HOLIDAYS

My mother was born on a small farm up in the hills of Mid-Wales. Over recent years my family have returned here each summer to spend time together. We stay in the Gregynog garden cottages. As well as my mother, my father and myself there are my three sisters and my brother with their partners and children. All in all there are twenty-two of us. It is a laughing, crying, chaotic and intense experience which is always worth it especially because of my nephews and nieces who are all the apples of my eye. They range in age from little Cody aged two up to James aged fifteen and in between are Jess, Rosa, Martha, Joe, Patrick, Caitlin, Luke, Tomas and Brigit. The Gregynog estate is now owned by the University of Wales and from the garden cottages you can look across the Werne valley to the hills where my mother was born on a smallholding called Porthmai. You can see the ash tree beneath which she spent most of her time playing as a child and arranging her dollies in lines. You can hear the incessant calling of the buzzards all through the day in the valley and you can watch red Kites as they swoop in circles over and over high above the hills. There are cattle and sheep and horses that graze along the deep green of the Werne bottom. A short walk away along a dark tree-lined path is an opening onto the gardens of Gregynog Hall, a huge Manor House built by the once owners of the estate. At night the sky is pitch black and filled with stars and the air is alive with the calls of owls. There are rabbits and weasels and mice. There is a hornets' nest and a wasps' nest in the eaves of the cottage and on the forest path behind the old wash house I have from time to time come across snakes.

The Gregynog estate was bequeathed to the University of Wales by the Davies sisters. These two eccentric sisters Gwendoline and Margaret were the last people to have lived as sole residents at Gregynog Hall. They were spinsters who had been gifted a huge fortune by their father who was the Welsh entrepreneur Lord David Davies. He had made his money from the mines and building railways across Wales. Both his daughters however had a lively interest in art and music and they spent their lives availing themselves of his wealth by collecting major works of art, many of which were gifted to the Cardiff Museum at the time of the last sister's death. However there are a number of great works still at the house. A Rodin bust, a Cezanne, a Monet and a Van Gogh. When the sisters were alive the house was full of music and art. George Bernard Shaw and Gustav Holst were among the regular visitors who attended the art and music parties. My grandfather was the gardener to the sisters as well as running the small farm Porthmai which he rented from them. He killed rabbits and pigeons to feed to their guests when they had the parties. He also built them the huge music rooms of wood and stone at the side of house, completely with his own hands, as his father had been a carpenter and a stone mason. This is where the guests attended their musical evenings. My great Aunt Fanny was the cook at the house and then in her later years she became a paid companion to the two sisters and lived in a little flat in the courtyard at the back of the house. 

Gregynog Hall

Each year my mother and myself make a pilgrimage to the graves of her family to bring flowers. My grandparents are buried in a small graveyard on the side of a hill in the village of Berriew. We visit the various graves of my mum's brothers and sisters who are no longer here. My mum's was a large family. I have a particular feeling of connection to my mum's sister Joyce who died of tuberculosis in 1947 when she was only twenty three. My mother, who was only eight at the time, says she well remembers Joyce dying at home being nursed by my grandmother. Joyce is buried under the oak trees in the far corner of the churchyard in the village of Tregynon and it is a place that is very special to my heart.

My great grandparents on my grandfather's side are buried in a churchyard in the small village of Manafon. This is the church where R.S Thomas the great Welsh poet was rector from 1942 - 1954. From here he wrote and released his first three volumes of poetry. I already had a love of his poems before I realised this connection with my family. Many of his early poems describe his relationships with the Welsh hill farmers to whom he feels helpless in bringing The Word and who he feels are a disappearing world away from him. It wasn't till my mum took me to these graves and I heard her stories that I realised these poems I knew so well were describing characters from my family tree (from his perspective I might add) but nevertheless his poems feel even more of a gift to me now. The yearly visiting of the graves is one of the most precious times of the holiday for me. A rare chance to spend time with my mother and a chance to stand on the ground where my ancestors bones are lying.

Me and my mum at the graves

Another source of stories about my mother's side of the family comes from one of her brothers called Alun. He came up one day to the cottages to visit us. He is a university lecturer at Swansea and has done extensive research into our family in all directions. He is an extremely passionate man full of Welsh fire and I love him. His own daughter, my cousin Rian, who was an amazing person, worked as a news presenter on BBC Wales and had already written articles for the Guardian when she was tragically killed in a car crash aged only eighteen. There is a bench in Gregynog estate gardens dedicated to Rian and I go there to feel close to her. There is a feeling of great peace and sadness mixed together here under the sycamore trees where her bench waits. On a happier note I find it truly fantastic to see the enthusiasm with which uncle Alun relays his tales about the ancestors. On my grandmother's side the name was Llwyarch. Uncle Alun told me that a few generations back there was a Llwyarch the son of a farmer. He fell in love with the butcher's wife in the village and they began a tempestuous secret affair. In the end however when the fire died down and unable to offer her any security as the farmers and their children were so poor the butcher's wife became tired of the young Llwyarch. She spurned him and told him to never come and meet her again or try to contact her. He brooded for a time and then one night stole down the hills and into the village. He broke into the butchers shop and taking a meat cleaver climbed the stairs and killed both the butcher and his wife as they lay in their bed. Then he dragged them downstairs and chopped them up in the butcher's shop. It's good to know where you come from I always say.

Towards the end of our holiday we go across to Aberystwyth. My sisters Catherine Jacqueline and Bridget, my brother Edward and all the children. Myself and Jacqueline jumped into the cold, rough sea as we do ritually every year. Just the two of us for some reason. This year I swam out quite a distance and let the huge waves throw me up and down. I love it. However when I came to try and swim ashore I found that the tide which was going out was dragging me out to sea. I've never experienced this before and it was happening to Jacqueline as well although she wasn't as far out as me. I was swimming and swimming and not getting anywhere. A feeling of desperation started to come up into me as I realised something much much more powerful than me had other ideas than I did. I could feel my arms and legs tiring and the huge waves were crashing over me. I closed my eyes and dug deep trying not to swallow the salt water. I found some extra strength from somewhere although the primeval fear was all over my body from head to toe. I heard Jacqueline struggling too and calling out and I started to make some headway eventually after what seemed a lifetime reaching a place where I could stand. Then I was thrown about and knocked off my feet over and over again by the waves till I reached the shore exhausted. Jacqueline had made it too. Wow that was frightening. I thought later on that all my musings about the dead over the years have made me think of death as more of a friend these days but when the sea tried to take me away everything that is inside me wanted to live and wanted to live with a powerful and desperate vitality. 

As I get older and preoccupations with myself start to thankfully wane somewhat I have found the voices of my ancestors and other unrelated ghosts coming through in my songs. I feel that in a way they have chosen me in order to make their voices heard and this expression is part of their coming to rest. Now that there's more space and little less noise inside me they are able to finally be heard and come through. It is very exciting to be entering this new stage of my creativity which has been going on over the last few years and which will make up the songs on my next album. I am so looking forward to sharing them. My father's side of the family is Irish and through him I experienced an incredible connection with our bloodline quite recently as well. That however is  another story. I will leave you now with this video of the great poet R.S Thomas.