Welsh

A Ray of Hope?

~ Cheryl

Here in Wales we woke up this morning to the news that the people of Hungary had rejected Viktor Orbán at last. That seems to be good news for the EU because Orbán, being a puppet of Putin, had long beeen a thorn in the side of attempts to provide aid to Ukraine. More specifically for us it means that Nigel Fauxrage and his cronies will no longer be able to command massive sums for speaking gigs in Hungary, the money for which it has widely been assumed was funneled through from Russia.

Personally I’m not counting too many chickens just yet. Péter Magyar is generally described as a ‘centre-right’ politician, which in UK terms means the Tories before they decided to turn into a more incompetent version of Reform. Magyar has a massive majority, possibly a supermajority, and that is dangerous no matter who the people in charge are. I remember how hopeful we were when Starmer won a massive majority in Westminster, and that hope has been terribly betrayed.

The Senedd election in Wales is now less than a month away, and the hope is that the downfall of Orbán, and the continuing descent into insanity of the Tangerine Tyrant in the White House, will rub off on Reform to their disadvantage. Certainly their stock seems to be falling in the opinion polls. But that doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods, because we have Proportional Representation.

A good thing about PR is that it is highly unlikley that any one party will ever have a massive majority of the type enjoyed by Starmer and Magyar. A bad thing about PR is that, if a party has 20% support, it will get around 20% of the seats. Which means that we are still looking at a significant number of Reform people in the new Senedd. Plaid Cymru will have the most seats, but probably not a majority. Reform may well end up as the official opposition because they are the second largest party. And as such, they can still do an enormous amount of damage. They will, for example, get to appoint committee chairs, which will allow them to gum up the process of government.

Where I do have some hope is that, where people are saying they will vote Reform, they are doing so, not because the believe in Fauxrage and his policies, but because they are angry and want to stick it to the people in power. In Wales that means Labour, and to a lesser extent Plaid Cymru because they have been in coalition with Labour in the past. There are also people who are planning to vote Reform because they see themselves as British or English and can’t stomach voting for Plaid. These people now have an alternative. They can vote Green.

I’m still not entirely convinced by the Polanski phenomenon, but I worked with Carla Denyer during my days in Bristol so I know the Greens have good people in senior positions. Also there is increasing evidence that disaffected voters in England who want to stick it to Starmer are now looking to vote Green rather than Reform, because they can get what they want without having to hold their noses while voting. If that effect can be replicated in Wales, it can significantly reduce the number of seats that Reform wins here, and that will be good for everyone. It may even result in the next government being a Plaid-Green coalition rather than Plaid-Labour.

Personally I would still prefer people to vote for Plaid. I am a party member, after all. But if you, or someone you know, is planning to vote Reform in Wales, please condsider voting Green instead. It is just as much a punch on the nose for Starmer, and it is, as Polanski is fond of saying, a vote for Hope, Not Hate.

A Kickstarter Campaign

~ Cheryl




So, here we go again. I’m trying to fund a new anthology with a Kickstarter campaign. There’s a good reason why I am doing this. I want to be able to offer authors a good rate for their stories. I can’t put the money up myself because the chances of getting it back are not good. Fight Like A Girl #2 has done incredibly well award-wise, but it has sold fewer then 150 copies. That’s a measure of how hard things are for a small press these days. Using crowdfunding will hopefully mean we sell more copies, and that we can pay the authors something closer to professional rates.

Of course running a Kickstarter campaign isn’t easy. A lot of them fail to meet their targets. And as soon as one goes live you are absolutely deluged with emails from scammers trying to sell you their expertise. Many of them claim to be associated with Kickstarter. They are not. One offered me a $30,000 investment if I paid him $300. I’m only trying to raise £5,500. It is bizarre.

However, the scammers will get victims because doing a successful Kickstarter campaign is hard. It was difficult enough when Twitter was useful, but now that the social media environment is so fragmented, and so many people are terrified about the rise of Facism, it is massively more so. I don’t expect to succeed without effort.

But there is a plan. Because the anthology will be about Welsh history and legend, we will be running regular updates showcasing how weird that stuff is. Most days I will post an update, either written by me or by someone else associated with the campaign, about some person or creature that might feature in a story in the book. I am hoping that these updates will draw people to the campaign page just to read them, and that some of those people will decide to pledge.

That’s the plan, anyway. But I will also be begging people to pledge on a fairly regular basis, because that is absolutely necessary. You can do so here.

New Fiction – From Me

~ Cheryl


Yeah, there’s a rare thing. I blame Jo Lambert for this. She told me that Gwyllion was looking for a certain type of story, so I wrote one.

As Gwyllion is The Welsh magazine of science fiction and fantasy, my story is very Welsh. It is set in and around the area where I live. It features Merlin, a dragon, and a couple of teenage lesbians who are huge Taylor Swift fans. Roz described it as cozy, and I guess it is because there isn’t any furious action. One of the characters does describe the current British Prime Minister as an idiot, which I suspect he would characterise as an unacceptable level of violence.

Anyway, thanks to Roz Clarke & Jo Hall for the feedback, and to Laurie and the Gwyllion crew for buying the story. If you would like to read the story, an ebook of the magazine is just £3.50, and there’s a whole lot more fiction in there as well as mine. One of the stories is in Welsh, but they’ve provided an English translation.

While you are on their website, there’s a whole 9 other issues you could be trying as well.

A Local Rugby Story

~ Cheryl

As those of you who follow the sport will know, Welsh rugby is pretty shit at the moment. One of the few good things about the national team is the captain, Jac Morgan (no relation), whom even the English accept is a world class player. Before the Scotland game yesterday, the BBC ran a little feature on Jac. You can find it here (though you probably need a UK TV licence to watch it).

I live just south of a town called Rhydaman (Amman Ford in English). Jac is from further upriver: the village of Brynaman (Amman Hill). You may remember me enthusing about the wonderful old cinema they have there. The team that Jac played for as a boy is in the neighbouring village of Cwmtwrch. That means ‘Valley of the Boar’. Specifically, of course, it refers to the giant boar called Trwyth who has a starring role in the Second Branch of The Mabinogion. He’s something of a local hero in these parts. A wild boar is, of course, the perfect mascot for a rugby loose forward.

Going back over the video before writing this post, I noticed that the BBC had changed the background music, probably to avoid having to pay more royalties. The music that they used for the broadcast was a song by Adwaith, the single off their debut album, Melyn. The song is called “Fel i fod”, and has apparently been adopted by the Wales Women soccer team. I have no idea who chose it for the feature on Jac, but it was a very Carmarthenshire thing to have done. I like to think that Jac chose it because he’s a fan.

“Fel i fod” is an unusual track for Adwaith, being much slower and more melodic than most of their fare, but it is lovely. Here are the girls doing a version as promo for the 2018 Green Man festival which, incidentally, takes place in Crucywel (Crickhowell) in the Bannau Brycheiniog a little way east of here.

I see that Adwaith are playing there again this year, along with Tristwch y Fenywod and Gwenno, but tickets are sold out and anyway I’m much too old for camping in a field.

I’m not too old to watch rugby though. I spent part of today at Parc y Scarlets watching our local women’s team. The men and boys national teams might have lost to Scotland this weekend, but Brython Thunder won a closely fought game against Glasgow Warriors. If you want a job done, get the women to do it.

Community Action in Practice

~ Cheryl


There has been a lot of talk on social media of late about how communities need to work together to fight the onrushing tide of austerity policies and Fascism, but there has been little idea of how that might be achieved in practice. Well, here in West Wales we have something that is rather special.

My friend Deri Reed runs a top quality restaurant in Carmarthen called The Warren. (I took Kevin there after Worldcon if you need a less biased recommendation.) More recently Deri has founded an initiative called Cegin Hedyn (that’s Seed Kitchen for you English-speakers). This provides a “pay what you can afford” service which aims to ensure that the people of Carmarthen and the surrounding area have “access to nutritious, delicious meals, regardless of financial means.” The service is run by volunteers and relies on donations of money and food from the local community.

Recently Cegin Hedyn has been named as one of the finalists for the Community Food Champion award in this year’s BBC Food and Farming Awards. Consequently it was featured on Saturday’s edition of BBC Morning Live. If you have access to the BBC iPlayer you can watch the segment here (fast forward to 44 minutes). The winner will be announced at a ceremony in Glasgow on December 2nd.

While it would be lovely for them to win, the point I want to make here is that this is very much a grass roots initiative that was set up to benefit the local community in a sustainable way. It is something that we could all learn from. If you would like to help out you can do so via the LocalGiving website.

By the way, Cegin Hedyn serves all of the local community. The BBC video features a couple of people I know from the local queer community. And if you check out the organisation’s website you will see that one of the Directors is my long-time friend, Frank Duffy. Frank provides all of the graphic design for The Warren and Cegin Hedyn. They have also done quite a bit of work for Wizard’s Tower over the years.

Farewell Duolingo

~ Cheryl

I have cancelled my subscription to Duolingo. It has been a good run, and I think it has helped quite a bit in my efforts to learn Welsh. However, I reached the end of the Welsh course some time ago and the app isn’t teaching me much new any more. The course I’m doing through Carmarthenshire Council is now much more useful.

I was quite tempted by the music course, but it turned out to be something like a platform video game. If you don’t have the hand-eye coordination to get it right the course is a waste of time.

Here We Go A-Wassailing

~ Cheryl

Around this time of year I generally post a jolly seasonal ditty from the very wonderful HP Lovecraft Historical Society. However, in recent years I’ve been running out of good ones and didn’t want to repeat myself. So here, instead, is Steeleye Span with a traditional wassail from around here.

The lyrics are great.

It’s me, yn Gymraeg!

~ Cheryl

As part of my process of getting to know the local cultural landscape, I have made friends with a lovely bunch of people called Inclusive Journalism Cymru. They are a group of media professionals who understand that marginalised people are very badly served by the UK’s media landscape, and are seeking to improve things in Wales.

I have written them a little blog post about why trans people, in particular, need this sort of help. Excitingly, they have published it in English and in Welsh. I am not yet good enough at Welsh to have done the tranlsation myself, but I’m very pleased to have it. As far as I’m aware, this is the first piece of writing with my byline on it that has been translated into Welsh. Here’s hoping for a lot more.