asthma and wales

Live the Welsh road works and dream of England

(written august 2009)

A few years ago I was on holiday in Wales. At the time I was still living in East Anglia, thus the prospect of hills was a real novelty. Yet when I was on this break in Welsh land I was confronted by a young man whom I presume was both unemployed and suffering from low level brain damage. I was standing next to the car belonging to my girlfriend of the time and I was also sporting a black and white Union Flag tee shirt (often mistakenly referred to as the ‘Union Jack’, but it is only the ‘Jack’ when flying from the jack mast of a ship, enough trivia) albeit a low level affair. The young man in question asked “what the f*** are you doing here?”. My reply was the retort, “I’m seeing what my taxes pay for”

I know that I am being all English and demeaning to the rest of the United Kingdom, yet I feel that I have a point. England is the only country that does not have a bank holiday on its Saint’s day, because most of the money that goes to the government comes from this green and pleasant land and Mr Darling would pass out if he had to stump up the money for everyone in England to have an extra day off.

Nonetheless I have a love for Wales. The Welsh currently builds the V8 engines that power the new Jaguars and have also given us Anthony Hopkins, Tom Jones and the Manic Street Preachers. However, the Welshists also produced Neil Kinnock and John Prescott and sorry, but that is simply unforgivable.

I digress.

On Monday I was required to journey to Wales once again due to my girlfriend needing to go to hospital. I live in Staffordshire, which is deeply unpleasant, and she lives in Cardiff, a city that she describes as lovely, but seeing that she is originally from Belfast I guess that anywhere where she doesn’t get shot at has a nice and warm feel to it.

My Paddy partner had been stopping with me for a few days and we left for Cardiff early in the morning, storming down the motorways of England before the rush hour took effect. There were a few minor hold ups, but nothing untoward until that is we reached Wales. I have always had trouble when driving west of the border, I simply do not understand why it is that the road signs have to be in Welsh as well as English as I find this downright confusing. When I read a sign I only want to see what information it needs to yield and then I can carry on with my journey, that’s it. But in Wales I am left reading the Welsh language section after the English and trying desperately to comprehend how the two phrases are in any way related. Another point that riles me here is that I have never met anyone from Wales who does not speak English, usually with Welsh being a language of national pride. I see nothing wrong with this, I am all for a bit of pride in one’s country, yet there is no need for road signs to appear in the UK in anything other than English. After all English is the language of the civilised world.

And America.

Anyway, as we made our merry way towards Cardiff I became rather agitated with Welsh road works. There were tailbacks and hold ups galore, but nothing, I repeat, nothing prepared me for the mess that greeted us upon arrival in the capital of Wales. Now, we all know how road works are supposed to go. You sit there, bored and frustrated waiting for the lights to change that in turn herald a few cars moving through the aforementioned road works. Not in Cardiff it isn’t.

No, here you sit in traffic that simply does not move, looking towards traffic lights that are apparently jammed on red for the best part of an hour, riding the clutch and sweating profusely, praying tht that the fan will kick in before the radiator explodes and showers the druids with the impossible prospect of coolant heated to a billion degrees centigrade . Then if you blink you miss the lights that flash green for a nanosecond before letting half a million buses through.

After an obscene amount of time I changed lane and decided to adopt the ‘taxi driver’ style of traffic negotiation whereby one simply ignores the lanes and tries to fit through any available gap. This caused a problem however, as the clutch pedal simply went straight to the floor. To say I was upset would be a drastic understatement. I screamed, I wailed and I cursed God, something awkward for an atheist to do. You see, in this moment I had run every possible problem through my head. Anyone who has ever been involved in a road accident will know the way that times slows down and thought processes accelerate faster than a top fuel dragster. My girlfriend was in the car, instructed not to take the medication she relies on because the hospital had told her not to have it that morning, the same medication was buried somewhere in the luggage in the back of the car, my clutch had gone, the road was blocked, therefore there would be no way that an ambulance could read my lady should she need urgent assistance, thus in a few brief seconds I was already planning bereavement and planning a funeral.

To make matters worse my crawling about on the road trying to reattach the clutch cable caused amusement for an Afro Caribbean gentleman in his Peugeot. I do not fully understand the reason why French cars tend to be owned by persons with learning difficulties, but they do. Had I been on my own I imagine that I would have lost my temper and beaten him to death with the jack handle that resides beneath my driver’s seat. This is not a joke.

Once the cable was back where the good men of Dagenham intended I fired the engine up and made my way forwards, realising that the handbrake was causing undue friction and whether the lights were green or not I have no idea, this was a terrifying situation.

Happily things improved, the Cortina lunged through the streets of the Welsh capital and onward to the hospital. Here came a surprise. Once more I found myself swearing owing to the distinct lack of pocket change about my person I thought would be necessary for the car park. Yet, my lovely lady explained that there was no need to pay for the car park. This was yet another shock. During my time going back to the hospital that buggered up my leg I was charged roughly £45 a second to park my car, but in Wales it is free, so that’s something else my taxes are subsidising, the bitterness continues.

I do not wish to divulge what occurred within the walls of the hospital, that is personal, yet I did actually get to meet a real Welsh person. This sounds obvious, but before arriving I had not yet seen a person from the rolling hills and deep valleys of this part of the UK. No, what I had actually seen was countless Portuguese, Polish and Indian people, as well as the African chap in the Pug, and even inside the comfort of my own vehicle the other occupant was from the Emerald Isle.

Nonetheless I can report that the ‘technician’ who saw to my lady was somewhat ‘thick’ and I assume had worked his way up through the NHS from the post of cleaner to operating a machine a child of three would not find complex.

Just a word of advice, if you find yourself in a Welsh hospital and a man called Collin is called in to asses you, simply ask to see the Vietnamese woman that cleans the toilets, it will be easier and more accurate.

Later in the day I dropped my girl off at her flat, situated on a street that Afghans would find a wee bit dodgy (but not to rough as there are plenty of veiled women wandering about) and made my way home thinking only of how quickly I could save the cash so that she could move in with me and headed back towards my home country.

To be honest I still love Wales, but I have no intention of visiting Cardiff unless there is something good on at the Millennium Stadium (paid for by the English) or if Eileen calls me up saying she has bought a job lot of PVC clothing and cannot get to the train station. I was sad to be leaving my lover but happy to be leaving the land of the idiotic road works, blasting along the motorways, thankfully with the signs in the Queen’s English and making good time.

Then I got to the M6 and got stuck for two hours. And guess what was the cause of the hold up? A caravan that had tipped over, complete with the Welsh dragon on the number plate.

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