Contrast

 


Cardiff 2008.  The nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.

A Victorian port, Cardiff, built on the coal from the valleys.  My grandfather was as Welsh as they come, born and bred here in the 1870s (this makes me feel really, really old), my grandmother an incomer from Devon, orphaned at age seven when she was packed off across the Bristol Channel to live with an aunt and uncle in the city.   Poor little mite.  She eventually became a teacher, met my grandfather and married him.

He was born into a large, bilingual working-class family, Welsh and English, but the Victorian education system was definitely not inclined to pander to wishy-washy notions of cultural identity.  English was the language of progress, of advancement and enlightenment.  Accordingly the children were forbidden to speak Welsh in school and punished if they did so, and eventually English took over their lives completely and, yes, he did indeed advance, got a good job and after the First World War moved his family to London.  Yet he returned to his origins, to Cardiff, with his second wife when he retired.  In his eighties he did try to relearn his lost mother tongue.  Too late, perhaps, he couldn't do it.

As I recall he disapproved of much of the modern world - pop music, football players - but he'd be surprised and delighted at how much of the Welsh language there is around the place in 2013. 

Dilemma

La falaise a Penarth, le soir, marée basse - Alfred Sisley.

I linked to this painting in a previous post. The coastal scene is not that different today, over a century later. The promontory in the distance is Lavernock Point, a few miles out of Cardiff, one end of the proposed Severn Barrage, linking South Wales to Somerset. According to a front-page article in today's Independent, this will harness the powerful tide of the Severn Estuary to provide 5 per cent of the UK's energy needs.

That's a lot. You can see why the Government are very interested indeed, and why at first glance it makes sense. A wonderfully green scheme. But. But. It will mean the destruction of natural habitats, marshes and mudflats, for thousands of migrating birds, fish and eels. Vague promises are being made that alternative wildlife sanctuaries will be found but the loss will be immense. There are other less damaging options under consideration for harnessing parts of the Estuary - such as the ones put forward by Friends of the Earth, who have come out strongly against the Barrage - but none that deliver this kind of mighty renewable punch. As the Indie says:

There is little doubt that a barrage would destroy more wildlife habitat than any other British construction project in modern times. The Severn Estuary, where the celebrated naturalist Sir Peter Scott founded Slimbridge, the wildfowl refuge which became one of the world's most famous nature reserves, provides an 86,000-acre feeding ground for wild swans, geese and many thousands of wading birds, such as dunlin, turnstone, oystercatcher and ringed plover, from all over Europe.

Under EU wildlife habitat laws, if the Government were to go ahead, it would have to find alternative compensatory habitat – mudflats and marshes – which might be as much as 40,000 acres, and which might cost anything up to £3bn.

But that is unlikely to hold the Government back, such will be the temptation to grab that massive 5 per cent renewable energy boost from a barrage – for in December ministers took on the enormous obligation, in an EU-wide deal, of sourcing 20 per cent of total UK energy demand from renewables by 2020. Twenty per cent of total energy (which includes heating and transport) means finding about 40 per cent of electricity from renewables – nearly 10 times the current figure of about 4.5 per cent.

The Herculean size of that task means the Government is very likely to go for the barrage, especially as the onshore wind industry is suffering strongly from the rise in the euro against the pound, meaning turbines made in Germany and Denmark are now about a third dearer than they were a year ago.

Dilemma. I know the area well and would grieve at its destruction. I am in favour of renewables and clean energy (who isn't?). I distrust the forthcoming Government consultation process and the hidden agendas behind it that quite probably mean that it will be a rubber-stamping of a decision already made. I am a supporter of Friends of the Earth. There is a long way to go and we are currently living through the mother of all recessions and the country may go bankrupt and there will be an election soon. But I suspect the Barrage will be built, eventually.

Family

Last Sunday afternoon, late. The train is crowded. Luggage everywhere and no seat to be had when I get on at Bristol after a few days at my cousin's place. Not my favourite part of the journey, this, but fortunately it doesn't last long. Twenty minutes at most, then a change. I share the stretch of grimy corridor with a father and two sons. The father, late thirties, jeans, sweatshirt with a logo. The boys maybe ten and eight. The father asks if they are in the way, offers to help me with my suitcase. A Welsh accent. He seems kind.

The two boys chatter, looking out the window, pointing at trains, carriages, signs. Look over there, Dad. Is that the same train we saw at Swansea? It would have to be a very long train if it's the same one, says their father. Laughter. Oh Dad.

The older boy starts to talk to me, unprompted. Quick, darting speech. I notice the bulky dental braces.

"We're going to Maesteg". The Valleys. "We've been to see our cousins in Durham". That's a long way, I say, I did the journey myself a few months ago.

"I know. We've been travelling all day". He turns back towards his brother and the window.

Rail travel may be a novelty for both boys. There is something old fashioned about their excitment and keen interest in everything on the other side of the glass, with nary a computer game or ipod to be seen. I watch them with mixed emotions - happy, wistful, sad, who knows - their lack of cool is very endearing. As is their confidence in each other's company. Their security in being part of a unit.

Newport. The father offers to open the carriage door. People start to board, pushing. Almost dark. Goodbye, I call as I get out. A faint reply is just audible over the blaring cacophony of the station loudspeaker.

Diffuse

The Bristol Channel and Severn Bridge from north Somerset.


A blustery wind rushed in from the Atlantic. Diffuse light, muted colours, boundaries between sea and sky and land softened. Studies in blue and grey. The Impressionists would have loved it. (In fact Sisley did paint some later landscapes on the opposite side of the water).



If you can see Wales, according to the locals - tongue in cheek - there's rain on the way. If you can't, then it's already raining. Sure enough a few hours after these were taken the heavens opened.

****

A line is crossed.

Certainties dissolve. Or maybe are distorted by the mists within.

Red kite

Mobbed by crows,
rising high,
high,
out of danger
effortless,
wings invincible,
wide as the world,
and silent,
riding an invisible wind
floating in blue.

On the other side
of the valley,
watching,
I drink tea
from the flask.
I eat my sandwich
then the banana,
carefully packing up
the rubbish
to take home.

Deo gratias.