Land of My Fathers

So. Despite the popularity of breasts, there are some BritHaters who have indicated that there may no longer be any blog worthy stories to be had now that I am back in the UK. Practically a treasonable suggestion, I feel and thus am determined to live in a manner that proves these pessimists wrong whilst I'm still riding the we-can-drink-out-of-the-tap-in-this-country?! wave. This is the same wave as the wow!-cows! and the autumn-colours-are-so-enriching wave. Man, there is a lot to appreciate in this country. Isn't it amazing that we have a national rail system?! In Vietnam there was one train that went up the coast three times a week and took three days to get to Hanoi and in Singapore they only had MRT trains because the country was too small to bother with anything else. So BORING.

Anyway, before my big breast adventure in Richmond Park next week, I decided to go on a different sort of adventure to Cymru, Land of my Fathers.  In fact, it's the Land of my Father's Mother and thus only a quarter my own, and if you research your family history, you'll probably find that it's also Land of Your Fathers in some small percentage somehow, because that tends to happen if you're british or sort of washy American, Australian or Canadian: the further you go back in your family tree, the more likely you are to find the Celt.

Driving towards Wales is very exciting because the closer you get to it on the M4, the more it dawns on you that Wales counts as a different country: you don't need your passport to get across the bridge, but you do need to pay £6.50 to get in, like the visa system in Indonesia and Turkey. It's a shame you don't get a stamp of a red dragon somewhere official because that would be the most amazing. It also has its own language spoken by DJs on its own radio station which kicks in around Swindon and plays songs in Welsh and French as well as what I could only guess was anti-Thatcher protest music, and all the signs have double signage: stop/araf, humps/twmpathau, give way/ildiwych and eventually they just outlaw vowels all together.

To prepare properly for my trip and the outlawing of vowels, I learnt some essential Welsh from my two very lovely friends, spitting my way through the 'dd', 'll' and 'rh' letters in the alphabet that replace what now seem like the very unimpressive 'z' sound, and managed to learn 'wine', 'coffee', 'beach', and 'delicious!'  And since I'm a gifted and talented learner, I picked up 'church', 'two', 'white', 'headache', 'goodbye' and 'excuse me' in order to string together three very impressive conversations. So. Just as long as I have just been to a church and am going to drink white wine on a beach, or am ordering a cup of coffee or eating something delicious just before bed time, I am ready to blend in seamlessly with the rest of the Welsh speaking population. I even thanked a lady at the service station and she totes 'diolch'-ed me back.  Practically fluent.  What with my Vietnamese (left, right, straight on, stop, purple, fish, mot hai ba), Mandarin (two chocolate sundaes, where is the train station?) and Spanish (a return ticket to Salta, please!), in addition to my perfect (yes, perfect) French and English, I think I am now justified in writing 'six-lingual' on my CV. Right? 

Now, if all that tropical lingo doesn't convince you that a trip to Wales is an exciting and culturally Li Hi adventure worthy of this blog, then maybe the knowledge that it is home to the smallest city In The World will do more to persuade you.  If you followed my adventures through South America, you'll know that I really enjoy In The Worlds and have been collecting them for some time now (http://emmadoessouthamerica.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/uyuni-salt-flats.html), and St David's is right up there with Uyuni, Cerro Blanco and La Paz.

Obviously, to be a city, there needs to be a cathedral. Oh! Here it is! (Note tropical blue sky, please.)

And to be a historic cathedral in Wales, there needs to be a book of Welsh Law dating back to the 18th century (I think). Oh! Look! Here it is!

No. Really read it. This is the most hilarious thing. Not only did the law enforcer at the time see the need for this to be explicitly detailed as a law, the hilarious curator of the treasury chose this page to display for visitors to a really important historical and religious site. What a legend this person is.

After reading about the rights of 18th century Welsh hermaphrodites, the next two days were spent enjoying the autumnal Welsh weather around the Pembrokeshire coastline, and by autumnal weather, BritHaters of beginning-of-the-blog-infamy who whine about the minging weather, I mean this tshirt gorgeous amazing so beautiful weather:

I'd like to state right now that I have not had Vinegar Bra since returning to the UK and I am so grateful for our gorgeous, non-sweat climate. Thank you brisk wind! Thank you bracing gusts! Thank you crisp mornings with sunshine! Thank you balmy afternoons when jumpers are needed in the shade! My bras are eternally indebted to you all.

So, if you're still not convinced that the UK is blogworthy, and the small role that this blog is now to fulfil is to act as one of those M&S or John Lewis or BBC adverts where everything in the UK looks wholesome and gorgeous and epitomises all that is right and good in the world for my nostalgic expat friends instead of a record of daring equatorial adventures for my envious Brit-based buddies, then so be it. These are for you, Big International School ladies! Aren't the British Isles pretty?

Such fluffy clouds!

Fluffy fluff fluff!

Doesn't original South Wales look remarkably like a smaller version of New South Wales? They really got that comparison quite right. Just a shame New South Wales probably already had its own indigenous name before Captain Cook got there...

And of course, any Welshman would be disappointed if I didn't end with this:

Yes. Childish.