The following is a bird’s eye overview of the old Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen school site. The red pin on the map denotes the Powys block of the school.
Use the plus / minus on the top left to re-size the map. You can navigate the map in the following way : place the mouse pointer over the map image, click the left mouse button and hold it down, then move the mouse to navigate the map.
The oldest part of Rhydfelen school dated from World War I and was based around the Gwent block of school rooms. The Gwent block is in white at the lower part of the map.
Test your memory… see how many parts of old Rhydfelen school you remember.
Please note this map dates from approximately 2004. In 2006 the school moved to a new site in Church Village and in 2008 all the old school buildings at the Rhydfelin site (in the map) were destroyed.
In the bottom left hand side of the map the large road is the A470 and adjacent to that runs the River Taff.
Given some time I hope to be able to prepare and publish an anotated map of the old Rhydfelen school site in future.
I am sweating and tapping a keyboard and shifting wires.
I have Patrick Jones on my mind because I am going to see his play tonight.
It’s Thursday March 23rd 2000.
I am sweating my bollocks off in a Japanese factory near Hirwaun.
I am at one end of the production line.
The girl with the pretty smile is at the other end of the line.
And in between an endless sullen stream of computer monitors humming monotonously all day.
*
I went to see Everything Must Go at Blackwood Miner’s Institute on March 23rd, 2000. I saw the premiere in the Sherman Theatre the previous year. The acting was excellent and the casting remained mostly unchanged from the Cardiff premiere. Andrew Lennon, Maria Pride (ex Rhydfelen pupil) etc.
I was so moved by the production at Blackwood. It felt unnerving to witness the story unfold given my current work and the way I was feeling (or not feeling) at the time.
I was then working in the the Cynon Valley’s largest factory, Hitachi Electronics on Rhigos Industrial Estate outside Hirwaun. In the 1970s in its heyday it employed several thousand people. Now in 2000, the closure of the factory was inevitable and there was an air of despondency and gloom that made life in the factory difficult and depressing. I felt sorry for the workers who had invested ten, twenty or more years of their lives in this one factory and knew it would all soon end with little prospect of getting another job.
In Everything Must Go, one scene in particular reminded me how brilliant Jones is as a poet and dramatist : the scene with the miners and computer monitors being thrown down a mineshaft. In one brief but very poignant scene in the play, Jones contrasts the traumatic changes that have happened to the Valleys in recent years and the human response to that : a need to express anger at such inexplicable changes. I could relate to this writing. It made me want to try and put pen to paper.
In his own words from the play’s directions :
Unit 7
Music : Ready for Drowning by the ‘Manic Street Preachers’
7 miners climb out of the ground and sit in lecture chairs, brought on by factory workers, and are presented with computer screens. After failing to work out how to use them, each miner picks up his screen and throws it down into the pit. They take a long look at the audience, their lamps shining straight out, then exit.
A factory hooter sounds. Silence.
This scene resonated deeply with me. I was working computer monitors on an assembly line and sometimes felt like throwing them simply to feel alive. Production line work numbs the body and mind. The factory making the computer monitors was situated literally down the road from Tower Colliery, the last deep mine in South Wales. Everything seemed to be going, going, soon to be gone.
The Manic Street Preaches song ‘Ready for Drowning’ played out with this scene. Listening to this song I felt as if tears were welling up inside and filling my heart and lungs, blotting out and drowning traumatic experiences from my own past.
Here’s a true story said someone to me yesterday…
Deny its history, deny its history…
So where are we going we are not ready for drowning ?
I stayed for the after-show event where Patrick Jones performed some of his new poetry. I had brought a few questions with me but never got the opportunity to ask them. He read some poems concerning the St David’s Woods area of Blackwood which was about to be destroyed by road developers.
I took notes, as I usually do, throughout the play and in particular during Patrick’s after-show reading. I took so many notes, I started writing on the edges of the newspaper at hand. Eventually I ran out of newspaper, and then I started writing on my hand, and then up my arm. Thus I walked out of the Blackwood Miner’s Institute with Patrick Jones written up my arm. I looked like a tattooed yob, albeit one inspired by poetry.
Tresaith is a small village around two miles to the north of Aberporth on the Ceredigion coast.
The coloured ‘pin’ in this map is roughly above the Tresaith chalets which were used by Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen for many years.
You can navigate the map in the following way : place the mouse pointer over the map image, click the left mouse button and hold it down, then move the mouse to navigate the map.
The Urdd Gobaith Cymru’s Llangrannog camp site is approximately five miles away.
Another photo from the Tresaith school camp in July 1983 with 1 Owain.
In the photo : front row (left) Craig Duggan and (right) Jonathan Dunn.
Behind the window pane, Richard Hughes.
If I can blow my own juvenile trumpet, I think there’s good composition in this photo.
Craig Duggan worked for the BBC for some time and, latterly, he went on to work for Powys County Council as part of their Menter Iaith (Welsh Language initiative). But what happened to Richard and Jonathan ?
I think the best Muppet Show ever was the one where Julie Andrews appeared and sang The Lonely Goatherd. That was thirty years ago in Episode 17 of Series 2 (1977-1978) of the Muppet Show.
By that time in my childhood I had seen the Sound of Music film and could recognise this song. We certainly had a copy of the album of the Sound of Music in the collection of records near the family gramaphone (or record player).
I loved the surreal comedy of the Muppet show. There were so many daft and lovable animal characters. The Muppet Show was very cleverly produced and had a wide appeal amongst children and adults alike. There was always plenty of visual gags in the show, like the gag at the end of this particular episode where Rowlf plays “Moonlight Sonata” and loses his concentration as a moon rises behind him.
April 1982. I walk into Aberdare Woolworth’s in Commercial Street Aberdare and pay £1.10 for the 7″ single of Tight Fit’s ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. It has been number 1 in the UK pop charts for three weeks.
I am eleven years old and still at junior school at Ysgol Ynyslwyd. I seem to know what I like when it comes to buying a single on the occasional Saturday in Aberdare town.
Tight Fit were a short-lived UK pop act. They gained unexpected success in 1982 with this single. The group was fronted by singer and male model Steve Grant along with female singers Denise Gyngell and Julie Harris.
Never underestimate the record buying allure of women dancing in leopard print leotards… here is the video on Youtube.
Fel bachgen un ar ddeg mlwydd oed fe ennillais Crys T Bananaman am fy mhod wedi ysgrifennu llythyr doniol a brintiwyd yn un o comics poblogaidd y dydd.
Fel dyn yn fy nhridegau fe ennillais tocyn ar gyfer y dadl agoriadol yn Siambr newydd y Senedd.
Braint oedd cael gwisgo fy nghrys T Bananaman fel bachgen a braint oedd bod yn rhan o gynulleidfa wahoddedig yn Siambr y Senedd yn gwrando ar Aelodau y Cynulliad ar Ddydd Mawrth, y 7fed o Chwefror 2006.
Clod i Leanne Wood AC am ddefnyddio ei thocynnau er mwyn codi trafodaeth ar y cwestiwn, pwy ddylai agor ein Senedd ni ?
Do you remember Philip Davies at Rhydfelen ? He is on the right of this photo, behind Trystan Williams (1T) in the foreground. Philip was in class 1H and after that, 2H, 3H etc.
Please drop me a note if you know Philip Davies or his whereabouts.
Philip started Ysgol Rhydfelen school in September 1982. 1 Owain was his registration group.
This photo was taken on the July 1983 school trip to Tresaith on the Ceredigion Coast with 1 Owain group. On that trip, Menna Tomos was present, as our registration group teacher, along with Mr Gerwyn Caffery and Mr Elfed Charles.
I am looking forward to a meeting today at Cardiff University to discuss the future of a Welsh ‘indymedia’ independent media project. The old Indycymru project died recently. This left Wales as the only part of the UK without an independent media project website.
I have booked the smallest and thus cheapest room available at Cardiff University and sold a proverbial kidney to pay for it. I never gamble, but today I am gambling people will turn up.
There are promises of support from many different individuals and groups, but very few people turn up for this meeting. One of those that did turn up was an enthusiastic young man called Jim Dunckley.
I have a book by Noam Chomksy with me and Jim Dunckley seems to know a thing or two about this writer. So I give him my copy of Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions in the hope it might find a good home and help his political thinking.
Before the above meeting, I took a walk around Cardiff Queen Street and a lone busker sitting on a bench in the middle of the street caught my eye. He was singing one of Bob Marley’s classic songs and there was so much happiness in his singing and such a warm smile. He seemed to light up the whole street. We take ourselves and the work of our lives so seriously, that we do not allow ourselves time to stop for a while and enjoy the simplest of pleasures.
* * *
This man entertained thousands of Welsh people today for he spent the afternoon sitting on a bench in Queen Street, Cardiff singing his heart out.
The sun shone on Cardiff today and it felt like summer in the mid-day sun.
Today there are more beggars and homeless people in Cardiff than in many decades past.
Aberdare’s MP Ann Clwyd raised the issue of homelessness at this year’s March 1st St David’s Day Welsh Affairs Debate in the House Of Parliament, saying :
I have been shocked recently in Cardiff to see people sitting on the streets, by lifts, wrapped up in blankets, begging.
It was nigh impossible to walk down a single street without passing someone squatting at a shop-entrance begging.
Cardiff has changed so much in the past few years, but the chasm between the richest and poorest in society is wider than ever.
…
I spent some time sitting in the sun near the statue of John the Third Marquis of Bute overlooking Cardiff Castle, with a copy of Noam Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions at hand for company. Even the stern figure of old Butey seemed to want to smile in the glorious sunny Cardiff that was Friday, March 9th 2007.
The first record I ever bought was by a band called Darts. That was in 1978. I was seven years old. I loved the doo wop singing style. Makes you want to dance.
I’ve found a video of Boy from York City on Youtube, below. It’s a cover version of the Ad Libs 1965 hit.
In the video Den Hegarty is the band member with the chequered suit. He always reminded me of a scary monster character with his jerky movements, thick sideburns and eyebrows and strange expressions.
Bob Fish is singing and dancing to the left of Hegarty and looking so cool in a dark staypress-type suit with a wide white collared shirt. And Rita Ray. She is a touch of magic. Just look at her move in this video clip.
Galarnad Jeremeia, Pennod 3.
I have Patrick Jones on my mind.
I am trying to contact RYAN SMART, a former pupil of Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen school. He is now approximately 37 years old.
Do you remember Philip Davies at Rhydfelen ? He is on the right of this photo, behind Trystan Williams (1T) in the foreground. Philip was in class 1H and after that, 2H, 3H etc.
