Ziggy Bell

Welsh Absurdist Atheist Pacifist . . . Okay. (Please excuse me.) As usual – myself, this page, and the rest are under construction. Nothing is ever finished. Normal service WILL NOT be resumed as soon as possible. Until then, I give you some . . . FRACTURED LANDSCAPES OF A BOYO BOY . . .Under the table in an end-of-terrace house. Hengoed Road, Penpedairheol – in the parish of Gelligaer and the county of Glamorganshire – South Wales. Crepe slipper Hoover, Cherry Blossom black boots, and Rags the dog. The lemon hiss of the gaslight bubbling up above. Pink-glass bells and a pink-glass, cobwebbed hookah pipe. Top cupboard: front room. Then, candle in hand, it’s up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. Each bed is the size of the Great White Whale and there are clothes everywhere. The made-up beds stretch right across the bedrooms like quilted coal tips; and in one of them, I, Gwynfyd Joseph Bell, am born into this world on the twenty-first day of February, in the perfect blizzard of forty-seven. Two years later, on the tenth day of February, nineteen forty-nine, Myfanwy Josephine, my sister, decides to join me; and we spend the next two years growing up in this dark and airless end-of-terrace house.When older, we discover flowery wallpaper under flowery wallpaper, and with wax crayons we draw safes behind the framed prints on these ancient walls. The Boyhood Of Raleigh by Millais; a pencil portrait of the composer Joseph Parry; and a large and colourful painting of The Sacred Heart Of Jesus – heart aflame – bleeding – encircled by a crown of thorns: pulsating – “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art Thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb [bow your head], Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.” Make the sign of the Cross and genuflect. Pass the collection box along. Keep a serious face. And – “Hic!” says the real priest, while we in our venial play dress up as him and read from our brand new missal. Remember:– the tongue curling its way around the holy wafer; trying to coax the dry and gagging mouth into swallowing it. Trying hard not to bite into it, because in doing so would label us mortal sinners, and would surely guarantee us a first class ticket on that downward-sloping road to eternal damnation. Jumble Sales and Women’s Institutes. Nan, with fox claws locking the fur-piece of foxhead onto her shoulder; leading us briskly down the long and windswept, miserably-cold-back-lane to St Peter’s church in Bargoed. Confessions, communions and confirmations. Incense and peppermints. No drink for one hour before receiving the Host and no food for three. Benedictions, pilgrimages and Catholic Missions. The church parties in the Miners’ Institute in Bargoed. The party games. The farmer wants a wife. The wife wants a dog. The dog wants a bone: and – the bone wants a beating. I was the bone. Aye indeed, I was always – the bone. Musical-chairs and pass-the-parcel. Palm Sundays and Easter eggs. The Easter party in the presbytery garden in Gilfach. Stations of the Cross. Sad Good Fridays. Ave Marias. Eight o’clock mass. Eleven o’clock mass. Midnight mass. Blue lipped boy. Polio boy. The groaning old church bus with its reddy-brown water all a scalding and a hissing; all a spitting and a bubbling out from the rust-eaten, crumbling-chrome radiator cap. The Poles. The Italians. Protestants and converts. Never enough holy water in the font, and what there was, was piddle of a very small fly.All sing:“Stand up, stand up for Jesus, I give my soul to Thee. Sit down, sit down for Christ’s sake, The people at the back can’t see.”I am a sinner; I read my Catechism, and I make a good Act of Contrition. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.” A good Act of Contrition is made with twelve Hail Marys and four Our Fathers. I kiss my holy beads and I rise up through my halo – “Hello!” – a saint: but believe you me, I will sin again. And around we go once more. Saint and sinner; sinner and saint – they’re both one and the same. Whoa! there now, boyo! - Let’s breathe here.