Determined

1979. Ron Fawcett puts up the first ascent of The Lord of The Flies, E6 6a on the Right Wall of Dinas Cromlech in Llanberis Pass, North Wales. I'm working at the University of Birmingham as a photographer/technician in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; one of the largest departments on the campus. I have recently been offered the chance of teaching a night class in photography in a suburb of Birmingham called Stirchley, arranged for me through a contact of my boss, the Chief Technician, Arthur Burgess. He has also flagged an internal promotion opportunity for me in the Department of Civil Engineering as Senior Technician there, which he is supporting me in applying for and hopefully getting, a significant step up which would set me up for the rest of my working life.

Fast forward to the cold, early spring of the following year, and Jane and I are visiting a schoolfriend of mine and buddy of us both, in North Wales, where he is studying the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language, so that he can improve his career prospects in his impending move back to Spain. John is half-Welsh, Jane is half-Welsh, and I - as I later found out [blog posts passim] - am also descended from Welsh stock, a couple of generations back. Previously I've only visited the area once before, at the age of twelve, on a climbing weekend with two of my uncles, up in the Ogwen Valley, on Tryfan. On this subsequent visit, Jane and I both arrive separately at the as yet unvoiced conclusion that we both want to move to this place, to live. Two more visits over the next few months serve only to reinforce those views, and impel me to hatch a plot whereby we might actually achieve such a move.

Bearing in mind that I was just about to be set up for a life of relative prosperity in a very good, well-paying job in an institution that was - then at least - a joy to work in, it might seem in retrospect a tad bonkers to want to chuck it all in and start completely from fresh somewhere else. The thing that settles the deal comes out of left field. The very thing that had altered my choice of which road in life to take after college - my getting a 2:1 degree, instead of the first I narrowly missed out on [I would have headed straight to London and The Royal College to pursue my postgrad if I'd gotten the First] - actually gave me the idea for the move to North Wales. I would try and continue where I effectively left off with my college dissertation on the Semiotics of Photography, by enrolling on the Linguistics Postgrad course at the then University College of North Wales, Bangor.

Ultimately, the enabling factor for the move was the revelation that I'd only missed the First by a mark or so, and that my degree was sufficiently good to get me a married man's mature student postgraduate grant - college fees included - that would pay not only for the move, but enable us to set up home here in Eryri for the following year, despite the fact that Semiotics was most definitely not on the department's menu at the time [the Uni wanted the fees!]. In the intervening years we have established ourselves by twist and by turn in the area, have a family here and are now happily retired in the place. Home: Cartref in Welsh. Would I have chosen any different path? No. I've always moved through the time in which I find myself and let decisions find their own course. Self-determinism is not just about trying to shape the world to suit your own ends, but rather finding your own shape within it...