the title is in here, somewhere // mae'r teitl yn fan hyn, yn rhywle

 

 

 

Cymraeg & English...translation...bilingualism...how to melt the two languages, how to make something that is not a direct translation - always two lines of either/or; not to split it. I am not a fluent speaker of Cymraeg - I get by. My Grandad spoke it, he learnt it as a boy when he ran away from Cardiff and ended up on a farm in Treletert, Sir Benfro. The language is around me where I live. Some words or phrases are so embedded that I know I don't translate them.

I have learnt from my collecting of plants names in English and the Brythonic languages [and the scientific names], that I can flounder over a noun, a name, when I look at a plant with so many names in my head - cat got your tongue?...fur in the throat?... 

 

I can't do it, the thing that I want - some things just can't occupy the same space at the same time and be clear, be understood, be read.

 

 

But...Howard Gardens the art school - the Cardiff School of art, the Howard Garden's campus of South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education, of UWIC...that was there and isn't now, and the empty space is filled with new rooms, corridors, stairwells, my memory overlays what was with what is. The impossibility of walking the corridors of my memory, of touching the plastic covered handrails of stair rails, of wedging myself up by the ceiling of the lift...

 

 

 

black & white photo: Dave Daggers, Cardiff/Caerdydd

Stryd Fawr Llandaf // Llandaff Hight Street first time

Blue glass sky with Cumulus clouds Swifts Skimming screaming Chasing Yellow traffic warden watching ticketing Slipping notes

Standing waiting on Llandaf High Street

Sound of bicycle breaks

Smell of after-shave from man running to cash point machine on other side of the road

Piercing alarm from somewhere close. Stopped

Swallows sparrows jacadaws

Coffee after the café door across the road is opened

(car upon car)

Door of newsagent's, bag caught against door knob

Beeping of large vehicle reversing

Keys/change in a man's pocket

Baby jacadaws

Two different music sounds from two cars going up & down

Bus

Dustbin bags thunk rattle - dropped on pavement

Starling lots of jacadaws

Newsagent's door

Big skip lorry

(car upon car)

Postman ringing post office door and jangles keys/change in his pocket

Door open

Chaffinch; newsagents door (priest & newspapers)

(car car car car..)

Zebra crossing beep; flat shoes with hard sole plastic carrier bag against leg

Bus slowing down for stop

High heels and carrier bag

(cars always cars)

Newsagent's door swifts robin newsagent's door one, two

Girls talking

Post office door - latched, open close

Postman keys, sack drops on floor;

Car door open close boot/trunk wheezes

Open clunks shut car starts quiet squeaks a little smells of petrol