Notes on Abertillery, Blaina, Cardiff, Cwmbran, Newport, and Llanhilleth (April 20-23, 2026)
April 20 (Monday). Aberystwyth to Newport.
‘When you wake up, it’s a new mornin’ / The sun is shinin’, it’s a new mornin’ / You’re goin’, you’re goin’ home’ (Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street (1978).
7.00 am: ‘Ar amser’ [‘On time’] announced the departure board, as I arrived at the railway station. Over the past several days there’d been a number of morning cancellations due to, for example, ‘coupling issues’ on the line (on Friday), and track flooding, caused by the swollen Spring tide (on Saturday). Today’s journey began without let or hindrance, and was crowned by tea and KitKat, bought from the onboard trolley, somewhere between Borth and Dovey Junction. I derive inordinate pleasure from these modest consumables. And it was a ‘bright, bright, sunshiny day’ (as Johnny Nash sang), too.
Shrewsbury was chilly. The woman who sat opposite me on the Newport-leg of my journey talked incessantly and at speed, without pausing for breath. I thought of Samuel Beckett’s monologue Not I (1972), and smiled (inwardly).
11.30 am: On leaving Casnewydd [Newport] railway station, I headed for my favourite cafe, on Charles Street, to partake of my favourite bacon sandwich. Only when I’ve taken my first bite, and only then, do I feel that I’ve truly arrived.
Thereafter, I walked the same streets, touched the same landmarks, and told myself the same old stories as I always do when here. My visits are ritualistic: confirming what I already know, rather than discovering something new. Beneath the surface of all that has changed, I still detect the vibrations of what had been when I was a child and, afterwards, a student in this place.
6.30 pm: My friend, the artist, Mark Williams drove me to his terraced house in Hen Gwmbrân [Old Cwmbran]. It felt like being inside a painting by Van Gogh. Fine artists often have a decided view about interior decoration. On every wall, there were pictures by Mark, and other artists whose work he has admired and purchased. (Mark is a great encourager.) He toured me around the rooms — gingerly stepping-over Guto the cat (who provides the only ‘splash’ of monochromacy in the house) — while giving me the backstories of the artists represented.
His studio has been converted from a front bedroom, and looks out onto the village and the distant hills of Llanfrechfa and Ponthir, beyond. ‘You must paint this view’, at some point’, I urged. Presently, Mark is completing a few works which he’d begun several years ago, and making plans for new paintings of landscapes associated with Arthur Machen’s stories, as well as historic, local industrialism. Before retiring, Mark was employed as a draughtsman at Aberthaw Power Station. (He draws very well.)
As we sat in a local pub waiting for our meal to be delivered a man, whom Mark seemed to know only as an acquaintance, sidled up to the table and shook our hands. He was like one of those minor characters in Shakespearian tragedies who enter (stage-left) and announce the deaths of more prominent characters that have taken place off-stage. ‘My one brother took his own life a few months back. Under a train. My other brother suddenly died of a heart attack. And he looked fit, too. And did you know so-and-so dropped dead of a stroke? Just like that.’ ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead’, I thought.
April 21 (Tuesday). Abertillery and Blaina. 7.30 am: I took the train from Newport to Llanhiledd [Llanhilleth]. The latter place name is a corker to pronounce, even if you’re Welsh. The only travellers heading towards the Ebbw Fach valley were a few professionals and school children. At ‘Llan’ (as it’s referred to locally), the train leans left and heads up the Ebbw Fawr valley to Ebbw Vale.
From Llanhilleth, I caught the bus for Abertyleri [Abertillery]. 8.20 am: I arrived at the only watering hole open in town, some 20 minutes after the first pint of the day had been pulled. The commercial centre is having a makeover, it would seem.
Following a rather desultory cooked breakfast, I caught another bus to Blaina Cemetery, two miles further north. My Mam and her parents are buried in the same grave. While my mind tells me that talking to her here is in vain, my heart will hear none of it.
Birth and death. I discovered the grave of the GP who’d delivered me. He was our family doctor (in the days when there were such things). Dr Neville’s practice was on the aptly named Surgery Road, in Blaina. After each appointment, he’d give me a sticky lollipop to take home. (But, then again, so did my dentist in Abertillery.) As a toddler, I was as much a Blaina Boy as an Abertillery Boy. My childhood was divided between summers holidays at my grandparents in Blaina, and the rest of the year with my parents in Abertillery. Mam and I would visit them every Tuesday and Thursday. Spiritually, I don’t think she ever left home. Mam was a Blaina Girl, through and through.
10.30 am: Today, it was blisteringly cold. Rather than continue my journey to Blaina proper, where there would be no cafe to offer warmth, I returned to ‘Llan’ by bus, and searched for a place to sit still, remember, and drink hot tea, before I caught my train back to Newport.
The proprietor of a local convenience store (and the only shop in the village that was open) was my guide. She was from the Punjab, and had lived in the area long enough for her Indian accent to have blended with the local one, yet without losing its distinction. Her store was choc-o-bloc with what appeared to be every type of food that you’d expect to find in a supermarket 50 times its size.
I took tea at the former Llanhilleth Miners’ Insitute. When it opened in 1906, the building was a community, an educational, and a recreational hub for miners who worked in this part of the valley. When I arrived at the cafe, an earnest young man was impressing upon two patrons the value of learning Welsh. He was one of the local teachers, and had learnt the language himself. The take-up at classes in the area had been exceptionally good this year, he said. (An Emmaus moment: Was not my heart ‘strangely warmed’.)
I returned to Newport mid afternoon, and ate at a reasonably good independent pub in the evening.
April 22 (Wednesday). Cardiff. 6.00 am: I had a fitful night’s sleep. My body alternated between periods of shivers, cold sweats, and a high temperature. My left ankle was sore, stiff, and red when I awoke. This was, unmistakeably, cellulitis — a condition from which I suffer periodically, and which requires treatment with antibiotics. 9.00 am: I took a taxi to the Royal Gwent Hospital, close by, and registered at the Minor Injuries unit. This unexpected interruption would unseat my best laid plans to meet with my friend and former PhD Fine Art tutee — the artist, model, and teacher Dr Anastasia Wildig.
She was already in Cardiff and keen to accompany me at the unit’s waiting room. I couldn’t shake her determination. About an hour after I’d arrived at Minor Injuries, and begun my wait to see an out-of-hours GP elsewhere in the hospital, Anna messaged me to say that she had arrived in Minor Injuries. I returned to the unit, but couldn’t see her anywhere. As it turned out, she was in Minor Injuries at a Cardiff hospital. (I’d not clarified, when messaging her, which city I was in presently.) How strange. This is what living in parallel universes must be like. We both were in the right and the wrong place, simultaneously.
1.45 pm: Having had my self-diagnosis confirmed and cashed-in my prescription, I took the train to Cardiff and met Anna at the National Museum Wales, only 4 hours later than planned. We’d come to tour the Gwen John: Strange Beauties exhibition together. This was my second visit. Our conversation returned to a mode of interrogation — of both Johns’s work and one another — that reminded me of our PhD tutorials. I’d not seen Anna since she’d left Aberystwyth for England some months ago. It was a rich and rewarding reunion. With some friendships, its possible to drop into the old groove effortlessly.
6.30 pm: Dinner at yesterday’s pub, again. The fish could’ve been cooked better. To my mind, the frying fat was insufficiently hot when the battered cod was added. An evening and night in a chair, with my left leg elevated.
April 23 (Thursday). Newport to Aberystwyth. 8.00 am: I took breakfast at a local watering hole. 10.30 am: I made a final tour of city centre, sat in a cafe drinking a dismal cup of breakfast tea, before moving towards the railway station. Shortly after 1 o’clock, I caught the Manchester bound train to Shrewsbury. At Abergavenny (Y Fenni) station, I looked towards the hillside in the distance. I used to see it, close-up, from the window of my mother’s ward at Neville Hall Hospital, where she die in 1987. Towards the end of her life, when Mam’s suffering became too hard to witness, I would go into the grounds and lift my eyes to it (psalmodically), for consolation (Psalm 121.1).
See also: Intersections (archive); Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021); Diary (July 16, 2014 – September 4, 2018); John Harvey (main site); John Harvey: Sound; Studium; Academia; Facebook: The Noises of Art; Bluesky; Instagram; @Threads; YouTube; Archive of Visual Practice