The Black Pig (Mochyn Du) As Metaphor For Wales' Future Under Westminster

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As I'm in Essex exile at the moment looking after my mother. I don't feel that it's the right time to discuss most Welsh issues as I'm literally miles away. There are certainly things that I do want to deal with, the mud from the Hinckley Point nuclear power station being buried in Cardiff or the Barry incinerator springs to mind. But to me they are best looked into when I return.

But as regular readers will know. Even though I'm in Essex I'm not completely immune in this blog from discussing things Welsh. Which leads me to the Black Pig, or as I should say, Y Mochyn Du.

Y Mochyn Du was a pub in Cardiff city centre and popular with Welsh Language Speakers. Now before I go on I've never visited the place. Partly because I don't live near enough partly because I'm of an age where visiting a town centre in the night is the exception not the rule. But mainly because of the minor little fact that I don't drink. So let's face it I'm not it's target audience.

But remember I'm talking about this place for metaphor for Wales. Therefore we need to begin with the fact that is has been taken over by the London based chain Brewhouse and Kitchen. So what has the London based chain done? It has changed the name of the pub to the imaginatively named Brewhouse and Kitchen Cardiff. Thus in a stroke it has taken the Welshness of the place away so to assimilate it with the other English pubs in the chain. It has become the Cardiff branch office and nothing more.

Does Alun Cairns have shares in the firm?

But then it gets even more concerning. The drinks list includes under the caption "English Style Ales" (whatever that actually means) an ale called Y Mockyn Du. Now let's pause here. A Welsh ale done in "an English style" (whatever that means) with a name that's almost literally a mockery of it's past (that or it was written by an Englishman/woman brought in who thought that was how it was spelt).

Also the Twitter account adds insult to injury where they describe that they're about to open "a shiny new pub". Again I'm not the target audience but I would guess that no one actually wants a "shiny" pub. They want it to be clean but not shiny. The pictures it includes makes you realise that it will be very little different to other Brewhouse and Kitchen pubs throughout Britain. The Welshness barring a throwaway tokeness is gone.

And this is the metaphor for Wales. Today a pub...down the line a nation?

Until the next time.