It’s not just the Olympics that dishes out gold medals – the National Eisteddfod does so too.
Cardiff’s cultural crachach were out in force for the launch of the new exhibition at the city’s Millennium Centre this evening.
To celebrate the centre’s tenth anniversary an exhibition of art by winners of the gold medal for art at the National Eisteddfod is running until mid-March.
Continue reading Aur – the golden gang at the Millennium Centre
Seen Wales play football in some strange spots over the years – Qatar, San Jose and Minsk come to mind.
Llanwern High School in Newport doesn’t quite match them for exoticism.
This friendly, earlier today, pitched the Welsh Schools FA under-18s against the Aussies’ under-19s.
Slagheap City, it has to be said, hides its charms well.
Nearly a million people now live in Donetsk, which was set up by Welshman John Hughes after he came out here in 1869. In effect he sparked an industrial revolution in this part of eastern Ukraine.
The legacy of his efforts is staggering to behold when you travel out to the huge metallurgical plant in the south of the city.
Ten years ago, Wales drew 0-0 in Moscow in the Euro 2004 play-off first leg. We lost the second leg 1-0 and, on the pitch, have never posed a serious threat to the opposition since.
The weekend was an extraordinary, surreal experience. At one point Cardiff hooligans were negotiating with local idiots to have a fight in Red Square. At the match, we had to barge policemen out of the way to enter the terrace. It was relentlessly crazy – just read Darren Tandy’s amazing tale below to get a sense of what life there is like. Here’s my piece which was first published on the Bobbing Along website:
Continue reading Extreme noise terror – Russia 0 Wales 0 (2003)
Is it crisis over now? And finally there’s been an outbreak of trust and hugs and kisses all round? Did the FA say to Chris Coleman in the communal showers after: “We were always going to keep you, Cookie – this was a test.”
I hope so. And I think it’s the least he deserves. We can all move on then. To new Welsh football fiascos and debacles. Or maybe with the world’s most expensive footballer in our ranks and Britain’s best player (Ramsey) we can finally achieve something concrete.
The road trip
Up the A4058 from for the latest National Theatre Wales production. Tickets £8. Bargain. Drive through Ponty along a route through never-ending valley villages, all look the same – where’s the join, why do they have different names? A relentless ribbon of squat miner’s homes, grey pebble-dashed terraces.
The only highlight so far of the Welsh international football season came in the 80th minute of this match.
Time was, when the surreal stuff, the weird and wonderfully wacky ways of Welsh fans were the defining characteristic of a trip and indeed, the sole reason for going. Away games were the closest we might get to a journey to Mars or being in a rock band.
I can remember the concierge of Baku’s Hotel Grot, as it should have been called, asking me: “Why your friends throw TV from 16th floor window?” He wouldn’t have understood the answer: “Because they’re from Bala.”
Continue reading Monty Python and the Holy Bale – Macedonia 2 Wales 1
Blast from the past – a South Wales rugby club in 2007
On the wall is a sheet of paper bearing a list of 33 famous people. Shirley Bassey, Adam Ant, Tom Jones, Sir Norman Wisdom, Ginger Spice etc etc.
Next to them 33 drinkers – they gotta be drinkers, they nearly chucked me out when I said I’d stopped – up the club. VWC, Geraint, Compo (Geoff) etc. All allocated a famous person each.
Above that, a heading – Dead Man’s Pool. It’s a sweepstake! If your famous person dies in the seven days from one Sunday to the next you get all the money in the pot. And the pot is well worth having.
VWC explains: “I won £1,300 on Marlon Brando I did. I remember seeing the news on telly and thinking, ‘I might have him’. I knew I’d won as soon as I walked in here and everyone told me I was a lucky bastard. It’s pot luck – they chuck
some youngsters in – Adam Ant’s not young is he, but he is Radio Rentals so who knows.”
As if to prove life’s lottery, the barman pipes up: “My brother won £1,900 on Paula Yates.”
At last, nearly 30 years after leaving the place, time to finally watch a match at Aberystwyth Town FC.
Previously the football club was the scene of student discos and the chief memory was of Simple Minds‘ Lovesong always blaring out at some point in the night.
This match never met those heights and was not a wonderful spectacle for the 300 or so who turned up.
But, as in the eighties, there were plenty of off-pitch highlights. The clubhouse is a treasure trove of pictures and heartfelt love for a club.
Was a bit surprised there were no photos or reports of games played by Chelsea up here in the eighties. They were regular visitors I seem to remember.
But that was more than made up for by the John Charles lounge, which is, in effect, a part of the clubhouse adorned with terrific pictures of the legend in action, without quite clarifying why they were there. Presumably Charles DID play at some point for Aber on his travels. And even if he didn’t, so what, he deserves this sort of tribute.
Welsh Premier League is a huge contrast now with the English. Just before kick-off an Aber urchin on the terrace quizzed one of the players: “What number are you?”
“16,” he replied.
“Are you any good?”
Well he came on as sub later but by then the cause was lost.
A comedy own goal gave Aber the lead, Bala’s keeper saving well only for Tony Davies to unwittingly knock the rebound over his own line, for an unlikely lead.
Bala bounced back with Davies netting an overhead kick as the keeper was unable to fist away a superb corner.
Second-half saw Bala seal the win with goals from Hunt and Brown. 3-1 was about right on the right and a miserable evening was compounded for Aber when Matty Collins went off with a broken shoulder.
Incidental highlights included seeing a Welsh international on the field – Mark Jones for Bala. The sight of ex-Hereford Kenny Lunt, for the visitors, was also a surpise. For Aber it was good see the famous Welsh surname Cadwallader in the team line-up. And a stirringly named Glyndwr Hughes in the home team line-up.
We’re a broad church at the Wales fans’ team. No, really.
So when three Canadian gap year types got chatting to some of our number on the train from Graz to Zagreb, they were invited to play for the team the following day.
And to our surprise they turned up for the rendezvous at 4pm on the day before the trip to Osijek. Well oiled – how did they know this was part of the deal? Adam Soil (goalie), Brian Weatherseed (blonde hair) and Rob Cooley are travelling around Europe. In Hungary last we heard.
The mayor of Zagreb (still trying to find his name on the internet) kicked the match off apparently at the very plush training ground of the first division side NK Zagreb.
I didn’t know this fact otherwise I would have taken a picture of the kick-off. Just to add to the surrealism. And then he invited us all for breakfast on the day of the game.
And, even more surreal, the invitation was later rescinded for some family reason (Hmmm, isn’t that what politicians all over the world say?).
As per usual we slipped into a four-goal deficit in what seemed like seconds. And our top front man Owain from Aber was too knackered to last the first half.
Then keeper Greg hurt his leg – he’d done a half-marathon the day before. And a second keeper
So half-time came and Adam, three days into his European holiday of a lifetime, stuck his hand up to be goalie for the second half. He has a scary twitter nickname folks @evilsalty – go and follow him.
Man of iron and top Wales goalscorer Will Johnson took the field after running a marathon the day before in Graz (show-0ff). What’s he on? I reckon he could outlast Lance Armstrong even if Armstrong had swigged a bucketful of EPO/steroids/dopedisguiser.
And we pulled a goal back through the multi-talented Johnson, scoring for his tenth fans’ game in a row. A Gullit-esque rocket header from a corner .
And then came the highlight. Man off the S4C soap opera Rhys Hartley gave away a penalty in the box and Adam from Toronto (full of some sort of concoction) had to face it.
The Croat hit it low to the keeper’s left and well, would you Adam and Eve it?, our man danced across to save it with his left foot. The penalty taker made it to the rebound first and fired in a cannonball which ricocheted off Adam.
A double-save from a penalty. A Wales fans’ first, surely? Big Nev eat your heart out. And definitely the highlight of the game, if not the week.
We showed those pesky Croats how to take a penalty when ex-Croesyceiliog hotshot Huw made it 6-2.
We’ve had ex-international Malcolm Allen, former League of Wales players, the Doc Marten-wearing barman from the Irish pub in Graz matched up against 1978 World Cup star Hans Krankl.
But, the biggest guest, for me so far has been @evilsalty
The fevered delusions of a man in love make for compelling theatre in this one-man show.
Well before Ozzy Osbourne used it as an album title, Russian writer Gogol wrote a short story on a clerk’s descent into abject humiliation.
And it’s quite a plunge we witness. So though it sounds dark and forbidding it’s performed so expertly that you’re never overwhelmed by the character’s despair.
It’s superbly acted by Robert Bowman who manages to draw us in to the life of a self-important St Petersburg bureaucrat whose chief role seems to be the sharpening of pencils for a bigwig.
He falls for the bigwig’s daughter many years younger than him. A man in love is barely rational and one second he’s howling like a dog on heat, then softly speaking of the raptures of love he feels.
It’s a physically and emotionally demanding role for one actor to sustain, but Bowman manages to switch the contrasting tones of his emotions extraordinarily well.
He gabbles madly in the height of his obsession, slows down and then loses control as the madness deepens. It’s a highly skilled, remarkable, 70-minute performance by Bowman who barely stops talking, ranting and fantasising while careering across the set all the way through.
Afterwards, I couldn’t help feeling that Ozzy must have read the book.
Well worth seeing when it goes on a national tour next year.
Miles from Nowhere 