Flame and Slag
Page 20
Aye…”
“For God’s sake,” she said.
I said, “Give any man doing a shitty job enough to live on for working two days a week, and he’ll spend the other five days enjoying himself and worrying how he can lose the job altogether. The state of the country has bugger all to do with his problem, nor the industry itself. He’s out on his bloody tod…”
“You’re ranting,” she said.
“I was bent to a shitty job when I left school. Thousands of miners like myself, and we stuck our lot. Right then, Daren’s a scrap-heap and I’m on it. Most of the disabled men left behind from Caib aren’t disabled enough to go to Remploy. Bloody quaint, ah? They’re fit for nothing by any bloody arrangement. Whatever the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Fuel and Power or the Ministry of Labour does will come too late. We should have fought against pit closures from the very beginning, landed ourselves on the scrap-heap of our own accord. Now they’ve organized us on to the scrap-heap. We’re viable waste. Three cheers for economic feudalism.”
She said, “Finished?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Reesy, you enjoy destruction. Come on, we’ll feed the youngsters and take them across to Daren woods.”
“I haven’t destroyed you, Ellen.”
“Certainly not, we’re a couple of beauts together. Come on, let’s go.”
“Away to the woods,” I said.
“That’s right, away from the coal and muck on your mind. No more ach y fi.”
“Don’t forget I love you, Ellen.”
“I love you, too. Come on.”
Glossary
Beth sydd yn bod arnoch chwi nawr, cariad? – What is the matter with you now, darling?
Does dim yn aros, mae wedi cwpla. – There is nothing left, it is finished.
Brawd – brother
Cwtch – shed, hiding-place
Dabbo (Da bo’ chi) – All go well with you
Dere ’ma – Come here
Dere mâs o fyna! – Come out from in there
Dere nawr – come now
Diolch yn fawr – Thank you very much
Gwaith, gwaith. Gad ’e fod. Paid a gwneyd dim rhagor! – Work, work. Leave it there. Don’t do any more.
Gwenwynllyd – jealous
Gwt – queue
Hiraeth – nostalgia for home
Hwyl – fervour
Iesu – Jesus
Iesu mawr – big Jesus
Mae wedi cwpla – it is finished
Merch – girl
Mochyn – pig
Mum-glo – inferior coal
Myfi sy'n fachgen ieuanc ffôl – I am a young foolish boy
Nefoedd – heaven
Nos da – goodnight
Pais – petticoat
Twti – excessively small
Foreword by Leighton Andrews
Leighton Andrews is Labour Assembly Member for the Rhondda, and Minister for Education and Skills in the Welsh Government. He was elected to the National Assembly for Wales in 2003. He had previously worked for the BBC in London as Head of Public Affairs. He is an Honorary Professor in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.
Cover photograph by I C Rapoport, Aberfan 1966
I C Rapoport was born in the Bronx, New York. He studied photography at Ohio University, Athens Ohio and began his career as a freelance photo-journalist in 1959.
His photographs have appeared in major publications across the world including the New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek and Time. He presented his complete Aberfan 1966 assignment for Life magazine to the National Library of Wales in 2005 and the work was published as Aberfan The Days After: Y Dyddiau Du A Journey in Pictures Taith Trwy Luniau. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.
Library of Wales
The Library of Wales is a Welsh Government project designed to ensure that all of the rich and extensive literature of Wales which has been written in English will now be made available to readers in and beyond Wales. Sustaining this wider literary heritage is understood by the Welsh Government to be a key component in creating and disseminating an ongoing sense of modern Welsh culture and history for the future Wales which is now emerging from contemporary society. Through these texts, until now unavailable or out-of-print or merely forgotten, the Library of Wales will bring back into play the voices and actions of the human experience that has made us, in all our complexity, a Welsh people.
The Library of Wales will include prose as well as poetry, essays as well as fiction, anthologies as well as memoirs, drama as well as journalism. It will complement the names and texts that are already in the public domain and seek to include the best of Welsh writing in English, as well as to showcase what has been unjustly neglected. No boundaries will limit the ambition of the Library of Wales to open up the borders that have denied some of our best writers a presence in a future Wales. The Library of Wales has been created with that Wales in mind: a young country not afraid to remember what it might yet become.
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The Library of Wales is a Welsh Government initiative which highlights and celebrates Wales’ literary heritage in the English language.
Published with the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.
Series Editor: Dai Smith
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Flame and Slag first published in 1968
Library of Wales edition 2012
This ebook edition 2012
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© Ron Berry
Foreword © Leighton Andrews
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ISBN 9781908946638