Alone On A Sunday Afternoon With S4C

Hello there. Trust you're feeling well today.

I do not in any way have a glamorous job. But it's OK and my work colleagues are nice. Now it does involve shift working early mornings between six and two,sometimes in weekend. Days such as today,Sunday 10th April.

And on days such as these the wife/daughter might spend the day out somewhere. Leaving me on my own when I return home, soon to throw mini pizzas into the microwave for dinner. Which you might consider sad......if it wasn't for the fact that I have the chance to watch my TV recordings in peace.

Since deciding to learn Welsh again I've split how I watch television. One day it's sport. Mainly football of course but also bits of NBA and MLB thrown in (I'm a Red Sox fan. Picked because I follow the Spenser private eye novels of Robert Parker).

But the next day I would watch my recordings of programmes from the Welsh language channel S4C. The idea is as much as possible to immerse myself in the language for that day along with the radio station Radio Cymru.

There is a lot of rubbish spoken about S4C mainly from non Welsh speaking people who wouldn't want to watch it with English subtitles on (presumably they go around Wales wearing blinkers to all the Cymraeg around the place). Those detractors point to the low ratings of some programmes as some sort electronic ammunition to shoot it with. This of course is unfair. Because the biggest problem this one channel faces is that it is one channel. It's expected to be BBC1,BBC2, BBC3,BBC4,Ceebies,CBBC,BBC Parliament and the BBC News channel in just one stream. So a documentary programme about a dead poet in English thrown on BBC4 will rarely have a massive audience then a similar programme made in Welsh is obviously going to have even less than that as even if you're a fluent speaker it doesn't mean you'll want to watch it.

But as I will fight for libraries even though I will never read every book in one then similarly I will fight for S4C even though I will not want to watch every programme in it. For it is the main national promoter of Welsh and any diminution will damage (though will never destroy) its use.

And so today on my list to watch as follows:

Anita: A comedy about a woman and her daughter who moves from Cardiff  to Anglesey to be with her boyfriend and his family. It's funny warm and very amiable. It's also clever being able to combine English,South Walian and North Walian Welsh and yet I feel as  a learner able to understand most of it.

Prynhawn Da and Heno: These are magazine programmes for the afternoon and early evening respectively. They're useful for me  because they cover a wide variety of subjects in a general way. (The worst programmes for me are those that also require a detailed knowledge of a subject. These are pointless to watch. Recently there was a series about angling. Now the closest I get to fish is when they cohabit with chips on a plate before going into my mouth. Needless to say it was avoided.

Pobol Y Cwm: The long running Welsh language soap opera and a favourite of mine. I was a fan of the Sunday omnibus edition which had on screen English subtitles. It also taught me that translations may not give the correct phrase all the time. I remember "he thinks a woman's place is in the home" as a subtitle but I distinctly heard "gegin" (kitchen) and "gwely" (bedroom) being said!

Pobol Y Rhondda: A series spotlighting the people of the Rhondda Valley. A place that I've always believed is the Tuscany of Wales (should you believe that it's Italy with rain). It's a life affirming show. I've shown non Welsh speakers who live there this programme and they have become instant fans

Sport: I've a match of from the Welsh Premier Football League (yes Wales has its own leagues. Something I learnt quickly when moving here. I'll chat about this soon). S4C also shows Rugby at all levels in Wales and it's the only moment when I make the effort to watch it. There is a game with London Welsh in it today (though I can't say I quite understand London Welsh - they don't seem all that Welsh and they don't play in London). I must admit I'm not into rugby as much as football and again I'll chat about this another time.

Well I hope I've persuaded you to watch some programmes on S4C. If you're not in Wales S4C has its own on demand app and you can also watch it on the BBC Iplayer.

But if you excuse me...I've got some programmes to watch.

Until the next time....

Of Books Read And To Be Read. And Why I'm Learning Welsh Again

Hello there. Trust you are well.

When chatting to you about the books in my first post I'd forgotten in fact that I was reading three books at the same time. As all these books have now been read reckon I should start with the book I hadn't mentioned which is.....

Danny Baker - Going Off Alarming

Took this with me when visiting my mother on the Mother's Day weekend. On the London Underground it took me from Grosvenor Road to Epping and from Epping to Victoria by chuckle. I've a soft spot for these autobiographies, particularly for its first volume Going To Sea In A Sieve. It evoked a London of my youth as the mayor seems to make the present day capital a land for for Russian Oligarchs to live in. Even if his is South of the Border and mine is of the East.

Of course Iris Murdoch could not be more different from Danny Baker and that it appears includes my reaction to this Penguin Paperback.

Iris Murdoch - The Italian Girl

One thing I will make every effort to do is not to go into great detail about the books I'm reading because I don't want to spoil it for people who want to read it in the future. So let me say this. It was a disappointment having been a fan of The Sea,The Sea. What it was was arty twaddle, For a relatively thin book it was full of unbelievable characters with unbelievable traumas in an unbelievably short space of time. The most I'll say about it is that it was readable...but that was it.

I didn't have high expectations of Neil Warnock's ghost written book The Gaffer. But that didn't matter because this is best described as amiable. Essentially it was billed as an entertaining slice of a manager's life and judged on that basis you did feel cheated. If I had to choose between the Warnock book and the Murdoch one then The Gaffer wins. But both would lose when brought up against either of Danny Baker's autobiographies.

So there are new Penguins and Football books to buy. But I won't be able to do that until later this week so I went to the shelves of the great unread and picked two books. 

This was the first one....

Paul Theroux - The Pillars Of Hercules

As the cover says this is a chronicle of his travels  along the Mediterranean around 1994. I personally find travel books more interesting when read years after the actual trip. The phrase "the test of time" seemingly suited to it. My favourite travel books don't just capture a place but also a mood. That said I must be honest and say that I've never read any of his books in the genre before or indeed any of his novels. Not because of a personal dislike but simply as there as there are so many books and so little time that I've never got round to reading one until now.

Mind you I have read a couple of short story collections with an American consulate official as a central character. They were alright but nothing more (and obviously they did not inspire me to actively get seek out others in his canon). I do remember that the best word to describe these books was "professional" but writing to a reader I'd argue needs to be more than that.

I hadn't actively sought out another football book amongst the shelves of the great unread but it just turned out that this was the book came to my sight next.

Football Dynamo - Marc Bennetts

As (again) the cover explains book (this edition 2008) is about Russia and football written by a British journalist living there. One of my favourite type of books in this genre is one that mixes personal experience with general history. It probably explains why for example my favourite about boxing is In The Red Corner by John Duncan, about the relationship between Cuba and the sport.

Anyway it is I can tell you a fascinating read. How do I know this already? Because I've already started reading it years ago and am halfway through. It was bought many years ago. Remember beginning to read it but then another book demanded my attention beforehand for reasons I can't recall and so it was put back on the shelf (with the bookmark still on the point I left it) to be forgotten. If there was a moment you can go "ahhh" at a book it's now. Not now though (so you can cheer).

Now to completely change the subject I've recently decided to resuscitate learning Welsh. Now before chatting about the present an explanation as to the circumstances as to why I'd learnt the language in the first place is called for. Because it came about by accident.

Many years ago and before we had our daughter my wife had a job which required her to work on Wednesday evenings. At the time I felt at a loose end and decided to attend evening classes on that day. So looked at what was available. I'd wanted car maintenance as my stock move with any problem in that regard is to panic and call the breakdown people/go to a garage. But there were no lessons on that day. There were though lessons in Welsh for beginners.....so it began.

I always say that in a parallel universe there is a version of me proficient in car maintenance. Of course in another parallel universe there is another super me who can speak Welsh and  know his way around a car.

Anyway slowly but surely I started learning yr iaith Cymraeg.Getting to a stage where I passed the equivalent exam in O Level and had only just failed to do the same in the higher level. I found myself regularly watching the Welsh language TV channel S4C and the radio station Radio Cymru and practised the language socially in such occasions as coffee mornings.

However when I lost my job and found it difficult to get a new one I slowly became depressed and found it hard to concentrate on other things including Welsh. I performed disastrously in my second attempt in the exam at the higher level. My heart was not in it so just walked away.

So I was in a sort of linguistic limbo. Nowhere near fluent but a thousand times better than "the cat sat on the mat"

Now I have work, and slowly my mojo is coming back. So I'm returning dysgu Cymraeg. What I know in learning Welsh the first time is that experiences are introduced to you which are absent if you only speak English even if you're living in the country. My wife is from Cardiff and I know that in some respects I know more about this country than she does because I can to an extent speak the language.

What I also know is this. Whatever personal circumstances derailed me from learning Welsh I have always believed that the language has to survive. Because if Welsh was lost then there will be a piece of Wales that would be lost with it.

Perhaps I'm an old romantic...but there you go

I find that I can listen to general programmes on Radio Cymru and watch those on S4C and be able to catch the gist of what's going on which is encouraging. In another time I'll chat about these channels but you're spared today.

So the beginner's books are taken out. The old papers are dusted off and ymlaen.

The mutations are once again to be tackled (and I don't mean the X Men).

Welsh Language Action

I'll chat about how it's going on in future posts.

Until the next time.