Cerys bach-

Hope you don't mind if I practice a couple of Welsh words on you. I was at the local library last week and ran across a series of books about Police Inspector Evan Evans by a Welsh author Rhys Bowen.

So I thought, well how fun, I'll check one out and see if Cerys is in it, or at least some of her environs.<lol> I'm reading Evan's Gate right now and I think there are perhaps seven others in the series. Mostly they take place around Llanfair and Porthmadog in North Wales and they are full of lovely and hard to pronounce Welsh personal names and place names. The country sounds so beautiful.

Anyway, just wanted to share and see if you were familiar with the author, who I thought was a guy until I looked at the back cover and discovered the author was a very pretty woman. Silly me I thought Rhys was a boy's name. Or can it be both?

Cwyl, Cerys, cariad.

Hugs, Joni

Noswaith dda Joni Bach, Sut 'dach chi?

You're right, Rhys is one of those names that can be both male or female (a bit like my own male name, which is also Welsh - but I chose to go for an all out female name (Cerys is always a girl) mainly so it wouldn't be too obvious should any casual aquiantances stroll by (unlikely I know).

I'm not terribly familiar with Rhys' work but I know the area around Porthmadog very well having spent many a happy weekend there as a child. It's where the Snowdonian mountains run down to the sea, a favourite spot with sailors and rock climbers and just five miles from the famous Portmeirion - location of the sixties cult TV series "The Prisoner". Hark at me I sound like the Welsh Tourist board. Anyway here's a pic to convince you to book a plane ticket ...



However, the village of Llanfair in Rhys' novels is totally fictional but based on her memories of Wales as a child, and why not? I'll see if I can't pick one of her books up and take a look.

If you're looking for some help on pronouncing those Welsh place names start here ..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wale[...]l?index

Oh and while we're here ... who won the Six Nations Rugby at the weekend?

Let me think now ... time for a quick chorus of "Hen Wlad fy Nhadau", and a pint of Brains Bitter (eughhh)!

Hwyl fawr, cariad

Cerys xx
(keep your eyes out for a Welsh rock band called "Melys", they're gonna be big, saw them last week, fantastic stuff)

Oh, Cerys, diolch for the nice reply. Sut rydych chi? Girl, that picture is so pretty and the landscape is lovely as well. They both take your breath away.<g>

Where was the picture taken, I mean the landscape this time? Is it around the Snowdon mountains. How absolutely stunningly beatiful. I would just love to visit Wales someday, as well as so many other places. Such a romantic place, with such history, I even love your flag, I bet lots of other countries wish they had a cool dragon like that on their flag.

And thank you for the link to pronounciations. It is very confusing, but I'm trying to sort it out. Just the spelling kind of throws you, letsee, V sounds like F and F sounds like V, and LL is a bit like a hiss. Okay, I'm getting there.<lol>

Cwyl, Cerys bach.

Hugs, Joni

BTW congrats on the win, please have a pint for me.

Joni

Pic is of Tremadog, village in foreground and Porthmadog and the sea in the distance, location is here ...

http://www.multimap.com/m[...]out.y=9

.. On the very edge of Snowdonian mountains.

As for rugby, it is possibly the gayest sport in the world, men chasing each other around desperately trying to grab each others testicles ..



... as this picture from today's game will prove.

Feel free to drop by at any time and I'll give you a guided tour of the principality, on the pillion seat of my motorbike of course.

Nos da

Cerys x

Oh gawd, Cerys, you're so funny. I burst out laughing and my wife who was noodling around on the piano asked me what was so funny. I was laughing so hard I could hardly answer. Finally I told her she would have to come over here to see it, I couldn't really explain. Now she's having hysterics.

Thanks, it made our day.<lol>

Hugs, Joni

Joni

Glad that tickled yer fancy.

Started digging round for some more pics of Welsh landscape and came across this stunning site by Photographer Neil Robertson (not a very Welsh name, but hey!)

http://www.welshpaintings[...]dex.htm

I'm a big fan of dramatic landscape photography though my own efforts are nothing like these. And of course, there are still dragons living in the mountains .. aren't there?

Hope you like them

Cerys xx

Diolch ti, Cerys, bach. (Did I say that right, I meant to say thank you?)

What a spectacular land you live in, girl. Thank you for those pictures, that link is so bookmarked. It would be easy to believe that dragons would still live in those mountains and perhaps guard that tombsite from so long ago.

Hwyl, Joni

Noswaith dda i chi!

I couldn't resist posting a link to some quite atmospheric piccies of Cadair Irdris - http://www.walkingbritain[...]2.shtml

I alos couldn't resist posting a link to a site about the valley in wich I grew up. It's a truly beautiful place, but hasn't always been that way. Once, it was completeley wodded, with salmon swimming up the river, and all manner of other wildlife, but then came the coal mines, which is a proud, but very destructive and dirty heritage. In the last 20 years though, a heck of a lot of effort has gon into repairing the damage done o the valley by mining, and it now looks as beautiful as ever.


http://www.garwvalley.co.uk/

Hwyl, Rhia xxx

Shan

I think "bach" means little, "Bachgen" means boy, so "Bachgen bach" is little boy. "Bach" used on it's own is a term of endearment.

Rhia

I know the south very well, my grandparents lived down on the coast at Llaniltud Fawr for years and I went to University in Cardiff (or Caerdydd I should say!) Interesting to see those sculptures in the Garw forest park, landscape sculpture was my subject at Art College.

Joni

At the moment I'm not actually living in Wales but just over the border outside Chester, though I can see the Welsh hills from my house. (Sadly I can see Liverpool too). I think Chester is the only English city that also has a Welsh name "Caer" - (meaning fortress) but I could be wrong. It also has two churches that hold sunday services in the Welsh language!

Perhaps we need to start a Welsh Trannyweb to go with the other national sites as there seem to be a enough of us.

.. and of course we couldn't go without some reference to my namesake, the very lovely, but usually very badly behaved Welsh songstress Cerys Mathews - bless her x




Cerys xx
(First one to mention Charlotte Church gets a big fat slap!)

.."CHARLOTTE CHURCH"!! now where's me big fat slap cerys honey!(sorry i couldn't resist it) Love anna-marie xxxxx

Hi Rhia and Shan, how nice you joined in, fi esgusawd for forgetting to include you.

So how's the flyfishing in Wales? Flogging the water with a flyline is my other "moneyhole" hobby besides girl clothes and makeup.<lol> I've never fished en femme, but I'd love to. I think having my breastforms on might improve my casting, counterbalance and all that. I bet if wore DD's I could get an extra 30 feet on my cast.<lol>

Ffynon ofuned to you all. (Hope I said that right and it doesn't mean something like your feet smell.)<lol>

And escob annwyl, Cerys, your namesake is rather fetching. I'll be looking for her website to see if I can find any of her music.

Hugs, Joni

Oh, she's quite famous

Cerys Matthews is a solo artist, last time I looked anyway, but previously she was head of a band called 'Catatonia', quite popular in the UK during the breif lived period rather aptly labled 'Cool Cymru'. lol

'Cool Cymru' was the era of three bands in particular, being Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, and Catatonia, with a couple of lesser followed bands like Super Furry Animals.

Incidentally Joni, you seem to know more welsh words than I do! lol (Welsh isn't really a strong language in south wales any more. Well, it depends how you look at South Wales. Most people see the area of South wales stretching from the border to Swansea as just an extension of England, which I feel is laregely true. The REAL Wales in the south, in my opinion, doesn't start untill you reach Pontardawe/Ammonford heading westward. Of course, the South Wales Valleys are still little pockets of true old-school Welsh national identity, but very little welsh is spoken in most of them now in comparison to english. There's still a few welsh speaking schools in the valleys though. )

Dear old Cerys Matthews is indeed now a solo artist. Having cleaned up her act following a spot of drinking trouble she went to live in the States and Married a country singer.

She's also the friend of a friend who told me a very funny story of how she came third in a Karaeoki competition at the Cardiff RAF Association social club .. the judge said she'd go far with a bit of practice, all this the week her album was at Number 1 in the UK chart! Seems none of the old giffers at the club recognised her, bless!

Rhia, I think the policy in the north must be different, every town has at least one fully Welsh speaking school, and Welsh is taught even in the English language schools unless they're very close to border. How many people actually use it in their everyday lives is debatable but you still hear people using it if you're out and about in places like Wrexham, and I frequently hear it being spoken in Chester - specially in the Dorothy Perkins store for some reason, work that out!

Cerys x
(the one who can't sing)

I pant I live in wales? lol

well, yes. That would be because of the thin air we get up here in thease mountains. lol

I will admit though, welsh IS taught in schools in south wales as a second language, but in truth, it's to a very poor standard. Not that I'm saying the teaching is bad, but the level to which it is taught by the third year of comprehensive school(9th grade!?!?) is pretty much a taster. It's probably enough to get by with in North Wales (given that many pople in the north can speak English too. lol).

In terms of welsh speaking comprehensive schools, There is one in the rhondda valley as far as I can recall, that serves an area from Cardiff to Bridgend, being Ysgol Gyfun Llanhari!!!! That's a HUGE area! By contrast though, there are a number of smaller welsh speaking primary schools all over the place.

I've NEVER heared anybody local conversing in Welsh, but I do know that the language does start to show itself if you were to visit Carmarthen, and even a little in Ammonford from time to time. There is a part of Pontyprydd that is a pocket of welsh speakers though, in the midst of an english speaking community.

It's sad to think that even just 25 years ago, a substantial amount of Welsh could be heared across the south wales valleys, and now there's almost nothing. Welsh hasn't been gone for all that long in the south really.

Sure, as English miners came to work in the Welsh mines, the language diluted a over time. My own family was such a family, moving to wales from Churchill in Oxfordshire in the mid 1800's. But what put the final nail in the coffin for welsh in the south was Maggie Thatcher with the underhand and brutal way she dealt with the Miners Strike.

Statistics to seem to point though, to the Welsh language in the south of the country rising like the pheonix from the ashes though.

Shan

There's also quite a large Welsh Population in Pensylvania, so I'm told, with some local cable TV stations even showing some S4C material.

A bit of history for ya. Some say the real saviour of the Welsh language was Queen Elizabeth 1. Who, worried that the Welsh would be indoctrinated by the catholic church commissioned the first translation of the protestant bible into Welsh at a time when the language was starting to die out. One of the first times that Welsh had been written down and made available to the ordinary people, it started a resurgence in Welsh speaking as it was the first book many people were able to get hold of.

Fascinating what?

... now, back to the girly stuff .. that's enough of that ...


Cerys x

That's a tasty looking sausage you have there Tiina!
xx

Mmmmmm yum. A nice collection of seafood there too. Which is the diet I'm on at the moment, seafood and eat it.
(Sorry)
xx

Tiina

Of all the Fishmongers in all the towns in all the world, you had to choose that one! I spent a few weeks working in Fishguard and went in that very shop many times. Fascinating fact alert: Fishguard was used as the location in the film of Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood"



.. But as this is supposedly a Tranny site rather then a history lesson here's a pic of an old dear in Welsh national Costume



Elegant what ...? If you ask nicely I'll tell you the tale of how a small group of Welsh women dressed like this defeated Napoleon's invasion of Britain at Fishguard .. 'tis true.

Cerys x
(Useless information, I got it)

OK Shan just for you ..

A small contingent of the French army, mainly made up of convicts who had been released into conscription invaded Wales near Fishguard in 1797. They spent several days waiting in the hills for reinforcements that never turned up and started to get hungry and disillusioned. Suddenly over the hill came a group of Welsh women dressed in the traditional red costumes with "Chimney stack" hat. Seeing the red outfits and believing them to be soldiers, the French (Cheese eating surrender monkeys that they are ) promptly gave themselves up in return for a good meal; thus ending the last attempted invasion of the British Isles. Unless ....

.. Many don't regard it as a proper invasion and give that honour to the American adventurer (terrorist?) John Paul Jones whose attempt to invade Britain via the port of Whitehaven in Cumbria (1776) was thwarted when his torch went out and he knocked on the door of the local customs officer to ask for a match to re-light it, thereby giving the game away! Wish I'd been there to hear that conversation.

Cerys xx

No not on his own Shan, he had a small crew on board the USS Ranger, he was looking to inflict as much damage as he could on the fleet moored in Whitehaven before scarpering. John Paul Jones was actually Scotsman and although he went on to become known as the "Father of the American Navy", he spent more time serving as a captain in the Russian navy than for the US. Eventually he went on to sing for Led Zeppelin, so quite a career really!

Weird but true .. George Washington's grandmother is also buried at Whitehaven.

Cerys xx
(I'll shut up now)

Tsk Cerys, John Paul Jones was Led Zeppelin's BASS player (and occasional keyboards), he didn't sing, Robert Plant did that.
I expect you knew that really, people often say sing when they mean play. But if your new vocation is history teacher then we must be accurate must we not.
Ms Pedantic
xx

Bhaa

Yes of course I knew that ... didn't I?

Cerys xxx

Q. What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians?
A. A drummer !

poor drummers, the butt of many musicians' jokes.
and some of them have such cute butts too.
xx

Another interesting fact.

In under milk wood, one of the towns is called llareggub. Spell it backwards and you've just found an author with a slightly cynical sense of humour. - You've gatta love Dylan Thomas! lol

"Llareggub" was inspired by the little coastal village of New Quay where Thomas lived for a while, not to be confused with the Cornish surfing town of the same name. Take a virtual walk around New Quay in the footsteps of Thomas and and his boozing buddy Richard Burton on this link ...

http://www.newquay-westwa[...]ail.htm

I wonder if Liz Taylor ever got drunk with them in the Blue Bell?

If anyone cares the complete text of the utterly brilliant "Under Milk Wood" can be found at the end of this link ..

http://www.geocities.com/[...]ood.htm

Go on you know you want to ..

Cerys x
(Is it Welsh week or what?)

Interesting how threads evolve and somehow take on a life of their own, init? Since we're onto drummers now, why do guitarists put drumsticks on the dashboards of their cars?

So they can park in the handicapped spot, of course.

Apologies to all you drummers out there. My seventeen year old wants to become a drummer when he grows up. An oxymoron, that.<g>

Hugs, Joni

no shan i was just thinking of a certain little drummer i know.
i would never attempt to compete with cerys in a bad pun competition; she is the undisputed champion.
xx