Dead water is the nautical term for a phenomenon which can occur when there is strong vertical density stratification due to salinity or temperature or both. It is common where a layer of fresh or brackish water rests on top of denser salt water, without the two layers mixing.
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or water eddying beside a moving hull, especially directly astern.
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or a part of a stream where there is a slack current.
When the Cadman’s arrived in Northern Ireland in the early 1960’s, the Roman Catholic population did not have political representation. They had the vote but the choice on offer to them was Protestant Unionist parties. The UK Labour Party was not allowed to set up its stall in Northern Ireland and Unionism was all powerful in the six counties. Roman Catholics were exposed to a hate environment extolled by Unionists. Housing conditions were poor, unemployment rife as was poor health.
Neither of the Cadman’s were catholic, or indeed of any religion. But Keith and his friend John Hume set up the SDLP along with other quiet men and women. They saw that political representation would lead to full emancipation for the Catholic population — Keith Cadman was one of those quiet men who worked behind the scenes, but whose quiet work in the end moved mountains. It should be remembered.
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Without the SDLP and John Hume the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement wouldn’t have taken place.
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We have a reason to be proud of quiet men.
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We have a reason to be proud of the women who stood at their backs through it all.
He was old then. Or not so very old. I was a child. But I remember him. Poor man. It was said of him he was quite mad. A man driven mad by the jungles of those eastern lands. Of Malaya. Or was it Burma? No Burma. He was the last to come home.
It was in the war when he was young and handsome. A laughing boy of a man whose world lay before him. He was to marry. She was a black haired girl who lived in a house on the other side of the street to his mothers. The black haired girl still lives there in the same house in the same little village in the same valley. But she is married to another man now. He would have married her. It had been planned. And if the war hadn’t come along to alter all that had been planned then that would have been that no doubt. There would have been something else to say. Something quite different. But the war did come. And he left his parents’ home on the other side of the street in the village. He left the black haired girl and promised to return. He promised to marry her.
But instead he had been driven mad half a world away from this place. This small village in a valley in Wales. In the war. In Malaya or some other green jungled land. Where birds cry out in the darkness of the day. Suddenly. Menacingly. Setting the mind into a frenzy and muscles tight. Tight in the eyes.Tight on the trigger. Trying to see in the darkness the little men hiding there. Where? There. There. Don’t you see them. Look. Waiting. And birds cried out in the darkness of night time. When all should have been quiet. When men should be allowed to rest. But there. There in that place. Daytime was the same as night time. Muscles twitched with strain. Muscles twitched involuntarily in the crackling spells of silence of the darkness. Day in. Day out. Night came and all was the same.
He came home. Eventually. They said he was the last to be found. The street was the same. And as with many other men he’d found nothing had really changed. Except of course the minds of those men. And the minds of those women who had waited. The minds of the men had changed. Ruptured by some indescribable maddening. His mind had changed. And he was no longer who he had been. His eyes told another tale. Those blue-blue far away blue eyes. He smiled a lot. A toothless smile. In between a puff of his small black pipe. The pipe my father had given him. While, and in spite of the spittle, which periodically dribbled hanging in a line from a corner of his mouth and down over his bristled chin to dangle and then fall downwards to the bespattered lapel of his tattered olive green jacket.
He had come home. She had waited. The flags and pennants had flown all day. But he did not see them. And she did not see him. He sat with his mother in the darkness of the parlour all chocolate and green painted leatherette walls. He sipped the dark beer in his glass. He smiled but said little. He smiled. But no one asked. She never came to the door to ask after him. Her mother would never allow her to see him. He would never marry. Some in the village said just as well. He would never leave his mother’s home.
Over the years he constructed a small shed at the top of the garden. A tin hut made of corrugated and galvanised zinc sheets. Other metal objects lost and found themselves part of that gathering enlarging hideaway. Beneath the mossy green barked elderberry tree. Blackbirds built a nest in an old enamel jug jammed into the cleft of two branches. Sparrows flittered amongst the leaves. Starlings visited to gorge themselves on the bright black berries and stained the tin hut with the purple dye of their shit. Gradually the tin hut rusted. A Colemans’ mustard enamel advert appeared to add a bright yellow square to the dull and sombre tones. An orange Typhoo tea advert appeared on another wall. As the man and the shed grew older together the wires and nails holding the metal sheets together wore away. At night when a cold breeze blew in from the grey Atlantic the darkness of our street became filled with the rustlings and scrapings, the tapping and clanging of hundreds of pieces of metal filling the night time air with a discordant cacophony of sound.
It was the hut where our first encounter had taken place. As I chased the orange plastic football which had swerved from its volition and at the same time displayed an almost disgraceful avoidance of its intended destination and decided on another for itself. He did not seem to understand this point. I was to blame for everything and its consequences. Of this he seemed in no doubt. Or if any it was very little and totally unobservable from where I was standing.
He shouted gesturing to the skies as if for divine condemnation on this little hapless fellah who couldn’t for the life of him kick a ball straight. And as he spoke, I could see into his mouth as he turned back to face me, his mouth still agape. Toothless and overflowing with an abundance of spittle that gave a gleam to his pink lips and seemingly erupted volcanic like from his face. To spray the area for a yard or two immediately before him. The skies remained somewhat indifferent while he ranted and raved. It was then I was able to look into his shed for the very first time and see the immaculate green wooden chair.
It was in that wooden chair he sat before the brazier when the days were grey with cloud and it rained horizontally. As it nearly always did then in winter months. And if truth be told still does – horizonytal like not that vertical namsypamsy easy stuff – horizontal and hateful rain! The dark brown empty beer bottles gathered like black pats*at his feet. Brown shiny ale bottles. Discarded ornamentation from those days when he was drunk. Which were often. When he sang. A strange language that had no sense. By this I mean it wasn’t English. So it must be a strange language. A language that made the people who heard him laugh. Madness. It was madness you see. Poor man. Quite obvious they said. When I asked. He was trying to sing in Welsh. But not being able to speak a single word of Welsh. He used to make it up. But I shall say this to you in confidence. I am not so sure that was the case. We could not speak Welsh either. I would like to think that it was some far eastern language. Or even Japanese. Learnt in some tormented place. Leaf green and jungled. But maybe that is my madness.
Ah, you lovely harmless man. Soft and breakable. You were broken. Too quickly. Dirty and lost. Your mother is dead now. Your father gone long ago. And you are unknown and uncared for when I meet you these days. I bid you good day. And you look at me surprised by this strange and unknown someone calling you by your first name with friendliness. Your bewildered eyes for a moment guided and serious. With purpose in mind you look into my eyes for a few minutes not saying a word. And then your eyes change. A smile of recognition. You say hello. I knew you when you were a boy. About this tall you were then. You were a little buggar. Hells angel they called you. And you ask after my mother and father. How are they keeping? And my sisters? And after all is said and done you shuffle away. The backs of your shoes split. Like the coat you wear. The cap you wear slanted to one side and slouched over one eye. The rim blackened with sweat.
So another day looking out at the kitchen garden, as I write, and quietly formulating what needs to be done over the coming month and the Spring. At some point I need to clean and tidy our small greenhouse but keep putting it off. Thinking back over the 27 years since we moved into this house I always think of mid-January and February as months when the ground is so hard with frost that it was best to plant Garlic and Onions in advance. Garlic needs a period of cold as does Rhubarb. Now I’m worrying that the ground is so wet that the Garlic crop, which is beginning to show, will rot. The weather has been so mild that Rhubarb has begun to sprout – which is not a good sign at all. Our hardy Leek crop has started bolting too. All of which raises questions about whether the changing weather patterns will lead to these crops being unviable. So much for global warming and the benefits of a Mediterranean climate! No doubt growers will adapt but what other changes will the unpredictability of our weather bring?
In the middle of the emergency, lying prone on the gurney, I listened to the professionals in discussion, the paramedics and the ambulance crew, together with the Doctor and the Air Ambulance that had arrived. A discussion centering on which hospital I should be taken, the University Hospital in Cardiff or the nearer Royal Glamorgan Hospital, which would entail travelling through narrow country lanes. It was decided time was of the essence and it would be the Royal. I am grateful for that decision,as it was undoubtedly a factor that played a part in saving my life.
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The Royal Glamorgan Hospital’s Accident & Emergency department had been under threat of closure. If this happened, the result would undoubtedly be lives would be placed at risk by taking people on a much longer journey to another hospital. The shorter journey would save lives. I am living proof that this was the case! A public campaign eventually elicited support from local politicians, and the Royal Glamorgan has stayed open to serve the surrounding communities.
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Our NHS — National Health Service — has been under relentless attack for decades, since the time of Thatcher, from a bogus political doctrine with its feet in the former US President’s economic musings and which English politicians subsequently titled monetarism. British Society has endured a line of politicians who have put in place austerity and the swingeing cuts to public services which are paid for out of peoples taxes, or so we are led to believe. Even America’s supposed President Trump got in on the attack against the National Health Service! If ever there was proof that there was something good about the NHS, this must be it!
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The value of the NHS is the provision of a service that is free at the point of demand! I was taken to an Accident& Emergency ward. There was no question of payment before treatment. My heart was shocked into a regular rhythm. Three days of tests followed. On the third day I had an angiogram, and on the fourth day a defibrillating pacemaker was fitted. On the fifth day I was discharged to home. No payment and no debt.
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The beginnings of the NHS came from a profound need to make available medical treatment to the mining valley’s population and communities whose health had been seriously undermined by harsh work conditions, diseases like Measles, TB, and Typhoid to name a few, as well as poor diet and mal-nourishment. Also the demands made on women’s health by large families and lack of effective contraception. Housing conditions were inadequate and very often appalling, exacerbating the risk of disease becoming rife. And, it has to be said, mine owners who prioritised profit above the well being of their workers and their families.
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Regrettably, a direct consequence of miners taking strike action was they were left with limited financial support and soup kitchen’s to fall back on. The 1910 strike lasted a year. Families had to subsist on very limited means. The record for child mortality and death of mothers following child birth in 1910 are utterly shocking. The Great Depression that followed added to the difficulties communities were already facing.
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It is from this background the NHS was established. And, once again in this age of Covid19, we have discovered the service cuts imposed by governments, following the bogus monetary doctrine of cuts for short term financial gain, have left the population exposed to the extreme effects of the pandemic. People’s lives have been, as a direct result of lack of services and criminal neglect, lost through government dictat. There is now a need for a reset.
Rob Cullen artist, writer, poet. Rob runs “Voices on the Bridge” a poetry initiative in Wales. Walks hills and mountains daily with a sheep dog at his side.
I was born and raised in a former South Wales mining village in the Rhondda in the heart of the coal mining area. The mining complex of the Glamorgan Colliery had long been shut down, but the vast hulk and expanse of the colliery yard remained. A place that once had been the work place of four and a half thousand men and six pit shafts, was now left a brooding silence filled haunted shell. It was the place my grandfather and great grandfather worked. Although there were fewer working deep mines my parents were determined that this was not where their children would work -well two daughters couldn’t, so that left me. The message was clear the mines were not going to be my future. Though my dad probably struggled with the reality of a dreamy, artistic son whose only serious interest seemed to have been reading books, drawing and play. Nevertheless gaining an education was the primary goal.
with thanks to Rhondda Cynon Taff’s Library Photography Archive.
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My parents lived through both inter-war depressions, the First World War and the Second World War. They met in 1930’s London. My mother had been found work as a young teenager as a maid in a bankers Chelsea Mansion. My father had left Ireland to find work in difficult times and experienced the racism towards Irish people — which was also thrown at Jewish and Black people. My father served for five long years, during which time he was listed as “Missing and presumed dead”. At wars end my fathers employment in London had been kept for him — but he moved to Wales. Finding work wasn’t easy but he got a job cutting grass outside BOAC’s engine plant on the promise that if a vacancy as a fitter came up he could apply for it. And that’s what eventually followed — a position as an engineering fitter and eventually as an inspector of the engines for air safety. So with this background I fully understood my fathers difficulty with a son’s artistic inclination and studying at Art Schools for five years.
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During Art Teaching studies I was impressed by A S Neil’s statement that “Play is the work of children”. I came to understand that the concept could also be attributed to Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian educationalist and philosopher and creator of the Waldorf-Steiner system of schooling. Steiner schools often quote him saying, “Play is the work of childhood. When children play they are experiencing the world with their entire being…” But Montessori and Piaget could also lay claim to the concept as well as Frobel and Rousseau.
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I think at the center of artistic and creative activity is “play”. Artists and creatives have retained a plasticity in their thinking processes — something that is generally lost for most people as adulthood looms, indeed it is often discouraged with the words “time to grow up”!
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Throughout the lockdown I have had growing concern over the invasiveness in the child’s world by the extensive use of online teaching methods. I worry that the extensive use of computer technology has led to a generation of children who have little “independent” experience of the outside world. Adults seemed to increasingly invade the child’s world with technology and increasing supervision. The old bogeys of “stranger danger” and the risk of being groomed by paedophiles (pedophiles) on the internet has led to a heavy price being paid in exchange for protection. Is this an exaggeration?
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My memory of my childhood and well into my teenage years was an extended period of play. As young children the street was our play ground. There were generally very few cars in the 50’s, there were only two cars in our street which would miraculously disappear taking their owners off to a workplace. For the entire day the street was our paradise; as teenagers, the mountainside immediately beyond the village was the place we explored, sometimes being away from our homes for the entire day. No one seemed to worry much about our disappearances — we’d turn up for meals, and then back out to play in the darkness of the street.
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Iona & Peter Opie’s book “Children’s games in street & playground” (1969) opens with the following commentary:
“And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the street therof.”
Zachariah, viii. 5
“When children play in the street they not only avail themselves of one of the oldest play-places in the world, they engage in some of the oldest and most interesting games, for they are games tested and confirmed by centuries of children, who have played them and passed them on, as children continue to do so, without reference to print, parliament, or adult propriety.”
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Observing as an older adult children playing in the local park, supervised by adults, all with one eye on the blue screened mobile in their hands; or when I listen to my wife a Steiner Arts & Craft teacher coming to terms with the difficulty presented by online teaching — I grieve that children are losing something which is of crucial importance to childhood development and the mental health of the adult that child will become. Play and games not overlooked by adults.
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“A true game is one that frees the spirit. It allows of no cares but those fictitious ones engendered by the game itself”. Iona Opie.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
Celfypridd 