Reflections after a holday in Wales

Pen-y-Banc Farm, Llanwrda

Eight days ago we returned from a sunny and delightful week’s holiday in rural Camarthenshire, not far from Llandovery overlooking the Towy Valley. It’s a place we’ve been to a number of times in the past, a holiday cottage set in what should be a show garden. Our hosts were the amazing Kenneth and Gill, who over twenty years have converted a run-down farmstead into a place of beauty and a haven for wild life. The reason I call them amazing is that as well as being the epitome of hospitality they have made the transformation in the years since they retired.

Across the Towy Valley

My one sadness is my inability to explore the garden intimately in my wheelchair. However Jane brings back photos from around the paths – and I am able to sit in the back garden and enjoy the view over the valley to the Black Mountain.

For us one of the joys of that part of Wales is that is relatively accessible from our home, and yet it feels remote. Crossing the Severn Bridge is not exactly like crossing the English Channel, but there’s a faint sense of that as you go through the toll booths and all the traffic signs change to bilingual, with Welsh coming first. Talking of roads, what a joy they are after the terrors of our potholed, pock-marked tracks! Even the most minor of country tracks have scarcely any potholes. The Welsh government is often cited by Tory ministers as an example of Labour mismanagement, but I have to observe that they are a hundred times better at maintaining their roads than the English administration. I guess it’s a matter of allocating funds. In England local authority grants have been cut by 49.1% since 2010. Maybe it’s because the government allows local authorities 52 times less per mile to spend on local roads than it spends itself on major roads. And it's not just the roads that the cuts affect.

Just this morning I met a chap with a very complex medical condition who needs a support worker. The funding for support has been taken away, so that he now has to pay for his carer – which is taken from his pensions. When he suggested he might do without the support, he was told that wasn’t possible, and he would have to go into a home – funded by the sale of his assets. Apart from his small bungalow he has precious few assets. Meanwhile in a neighbouring council, there’s a team of social workers in child protection, half of whom are off ill with stress. The pressure on remaining team-members is scarcely imaginable. (Think of a half-strength football team in the World Cup, with the nation's expectations on them.) Such is the human cost of economising all in the name of cutting the national deficit. The people it hurts are not those who decree it, because, of course, if anything goes wrong, they'll not get the blame.

Aberaeron

Carreg Cennen Castle

How it is that Wales manages to maintain all its roads so much better than England, I don't know. Perhaps there's a strong lobby of Geraint Thomases. Certainly we met a road race of lycra-clad cyclists on the road home. (By the way, am I the only one to mourn the passing of leisure cyclist in normal clothing on normal bikes?) Nevertheless I'm grateful to Wales that I'm still able to enjoy its excellent roads, its beautiful gardens and castles, and its coast. We'll be back.

Whingeing poms

Last night illustrated perfectly what I was arguing on 26th February in Infantilising Sport. By a last minute whisker England squeezed a final winning goal over Tunisia in the FIFA World Cup. Unfortunately I was watching the game with the BBC commentary. The commentators were full of indignation about the referee, who should, they reckoned, have awarded at least two penalties for clashes between the defence and English captain, Harry Kane.

"What," they said, "was the VAR referee thinking of? Why did he not tell the ref to look again? Isn't that's what VAR is for?" Oh, look at the Tunisians; they're getting in the way. Even after the end of match when we'd won, what were the pundits talking about? The missed penalties - surprise! To give him his credit, Harry Kane was quite philosophical about it.

I know it's the ancient English custom, as our Antipodean cousins termed it, "whingeing Poms". It's not fair. Maybe the Tunisian commentary team kept harping on about English diving or whatever they saw....

Perhaps the commentators, both BBC and ITV (who are equally prone to whingeing), should have a copy of the archetypically English poet, Kipling's poem If:

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;...

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!" At present, we are further from such equanimity than we have been for many a long year.

Nevertheless, lest those who know me well accuse me of insufficient national pride, congratulations to Gareth Southgate and his team - of course!

It's so UNFAIR!!

Of course, after England's forlorn exit from the World Cup yesterday, the media have been full of recriminations for our 'dismal', 'pathetic' showing: Sepp Blatter, FIFA's president, who apparently is responsible for our goal that never was; Jorgé Larrionda, the ref, and his assistant, who apparently were the only people in the entire stadium not to have seen the ball cross the line; Fabio Capello, the manager, who doesn't speak good enough English; the English FA who appointed him and extended his contract days before the World Cup - and, of course, the hapless players, worn out, unpatriotic 'overpaid performing monkeys' who just didn't 'step up to the plate' when it counted.

What a fickle bunch the press - and we the public - are! When Signor Capello was appointed, he was hailed as the great manager, who came and instilled the much-needed discipline into the England squad, and achieved a 100% record in the qualifying rounds so that we were given a seeded place in the finals. Here was a man who had moulded these individual millionaire egos into a TEAM. 'Ingerlund, Ingerlund, Ingerlu-und!' We were heading for Brazil in the Final! Then after a long premiership season here, reality hit with the first lacklustre match against the USA and then the even less lustrous one v Algeria. Doubt began to infect expectation. Were we about to suffer the same fate as France and later Italy? Surely not. It was hanging in the balance until little Jermaine Defoe popped up and headed that single crucial goal against Slovenia. Not exactly glorious, but it would do.... I suspect the euphoria should have been a warning.

'Ingerlund, Ingerlund, Ingerlu-und!' To be fair, I thought England responded well to Germany's 2-0 lead. I guess most of us were thinking, 'Here we go again...'. But to give them their due, the English team came out fighting and it should have been 2-2. However, clearly, the ref didn't see Lampard's rocket cross the line before spinning out in a split second. 'Unbelievable!' the commentators fulminate! The fans boo the officials off at half-time. It's so unfair! Sadly even our PM joins in. But if the ref didn't see it he couldn't award it. C'est la vie. Che sera sera. That's life. Life IS unfair. But that doesn't mean you give up fighting for justice. What was disappointing was to see how the stuffing seemed to have been knocked out of us. I don't give anything for this 'they had no pride in the country' nonsense. It was more like, 'Perhaps it's just not our day after all.' We tried hard and played well, but the Germans played better, to be honest. And so we're out. And all the armchair pundits and would-be managers have their scalpels out. They're gunning for Fabio - of course -. If he goes, it will be at a cost. He's no fool!

Then in the middle of Radio 5's phone-in on the subject breaks the news that another bomb-disposal soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, and suddenly the perspective changes.... Football is not more important than life and death. Actually, it's entertainment - and, what's more, it's escapist entertainment. There are people out there who are laying down their lives for what they believe in. 

I've just watched disabled artist, Katharine Araniello's latest work, Follow Me On My Journey To Die, a short film she made last year, about disabled artist, Gemma's quest for publicity and fame by seeking permission from the High Court to commit suicide and the dire effect it has on others. Should you get the opportunity, do try and see it. That is serious, though not humourless, stuff. Sorry to say so, but it's even more important than football.