Recognition

-

Well I was going to write something about tonight's Tagliatelle with Ragu Bolognese as the sauce was even better than it was yesterday - a double portion has left me in pasta torpor. But the news has caught me out: I'm proud to say that our adopted home of over four decades has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage status - the slate quarrying valleys of the area finally being recognised as globally significant, culturally and historically.

Many of us, professional and lay people alike have been saying as much for decades: finally the history of this area has been granted an equal footing with perhaps more immediately 'glamourous' sites throughout the world. As a consequence, we can promote ourselves to, and be taken more seriously by, the rest of the UK in particular. It's to be hoped that the political and class struggles that are inextricably entwined in our history are writ large in that promotion, placing the industry of slate extraction firmly within the context of industrial development, exploitation, strife and resolution.

The horror that was Y Streic Fawr that I posted about a couple of weeks ago needs to sit front and centre alongside the inevitable encomia to the industrial magnates that exploited their resources in all senses of the word, drawing on funds culled largely from inheritance, marriage or the proceeds of slavery. All said and done, the newly granted status is a welcome one and an affirmation of the importance of this part of Wales in the history of the developed world.

The rider to the rugged beauty that surrounds us is that came at a great cost to the indigenous population of the area, as well as to the many migrant workers drawn to the industry, in furthering the enrichment of a small number of already fabulously wealthy individuals, most of whom were ruthless in the pursuit and maintenance of their riches at the expense - often fatal - of those that extracted that very wealth from the earth for them. If this most important part of the story of the area is brought to a wider audience through the UNESCO listing, all to the good, and I salute it.

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner28 July 2021 at 20:58

    I agree mate! TOO fucking long in getting the recognition that Gwynedd deserves. I have, however, some reservations in that Pesda ALWAYS gets shat on and the suites & public sector parasites will cock it up!! Pesda supplied (I'll NOT use the Penrhyn name!!) 80% of the Welsh slate and Wales produced 80% of the World's slate! We roofed the world vis they had to re-open a Penygroes quarry to repair damage to San Fransican roofs after their last earth quake abt a decade ago!
    We need the traitorous Dr Daffyd Richards to lead the charge to get Pesda what it deserves!! I'll start ticking the old trout:)))

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more