Second Christmas in Wales

We celebrated out second Christmas in Wales but not in Wales – if that makes sense.  Now that we live in Cardiff city centre we were not restricted by bus schedules.

Christmas is very big in the UK.  Places of work go out for Christmas dinner at a cost of $50 to $80 per plate.  At school the staff wore Christmas sweaters (everyone owns at least one) on November 21^st.  The next day St. John’s church (been there for over 900 years) had its first carol service.  The vicar was most apologetic but the Christmas Market opened November 13^th with the Santa parade.  St John’s is in the middle of all the Christmas Market hype and she felt that there needed to be some kind of Christian presence.  When the Christmas market opened there were street entertainers every 20 feet the full length of St. Mary’s Street and Queen Street.  Some very good, some not so good but it was all fun.

The next weekend we enjoyed a harp concert at St John’s, another Carol service, and helped a young friend celebrate his 30^th birthday at the Ty Mawr (pronounced tee mawer – the big house).  We are beginning to become suspicious of the number of 30^th birthdays going around and are thinking of holding our own.  I also went to a local pub to watch Wales make the New Zealand rugby team very happy.  We missed Stir Sunday at St Fagan’s but someone did explain it to us and I made up for it by going to the hockey game.

The next weekend we went to central Wales for a church retreat near Llandovery.  We missed our school Christmas fair; an organ recital at the Tabernacle; the German Carol service at St Johns; Barry Brass at St Johns and the Advent Service at Llandaff Cathedral.  That was OK but I missed the Welsh rugby team breaking a decades long curse by beating South Africa!

Now we are into December.  The first week we missed more concerts than we got to.  The highlight of the week was a concert featuring a world class men’s welsh choir and a plant (childrens) choir at the Tabernacle church.  The children were below and the men were on the right side of the balcony.  They placed women who could sing across from the men as there were elaborate microphones in place for harmony singing and recording while the rest of us were at the end.  One of the pieces the men sang in welsh was to an old tune that has been resurrected as the Eli Jenkin’s prayer. 

There are lots of versions of Eli’s prayer on the web.  This one has the words:  

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0opbLtDJTm0 .  A close look at the words has me convinced that Dylan Thomas had some sense of the spiritual world, although the prayer kind of takes the mickey out of the more religious among us.

The weekend of December 12^th saw the end of term one concert at school.  Some really great singing.  Even though it is a small school there is a lot of talent and Organ Morgan (what we lovingly call the music teacher) has a way of bringing the best out of the students all the way down to age three.  On Saturday we went to the German Carols at St John’s and visited the disappointing Riverside Food market (not our regular Sunday market) out our front door.  We were too tired to go to the twmpath which is a Welsh version of a Ceilidh but I believe there will be another one soon.   I am afraid the caller will call in cymraeg.  On Sunday a friend who celebrated her alleged thirtieth birthday this fall contacted us and we tried out the new Spanish/Mexican restaurant in town.  It was great!  

On Sunday night Carolene was a little ill so I went to a concert alone at the City Temple.  City temple is just around the corner from us in Riverside and the feature group was an acapella trio.  The singing was terrific and a lot of variety as well.  At one point they read the Bible (it was church and it was Christmas).  They said it was psalm 44 but it sounded like “we have yeard it with our own yars”.  I think they were from the ‘Valleys’.

I know it sounds silly but I spent most of the first week of Christmas vacation prepping for term two.  We went for a lot of walks around the Christmas markets and over to the Christmas midway near city hall.  On Saturday we went to St. Fagans museum of welsh life to see the winter solstice demonstration.  The person giving it was a historian who tried all the drying techniques and food preparations that he demonstrated.  We had him to ourselves for about 20 minutes so we pumped him full of questions.  St. Fagan’s has a long range plan to rescue old buildings in Wales, transport them to the site, and re-build them using expert builders and historians.  We can only take in so much at one time so we went for coffee at one of the coffee places.  I placed my order and the lady said “you will have to repeat that as I am having trouble understanding your Canadian accent.”  That was the second time that day someone there recognised us as Canadians.  Cariad Cymru. Cariad y Gymraeg.

For Christmas a young lady from church (I know she is young because we went to her 30^th birthday this autumn) invited us to join her family for a few days.  We gladly went assuming that if they were her family they would be wonderful people.  We were absolutely correct on that one.   We had a wonderful four days in Horsham where we toured the town including the well-stocked museum; had tea with bampy (he was from Aberdare); went to a crib service at an Anglican church; had Christmas eve dinner with a number of interesting people; had Christmas dinner with the family including bampy; went to an Anglican church Christmas day and generally had a good time.  At the time I said that when I am 93 years old I want to be as bright and optimistic as grandpa but I wish I was like that now!

After Christmas we went to Bexhill by the Sea to visit Carolene’s friend from before she and I met.  This woman grew up in the UK, lived in Canada and now lives in the UK.  We caught up on a lot of years and toured Bexhill and Hastings.  On Sunday we joined them at church and it sounded like the preacher was going to quote Eli Jenkin’s prayer:  for us it is touch and go.  Monday Carolene and I spent a day touring a small ancient town called Rye.  It was a day well spent.  Rye was the setting for a new BBC drama that was aired while we were there so we watched.  It was a costume show. (Carolene protests – it had some very good repartee and demonstrations of clever one-up-manship!)

We are glad to be home in Cardiff.  We have spent the last two days wandering around city centre and having coffee at all our favourite places.  Had bora te at the Tabernacle church this morning and will take a long walk in Cefn Onn park (Kevin on) tomorrow.  I need to go back to school for a rest.