Day 1: The train let me down, seawise. It dawdled through the Eastern Lowlands and so I missed my connection. But they organised a TAXI from Machynlleth to Criccieth!! Which went through one of the most beautiful stark startling dramatic valleys I have ever seen (between Talyllyn and Dolgellau, past King Arthur's Labyrinth, whatever that is). So I missed the coastal views, which are nice in a coasty kind of way, but got something BETTER = the foothills of Cader Idris, slatefalls, waterfalls, purple heather in the setting sun, and a garulous little old welsh taxidriver who explained how rubbish the railways are (he's always being hired for long missed-connection trips upcountry), and how good that is for him. I didn't have to pay for the taxi. Got to Criccieth c. 8.30, watched Cutting It w. mum and dad, then Paxman vs Blair w.just mum. Cutting It is more politically alert than Paxman, in my opinion.
Day 2: Misty moisty and dull. The view from this holiday house, when sunny, is ten miles across an estuary valley, with a smidge of sea off to the right. On a day like today
you can only see to the nearer mid-valley humps, about a mile off, and fog curls about their tops. In the afternoon we bundle dad into the car and go for a little drive down to the seawall in Criccieth. This village has some connection to Lloyd George: I vaguely wonder how, in 100 yrs time, Blair will be seen, compared to LG (who garners a mix of fondness and disappointed contempt, as a semi-failed reformist). Watch Crimewatch UK with mum, then Teachers on my own.
Day 3: Hot. We sit in the garden most of the morning, and gaze out over the valley. Go to Porthmadog in the afternoon, to help dad buy trousers and socks: v. successful as it happens (except the socks). The shops are not exactly wheelchair-friendly, though the shopkeepers do their best. The physical fact of lugging and dragging dad up onto pavements and over high doorsteps seems to break through a little barrier of reserve. In the past he has been maddeningly unwilling to ask or impose: which means his family or carers have to guess what he wants or needs. Now he has started being a bit more assertive, even selfish, and it's great. Waiting for him to finish certain tasks or even movements — which is I notice driving me to the same kind of irritated unfair frustration which seems sometimes to dominate mum's attitudes — is no longer quite so important: I feel less bothered stepping in sooner, and he seems to respond to this also, and appreciate it, and be less bothered himself about asking for it. Anyway, whatever the reason, we all get along quite well and have a fun, funny time. In the evening watch half of Buffy w.dad, then the Hanratty doc w.mum: she says that her mother always believed Hanratty was innocent, but for a perfectly outrageous and illogical reason, viz that the woman victim (raped, left for dead, unable to walk to this day) was of easy virtue and thus "asking for it"... "She shouldn't have been there in the first place" was apparently grandma's line on this case. The doc appears to make a cast-iron case for DNA as evidence: mum announces, as the prog ends, that we shall probably never know what really happened".
Day 4: Driving home. We just about get ready and leave in time (dad is a bit sluggish, probably tired from Porthmadog the day before; also he is getting up much earlier than usual). Leaving Criccieth we pass the turn for Port Meirion: in four years I have still not seen it, unlike the rest of the family ("I am NOT a free man! I am a number!! Number 77 to be precise hurrah" Oh well). The drive home is easy and beautiful, over two high passes, with Bala and Bala lake in the dip in-between: the Welsh mountainscape is sheer and bleak and sleepy all the same, the Shropshire countryside just sleep, muffled green nowhere. It's hot and close by afternoon, and I am more drained than I reckon with. I work on my Lord of the Rings essay quite usefully, and then try to take a nap, but as usual can't doze while the sun is up. At supper mum demonstrates that we are NOT two generations from the mines, but pure upper-middleclass bohemian mentalist through and through: "Before the wear my mother had a maid who could do wonderful things with a sheep's head" (this arises out of a discussion between Mum and Dad over "bath-chaps" eg edible pig cheeks!!). Dad goes to bed quite early. I watch Morse with mum, and skimread Clouds of Witness at the same time. Turn in early myself though of course by the time I actually get into bed I can't drop off. The house is very stuffy: especially this room. I try and open windows round the house to engineer a draft.
Tidy up and pack ready to catch the train mid-afternoon. Dad has disobeyed mum and asked me to take him to see whether the new Nesscliffe bypass is going to destroy a kettlehole of obscure botanical import, Lin Can Coppice. We can't see from the car so he clambers out and teeters around in the long wet grass in his slippers, neatly falling half a dozen times. Every time he tries to return to the car another heavy-terrain farm vehicle passes us in the narrow lane: I am getting the heebie-jeebies. But it turns out OK and better still the kettlehole is some way from the roadworks. Mum makes cauliflower cheese for lunch, chatters about handcuffs while we eat (at her last hospital visit, she was in a queue behind a man manacled to a police officer, and became totally fascinated) and then takes me to the train. It's delayed so she sits on the platform with me and we watch all the daft teens piling onto the Aber train. Half of them are eating raspberry bootlaces: the kids know where it's at.
― mark s, Sunday, 19 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)