeral for a Friend, Kids in Glass Houses, Lostprophets, Manic Street Preachers, Tom Jones and of course, Stereophonics, to name some of them) – the only real differences is that we can and choose to speak a different language sometimes (which seems to really annoy the English if they walk in on a conversation in Welsh – ever heard the “I walked into a pub and EVERYONE changed from speaking English to Welsh” myth?), and we support different teams in sports. Why is there such animosity towards the Welsh? I’m not saying it isn’t reciprocated – there are some Welsh people who dislike the English, but it never seems to be the same level of hatred as some English people seem to have for the Welsh – and yet, they’re more than happy to come on holiday here and expect us to speak English whenever they’re around, regardless of what language we normally use. And if we don’t? We’re racist.

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!

For those of you not versed in the Welsh language, that means “Happy Saint David’s Day” – yes, today is the day of St David, the Welsh patron saint, and, fittingly, one of the top trends on Twitter today was #WelshFilmClub, which was a feed full of people posting the Welsh versions of famous films. Some of them were a bit hit and miss (the ones with phrases like “where to” and stuff kinda went over my head, we have a more sophisticated Welsh up here in the north and don’t use such phrases), but a lot were hilarious. Here is a selection of my favourites 🙂

• Who Killed Roger Rarebit?
• The Lamb Shank Redemption
• Dai Hard
• Live and Let Dai
• Star Wars: Attack of the Jones
• Get Him To The Leek
• Gwladiator
• Rhyl Bill
• Dude, Where’s My Cardiff?
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bangor
• A Fish Named Rhondda
• BreCon Air
• Caerphillydelphia
• Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwyllsantysiliogogogone With The Wind
• Dial M for Merthyr
• Black Swansea
• Farmergeddon
• P.S. I Love Ewe
• The Wizard of Oswestry
• Treforest Gump

 

And, one of my personal favourites, “Cwtch Me If You Can” 😀 so, wear your leek and your daffodil with pride and belt out “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” (that’s the Welsh national anthem), and have a happy St. David’s Day!