Talking for Wales.

Malcolm Bradley                   Talking for Wales

I live in Wales, and have done for over twenty five years, although I am still thoroughly English - or so I thought until recently. After a very long absence through loss of contact I have received a letter from my sister in South Devon. Eager for news of me and my exploits, she naturally wants to visit as soon as possible. 'We'll talk for England', she said. But surely, I thought, we'll be talking for Wales. We'll certainly talk and reminisce about England, but the whole exhilarating discourse will take place here in Wales, albeit in a town invented by the English for the English. And continually geared up - at least during the summer - for English tourism.

Why should my mind register this almost tangible discrepancy at the prospect of talking for England in what is virtually an English enclave situated in a heavily Anglicised region of North Wales? What does 'Wales' mean to those who come to live here, and what does it mean to those who do not?

My chief reason for coming to Wales in the first place was to visit Laughame, the home of Dylan Thomas - at that time the only Welsh poet I could name. Somehow, I never did see Laughame. Instead I rented a flat in Swansea, in the very house in which Kingsley Amis wrote Lucky Jim. Cwmdonkin Park was just a stone's throw away, although I never quite caught a glimpse of the hunchback, hurrying out of sound of the taunts of the truant boys.

Much later, after moving to North Wales, I studied English at a Welsh University. In my final year as an undergraduate I chose, from amongst several others, a course on Welsh writing in English. I didn't have to. There were plenty of other options. After all, I was thoroughly English; I chose Dr Johnson for my dissertation and smoked Shakespearean cigars in my pursuit of happiness. So why did I opt for studying the work of Welsh writers? Simply to get a double helping of Dylan Thomas, or something more? Certainly the course conferred on me the unprecedented ability of being able to name more than one Welsh poet, and even to tell them apart by looking carefully at their poems. I learnt, to however limited an extent, to talk for Wales by tuning in, and responding to, just a few of its many voices.

Wales, then, for me - even this most English of Welsh towns in which I live - means quite a bit more than Welsh dragon fridge magnets, male voice choirs, demented seagulls and free-range goats. Precisely what it is difficult to say, but I will be talking soon, to my thoroughly English sister, about these and no doubt many other extraordinary things, for Wales.