Free Island of Lightning by Robert Minhinnick Page B

previously concerned with time.
    Time? It’s massing around me like Mynydd y Glyn, there to the west. It’s building itself in the east like The Glôg. And squeezing me into it. Another fossil in its cliff. Now The Glôg I can stand. And maybe Mynydd y Glyn I might negotiate. But I know what’s coming. Cefn Craig Amos, that’s what’s coming. Pilgrim, that’s a brutal ridge. There’ll be no shrugging off Cefn Craig Amos, no optimism about scaling that precipice.
    But that’s the future. That’s the end of this journey. And what’s ten years? A moment. So make your tribute to the god of thirst here in the Trehafod Hotel. And think of the moments of which The Glôg is built.
    The pilgrimage progresses even as we rest. And soon you will notice that the Trehafod Hotel is no place for the pious. There are pieties here innumerable, but the pious should beware. And now it arrives. Your drink. The drink you have ordered but which in another reality has been ordered for you. It’s been waiting a long time.
    There is always something numinous about a pint come over the bar. Forget what it costs and ignore its antecedence. It will taste like the Taff yet reassemble your perceptions of self. It will instil holiness before the paranoia starts, but life is impossible without the delusions your glass will bring to you.
    In Llandaff in the Butcher’s you might sit under the Brain’s diamond in your own blue diamond of smoke and know that the path taken is no more crooked than the path to come. In Graigwen at the Ty Mawr the regulars will know you for a pilgrim before you have carried your glass to your seat and they will understand entirely that pilgrimage but not easily illustrate their understanding. And at The Rickyard Arms coming down the hill towards Porth and its bazaar, selling Queen Elizabeth Jubilee street party union jacks (discount), we might stand Gwyn Thomas a drink. But choose a seat near the door. Exits are important to Gwyn.
    Less garrulous than of old, he has his opinions.
    â€œWhat’s become of the Rhondda, Gwyn”?
    â€œWhat indeed?”
    â€œWho are these inheritors, Gwyn, in their NY ballcaps and Adidas training gear? In their white trainers with shock absorbers in the toes? No steelies now, Gwyn. Their feet are soft.”
    â€œNY?” he asks. “Ah yes. Not Yours .”
    â€œSo who are these Rhondda men, Gwyn, heads shaved, faces ringed and pierced?”
    â€œThe sons of their fathers”, the maestro breathes, over his American cream soda. “No more, no less. But don’t ask me what they do. Work has changed”.
    And he thinks a moment. “Do people work these days? I know they’re busy. Sometimes I watch the boys when their phones ring. That instant of bliss. Somebody’s calling. Somebody cares. And there’s me,” he says, taking a first sip, “who hasn’t had a telephone call since 1981.”
    â€œMr Thomas,” I say. “Tell me one thing before you go. I’ve always wanted to know why people planted monkey puzzle trees in the Rhondda?”
    â€œAh! Our great conundrum,” he says. “I’ve counted them all. And each is a friend. A little misplaced, aren’t they, but brave. It’s their bravery I admire. And the pretention too. Which is always one thing we lacked. Pretention. How we were warned against it. That was our great virtue, see. Our unpretentiousness. But sometimes people make vices out of their virtues...”
    And then he has to borrow a handkerchief because the cream soda bubbles have gone up his nose.
    But as in The Rickyard, two miles closer to where we are heading today, or two miles further away, as Mr Thomas put it before slipping out, here in the Trehafod a word of advice. Be wary of the landlord’s expression. Vacancy and animation are masks. Both angels and demons are found behind public-house counters and I have been obliged by both. The