I suppose, if you had nothing to do, you could think about this madness

and Its rebuttal

If I ever thought the UK and US were different planets--now I know.

Here is a short checklist of things I am finding useful
Sorry it is not sorted into categories!
The EU/EC and JNCC sites are v.useful and you can trawl around them
Gwynedd CC site is difficult to negotiate..they clearly don't think the same way as me...but some of the the Minutes of Dwyfor are worth reading!
Look at Ancient Woodland...Cheshire CC to see what might be.have been done in Gwynedd

Forestry Commission - Comisiwn Coedwigaeth - Ynglyn a Ni - bwrdd y comisynwyr
The National Trust
The Woodland Trust
The Wildlife Trusts Internet Site
Ancient Semi-Natural Broadleaved Woodland
The Wildlife Trusts Internet Site
National Assembly for Wales: Organisation Index: Home
UK Safari - A site for anyone interested in the wildlife of Britain
PFAF Database Search
rspb.org.uk
Endangered Species
Clogwyni Pen Llyn/ Seacliffs of Lleyn - SAC selection
Corporate Information
JNCC - Coastal
Jeff Higgott's UK Lepidoptera web site
Gynedd Archaeological Trust
Environmental Contacts
Dwyfor Planning Committee - 2001/02
Cyngor Gwynedd Council
Great Nut Hunt
Managing Natura 2000 sites...Provides the explanation why the Gwynedd CC EIA is unsatisfactory..Long pdf document
Environment Agency - Protected areas
ENGLISH NATURE
ECNC - European Centre for Nature Conservation
EU Birds Directive 79/409/EEC
European Union nature conservation policy and legislation
David Element's Wildlife Web Page Orthopteroids 1
UK, Wales, Environment, Landscape, Conservation: Officers and Staff of CPRW
Protected Countryside - LLeyn
Protected Countryside - Lleyn
Links
National Assembly for Wales: Organisation Index: Home
Countryside Council for Wales
CADW
Butterflies
Moths
The Arts Council of Wales

A Short Guide to the Endangered Species of Sarn
Does not include dead poets and painters nor human refugees from the Welsh Wet Winter

Among the less common recently Breeding Species and plants
of which the habitats will be destroyed are :
Birds
Nuthatch Sitta europeaea
Tree Creeper Certhia familiaris
Woodcock Scolopax rusticola EU1
Woodpeckers Dendocopus major and minor
Picus viridis
Long-tailed Tit Aegithalus caudatus
Coal Tit Panus ater
Blackcap Sylvia atricapilla
Tawny Owl Strix aluco
Little Owl Athene nocturna
Barn Owl Tyco alba*
Nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus EU1

Animals
Weasel Mustela rivalis
Lizard Lacerta agilis
Slow Worm Anguis fragilis
Grass Snake Nutrix nutrix
Adder Vipera berus*
Dormouse Muscardinus arvellanarius*
Harvest Mouse Micromys minutus
Pipistrelle Pipistrellus pipistrellus*
Butterflies and Moths
Marsh Fritillary Euphydryas aurinia*
Orangetip Anthocharis cardaminea
Peacock Inachis io
Small Copper Lycaena philaeus
Blues Celastina argiolus
Polyommatus icarus
Hawk Moth Articia agestia
Large populations of orthopteroids and arthropods*
Plants and Flowers
Wood Anemone Anemone nemorosa
Horsetail Equisetum arvense
Hart's Tounge Fern Aspenium scolopendrium
Ramsons Allium ursinum
Early Purple Orchis Orchis mascula
Spotted Orchis Dactylorhiza maculata
Wood Sorrel Oxalis acetosella
Kingcup Caltha palustris
Significant growths of lichens, mosses, liverworts and bryophytes*
*Subjects of UK Biodiversity and other Surveys

With the nights drawing in you will be looking for a new pastime. Of course in the UK you will have to survive, floods, gales, firemen, fireworks and Christmas in Thurrock too. So I gladly put forward This to help you survive the candle lit teacake hours. Talking of Christmas I particularly encourage you to visit their GIFT SHOP!

SARN RHIW
Now what follows will not make a lot of sense unless...You remember the pictures of the road falling into the sea? Well the brilliant solution of Gwynedd County Council is to drive a new road through the Sarn Garden...stone walls and vegetation untouched since the late 18th century, through the Plas Yn Rhiw National Trust woodlands-semi natural ancient woodlands protected by National Assembly, Joint National Conservation Committee Special Area of Conservation status etc..
Strangely The National Trust do not appear that fussed...what is this all about.??..I know it is not Cliveden..but I thought the preservation of the demotic and quotidian was in fashion........so we have been having a little work!!



Gruffydd Morris
Planning Manager
Dwyfor Area Office
Gwynedd County Council
Ffordd Y Cob
PWLLHELI
Gwynedd
LL53 5AA

October 24 2002

Dear Gruffydd Morris,

Planning Application CO2D/0382/30/R3Q-Proposed road at Rhiw

I gather that the above planning application will be considered by the Dwyfor Area Services Committee at its meeting of November 4th 2002.

You will, I hope, forgive me for writing such a long letter; however I believe the issue is of sufficient importance to merit such. I apologise too that I have not provided a bi-lingual version.

The work that has gone into this application has continued over a long period of time during which I have believed it was better that I should not be involved, nor express a view. The property, Sarn Y Plas, which is leased to me by the National Trust is at the heart of this planning application, together with those properties of Treheli, Bryn Ffowc and Plas Yn Rhiw.

I am sure you also know I am the son of R.S.Thomas and M.E.Eldridge to whom, as well as myself, the Sarn Y Plas property was gifted, on lease, by the Keating sisters in recognition of both friendship and the contribution that my parents were making to Welsh literary and artistic life.

But it does appear that these things may be moving to some kind of conclusion and that I should request that yourself and the officers of the Council and members of the Dwyfor Area Committee consider what follows.

Two previous attempts have been made, over the last 30 years, to stabilise the road from Llandegwning to Y Rhiw against the effects of coastal erosion. It, sadly, appears that the second of these attempts has also been unsuccessful. Whether more might have been done, historically, particularly had funds been available, is a conjecture; as is whether, had modern technologies been available, different engineering solutions might have been successful. Whatever the case a great deal of money has been spent in vain.
However you will know that the continuing erosion of the road has been drawn to the Council's attention over the years, particularly by Rhiw Community Council.

I am very sensible of the fact that the Highway Authority and Dwyfor Area Committees find themselves in a difficult position. On the one hand some local residents believe that a new road is essential and some also appear dismissive of any objections or alternatives; elected councillors will be sensitive to that opinion; on the other hand you have to consider the wider picture of the irreparable damage that will be done to a significant area of land and the considerable weight of local and national opinion that opposes a proposed new road.

I think that strong arguments against the proposal to construct a new road behind Treheli Farm, through the Sarn Y Plas garden and the Plas Yn Rhiw woodlands can be made on at least four major grounds.

These are Planning Policy and Practice, Transportation and Routes, Environmental and Technical, and Heritage

1. Planning Policy and Practice

The planning application appears to be in contradiction and breach of the planning policies and priorities of The National Assembly, Gwynedd County Council and Dwyfor itself with regard to the environment, transportation and heritage. Indeed it is on the basis of contradictions in respect of National Assembly policy in particular that a request has been made for the application to be 'called in'. The application appears in contradiction to the National Assembly policy with regard to 'ancient natural or semi-natural woodlands' and in contradiction of the the County Council's Environmental Strategy with regard to both The Natural Environment and Transportation

a. The application proposes that a road be constructed through an area of ecological, conservation and heritage significance. The application gives little or no regard for the national governmental and European recognition of the designated special status of the area of land the implemented proposal will destroy. Indeed the applicant maintains that 'the area has little or no environmental value!'

b. In preparing the proposal the applicant has carried out an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), commissioned from Axis. This is an inadequate low level assessment which fails to meet the requirements for assessing projects of this scale and impact. The EIA itself is so fundamentally flawed by contradictions as to open the application to serious challenges.

c. The applicant has carried out a geo-technical survey which fails to come to satisfactorily measurable and certain conclusions on two particular and fundamental matters:

Firstly it is vague as to whether there is even sufficient bedrock on which to build a new road, the absence of which would render the whole project pointless

Secondly it fails to address one of the major causes of erosion, other than tidal erosion, which is water run off through the particular geological structure of the area

As a consequence of the above and of what is detailed under section 3 below a considerable number of organisations with National and Local remits have seen fit to raise objections to this proposal.

2. Transportation and Routes


The application appears to breach Gwynedd CC's Environmental Strategy in terms of Transportation. This strategy seeks to reduce dependency on private vehicles and to attempt to reduce the amount of fuel consumed.. It also aims to reduce the need for travelling while recognising the needs of rural communities.

a. Whether or not the existing course of the road can be repaired appears to me still uncertain. While there may be objection to repair on the ground of cost, longevity and appearance I gather that none of these factors have been taken into consideration for the proposed new road. No estimate of final cost, nor cost benefit analysis has been provided.

b. While the longevity of a repaired existing road has been put at circa.40 years, no longevity of the proposed road appears agreed-indeed the rate of coastal erosion between Llandegwning and Tyn Y Parc is such that any new stretch of road at Plas Yn Rhiw might be rendered inaccessible within 40 years by that erosion.

c. The application for the proposed route seems additionally invidious given the number of alternative routes available. While most of them would require some upgrading there are presently some 6 alternative routes between Bryn Ffowc, Plas Yn Rhiw, Talafon and Rhiw to Sarn Meylltern, Botwnnog, Nefyn, Pwllheli, Abersoch and beyond. These roads to the SE and NW of Mynydd Rhiw and via Bryncroes have been used by the community, while the road in question is closed, with an added journey time that has been estimated at 5 minutes-not the 20 minutes that has been suggested. If the UK traffic policy is to slow traffic down in towns, it surely cannot be to speed it up in rural areas.

d. I find it quite unusual that, with the availability of modern technology, no proper CAD and 3D Computer generated visuals of the proposed road have been provided to you by the applicant. While there are suggestions that, among the grounds for not repairing the old road, there are matters of unsightliness, I see nothing that would lead one to suppose the proposed new road was sightly in a manner appropriate to its location.

e. I am very surprised that some very simple analyses of the traffic flows and actual usage of the road that is now closed do not appear available. On the basis of living in Sarn Y Plas I would estimate that traffic in most months was of the order of 20-30 vehicles a day. In the tourist months of July and August, obviously, a little higher.

The issue of access to employment, goods and services and leisure is, of course, critical to local communities. However, in this instance, whatever the wider arguments for improving accessibility for rural communities are, I cannot really believe that Dwyfor nor The National Assembly, let alone Gwynedd CC, believes that it is worth expending the sums involved, the destruction of rare habitats, rejecting Planning Policy and the destruction of a major piece of Welsh heritage and tourist attraction for the convenience of this number of persons and with the existence of alternative routes.

3. Environmental and Technical

(I)Environmental

a. An application has been made to drive a new road through a National Trust property. While this is in itself unusual, the proposed road would also be built in on land which is part of the Llyn Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Joint National Conservation Committee Llyn Coastal Special Area of Conservation (UK 0030271), the Heritage Coast and and Environmentally Sensitive Area. All of these are designated and recognised areas at a National and European level.
It would impact severely on the flora and fauna of these areas area. The JNCC itemises many of these, through its programmes such as The British Biodiversity Scheme .

However the applicant, surprisingly, asserts in the environmental statement that " the scheme would not significantly impact on any nationally or internationally designated sites of conservation interest" which I hold to be simply not true.

b. The Gwynedd CC Environmental Strategy has as its mission for 'The Natural Environment' section of its Environmental Strategy that "The natural environment, landscape and biodiversity of the county will be protected and enhanced."
and states one of its aims 'to protect and enhance the landscape and valuable. I fail to see how destroying one of the major habitats of barn and tawny owls, woodcock, voles and mice, adders and rare lizards, let alone butterflies, dragonflies, equisetum, orchis, heartstounge ferns, lichens and mosses and wood anemones, the presence of many of which attracts tourists to Plas Yn Rhiw, contributes to any policy of protecting and enhancing our local environmental heritage.

c. A proposed road would also destroy an area of ancient natural or semi-natural woodland, the protection of which forms part of National Assembly policy as well Local Dwyfor Planning Guidelines Policy E17 (8.3.42). Indeed it is probably one of only two or three such remaining woodlands west of Pwllheli.

d. The Environmental Impact Assessment carried out by the applicant appears capable of being challenged in many areas; not least that it was only a Phase 1 assessment when a Phase 11 would have lent more weight. or at least further surveys of lichens, bryophytes, wild flower species, dormice and National Vegetation Classification types might have been commissioned, because of the scale of this scheme and the importance of the nature conservation interest i.e. ancient woodland


Specifically the applicant's EIA statement includes these additional inconsistencies

. ".....trees and other vegetation which is of limited botanical importance" Why then has it been designated ancient woodland and all planning references state that it should be protected if it's not important?

"the woodland .....contains no really ancient trees " then goes on to contradict itself by saying there are some "significant veteran trees providing specialised niche habitats."

The specialist, commissioned by The National Trust from ACS Consulting asked to survey the trees noted:

" there are numerous trees of significant girth and height not included in the topographical plan...most appear to be within the proposed road line. There are trees just outside the roadline that would have benefited from being accurately plotted to assess their relationship with the road"

Indeed I understand a more accurate assessment is now available of the significant number of species, sizes ,ages % mass in the woodland etc. which shows there are more trees affected than stated in the environmental impact assessment/survey. I trust this is available to the committee.

An additional hazard not considered is that of fallen trees. The root systems of the trees in the Woodland are extremely unstable due to the high water content in the soil. The creation of a new road will open the Council and thus the area committee to the charge, that in the event of accidents or worse deaths as a result of fallen trees, they approved this proposed road knowing the danger but failed to take it into account

It is also proposed that ..."the ancient field layer....of ecological antiquity....should be relocated into recently planted woodland elsewhere on the upslopes of Plas yn Rhiw".
This methodology has failed in various sites around Britain, and CCW (Countryside Council for Wales have published research to this effect

(ii)Technical

a. I gather there are considerable uncertainties about the actual geology of the land on which it is proposed to build a road. While some conjectured bedrock has been located it is my understanding that neither the consultants nor the applicant actually know what they will find until they start work. This is hardly a confident basis on which to start an engineering project

If you will permit an observation from someone who has lived at Sarn Y Plas for a large part of the last 20 years: The geological character of the land boulder clay and dolerite outcrop. The whole area from Treheli to Bryn Ffowc is characterised by being waterlogged for some seven months of the year. You can see the boulders forming the basis of the Sarn Y Plas house and elsewhere on the hillside. One effect of this is for the whole soil and subsoil of the area to move inexorably seawards.To anyone living in Sarn the main feature of seven months of the year is water draining off and through the hillside; and in the case of Sarn through the house!

b. Astonishingly there are no detailed proposals for dealing with this water run off which must have been one of the main causes of the collapse of the old road I am seeing no proposals for how the issue of draining the route of the proposed road is to be handled. If the road water simply drains off into the lower Sarn field it will simply hasten the slippage of the remaining field and house into the sea. When both of the two last road repairs were done, I was present. There was considerable debate and far greater concern about this; and the course of the stream from the 'Sarn Well' was diverted from in front of the house to try and assist run off. However if you stood, after a period of rain, at the bottom of stone embankments water could be seen pouring through the stones in the wire cages.

I have watched a stepped sloping field change to a single incline within 20 years. I believe that any proposed road will be built on an inherently unstable base. The council would therefore find itself facing mounting repair and maintenance costs as the years progress.


4. Heritage

This is not easy for me to say ButI

I had rather thought, at the outset of all this, that Dwyfor would fight tooth and nail to protect and preserve the heritage of Llyn residents that is the Plas Yn Rhiw woodland, the Sarn Y Plas field, the unusual and important habitats of both as well as the ambience of the former home of one of Wales's most famous writers

Nontheless, it is beginning to appear to me that;

--in spite of all considerations- ecological-environmental and heritage and
in spite of the inadequacies, uncertainties and incompleteness of the geo-technical and environmental surveys--

the Dwyfor Area Committees might actually be willing to consider sacrificing this unique location, with which it has been entrusted, for the sake of a perceived responsibility to a vocal minority in the local community, at the expense of the medium and long term considerations for economic and tourism growth for future community members; and this for the provision of a road that will accommodate traffic of possibly 20 vehicles a day!

I do appreciate that The Area Committees will be giving the fullest attention to the matter and that decisions will not be taken lightly. But I do wonder that, so far, there does not seem to have been any objection either in principle or on the basis of the fundamental threat to the heritage and environment from you yourself

Clearly it is invidious to try and speak for others. I only express below what I suppose I might have wished to hear members of the Dwyfor Area Committee say. Perhaps it has been said? What I would have expected the Dwyfor councillors' line, in order to protect its heritage, residents interests' and constituency would be that you

Have
a responsibility to all who live and work in the area and to those who visit to enjoy the outstanding natural beauty of this area:

Are
a provider and encourager of employment and
a guarantor of the visits of many kinds of tourists to the area who spend their money with local businesses.

Have a responsibility through due processes and consultation to propose policies and plans for the area which in both the short and for the future will protect our communities and heritage, albeit at the cost of some local inconvenience.

Are
not alone in being concerned at the coastal erosion that is occurring in Llyn, one consequence of which has been the unfortunate collapse of the road between Llandegwning and Y Rhiw. That you appreciate the need of the population of Rhiw to have easy and speedy access to Pwllheli and the rest of Gwynedd. You believe that, even if the possibility of re-instating the old road, albeit in the shorter term, proves impossible, nonetheless you should seek imaginative and cost-effective alternative proposals; including the upgrading of existing alternative routes, that even at the present standard of road provision, add, at the most, 5 minutes to journey times from Rhiw

and that
Consequently you should oppose the creation of a new road that will destroy both ancient, contemporary and future woodland, wildlife and heritage habitats .

It may not be what the you as a member of Dwyfor Area committee thinks; but it is what I would hope you thought!

So I urge you, on the basis of these cogent objections to decline this application.

Finally it must be said that one cannot see the Irish Government consenting to the building of a road through the garden of W.B.Yeats's Tower at Gort, nor Dyfed Council agreeing to a Marina at Dylan Thomas's Laugharne home. Nor can I see Warwickshire CC agreeing to a road in the garden of Anne Hathaway's cottage.
There are not a significant number of houses and gardens in Dwyfor which have a central place in world literature. If you consider the enormous international awareness of the significance of Sarn Y Plas as a central locus in the work of R.S.Thomas and M.E.Eldridge (Blwddyn Yn Llyn is mainly about Sarn, all his work from 1978 on was written there; M.E.Eldridge's book In My Garden illustrates the very garden that is at risk)I cannot believe you would wish to be remembered as an officer of the council or member of the committee that voted to destroy one of Wales's literary landmarks!

Maybe at the end I should let RS speak for himself:

Sarn Rhiw

So we know
she must have said something
to him - What language,
life? Ah, what language?

Thousands of years later
I inhabit a house
whose stone is the language
of its builders. Here

by the sea they said little.
But their message to the future
was: Build well. In the fire
of an evening I catch faces

staring at me. In April,
when light quickens and clouds
thin, boneless presences
flit through my room.

Will they inherit me
one day? What certainties
have I to hand on
like the punctuality

with which, at the moon's
rising, the bay breaks
into a smile, as though meaning
were not the difficulty at all?

No doubt one certainty he would have hoped to hand on was that Sarn Y Plas Pen Llyn was safe in your hands

I hope you will contact me if you wish to deal further with any matter of this letter. I hope it helps, as intended, in the your coming to a wise decision

With all good wishes




Gwydion Thomas


NOTE
This letter has been sent by email to those persons whose address I have, with a hard copy following. To others a hard copy has been sent. Please accept my apologies if your hard copy did not arrive before November 4.

cc. Members of Dwyfor Area Services Committee: Councillors M.Sol Owen, michael_sol_owen@hot,ail.com M.J. Clishem, D.B.Evans, Tomos Evans, tomosevans78@hotmail.com W.A.Evans, Simon Glyn, enlli@aol.com E.H. Griffith, evieg@griffith.fpnet.co.uk Margaret Griffith, mgiad_griff@hotmail.com J. Griffiths, jgriffiths@clara.co.uk R.G.Hughes, R.P. Hughes, richard@y-we.co H. Jones, W. Penri Jones, M.Lewis, maldwynlewis@cymru1.net I. Roberts, W. Gareth Roberts, R.G.Trenholme, D.W.Thomas, A. Williams, O. Williams, R.H. Wyn Williams. Wynabersoch@cwcom.net

Copies to Geraint Jones, CEO Gwynedd CC, A.E. Roberts, R. Daimond , Henry Roberts, Gruffydd Morrys, Elfyn Williams Gwynedd CC

This substance of this letter has is also being sent in the first instance, in some cases with a slightly different wording, to:

Fiona Reynolds CBE, Director General of The National Trust
John Broomhead, John Morgan and John Neale of the National Trust for Wales

The Members of The National Trust Committee for Wales: Richard Cuthbertson, Dan Clayton-Jones, Dr. Naylor Firth, Gerwyn Griffith, Roger Jarman, Dame Judy Ling Wong, Mark Mainwaring, Ann Markwick, Nigel Perle CBE , Dr. Jeremy Rye, Robert Thomas, Valerie Thompson, Gareth Wardell, Professor Gareth Wyn Jones and George Yeomans.

The National Assembly: John Saunders

Countryside Council for Wales: Roger Thomas, John Lloyd Jones and Peter Stutthard,

Arts Council for Wales: Joanna Weston, Sybil Crouch

The Guardian : Paul Brown

Council for the Protection of Rural Wales: Merfyn Williams, Morlais Owens

Wildlife Trust for Wales, Geoff Pedley

Woodlands Trust Graham Bradley,

RSPB Mike Webb

Am completely out of it
Elodie not well
I had St. Vitus' Dance or the BKK equivalent
Have spent hours trying to write to the learned Dwyfor Councillors who want to build a rioad in my garden. I will post the letter when it is done!
So for now:
the poet (who for the moment does not wish, understandably to appear! ) Oh no..here he is

and me mum
us.. well we did not have any children then!

,This is the text of 'ringless fingers'

missing the ms poems of Album.'My father is dead' and Cariad 'I look out at the timeless sea' but they are both in printed volumes

I am not sure it makes much sense without the pictures...I will try and find the time to add them!!

ringless
fingers

a testament

r.s. thomas
m.e.eldridge


the frangipani press
bangkapi
2002



"...how our art is our meaning"
Sonata. Later Poems 1983

































Ap Huw's Testament
There are four verses to put down
For the four people in my life,
Father, mother, wife

And the one child. Let me begin
With her of the immaculate brow
My wife; she loves me. I know how.

My mother gave me the breast's milk
Generously, but grew mean after,
Envying me my detached laughter.

My father was a passionate man,
Wrecked after leaving the sea
In her love's shallows. He grieves in me.

What shall I say of my boy,
Tall, fair? He is young yet;
Keep his feet free of the world's net.
I

I imagine it: two people,
A bed; I was not
There. They dreamed of me ?
No, they sought themselves
In the other, You,
They breathed. I overheard
From afar. I was nine months
Coming. . . nearer, nearer;
The ugliness of the place
Daunted. I hung back
In the dark, but was cast out,
Howling. Love, they promised;
It will be love and sunlight
And joy. I took their truth
In my mouth and mumbled it
For a while, till my teeth
Grew. Ah, they cried, so you would,
Would you? I knew the cold

















Autobiography

The fall of a great house?
I smile - bitterly?
sadly?
wrily?
Anyhow but proudly.
Two people cast up
on life's shore:
can't you see the emptiness
of their pockets,
and their small hearts
ready to burst with










love? Say 'feeling'
and the explosion
not loud.
They come to
in a lodging, make love
in a rented bed.
And I am not present
as yet.
Could it be said, then,
I am on my way, a nonentity
with a destination?
What do they do
waiting for me? They invent
My name. I am born
To a concept, answering
To it with reluctance. I am
wheeled through ignorance
to a knowledge that is not
joy.
Nothing they have they own;
the borrowed furnishings of their minds
frays. I study to become a rat
that will desert
the foundering vessel
of their pride; but home
is a long time sinking. All
my life I must swim
out of the suction of its vortex.







Sorry


Dear parents,
I forgive you my life,
Begotten in a drab town,
The intention was good;
Passing the street now,
I see still the remains of sunlight.

It was not the bone buckled;
You gave me enough food
To renew myself.
It was the mind's weight
Kept me bent, as I grew tall.

It was not your fault.
What should have gone on,
Arrow aimed from a tried bow
At a tried target, has turned back,
Wounding itself
With questions you had not asked.












Relations

An ordinary lot:
The sons dwindling from a rich
Father to a house in a terrace
And furniture of the cheap sort ;
The daughters respectable, marrying
Approved husbands with clean shoes
And collars; as though dullness
And nonentity's quietness
Were virtues after the crazed ways
Of that huge man, their father, buying himself
Smiles, sailing his paper money
From windows of the Welsh hotel
He had purchased to drown in drink.
But one of them was drowned
Honourably. A tale has come down
From rescuers, forced to lie off
By the breakers, of men lined up
At the rail as the ship foundered,
Smoking their pipes and bantering. And he
Was of their company; his tobacco
Stings my eyes, who am ordinary too.











The Boy's Tale



Skipper wouldn't pay him off,
Never married her;
Came home by Port Said
To a Welsh valley;
Took a girl from the tip,
Sheer coal dust
The blue in her veins.
Every time I go now
Through black sunlight,
I see her scratch his name
On the pane of her breath.
Caught him in her thin hair,
Couldn't hold him -
Voices from the ports
Of the stars, pavilions
Of unstable water.
She went fishing in him;
I was the bait
That became cargo,
Shortening his trips,
Waiting on the bone's wharf.
Her tongue ruled the tides.




The Survivors



I never told you this.
He told me about it often:
Seven days in an open boat - burned out,
No time to get food:
Biscuits and water and the unwanted sun,
With only the oars' wing-beats for motion,
Labouring heavily towards land
That existed on a remembered chart,
Never on the horizon
Seven miles from the boat's bow.

After two days song dried on their lips;
After four days speech.
On the fifth cracks began to appear
In the faces' masks; salt scorched them.
They began to think about death,
Each man to himself, feeding it
On what the rest could not conceal.
The sea was as empty as the sky,
A vast disc under a dome
Of the same vastness, perilously blue.














But on the sixth day towards evening
A bird passed. No one slept that night;
The boat had become an ear
Straining for the desired thunder
Of the wrecked waves. It was dawn when it came,
Ominous as the big guns
Of enemy shores. The men cheered it.
From the swell's rise one of them saw the ruins
Of all that sea, where a lean horseman
Rode towards them and with a rope
Galloped them up on to the curt sand.


















Salt


The centuries were without
his like: then suddenly
he was there, fishing
in a hurrying river,
the Teifi. But what he caught
were ideas; the water
described a direction;
his thoughts were toy boats
that grew big; one
he embarked on; Suez,
the Far East - the atlas
became familiar
to him as a back-yard.

'Spittle and phlegm
Listen. sailor,
to the wind piping
in the thin rigging;
go climbing there
to the empty nest
of the black crow. Far
is the deck and farther
your courage.'
'Captain,
captain, long
is the wind's tongue









and cold your porridge.
Look up now .
and dry your beard:
teach me to ride
in my high saddle
the mare of the sea.'

He fell.
Was it the fall
of the soul
from favour? Past four
decks, and his bones
splintered. Seventeen weeks
on his back. No Welsh,
no English; but the hands
of the Romanians
kind. He became
their mouth-piece, publishing
his rebirth. In a new
body he sailed
away on his old course.

On brisk evenings
before the Trades
the sails named
themselves; he repeated
the lesson. The First
Mate had a hard boot.

Cassiopeia, Sirius,
all the stars
over him, yet none of them
with a Welsh sound.
But the capstan spoke
in cynghanedd; from
breaker to breaker
he neared home.

'Evening, sailor.' Red
lips and a tilted smile;
the ports garlanded
with faces. Was he aware
of a vicarage garden
that was the cramped harbour
he came to?
Later
the letters began:
'Dear -' the small pen
in the stubbed hand -
'in these dark waters
the memory of you
is like a -' words scratched
out that would win a smile
from the reader. The deep
sea and the old call
to abandon it








for the narrow channel
from her and back. The chair
was waiting and the slippers
by the soft fire
that would destroy him.

'The hard love I had at her small breasts:
the tight fists that pummelled me ;
the thin mouth with its teeth clenched
on a memory.' Are all women
like this? He said so, that man,
my father, who had tasted their lips'
vinegar, coughing it up
in harbours he returned to with his tongue
lolling from droughts of the sea.

The voice of my father
in the night with the hunger
of the sea in it and the emptiness
of the sea. While the house founders
in time. I must listen to him
complaining, a ship's captain
with no crew, a navigator
without a port: rejected
by the barrenness of his wife's
coasts, by the wind's bitterness


off her heart. I take his failure
for ensign, flying it
at my bedpost, where my own
children cry to be born.

Suddenly he was old
in a silence unhaunted
by the wailing signals;

and was put ashore
on that four-walled
island to which all sailors must come.

So he went gleaning
in the flickering stubble,
where formerly his keel reaped.

And the remembered stars
swarmed for him; and the birds, too,
most of them with wrong names.

Always he looked aft
from the chair's bridge, and his hearers
suffered the anachronism of his view.











The form of his
life; the weak smile;
the fingers filed down
by canvas; the hopes
blunted; the lack of understanding
of life creasing the brow
with wrinkles, as though he pondered
on deep things.
Out of touch
with the times, landlocked
in his ears' calm, he remembered
and talked; spoiling himself
with his mirth; running the joke
down; giving his orders
again in hospital with his crew
gone. What was a sailor
good for who had sailed
all seas and learned wisdom
from none, fetched up there
in the shallows with his mind's
valueless cargo?


Strange grace, sailor, docked now
in six feet of thick soil,
with the light dribbling on you
from the lamps in a street
of a town you had no love
for. The place is a harbour
for stone sails, and under
it you lie with the becalmed
fleet heavy upon you. This
was never the destination
you dreamed of in that other
churchyard by Teifi.
And I,
can I accept your voyages
are done; that there is no tide
high enough to float you off
this mean shoal of plastic
and trash? Six feet down,
and the bone's anchor too
heavy for your child spirit
to haul on and be up and away?














The Father Dies


Ah, forget this snivel, the gone
lip. I am not maudlin;
it is just that all my life
I tried to keep love from bursting
its banks. Love is the fine thing
but destructive. I strove to contain it,
to picture it as the river
we lived by. But to fall
headlong in, to be carried away
in front of you, son; to have
no firm ground: a father drowning
in tears and without
breath to keep his voice casual
as in the old days; and the smile
you hold out to me breaks
like a stick, because there is
as much pity in it as love.


Sailors' Hospital

It was warm
Inside, but there was
Pain there. I came out
Into the cold wind
Of April. There were birds
In the brambles' old,
Jagged iron, with one striking
Its small song. To the west,
Rising from the grey
Water, leaning one
On another were the town's
Houses. Who first began
That refuse: time's waste
Growing at the edge
Of the clean sea? Some sailor
Fetching up on the
Shingle before wind
Or current, made it his
Harbour, hung up his clothes
















In the sunlight; found women
To breed from - those sick men
His descendants. Every day
Regularly the tide
Visits them with its salt
Comfort; their wounds are shrill
In the rigging of the
Tall ships.
With clenched thoughts,
That not even the sky's
Daffodil could persuade
To open, I turned back
To the nurses in their tugging
At him, as he drifted
Away on the current
Of his breath, further and further,
Out of hail of our love.


July 5 1940


Nought that I would give today
Would half compare
With the long-treasured riches that somewhere
In the deep heart are stored.
Cloud and the moon and mist and the whole
Hoard of frail, white-bubbling stars,
And the cool blessing,
Like moth or wind caressing,
Of the fair, fresh rain-dipped flowers;
And all the spells of the sea, and the new green
Of moss and fern and bracken
Before their youth is stricken;
The thoughts of the trees at eventide, the hush
In the dark corn at morning,
And the wish
In your own heart still but dawning-
All of these,
A soft weight on your hands,
I would give now;
And lastly myself made clean
And white as the wave-washed sand,
If I knew how.










Luminary



My luminary.
my morning and evening
star. My light at noon
when there is no sun
and the sky lowers. My balance
of joy in a world
that has gone off joy's
standard. Yours the face
that young I recognised
as though I had known you
of old. Come, my eyes
said, out into the morning
of a world whose dew
waits for your footprint.
Before a green altar
with the thrush for priest
I took those gossamer
vows that neither the Church
could stale nor the Machine
tarnish, that with the years
have grown hard as flint,
lighter than platinum
on our ringless fingers.

Manafon


Have I had to wait
all this time to discover
its meaning-that rectory,
mahogany of a piano
the light played on? What
it was saying to the unasked
question was: 'The answer
is here.' The woman was right;
she knew it: the truth china
can tell in a cool pantry;
the web happiness can weave
that catches nothing but the dew's
tears. The one flight over
that valley was that
of the wild geese. The river's
teeth chattered but not
with the cold. The woman tended
a wood fire against my return
from my wanderings, a silent entreaty
to me to cease my bullying
of the horizon. There was a dream
she kept under her pillow
that has become my nightmare.











It was the unrecognised conflict
between two nations; the one happy
in the territory it had gained,
determined to keep it; the other
with the thought he could kiss the feet
of the Welsh rainbow. I was shown
the fact: a people with a language
and an inheritance for sale;
their skies noisy with armed aircraft;
their highways sluices for their neighbours'
discharge. If I wet my feet
it was in seas radiant but not with well-being.
I retire at night beneath stars
that have gone out. I stand
with my friends at a cross-road
where there is no choice. No matter;
that nightmare is a steed I am
content to ride so it return
with me here among countrymen
whose welcome is warm at the grave's edge.
It is a different truth, a different
love I have come to, but one
I share with that afflicted remnant
As we go down, inalienable to our defeat.
The Return


Coming home was to that:
The white house in the cool grass
Membraned with shadow, the bright stretch
Of stream that was its looking-glass;

And smoke growing above the roof
To a tall tree among whose boughs
The first stars renewed their theme
Of time and death and a man's vows.


The Way of It


With her fingers she turns paint
into flowers, with her body
flowers into a remembrance
of herself. She is at work
always, mending the garment
of our marriage, foraging
like a bird for something
for us to eat. If there are thorns
in my life, it is she who
will press her breast to them and sing.
Her words, when she would scold,
are too sharp. She is busy
after for hours rubbing smiles
into the wounds. I saw her,
when young, and spread the panoply
of my feathers instinctively
to engage her. She was not deceived,
but accepted me as a girl
will under a thin moon
in love's absence as someone
she could build a home with
for her imagined child.










Seventieth Birthday



Made of tissue and H2O,
and activated by cells
firing - Ah, heart, the legend
of your person! Did I invent
it, and is it in being still?

In the competition with other
women your victory is assured.
It is time, as Yeats said, is
the caterpillar in the cheek's rose,
the untiring witherer of your petals.

You are drifting away from
me on the whitening current of your hair.
I lean far out from the bone's bough,
knowing the hand I extend
can save nothing of you but your love.





































Birthday



Come to me a moment, stand,
Ageing yet lovely still,
At my side, let me tell you that,
With the clouds massing for attack
And the wind worrying the leaves
From the branches and the blood seeping
Thin and slow through the ventricles
Of the heart, I regret less,
Looking back on the poem's
Weakness, the failure of the mind
To be clever than of the heart
To deserve you as you showed how.



















The Son


It was your mother wanted you:
you were already half-formed
when I entered. But can I deny
the hunger, the loneliness bringing me in
from myself? And when you appeared
before me, there was no repentance
for what I had done, as there was shame
in the doing it; compassion only
for that which was too small to be called
human. The unfolding of your hands
was plant-like, your ear was the shell
I thundered in; your cries. when they came,
were those of a blind creature
trodden upon: pain not yet become grief.


















Gifts


From my father my strong heart,
My weak stomach.
From my mother the fear.

From my sad country the shame.

To my wife all I have
Saving only the love
That is not mine to give.

To my one son the hunger.




















Song for Gwydion


When I was a child and the soft flesh was forming
Quietly as snow on the bare boughs of bone,
My father brought me trout from the green river
From whose chill lips the water song had flown.

Dull grew their eyes, the beautiful, blithe garland
Of stipples faded, as light shocked the brain;
They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted,
A young god, ignorant of the blood's stain.























The Unborn Daughter

On her unborn in the vast circle
Concentric with our finite lives;
On her unborn, her name uncurling
Like a young fern within the mind;
On her unclothed with flesh or beauty
In the womb's darkness, I bestow
The formal influence of the will,
The wayward influence of the heart,
Weaving upon her fluid bones
The subtle fabric of her being,
Hair, hands and eyes, the body's texture,
Shot with the glory of the soul.



Careers

Fifty-two years,
most of them taken in
growing or in the illusion of it
what does the mem-
ory number as one's
property? The broken elbow?
the lost toy? The pain has
vanished, but the soft flesh
that suffered it is mine still.
There is a house with
a face mooning at the glass
of windows. Those eyes - I look
at not with them, but something of
their melancholy I
begin to lay claim to as my own.
A boy in school
his lessons are
my lessons, his
punishments I learn to deserve.
I stand up in him,
tall as I am













now, but without per-
spective. Distant objects
are too distant, yet will arrive
soon. How his words
muddle me; how my deeds
betray him. That is not
our intention; but where I should
be one with him, I am one now
with another. Before I had time
to complete myself, I let her share
in the building. This that I am
now - too many
labourers. What is mine is
not mine only: her love, her
child wait for my slow
signature. Son, from the mirror
you hold to me I turn
to recriminate. That likeness
you are at work upon - it hurts.












Anniversary



Nineteen years now
Under the same roof
Eating our bread,
Using the same air;
Sighing, if one sighs,
Meeting the other's
Words with a look
That thaws suspicion.

Nineteen years now
Sharing life's table,
And not to be first
To call the meal long
We balance it thoughtfully
On the tip of the tongue,
Careful to maintain
The strict palate.


















Nineteen years now
Keeping simple house,
Opening the door
To friend and stranger;
Opening the womb
Softly to let enter
The one child
With his huge hunger.

Pension

Love songs in old age
have an edge to them
like dry leaves. The tree
we planted shakes in the wind.

of time. Our thoughts are birds
that sit in the boughs
and remember; we call
them down to the remains

of poetry. We sit
opposite one another
at table, parrying
our sharp looks with our blunt smiles














Marriage


I look up; you pass.
I have to reconcile your
existence and the meaning of it
with what I read: kings and queens
and their battles
for power. You have your battle,
too. I ask myself: Have
I been on your side? Lovelier
a dead queen than a live
wife? History worships
the fact but cannot remain
neutral. Because there are no kings
worthy of you; because poets
better than I are not here
to describe you; because time
is always too short, you must go by
now without mention, as unknown
to the future as to
the past, with one man's
eyes resting on you
in the interval of his concern.











Two


So you have to think
of the bone hearth where love
was kindled, of the size
of the shadows so small a flame
threw on the world's
walls, with the heavens
over them, lighting their vaster fires
to no end. He took her hand
sometimes and felt the will to be
of the poetry he could not
write. She measured him
with her moist eye for the coat
always too big. And time,
the faceless collector
of taxes, beat on their thin
door, and they opened
to him, looking beyond
him, beyond the sediment
of his myriad demands to the
bright place, where their undaunted
spirits were already walking.











He and She


When he came in, she was there.
When she looked at him,
he smiled. There were lights
in time's wave breaking
on an eternal shore.

Seated at table -
no need for the fracture
of the room's silence; noiselessly
they conversed. Thoughts mingling
were lit up, gold
particles in the mind's stream.

Were there currents between them?
Why, when he thought darkly,
would the nerves play
at her lips' brim? What was the heart's depth?
There were fathoms in her,
too, and sometimes he crossed
them and landed and was not repulsed.












Matrimony


I said to her what
Was in my heart, she
What was not in hers.
On such shaky

Foundations we built
One of love's shining
Greenhouses to let fly
In with our looks.



Sarn Rhiw


So we know
she must have said something
to him - What language,
life? Ah, what language?

Thousands of years later
I inhabit a house
whose stone is the language
of its builders. Here

by the sea they said little.
But their message to the future
was: Build well. In the fire
of an evening I catch faces

staring at me. In April,
when light quickens and clouds
thin, boneless presences
flit through my room.
















Will they inherit me
one day? What certainties
have I to hand on
like the punctuality

with which, at the moon's
rising, the bay breaks
into a smile, as though meaning
were not the difficulty at all?












The Untamed



My garden is the wild
Sea of the grass. Her garden
Shelters between walls.
The tide could break in;
I should be sorry for this.

There is peace there of a kind,
Though not the deep peace
Of wild places. Her care
For green life has enabled
The weak things to grow.

Despite my first love,
I take sometimes her hand,
Following strait paths
Between flowers, the nostril
Clogged with their thick scent.


















The old softness of lawns
Persuading the slow foot
Leads to defection: the silence
Holds with its gloved hand
The wild hawk of the mind.

But not for long, windows,
Opening in the trees
Call the mind back
To its true eyrie: I stoop
Here only in play.






















Golden Wedding


Cold hands meeting,
the eyes aside -
so vows are contracted
in the tongue's absence.

Gradually
over fifty long years
of held breath
the heart has become warm























A Marriage



We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love's moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
'Come.' said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance. And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.

Together


All my life
I was face to face
with her, at meal-times,
by the fire, even
in the ultimate intimacies
of the bed. You could have asked,
then, for information
about her? There was a room
apart she kept herself in,
teasing me by leading me
to its glass door, only
to confront me with
my reflection. I learned from her
even so. Walking her shore
I found things cast up
from her depths that spoke
to me of another order,
worshipper as I was
of untamed nature. She fetched
her treasures from art's
storehouse: pieces of old














lace, delicate as frost;
china from a forgotten
period; a purse more valuable
than anything it could contain.
Coming in from the fields
with my offering of flowers
I found her garden
had forestalled me in providing
civilities for my desk.
' Tell me about life'
I would say, 'you who were
its messenger in the delivery
of our child'. Her eyes had a
fine shame, remembering her privacy
being invaded from further off than
she expected. 'Do you think
death is the end?' frivolously
I would ask her. I recall
now the swiftness of its arrival
wrenching her lip down, and how
the upper remained firm,
reticent as the bud that is
the precursor of the flower.









Comparisons


To all light things
I compared her; to
a snowflake, a feather.

I remember she rested
at the dance on my
arm, as a bird

on its nest lest
eggs break, lest
she lean too heavily

on our love. Snow
melts, feathers
are blown away;

I have let
her ashes down
in me like an anchor.












In Memoriam: M.E.E.


The rock says: 'Hold hard'.
The fly ignores it.
Here, gone, the raised wings
a rainbow. She, too:
here, gone. I know when,
but where? Eckhart,
you mock me. Between no-
where and anywhere
what difference? Her name
echoes the silence
she and her brush kept.
Immortality, perhaps,
is having one's
name said over
and over? I let
the inscription do it
for me. She explored
all of the spectrum
















in a fly's wing. The days,
polishing an old
lamp, summon for me
her genie. Others
will come to this stone
where, so timeless
the lichen, so delicate
its brush strokes,
it will be as though
with all windows
in her ashen studio
she is at work for ever.


1. Photograph R.S.Thomas 1914
2. Photograph R.S.Thomas 1916
3. Photograph M.E.Eldridge 1912
4. Ap Huw's Testament Poetry for Supper 1958
5. I Young and Old 1972
6. M.E.Eldridge R.S.Thomas. Pencil Drawing 1939
7. Autobiography Uncollected. Wave No.7 1973
8. Sorry The Bread of Truth 1963
9. Relations Young and Old 1972
10. The Boy's Tale The Bread of Truth 1963
11. The Survivors The Bread of Truth 1963
12. M.E. Eldridge Buoys at Holyhead. Panel from Mural
at Gobowen Orthopaedic Hospital 1950
13. Salt Later Poems 1983
14. M.E.Eldridge Coracles on the Towy 1947
15. The Father Dies ms. 1978
16. Sailors' Hospital Not That He Brought Flowers 1968
17. Album Frequencies 1978
18.P Photograph M.E.Eldridge 1934
19. July 5th 1940 ms. 1940
20. Luminary ms. 1980
21. Manafon Residues 2002
22. The Return Song At The Year's Turning 1955
23. Photograph The Rectory Manafon 1950
24. M.E.Eldridge Morning Glory. Watercolour 1954
25. The Way of It The Way of It 1977
26. Seventieth Birthday Between Here and Now 1981
27. Cariad ms. 1970
28. Birthday ms. Echoes Return Slow 1984
29. Gifts Pieta 1966
30. Photograph R.S.Thomas and Gwydion 1945
31. The Son Laboratories of The Spirit 1975
32. Song For Gwydion An Acre Of Land 1952
33. The Unborn Daughter An Acre Of Land 1952
34. Careers Not That He Brought Flowers 1968
35. Photograph Gwydion 1966
36. Anniversary Tares 1961
37. Pension Uncollected. Encounter 1977
38. Marriage Laboratories Of The Spirit 1975
39. Two The Way Of It 1977
40. He And She Destinations 1985
41. Matrimony Residues 2002
42. Sarn Rhiw Destinations 1985
43. M.E.Eldridge Sarn. Watercolour. In My Garden 1986
44. The Untamed The Bread Of Truth 1963
45. Photograph M.E.Eldridge in Sarn Garden 1980
46. Golden Wedding Residues 2002
47. M.E.Eldridge R.S.T. and M.E.E. 1989
48. A Marriage Mass For Hard Times 1992
49. Together Residues 2002
50. Comparisons Residues 2002
51. In Memoriam M.E.E Residues 2002
52. M.E. Eldridge Against The Years. Watercolour 1970

An Acre Of Land Montgomeryshire Printing Company. Newtown 1952
Song At The Years Turning Rupert Hart Davis. London 1955
Poetry For Supper Rupert Hart Davis. London 1958
Tares Rupert Hart Davis. London 1961
The Bread Of Truth Rupert Hart Davis. London 1963
Not That He Brought Flowers Rupert Hart Davis. London 1968
Young And Old Chatto and Windus.London 1972
Laboratories Of The Spirit MacMillan. London 1975
The Way Of It. Ceolfrith Press. Sunderland 1977
Frequencies MacMillan. London 1978
Between Here And Now MacMillan. London 1981
Later Poems MacMillan. London 1983
Destinations Celandine Press. Shipston 1985
In My Garden Medici Society. London 1986
Mass For Hard Times Bloodaxe. Newcastle upon Tyne 1992
Residues Bloodaxe. Tarset 2002

Realised at
Senavilla Bangkapi
by
Gwydion Thomas
and
Kunjana Thomas
for
Rhodri's Birthday
January 2002

Ten Copies
on
Japanese papers
Five
Ordinary copies
Mulberry Paper Wrappers

this copy number




the frangipani press

c. Rhodri Thomas 2002

Was it not yesterday Thaksin was saying there were no ethnic or racial conflicts in Thailand? Of course there will not be..because he is just another Thai/Chinese racist Who prefers to deceive and subject minorities rather than respect and talk with them He must have been studying in the UK.

This from The Nation

I particularly like the paragraph in bold

AMAZING THAILAND: Insurance for tourists

Published on Oct 16, 2002


Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday ordered tourism-related agencies to study the feasibility of providing life and health insurance to tourists as part of the country's tourism-promotion campaign, said government spokesman Sitha Thaiwaree.

The premier issued the order because tourist safety has become a concern following the bomb attacks in Bali, Indonesia last weekend that killed more than 180 people, most of them tourists, Sitha said. ( But you say later that Thailand is not a target....??)

Thaksin told tourism agencies to gather data on accidents that killed or injured tourists, he said. (Tourism agencies?? How about the Police?)

Thaksin also asked all ministries to assess the impact of the attacks in Bali on foreign investment, the stock exchange, national security and the tourism industry.

Earlier, Thaksin said the attacks would not have any impact on Thailand's tourism industry as there are no racial or religious conflicts here and the country is not a terrorist target. (Must live in a different Thailand from me! Well of course he does..he is a mobile phone billionaire politician...I see ethnic and religous conflicts every day... to say nothing of the economic ones.... Was it not two months ago all those bombs in Had Yai were being blamed on Muslim separatists? ... What turned out...feuding policeman and soldiers...again!!)

Juthamas Siriwan, governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, said the number of tourist arrivals this year is expected to meet the target of 10.5 million.

Roe Gruber, president of Escapes Unlimited, a California travel agency that specialises in tours to Southeast Asia, said 50 per cent of her clients would like to switch their destinations to other places in Asia after the attacks in Bali. "We're seeing people willing to travel, but they're switching to other places like Thailand," Gruber said.

An airline analyst said the attacks in Bali would not have any impact on US carriers. Both United Airlines and Northwest Airlines said the bombings in Bali had not affected their Asian operations and flights are running on schedule. On Monday, the US State Department issued an advisory urging Americans to leave Bali and defer any future travel there. Travel agents said American tourists have been steering clear of global hot spots since September 11.(Global hotspots?? Where they? New York?)

"The Philippines has already seen a slump," said Robert Laney, president of 1st Air, a New York agency that specialises in business-class overseas travel. ( Yes if you wanted to attack Americans...all those overweight half dead 'Vietnam Vets' in Angeles City would be a good start)!

"Now Indonesia and Malaysia will see a slump. There's a trend of people travelling to places that are safer right now, like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa," Laney said.( Read the crime statistics for violent assault from Johannesburg has he?)

South Korean flag carrier Korean Air said yesterday it had halted chartered flights to Bali until December 21.

Taiwan is urging its nationals not to travel to Bali although many Taiwanese holiday-makers still flew to Bali after Saturday night's bombings because they had been denied refunds, according to Taiwanese media reports. The Taiwanese tourism bureau has ordered travel agencies to pay refunds of up to 80 per cent.

And would it not be terrible if the voracious maw of Phuket were to benefit from Bali's tragedy?

All you need to know about your next visit to a Thai RestaurantNot so much the Brimmed Rabbit as The Numbing Fish

? Letter writers have more nous and knowledge than journalists, do they not?

As I was saying! Terror has deep roots in Indonesia Kuta is not a nice place. The beach is squalid and most balinese wI know would rather ignore it. One correspondent, in I think The Grauniad, suggested...a bit like the Taiwanese above...that all would be well as Garuda was flying in planeloads of Japanese... Well they are hardly likely to be staying in Kuta... but rather in the tourist ghetto of Nusa Dua... a particularly nasty virtual life enclave of golf courses and international hotels..with again nothing to do with Bali......another hack who knows nothing!

BALI
This disturbs me. I know Bali quite well. These Jumping to conclusions may be justified....but I have yet to see the evidence. And I know Bashir to be a doubtful character.....but both responses speak of a quickness to seize the moment. We have friends of friends who have died here....... We have friends with little shops in Legian Road.........Devastated lives.....I am not sure...The hotspots of Bali, like those of Phuket have little to do with the rest of the island. And Bali has little to do with much of Indonesia....which is, after all, yet another invented country. A little go at the US owned mines of Irian Jaya might be a better idea........ There are seething ethnic and business rivalries...easily exploitable...... Of course it is an easy target.. and yes nightclubs in Jakarta have been attacked. It is a pity, if they wish to attack licentiousness, they do not see fit to attack the appalling brothel villages of Surabaya and Jakarta, where women., a number of whom one presumes are Muslim., are held, by Muslims, in unthinkably degraded situations.

Ubud must be one of the most civilised places on earth....

.There are wonderful books about Bali.. though none of them very recent....Michael Covurrabias, Hickman Powell-this the OUP pb with the Walter Spies cover Colin McPhee, Gorer, Bateson and Mead, Geertz, Helen Yates, Isabel Anderson, Vicki Baum, Nancy Carter. CARTIER..BRESSON Les Danses a Bali and Walter Spies............

Let's all play Happy Families...
Ha Ha



>

The Brimmed Rabbit, who has been savingProust for some as yet unknown period of rest-thought this was a nice bit of reportage

How about something politically incrrect? Nips and Thais deal with Johnny.......



Nips get the Buddha on their side......

Thank goodness if the nearest webcam is 375 kilometres away..unfortunately the spy satellites are probably closer!! Pity they do not mention the nearest Hospital..80 kilos..The nearest Tesco also 80 kilos..though my US friends will like the nearest Interstate at 97 miles. Autoroutes for a small country. And Poo-talee as the Thais call it is hardly a TGV stop! This takes forever to download..well in BKK it does......also the Archives as they are full of pics

Veuillez Patienter
as my French Yahoo has it!!

Where I live.... sort of..used to..will again!

You can see why I do not go on buses Now to whom does Thientong Transport belong?

I used to say to Rhodri..."just because everything looks normal here, do not be deceived...most people are doing things for quite different reasons than at home...they are not on the same planet as us"........And last evening I was feeling particularly morose as you can see below. K says to me: "You have to understand that all Thai people believe this has happened to Elodie because of her Karma . I do not know what she did so bad in her previous life..but clearly she did..so that is all there is to it. There is no point in being upset or asking why".........Que dire...????????
So here, by way of diversion, are two bizarre 'non sequitur' stories The Vegetarian Festival and Jaguars and a terrible one

Not quite sure what Karma is involved here

03.30 Monday morning has to be one of the real low times..does it not?I really do not know what to do! Should I even be writing this publicly? Probably not! This is the weblog as real confessional journal!!
What if........?
What if I changed my life 100%..........Threw away all my friends and family and ID, banks,. and all that stuff........who cares?
What if I never sent another email?
What if Elodie is never well..............how do people actually deal with damaged children......amongst all the websites and pontificating I do not see this answered. I had the misfortune, as I was thrashing around for some help, to sign up for The UK Colostomy Website...I am not going to post it. Appallingly aggressive, secretive and unhelpful.......actually typically Brit.... jolly colostomy soc. etc. Not like the US stuff. Had some great emails from mums in the US and Canada...open, helpful, encouraging.........I am not sure we could ever go back to live in the UK, however bad it is here........

I just weep

Again and every day

And you thought my interest in global capital was just peripheral!!? Want to do business? Look at what help is on offer! I was just trying to crack the email address of Michael Raycraft CEO of Tesco when I lighted on all of this!

Is this not 'good journalism'?:| With friends like these...

Tesco hits Bangkapi You have seen the market already. I do not think they are in competition!

The Bangkok Seafood Market chain of Restaurants has a new TV ad campaign:

"If it swims, we have it."

Say no more!

I had never really thought of Publishers as Professionals. Gentleman Publishers were/are clearly amateurs in the best (C17 and C18) sense of the word; Private Presses also. Do the purveyors of books as a commodity have anything much in common with 'professionals' ? -Though we might find it difficult to determine what C21st professions are! More in sympathy with with producers of any other good. It is called the Book Trade after all.....oh I am interrupted by tummy needs....definitely a professional eater.. While I am gone you can read Clay Shirky: Weblogs and The Mass Amateurisation of Publishing

OK --the more important demands of 'alimentation' having been met!!
What do you think about this writing/publishing 'debate'?

I rather incline to the muddled thinking view. When I write.. I know I am in a dialogue with myself over what I want to say, the best words to use...there are rethinks and corrections, doubts, revisions and uncertainties...and that is just for starters in the dialogue with myself...then there are that whole series of readings and allusions that I can call on because of what I have read and experienced and written previously..........there is the discourse of the subject I am writing about ...today...tomorrow....the traditions, conventions, shared assumptions and knowledge.......all those questions about purpose and audience. And I certainly have got nowhere near thinking about 'publishing' what I write. One has to decide on a meaning for this word...If my friend reads a draft or my sister my diary..that is not publishing. There has to be a dimension of making writing available to strangers...and the medium or technology one might choose to do this is critical. I do not see anything particularly amateur about Blogger or other Weblog hosts...They have simply spotted a publishing niche...similar to that of vanity publishing....BUT
at the same time the discursive and interactive aspects of weblogs are unlike other publishing forms. There is as yet no typology of logs. Most of what I read on the net is basically either of the diary/journal kind..though obviously with an immediacy not found in the end-of-the-day diary or the ponderous who I met today journal of yore or is a commentary on other sources..newspapers in particular but also TV sources.....these are Hyde Park Corner logs... there are logs that are reflective on the business of blogging and most of these are interesting, precisely because they are thoughtful..and then there are that series of 'technoblogs' all wound up with the software and hardware and what you can and cannot do........one or two of these are interesting because the writer has some 'professional' ! insight into typography or design or possibly into some protocol that has escaped one...but many of them simply drone on about industry gossip......Did you really start a weblog because you thought you might make some money? Oh come on!
Oh..more alimentation......

OK done

When I am writing this, I am writing it for a small circle of friends-the greater majority of whom have my email address-should they want to say anything about it. Of course other people read it..as I do their logs...but we sort of pass in the night...I have never propsed to anyone I did not know that they should read it.....though I am thinking of so doing!!....of course the RS and MEE logs are different...they are using the weblog as a website...
It is not the sort of writing that I write in a letter, which is specific and personal..like an email, but also it is not the kind of writing that I would hide under the carpet so that papa cannot read my confessions. Nor is it fiction. Though I have space to write fictions. So It occupies a very unusual space where the very private and the public co-exist for ..whoever..in real time..you can read this now and talk to me.......not a diary, not a journal, not a fiction nor a novel, not journalism, not reportage, not a stream of consciousness or psychologists log,,,,,,,,,,,this is what we are trying in true victorian butterfly catcher fashion to NAIL down.!

I have capitulated to sensationalism. However it was brought on by such a singular lack of imagination on someone's part!! Someone who does not live a million miles from Cantab. UK............u know??!!......So the log IS now a Horror Movie. Sorry folks

It is The Ancient Mariner..who stoppeth everyone to drone on about this. I promise this is the last one...until we have exciting messages from lawyers!!:

So we are going to sit in Sukothai for 2 months and wait

ENTER THE POLL: TO SUE OR NOT TO SUE........???

She was born on May 2002 to *&* in ** Hospital Bangkok Thailand.

A copy of her birth certificate and house paper are attached.(1)

By virtue of being born in Thailand and having a Thai mother and a European father she presently holds dual Thai and a European nationality.

** Hospital is a private hospital and recognised by insurance companies such as BUPA. It states that it holds ISO 9002 recognition. The validating company in the United Kingdom SGS confirms that these certificates, issued in 1999, are current and that their last visit to the Hospital was in May 2002. SGS, in an email message, says… 'the certification of IS0 9002 is for 'healthcare and full range of clinical services'. They add that this means that 'on the day of their visit' the appropriate procedures were in place.

She was born by elective caesarian section there being some uncertainty as to whether she would alter her position which was over the pelvic bone. At birth she was given an APGAR score of 10 within 5 minutes and no malformations or defects were reported. She passed meconium and was urinating normally; she rejected infant formula and was breastfeeding. She was discharged from the hospital after three days.

Copies of the obstetrician's and doctor's notes relating to her birth are attached.(2)

Between birth and now she visited ** Hospital on three occasions, was checked by the paediatrician and received appropriate immunisations. No problems were diagnosed nor presenting.

A copy of her ongoing medical record is attached.(3)

On August 31st 2002 she ceased passing stools. Hitherto her movements had been apparently normal. As she is was breast fed there was as far as we understood no undue cause for alarm; though some solid foods- banana, rice, papaya and prunes were introduced into her diet around August 31 she ate very little of them.

On September 2nd she was taken to the hospital for a routine immunisation and check up. No problem was diagnosed or presenting.

When by September 10 she had not passed a stool she was taken again to ** Hospital. The diagnosis, by two doctors, was that there was no cause for worry but that an enema could be administered. This was not done on the basis it was better for her to pass stools normally. . On September 15 a hard mass could for the first time be felt in her stomach so she was taken back to the hospital.

She was admitted to the hospital. X Rays were taken and a mass of faeces was identified on the right hand side of her stomach;. 'suggestive of dilated sigmoid colon'. A small amount of faeces was also identified on the left hand side. The radiologist's report continues: 'dilated bowel loop in upper abdomen. Just below diaphragm; could be transverse colon. Some air density in small bowel. …Hirschsprung's disease should be considered.'

The Radiologists report from ** Hospital is attached. (4)

For whatever reason this report appears to have either not been read by the doctor at ** Hospital or ignored or rejected. No tests for Hirschsprung's disease were carried out, nor for any other possible malfunction; no barium meal was given for example, nor was rectal biopsy prposed..

A short description from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, outlining the normal presenting symptoms, the usual tests carried out for diagnosis and the consequent treatment of Hirschsprung's Disease is attached. (5)

After an initial examination her anus was found to be very small. An enema/irrigation treatment was administered on the evening of September 15. An anal dilator-Hegar size 13- was also used. Further similar treatments were made on the morning and in the evening of September 16 and at the same time examinations either to identify the location of faeces in the anus or a vaginal examination were carried out. Father and mother were, in Thai style .suggested, : 'that it was better if we did not accompany the child to the examination room'. Therefore, neither mother nor father were present at these examinations. However when she was returned to the room on the evening of September 16 she was passing stools through her vagina as well as her anus. This had never occurred previously.

The doctor's notes, which are attached, (6) for the morning of September 16 raise, for the first time, the idea that she has a congenital fistula as the irrigation administered on September 16 resulted in a discharge of fluid from the vagina

We took the decision to remove her from the hospital and seek specialist advice. The doctor at **l Hospital wrote a letter outlining the procedures that had been carried out and the diagnosis. A copy of this is attached.(7)

On September 17 she was taken to the ** Hospital where she was examined by Dr. ** He confirmed that her anus was very small and that an internal examination resulted in blood passing from the anus to the vagina. On September 18 he examined her thoroughly and confirmed the presence of the mass of faeces. His diagnosis was that the faeces had possibly been progressively building up since birth; the cause was presently unknown. He performed a vaginascopy and identified that there was a fistula between the vagina and the rectum. He said that :'the fistula is very high up above the hymen.'

He said further that: ' I am astonished at what we found. I have never seen such a thing before. She does not have a congenital fistula but a severe trauma to the vagina and rectum that someone has recently caused'

He therefore performed a colostomy to begin the process of removing the faeces and cleaning the rectum, anus and vagina.

His prognosis is that in two months time he will know if the fistula has closed satisfactorily. If it does not close he will have to operate to try and close it surgically, with the attendant uncertainties of success. Once the fistula is closed he will proceed to identify the precise cause of the build up of faeces and either operate or introduce an appropriate program of treatment to allow normal bowel movements.

She is covered by a medical and life assurance policy in Thailand taken out with ** Life Assurance ltd. An associate company of ** Bank. The fee for treatment on September 15 and 16 at ** Hospital was paid by the Life Assurance Co. A copy of the policy is attached (8)

On September 21 I went to ** Hospital and obtained a copy of her medical history from birth. I spoke briefly with the paediatrician who inquired after her. I told her that she was with her mother and I did not know her current state of health; and that the reason for wanting the notes was so that any hospital we took her to in England or the USA would have her medical history. The paediatrician expressed the opinion that taking her abroad was un-necessary and said: 'that she had suggested to her mother that she take her to C Hospital but he had refused'. This is an untruth. No such suggestion was ever made. Nor is any proposal for referral made in the notes.

The order of statements in the letter from ** Hospital, the medical notes from that hospital, the hitherto unsuggested problem of a fistula, the failure to carry out normal testing for Hirschprung's Disease even though this had been proposed by the Radiologist ,and sudden appearance of faeces in the vagina together with the diagnosis from ** Hospital clearly indicate that the trauma was caused by a doctor or an assistant at ** Hospital and that the sudden diagnosis of a fistula by the doctor at ** Hospital is an attempt to conceal their error.

She has been cared for since birth by her mother, her mother's sister -who is a nurse-, her grandmother and her father. No other person has had access to her without one of the above persons being present until she entered ** Hospital on September 16

On September 25 Dr. ** discharged her from ** Hospital.

He has written a letter, which is attached; together with the pictures from the rectal and vaginal investigations.

This statement is made on October 2 2002 by ** & **

October 2 2002

..........

I wonder if earhquakes in Brittany means there have been earthquakes in Wales. The last one was about 20 years ago, too. Quite unnerving. I was sitting in the garden and suddenly porpoises, sea trout, mackerel could be seen leaping out the sea.It was very surreal. A couple of minutes later the earth moved. How do fish know? Have never read a satisfactory explanation of this

Is October 2 significant in some world of which I know nothing? Whatever it has come to zap me today!
Went in a taxi to the immigration office to collect my new 1 year visa..have to say was delivered last week with amazing speed...always a good idea to have have a wounded infant in arms........today...said to taxi driver apparently normal human being ...Go to Sathorn Tai/////like Wall Street...then to immigration in Soi Suan Phru...go on the motorway...so you don't get stuck in the traffic..join it at the second entrance OK?...all this in Thai......tries to enter at first entrance.....fortunately awake....NO NO second entrance///................Yeah????. Yeah........On the motorway.....Where you want leave Rama 3 or Rama 4?........me: Rama 4....unfortunately make phone call.....where the f* are you going?.....Rama 3.............me:why? when I said Rama 4....silence.
Visa: Have to come back 29. Which month? Why? ....This month! .Have to........Me: But downstairs they gave me 1 Year visa because baby is sick. Cannot come back.......Much flurry of papers.............Speak with Police Captain Immigration +Bar DSC........have to come back 29 October......Repeat stuff about kid......oh! OK come back 30 March.....2003?!......Sure? cannot Come back 30 July 2003?? ......oh OK....'Look after your baby na? She is THAI BABY'............ha ha.....yeah unlike dad....New Taxi.....Want to go to Saladaeng Underground Station OK?....OK.........Why is he trying to turn left from outside lane?? ...Me: Where are you going? Oh I go Underground Station Childlom....WHY? I dunno. ME>>>>BUT I said go Saladaeng.....Did you? oh OK .....cuts up three lanes of traffic turns left..Thomas green with fear............Go to British Embassy.....usually 300 people trying to get visas for hooker wives....but no-one upstairs in consular section......Today no one in Visa section but 300 people trying to get I dunno. what in the consular section....registration of marriages to hookers by the look of it. Must be more tattoos assembled in one room than anywhere outside of Fulham.......Ring the Embassy...........Just want their thoughts on lawyers...of which they publish lengthy lists..........OOOOOOh no we could not help you CHOOSE a lawyer............. Went to see the 'person responsible' at the Embassy...No Queue? What it is to have patrician accent!
Question:Why does the British Embassy employ Thai staff to give advice to British people who want to COMPLAIN about Thais....and as you know that is a no no..!??....You get one of those great.....I really wish I was not here, and I really wish you were not asking me this and will you please GO AWAY GRINS......followed by silence. On yer own as ever!

We have got back today the translations into Thai of all the hospital records and documents. I said to the translator guy: 'Sad story, eh?' And he said: 'How much are you going to sue them for?' '30 million Baht', I replied. ' And that is probably not enough.' "If she needs lifelong care, a house etc"... And he said : "If it was my daughter I would not bother..I would just send in the luk nong!" No, I joke, he didn't really, well some of it!.........but we sort of agreed that the whole thing was 'beyond the normal'.!! ..as is the charming Thai phrase......
ps. luk nong are the tontons, the men in dark glasses, the hit men.....I believe the going rate for contract murder is about 5000B-$120!! Probably less for a whitey.

But I have got the Health Minister's email and mobile number! Cannot see that will help. Still think the Newspaper is the best course of action. Strangely, while this was developing the papers were full of the doctors' protests at the new Health Bill. "It will mean money drunk lawyers lying in wait at hospital doors to pressure patients into taking legal action against doctors." Clearly the sooner the better. SHOCK someone Thai becomes accountable; it truly would be a first. Cannot see it happening.