tractor tyre.Tony has a simple if somewhat blunt solution: go to Westminster and sack every other one of them. ‘There’s your bloomin’ deficit sorted, right there.’
Mostly, it’s local politics that occupies them. Petty bureaucrats in County Hall. Tinpot dictators on the Town Council. How did such-and-such a farmer get permission to put up a huge poultry shed? Why can’t Highways pull its finger out and stop cars cutting the corner by the bus stop in Clyro? These are the political concerns that matter to them.
Emma will raise a sceptical eyebrow. We also talk about property, I add, a rejoinder that merely sets her expression in place.
Which houses or farms have come on to the market, who might be looking to sell up, where house prices are at, these are perennial themes as well. Who owns what now, and who might come to own what in the future, carries great import for the group. The answers locate their fellow residents and, indirectly, they place the Rhydspence crew too.
It’s only after many months of going along on Wednesdays that this realisation hits me. And with it comes another insight that helps explain the limited purview of the group’s conversation: the men are, it gradually dawns on me, only cursorily concerned with the present. In the peace and quiet of the Rhydspence, it is not the here and now that counts. It’s the past.
Not the distant past of history books. Rather, it’s their past, the recent past, the past of yesteryear. This is what captures their imaginations and loosens their tongues. The past of Sunday best and rationed meat, of marching bands and top-of-the-milk, of trouser braces and May Day rides, of Old Knowles the Schoolmaster and his holly-stick cane.
This is how most evenings roll, with dusty memories dugup and dusted down, with former friendships remembered and regaled, with old rivalries relived and re-won. A mere nudge of the lock-gate and out from the sluices of their memories it floods. So Mike, say, will have been waiting for traffic at Crow Turn junction and will have got to wondering if there wasn’t once a cottage directly opposite, and Geoff will be darned if he can remember, and Tony will think there might have been because he remembers talk of a lorry driving into it, to which Geoff will recall a similar incident at the Baskerville Arms but not a cottage at Crow Turn, and finally Les will settle the matter by recalling not only the cottage but also the driver – ‘Dennis Burton, it was’ – behind the wheel of the lorry, and Mike will say, ‘Gert away,’ and Geoff will say, ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ and that will be that.
For me, there’s something mesmerising about this group retelling, the way the men skip between past and present, present and past. Magic lives in these gaps, I swear.
Because no one has a monopoly on the past, events gather pace and grow as they bounce between the men. The winter of ’62 provides just such a case, when the snows fell and fell and Les was shut up at home for six weeks solid and Geoff swore the snowdrifts were up to the roof and the sheep took to eating holly. Pigeons froze on the wires, Mike adds, while Tony remembers his father telling him about an old boy who slit his horses’ throats rather than witness them starve.
Part of the pleasure of Wednesdays comes in connecting people to other people, and other people to places, and places to other people. It’s as if the world outside the Rhydspence represents one giant community crossword book that waits for midweek for a few more clues to be solved.
Take the school minibus run, which Tony does because his brother owns a coach company and Tony can do withthe extra money. He goes up to the Begwyns, past Rickettes’s place, he says in answer to someone’s question about his route. No sooner has he started than Les interrupts to ask if it’s the Wern he’s talking about, and Geoff starts tapping his temple and repeating ‘Now, what’s the name of the place?’
Mostly, it’s local politics that occupies them. Petty bureaucrats in County Hall. Tinpot dictators on the Town Council. How did such-and-such a farmer get permission to put up a huge poultry shed? Why can’t Highways pull its finger out and stop cars cutting the corner by the bus stop in Clyro? These are the political concerns that matter to them.
Emma will raise a sceptical eyebrow. We also talk about property, I add, a rejoinder that merely sets her expression in place.
Which houses or farms have come on to the market, who might be looking to sell up, where house prices are at, these are perennial themes as well. Who owns what now, and who might come to own what in the future, carries great import for the group. The answers locate their fellow residents and, indirectly, they place the Rhydspence crew too.
It’s only after many months of going along on Wednesdays that this realisation hits me. And with it comes another insight that helps explain the limited purview of the group’s conversation: the men are, it gradually dawns on me, only cursorily concerned with the present. In the peace and quiet of the Rhydspence, it is not the here and now that counts. It’s the past.
Not the distant past of history books. Rather, it’s their past, the recent past, the past of yesteryear. This is what captures their imaginations and loosens their tongues. The past of Sunday best and rationed meat, of marching bands and top-of-the-milk, of trouser braces and May Day rides, of Old Knowles the Schoolmaster and his holly-stick cane.
This is how most evenings roll, with dusty memories dugup and dusted down, with former friendships remembered and regaled, with old rivalries relived and re-won. A mere nudge of the lock-gate and out from the sluices of their memories it floods. So Mike, say, will have been waiting for traffic at Crow Turn junction and will have got to wondering if there wasn’t once a cottage directly opposite, and Geoff will be darned if he can remember, and Tony will think there might have been because he remembers talk of a lorry driving into it, to which Geoff will recall a similar incident at the Baskerville Arms but not a cottage at Crow Turn, and finally Les will settle the matter by recalling not only the cottage but also the driver – ‘Dennis Burton, it was’ – behind the wheel of the lorry, and Mike will say, ‘Gert away,’ and Geoff will say, ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ and that will be that.
For me, there’s something mesmerising about this group retelling, the way the men skip between past and present, present and past. Magic lives in these gaps, I swear.
Because no one has a monopoly on the past, events gather pace and grow as they bounce between the men. The winter of ’62 provides just such a case, when the snows fell and fell and Les was shut up at home for six weeks solid and Geoff swore the snowdrifts were up to the roof and the sheep took to eating holly. Pigeons froze on the wires, Mike adds, while Tony remembers his father telling him about an old boy who slit his horses’ throats rather than witness them starve.
Part of the pleasure of Wednesdays comes in connecting people to other people, and other people to places, and places to other people. It’s as if the world outside the Rhydspence represents one giant community crossword book that waits for midweek for a few more clues to be solved.
Take the school minibus run, which Tony does because his brother owns a coach company and Tony can do withthe extra money. He goes up to the Begwyns, past Rickettes’s place, he says in answer to someone’s question about his route. No sooner has he started than Les interrupts to ask if it’s the Wern he’s talking about, and Geoff starts tapping his temple and repeating ‘Now, what’s the name of the place?’
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