Home life
Enchanting Welshmen
Alice Thomas Ellis
Ihave always had a great fondness for the Village Show. It brings tears to my eyes, representing, as it does, months and weeks and hours and hours of loving and laborious enterprise.
The cakes and confections, all with a slice cut out to reveal the texture, are more moving than, say, the works of Henry Moore, the tea-cosies with their appliquéd pigs and bunnies more immediately human than the paintings of Picasso. I'm not so keen on the flower arrangements, which tend to the surrealistic, but the beans and the carrots and the radishes meticulously presented in small artistic groups are posi- tively cathartic. This is probably because, if you know anything of the background to these vegetables, pity and horror are appropriate responses. The passions which animate those who grow them are far deeper and more violent than anything experienced by your Royal Academician. Rivalry, envy, suspicion and skulduggery are rife amongst their creators. Men with shotguns have frequently sat up all night for weeks on end to deter jealous competi- tors from introducing paraquat to their leek and onion beds, and many a woman has made and discarded a few gallons of jam before being entirely satisfied with the set and colour of her preserve.
The agricultural show is a larger version of the village show, with farm animals and pets and machinery; and the Royal Welsh Show is the largest of them all. We went to it last week and were told by several people that it was the largest show of its kind in Europe. I can believe it. It's a splendid occasion. It didn't even rain the day we were there. There were clouds around certainly, crouching above the adjacent hills like hostile tribesmen, but they didn't attack. What's more, as far as we could tell, they were the only inimical element present since, as the show is so large, the inevitable rivalries were not so apparent. The sense of internecine strife noticeable in small communities was greatly diluted; and there was an air of carefree good fellowship. Janet did wonder briefly what would happen if a horsefly should bite just one of the glamorously groomed cows in the cattle shed and set off a chain reaction, and some of the ponies were uncommonly mettlesome, but all was well. Our host from the Beeb, Iwan Thomas, took us on a tour of the beasts and the vegetables and the pies and jams and cushion-covers and lawn-mowers, and when we tired he hailed a BBC buggy and we toured in comfort to some merry jeering from passers by. It beat sitting in London with the waters rising, I can tell you.
Iwan explained that the pleasant atmos- phere was due to the mix. There were country people and town people, South Welsh and North Welsh, peasants and bonheddigion, and even a few English. I'd have thought that that could prove explo- sive, but happily it was not the case. The hospitality had something to do with our feeling of well-being as we tottered from the BBC building to the HTV one and back again. Sitting with a glass of beer and a fag, I observed Sir Geraint Evans approaching, and compelled by considera- tion for the glorious tonsils was about to douse the latter in the former when I noticed that he was the only other person in the vicinity who was also clutching a fag: life is full of surprises. We met a gentleman from HTV who was born and brought up in the village adjacent to our country cottage and whose best friend is the local gamekeeper. Little tiny world, made even smaller by telly.
I have never willingly watched a game of cricket in my life but the day after our outing I turned on the match at Headingley because the commentator was Tony Lewis and he had been the gentleman on my left at dinner. I could listen to him talking for a very long time — even about silly mid-offs. I seldom really enjoy dinner parties but I had to be dragged away from this one. I think the success of the dinner was also due to the mix. Our hostess, Teleri Bevan, had gathered together a group of enchanting Welshmen and I'd forgotten how they could talk. The ghosts of past Welshmen talk in my kitchen in the country in the small hours. I have never, so far, gone down to join them, but next time I will. I shall go to the village show and come back and tell them all about it — tactfully, of course, for their beans, carrots, sheep, cattle and dogs will doubtless have been infinitely superior to anything produced today.
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