Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.
Before I start I'm not talking about last week's episodes of the Welsh language soap opera Pobol Y Cwm. We will as a family be watching it hopefully today. No I'm chatting about the previous two week's (with a break for the Eisteddford) editions.
It is amazing to me writing a blog how sometimes a post can be prompted by something initially innocuous. It was an article that appeared on my timeline on Twitter by Niamh Towey about emigration from the Irish Republic from the perspective of someone who stayed in Ireland. It is worth a read (https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/i-m-sad-that-so-many-of-my-clever-talented-friends-had-to-leave-ireland-1.3592182)
Now as regular readers of the blog will know. My mind sometimes works in tangents. I've written on a purely anecdotal basis on the dangers of emigration from Wales post the EU referendum result before. But this time my mind wandered back to the previous episodes of Pobol.
In the previous two weeks editions Characters contemplated or actually left the village of Cwmderi five times.
They were:
Sheryl: who was contemplating running away to Canada or Ireland.
Vicky: who moved to London to be with her father following his offer of a new job and accommodation.
Elfion: who wants to move to New Zealand. Partly for a new life following the loss of their farm and partly to run away from the past after a male lover reappears.
Cadno: Elfion's female partner who will move with her children to her brother's house on discovering Elfion is gay. And when I say discovering, I mean her partner and his male lover in bed together.
(And as a quick aside one of the most annoying scenes in film and TV is when a couple are in a bed after having sex. One of them gets out of the bed and they're wearing boxers/knickers! This happened here. Just get out wrapping yourself in a sheet. Equally unrealistic but less laughable)
Anyway...
If you take out the unfortunate Sheryl from that list who was going to kidnap her adoptive child and assume that Cadno's brother lives in Wales that will mean of the remaining three two of them did not consider staying in the village or even the country as an option. Two of them considered that their life would be better away from Wales.
Now of course I could be over analysing things, perhaps being overly dramatic about a soap opera. But perhaps this is a sense of things to come. People having the opportunity to leave Wales and deciding to live overseas. Of course this is not original (How Green Was My Valley) but perhaps post Brexit life gives it a push
So what can stop this? Well I don't know for certain. But I'd argue that independence could help. For whilst as in Ireland it will not stop emigration there would be that sense of purpose in building a nation which as part of the United Kingdom it currently lacks.
It is an issue anyway that Wales needs to be aware of.
Until the next time.
Vicky: who moved to London to be with her father following his offer of a new job and accommodation.
Elfion: who wants to move to New Zealand. Partly for a new life following the loss of their farm and partly to run away from the past after a male lover reappears.
Cadno: Elfion's female partner who will move with her children to her brother's house on discovering Elfion is gay. And when I say discovering, I mean her partner and his male lover in bed together.
(And as a quick aside one of the most annoying scenes in film and TV is when a couple are in a bed after having sex. One of them gets out of the bed and they're wearing boxers/knickers! This happened here. Just get out wrapping yourself in a sheet. Equally unrealistic but less laughable)
Anyway...
If you take out the unfortunate Sheryl from that list who was going to kidnap her adoptive child and assume that Cadno's brother lives in Wales that will mean of the remaining three two of them did not consider staying in the village or even the country as an option. Two of them considered that their life would be better away from Wales.
Now of course I could be over analysing things, perhaps being overly dramatic about a soap opera. But perhaps this is a sense of things to come. People having the opportunity to leave Wales and deciding to live overseas. Of course this is not original (How Green Was My Valley) but perhaps post Brexit life gives it a push
So what can stop this? Well I don't know for certain. But I'd argue that independence could help. For whilst as in Ireland it will not stop emigration there would be that sense of purpose in building a nation which as part of the United Kingdom it currently lacks.
It is an issue anyway that Wales needs to be aware of.
Until the next time.
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