December 1 has come and gone with its annual explosion of household fairy-light fanaticism. Every urban street has at least one devotee, busy unravelling miles of extension cables in readiness for six weeks of perpetual daylight.
No more so than in the tiny hamlet of Pantperthog, which nestles amid towering conifers in a deep river valley between Machynlleth and Corris. It's a place of outstanding natural beauty. All you can see is a rushing river and miles and miles of trees.
But not in December.
On an end terrace of three houses is a fairy-light spectacular that's surely visible from space. At the flick of a switch this weekend the Dyfi forest's entire squirrel population must have keeled over in shock. I wish I'd stopped to take a photograph, but the glare off the wet road meant I had to concentrate on where I was driving, and it's a long trip from Pembrokeshire to Anglesey. I wanted to get home.
The garden is reserved for reindeer and sleighs and waving Father Christmases, all consuming more amps than Live Aid 2. But then there's the house. Or at least, there was. Now it's just lights. Like the mother ship in Close Encounters, the house is coursing with so much power it's generating its own magnetic field. If you're orienteering in the Dyfi forest this December, stick to GPS - your compass is buggered.
Best of all, though, is that this wattage wonderland is no more than 200 yards from the Centre for Alternative Technology. I had to concentrate on the road again, because I was laughing. Then I thought: What better snapshot of mankind's dilemma over climate change than this?
I spent the weekend in Pembrokeshire, swapping Christmas presents with family, visiting and so on. On the way back I stopped at Ceibwr Bay, midway between Fishguard and Cardigan on the coast. There was a gale blowing, with bits of sea foam blowing up and over the black cliffs like drifting snow. I stood on the coast path and watched a grey seal sheltering in the bay, and I was warmed by the thought that right there, right then, Christmas meant absolutely nothing.
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3 comments:
How I agree! Every year I put off doing anything about Christmas, if we're lucky Llion and I are asked out for Christmas lunch - and then I don't have to do anything except send a few cards. This is the one time of year that I am pleased I don't have much of a family and what I do have live mercifully far away.
Phil, I really enjoyed your blog from the beginning - you quickly got a very sharp focus and style(the 'black' humour) and had a lot of fun playing around with some of the current uses of language.
In this last post you begin to change direction from the ironic and entertaining rants... maybe you've been influenced by some of your fellow students' blogs!
Now I'd love to see you do the academic construct of the earlier posts, so give it a try.
Another lively and entertaining blog! And I loved the thumbnail landscape sketches too. But - 'Coarsing'?? You need a hormone nymph cheque.
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