Once upon a time in Ceredigion
Which is pretty much the West of Wales, if not just the West.
I only buy one newspaper a week. This isn't because I'm mean or that I don't want to know what's going on in the world. It's because the nearest place I can get a newspaper is five miles away, up a steep hill and down the other side. It's too far to walk, too short to take the car* and if I were to bike it I'd have to shower afterwards.
So I buy a paper on Saturday morning, when the Horse Doctor and I go to Aberystwyth to do the shopping. Except that this morning they didn't have our favoured paper.
I find it very hard to adjust to reading a different newspaper. It might be that I'm an old fogey set in my ways, or it might be that I get confused when the world news is in the wrong place. There are certain papers I have to avoid because I disagree strongly with their political stance and I end up ripping the pages to shreds. There are some papers I avoid because they use short, simple words and have fewer of them than pictures. Mostly they are dominated by what they try to call 'sport' but which is in fact just 'football'. Neither are things that interest me greatly.
So we couldn't get our Saturday paper in town. Not a huge problem, though I like to work my way slowly through the sections over lunchtime throughout the week, and sometimes I even manage to get a few of the cryptic crossword clues done before the next Saturday comes round and it all goes in the recycling. I can never tell if I've got them right, since they publish the answers in the Monday edition, but I like filling the blanks in anyway.
And sometimes, just sometimes, the little shop in the nearby village (up a steep hill and down the other side), still has a copy of my favoured newspaper when we get back from town, car laden with supplies for the next week.
Unusually, the road outside the shop was full of parked cars. The council sent some underused staff out a while back to paint yellow lines, but there's never been a traffic warden anywhere near the place, so I parked a distance away and set off on foot.
At the door of the shop, gathered together like some mass of harpies, were about twenty women, ranging in age from near-eighty to not-yet-eighteen. One of them had a small buggy with an ugly-looking child in it. Cackling, they were, and plotting some heinous wrongdoing. I nearly didn't go into the shop, almost turned tail and fled. But we Oswalds are made of sterner stuff. Bearing in mind that they all seemed to favour the Welsh tongue, I put on my best Home Counties accent and said:
'Excuse me ladies, could I get through to the shop please.'
They cackled some more, made a few barbed comments about the colourful nature of my trousers, but parted nonetheless. Inside, I found the last copy of my favoured newspaper and purchased same. Turning to leave, I could see the assorted women peering through the window, pointing and arguing amongst themselves. When they saw me looking at them, they averted their eyes, as if ashamed.
I made good my escape, confusing them all with a polite 'Bore Da'** and darting back to the car, whereupon the Horse Doctor, who had remained within all the while, said:
'I thought Covens were meant to meet at night.'
This then was Devil's Bridge, or Pontarfynach in the old language (which means bridge over the monk's river - a indication perhaps of how the locals view Christianity?) Last year we were intending to build a house in this village. Now I wonder if we didn't have a lucky escape.
*It wrecks a car's engine to drive it for anything less than a good fifteen mile run from cold. Never buy a secondhand car that's done less than 10,000 miles a year, and particularly don't buy one that looks spotless from a little old lady who uses it once a week to drive to the post office for her pension. It will break as soon as you take it near a motorway, and the interior will probably smell of spaniel wee.
**That's 'good morning' to you and me.
I only buy one newspaper a week. This isn't because I'm mean or that I don't want to know what's going on in the world. It's because the nearest place I can get a newspaper is five miles away, up a steep hill and down the other side. It's too far to walk, too short to take the car* and if I were to bike it I'd have to shower afterwards.
So I buy a paper on Saturday morning, when the Horse Doctor and I go to Aberystwyth to do the shopping. Except that this morning they didn't have our favoured paper.
I find it very hard to adjust to reading a different newspaper. It might be that I'm an old fogey set in my ways, or it might be that I get confused when the world news is in the wrong place. There are certain papers I have to avoid because I disagree strongly with their political stance and I end up ripping the pages to shreds. There are some papers I avoid because they use short, simple words and have fewer of them than pictures. Mostly they are dominated by what they try to call 'sport' but which is in fact just 'football'. Neither are things that interest me greatly.
So we couldn't get our Saturday paper in town. Not a huge problem, though I like to work my way slowly through the sections over lunchtime throughout the week, and sometimes I even manage to get a few of the cryptic crossword clues done before the next Saturday comes round and it all goes in the recycling. I can never tell if I've got them right, since they publish the answers in the Monday edition, but I like filling the blanks in anyway.
And sometimes, just sometimes, the little shop in the nearby village (up a steep hill and down the other side), still has a copy of my favoured newspaper when we get back from town, car laden with supplies for the next week.
Unusually, the road outside the shop was full of parked cars. The council sent some underused staff out a while back to paint yellow lines, but there's never been a traffic warden anywhere near the place, so I parked a distance away and set off on foot.
At the door of the shop, gathered together like some mass of harpies, were about twenty women, ranging in age from near-eighty to not-yet-eighteen. One of them had a small buggy with an ugly-looking child in it. Cackling, they were, and plotting some heinous wrongdoing. I nearly didn't go into the shop, almost turned tail and fled. But we Oswalds are made of sterner stuff. Bearing in mind that they all seemed to favour the Welsh tongue, I put on my best Home Counties accent and said:
'Excuse me ladies, could I get through to the shop please.'
They cackled some more, made a few barbed comments about the colourful nature of my trousers, but parted nonetheless. Inside, I found the last copy of my favoured newspaper and purchased same. Turning to leave, I could see the assorted women peering through the window, pointing and arguing amongst themselves. When they saw me looking at them, they averted their eyes, as if ashamed.
I made good my escape, confusing them all with a polite 'Bore Da'** and darting back to the car, whereupon the Horse Doctor, who had remained within all the while, said:
'I thought Covens were meant to meet at night.'
This then was Devil's Bridge, or Pontarfynach in the old language (which means bridge over the monk's river - a indication perhaps of how the locals view Christianity?) Last year we were intending to build a house in this village. Now I wonder if we didn't have a lucky escape.
*It wrecks a car's engine to drive it for anything less than a good fifteen mile run from cold. Never buy a secondhand car that's done less than 10,000 miles a year, and particularly don't buy one that looks spotless from a little old lady who uses it once a week to drive to the post office for her pension. It will break as soon as you take it near a motorway, and the interior will probably smell of spaniel wee.
**That's 'good morning' to you and me.
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