The Royal Welsh Show 2026

    Back to Le Pays Des Galles Profond, and the Royal Welsh Show 2026.  This time, instead of taking the train, we drove over from the Infernal City, over the Brecon Beacons and down into the Usk Valley, past Brecon and down into the valley of the Wye to Builth Wells.

     The show site, lies, a great festal city of tents and caravans, over the Wye from the town.  For the farming community of the principality and beyond a place of pilgrimage - almost.  For the younger members of that community a passage rite.

     This was our second visit, and it was both busy and hot.  We must have spent about four hours there and yet I realise we barely skimmed the surface.  How could it be otherwise?  The show lasts for four days, and there are a good twelve hours of events each day.  Like all the other visitors we were merely spectators while the 'Great Work' of show, the judging of livestock etc continued around us.  Two worlds rubbing along amicably, but with some element of incomprehension.  Sadly for us, and a great many others, this is our one connection to the farming community.

     Lunch at Hafod a Hendre.  Where the exhibitors eat.

     But for me it was not always so.  I was raised between the Wars,   in a small market town in s Lincolnshire.  My grandfather was a local butcher (at one time, he had to slaughter the animals he bought to sell in his shop).  He had a flock of sheep and owned a few fields.  Chickens were kept.  The town then, in the Late 60/early 70s, had a weekly cattle market, and a busy twice weekly street market.  There were also a number of farm supply shops, places to buy tractors and other kit, a grain merchants and straw merchants, the later had a Royal Warrant.  And then, over a couple of decades or so, perhaps less, it all went.

    The livestock market was the first to go - the victim of what?  The EEC CAP farming policy, which in East Anglia and the East Midlands, at least, encouraged massive over-production of cereals, or a desire to tidy things up and centralise that sort of messiness?  It resulted, eventually, to a whole area, being redeveloped.  A long length of North St was demolished - a smashing if domineering Victorian office block, a Georgian shop and a long building - Judges - with a Georgian Gothick stone front concealing a Medieval timber structure.  Listed Grade II in 1977, and left to rot for a decade by the developer.  Gone.  All of it gone.  And in their place a cheap hideous shopping centre that has never really had a full occupancy except for the expediency of charity shops.  All the worse considering that in London the 'Comyn Ching Triangle' was then just about complete.*

     Next to fall was was the twice weekly street market, for understandable reasons it was moved to a car park but within a month it had collapsed; the Saturday market often reduced to single stall.  And with it and the other changes the whole social life centred around the market collapsed too.  For people living in the surrounding villages life became smaller.

    I suppose one can understand some of the councils actions but the effect was deadening, a sort embourgeoisement of the public space.  It became 'safe', but I prefer the cabbage stalks, the straw, and the dung.

* I once tried to introduce one of our councillors - a friend of the family - to the New Urbanism, but it was like talking to a brick wall.

  

     

Effi o Blaenau

     An unexpected trip to the Odeon Cinema in Swansea yesterday evening to watch the Welsh language film 'Effi o Blaenau' directed by Marc Evans.  It's all a bit complicated but the script is an adaptation, by the producer Bronwen Cennard, of a one-woman play, 'Ipigenia in Splott' by Gary Owen.  It is based ultimately on Euripides' play 'Iphigeneia in Aulis', but how one gets from Aulis to Splott and then Blaenau Ffestiniog we couldn't work out.  An intellectual leap too far for us - even after having it explained to me via ai it takes some swallowing.*  In fact, I would go so far as to say it is incoherent.  Anyway, the bf liked it very much but I was circumspect in my praise.  I found it interesting.

     My reservations rested almost solely upon the rather cliched imagery - the shot of the main character laying face up in the bath, the ubiquity of the drone shot.  The inert camera. We've seen enough of them by now.  But then, I suspect, this film isn't about setting out a new direction in cinematography.

     The film opens with Effie and her friends preparing for a night out in Llandudno, getting shit-faced on vodka and perhaps pulling.  All three of them are essentially solipsistic hedonists, living from weekend to weekend.  Perhaps there is nothing else to do in Blaenau Ffestiniog - where apparently is is always winter and always wet, but Snowdonia is not Splott.  The urban landscape, the alienation and the grittiness may always be with us, but the rain is not. We can assume they are unemployed, but they can still find the cash for a Saturday night on the tiles.  Effi is certainly no example of the Jungian individuated person, she is self-regarding and callous.  Here is the Meaning Crisis.  The substance abuse is simultaneously both destructive, and a search for transcendence.  

     And then something happens and meaning presents itself to Effi.  In fact, it presents itself three times.  The first time in the form of a former soldier, Lee.  Lee has lost his right leg in either Afghanistan or Iraq.  At this point Effi ' has a sort of epiphany and we see her in a different light.  She is shown as kind, softly spoken and loving.  She gathers meaning to herself in his vulnerability. (I thought that perhaps Lee would be her salvation but realised soon enough that it was too early in the film for this to happen.)  Her second epiphany is during her pregnancy, with another vulnerable body to care for.  Finally, for a third time meaning is presented to her, and this time is not snatched away, in the person of her neighbour's young daughter.  It is in the last place she would look, being on her own doorstep, and the offspring of woman she despised.  Each time she chooses to take on responsibility and find meaning there.

     The acting was excellent; the star Leisa Williams very good at eliciting sympathy for an, at times, repugnant character, Effi, without ironing-out her flaws.  The supporting cast too, is very good; credit in particular to Carys Gwilym as Effi's grandmother, and Owen Alun as the hapless Kev.

     It is at times this compelling film is very raw, and some scenes were particularly affecting.  Effi is no mere sacrificial victim.  She makes choices and she has agency, but she is also feckless.  It is all very well for a middle class reviewer in the Guardian, to see this a 'savage indictment' of the system, but Effi's chaotic life is downwind of the extreme bodily autonomy that the Guardian seems keen to promote.  In the end her life gathers some meaning when she becomes friends with her neighbour.  It's that simple.  When we accept to love and care, to take responsibility, we limit our agency.  What this film presents us with, perhaps, no doubt, unwittingly, is a spiritual journey in which Effi, through the most painful catharsis, learns to place the needs of others above the needs of her own ego and thereby finds meaning.

    Whisper it, but this film is quietly conservative.  Could almost have been written by Jordan Peterson.

     I honestly don't think I'd want a return visit to the Odeon.  Before the film there was half an hour of adverts and trailers.  It wasn't so much the adverts we disliked, but the trailers which seemed designed to discourage attendance.  The worst was that for Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the Odyssey, which looked terrible.  On the strength of the trailer, one to miss, I think.

Effi o Blaenau

2026

Producer:               Branwen Cennard

Director:                 Marc Evans

Cinematographer: Eira Wyn Jones

* None of this mythological framework is at all obvious in the film.  Like many will, and have, I came to this film without preparation.  As Lola Salem has recently said in The Critic, "Art is not about diversity, or access, or urban regeneration. It is not about measures that are ontologically extrinsic to it. Art is first and foremost about art, and the artefact owes us nothing".

St Paul, Plasmarl & St Peter, Newton: Part 2

     

     A blustery day, but sunny.  A bus ride (finally!) across the city to that most salubrious of Swansea's suburbs, Newton.  To a place of private roads, hidden villas, occasional glimpses of the sea, and St Peter's church.  Another Late Victorian/Edwardian church by that prolific architect Edward Bruce Vaughan, but in far better condition than poor old St Paul's up the valley in Plasmarl.

    St Peter stands on a corner amongst pine trees, solid, well-massed and not a little comfortable.  Quarry faced snecked masonry of Bridgend Sandstone.  Some rich detailing (Bath Stone) all in the best Bodley and Garner mode.  Some of it even put me in mind of Melrose Abbey, that remarkable Late Gothic building in the Scottish Borders.  Incomplete s tower, massive and intriguing.  As at St Paul's Plasmarl the e end more interesting than the nave.

     The rich detailing continues inside, but on the whole it's a rather dull interior - short nave of three bays and longish chancel, oddly the walls are in the same snecked masonry as the exterior.  Sedilia, otherwise no fittings of real note. 

     In all a bit disappointing, really.  Perhaps Bruce Vaughan can be thought of as a competent though pedestrian architect with, however, flashes of brilliance.

St Paul, Plasmarl & St Peter, Newton: Part I

This post, both text and photos, was created just before the second lockdown.  The plan was write a single post on both the churches.  Plans have changed.  I hope to write a post on St Peter's soon.

     A study in contrast this, and two churches by that prolific Late Victorian Welsh architecture Edward Bruce Vaughan (1856-1919), who until moving to Wales I had not heard of. Bruce Vaughan was based in Cardiff and specialised in ecclesiastical work, designing some 45 churches in Glamorgan alone.  According 'The Buildings of Wales' he built eight churches in Swansea.  All, I suspect. of quarry faced masonry.
     Every time I head into town I pass this sad sight, St Paul, Plasmarl.  It stands at the southern end of the main street in Plasmarl, Neath Rd, hard by a busy roundabout. I rather love this church, which is all rather Bodley-esque with some interesting 'free-style' detailing.  The placing of the octagonal bell tower is masterly. Alas as you can see the whole thing is beginning to give way to ruin.  The people of Plasmarl deserve better.  Since I wrote those words three years ago now, the deterioration has continued.  The top stage of the tower has begun to tilt to the north and large cracks have opened up in the masonry.  All is Ichabod.

Badger's Drift

     

     Off to Cardiff yesterday and a matinee performance of 'Badger's Drift' at the New Theatre.  This is an adaptation of 'The Killings at Badger's Drift', the first episode of the ITV detective series 'Midsomer Murders'.  The original screen adaptation of the novel by Caroline Graham was by Anthony Horowitz.  And I think, but am not entirely sure that the stage adaptation, written and directed by Guy Unsworth, was adaptation of the original screenplay rather than the novel.  It was, as can be imagined a bit meta at times; it might help to have some idea, at least, of the tv series. Anyway, this touring production stars Daniel Casey plus a very hard-working ensemble cast.  Fans of Midsomer will know Casey played DS Troy in the first six+ tv series.  I, though, am not a fan, (neither do I hate it); the theatre, however, was full of them, and that was good to see.  Interesting use of scenery etc, reminding me of a similar technique in the National Theatre of Wales adaptation of  Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town'. 

Laurel and Hardy at The Grand

      To the Grand Theater last night and an evening of early Laurel and Hardy films (i.e. before the introduction of sound) with the melodious Neil Brand accompanying at the piano, (with occasional help from the audience).  Mr. Brand's nationwide tour is to celebrate the 100 anniversary of Laurel and Hardy's comedy partnership

'Our Town'

      It is rarely, if ever, that I get to go to a theatrical first night, let alone one that launches a new theatre company.  Friday evening, however, I did just that when the Grand Theatre, Swansea, presented the Welsh National Theatre's inaugural production; Thornton Wilding's 1938 play 'Our Town'.  In some ways an intriguing choice.

     This three act play, which is rather Burkean in its conservatism, is set within the American trope/ideal of the small town - incarnated here as the fictional New Hampshire community of Grover's Corners. Twelve years - 1909-1913 - are portrayed. Nothing much actually happens, and there is an emphasis on community and continuity. A telling detail, or theme, is the increasing tendency of the inhabitants to lock their doors at night.  This essential conservativism, is not quite matched in the staging - the stage is bare, props are minimal and it is all rather 'meta'.  The main character, here played by Michael Sheen - a charismatic stage presence - is the omniscient Stage Manager.  A character that stands between the actors and the audience and engages with both, and is perhaps a manifestation of the divine.

     Changes have been made to both text and staging, which I believe involved input from Russell T Davies. Grover's Corners has been re-located to Wales: Main St has become Stryd Fawr.  A small point, but oddly (or arbitrarily?) many Americanism have been allowed to remain.  Well, the line has to be drawn somewhere.  A gay love affair (partly as a way of explaining a character's alcoholism) appears silently and fleetingly towards the end of the second act. 

     Finally in the 3rd act, at the conclusion of the play the Stage Manager is seen to join the company of the dead.  It works well enough, but the original direction is that the Stage Manager draws a curtain across the stage. (I detect the hand of Russell T Davies here; he has a history of portraying the death of God.) I worry that it undermines the Stage Manager's words at the beginning of the act:

     "We all know, that something is eternal.  And it ain't houses, and it ain't names, and it ain't even the stars...and everyone knows in their bones that something is eternal and that something has to do with human beings."

     

     The notoriously acerbic critic, John Simon, of The New Yorker, in reviewing a performance of the play at the Plumstead Playhouse (The New Yorker, 15.12.1969) wrote '....'Our Town' is recommended only to people with a craving for communal hagiography flavoured with maple syrup.'  On the strength of this production, I don't feel that to be true.  In all an excellent beginning.

Hay-on-Wye

     A fine day out in Hay-on-Wye Saturday.  Crisp and sunny.  The place humming with locals and late-season tourists.  Breakfast at the Blue Boar Café; lasagne and chips for lunch at the Rose and Crown (very fine those chips).

     A mere three books bought: 'The Garrick Year' by Margaret Drabble; 'Six More English Towns' by Alec Clifton-Taylor, and 'Rutland, a Shell Guide' by W G Hoskins.

     'The Garrick Year' is something I've been looking for for some time - though on Saturday I was actually on the hunt for Storm Jameson's 1966 novel 'The Early Life of Stephen Hind'.  'The Garrick Year', 1964, Drabble's second novel, is an exploration of a decidedly shaky marriage.  It is told from the wife's viewpoint, as she and her husband relocate from London to Hereford, where he is to take part in a theatrical festival.  Apparently satiric.  Could be fun.  Cover artwork by Caroline Smith.

     'Six More English Towns' written as an accompaniment the eponymous BBC television series, broadcast in 1981 on BBC2.  The original series - 'Six English Towns' - had been broadcast in 1978, and a third series - 'Another Six English Towns' aired in 1984.  The towns in this volume are Berwick-upon-Tweed, Beverley, Bradford on Avon, Lewes, Saffron Walden, and Warwick.  He said of these broadcasts, 'I'd like every programme to be an exercise in looking.'  I have mentioned Clifton-Taylor in a number of previous posts before.  He was educated at Queen's College Oxford, the Courtauld Institute, and (I think) the Sorbonne, and was a man of strong opinions.  He was brought to our screens by a man of equal robust opinion, John Drummond.  Clifton-Taylor was a regular contributor to the Buildings of England series, and wrote a number of books, such as 'The Cathedrals of England', and 'English Parish Churches Works of Art'.  As with John Drummond, it is unlikely we will see his sharp, erudite like again, or, for that matter, programmes such as 'Six English Towns'. He deserves a post to himself.

     So does the great WG Hoskins; and the whole phenomena of the remarkable the Shell County Guides. The guides were published by Faber & Faber under the patronage of Shell, and were edited by Sir John Betjeman and the artist John Piper. They were designed to be an alternative to 'The Buildings of England'.  Sadly, the project never reached completion. However the books are rather lovely.  The photography, for instance, is always top notch. In addition to 'Rutland, a Shell guide' of 1963 - one of the smaller and rarer of the series - Hoskins also wrote the Leicestershire volume in 1970, where in the introduction he manages to completely ignore the sw part of the county. No mean feat.

Tenby

      The bf's birthday yesterday and we decided, last minute, to take the train to Tenby.  Rather cold, but fine.  Lovely lunch.  Some photos for you.  Doors mainly.