Welsh Rarebits

Last Monday I began working on my dissertation for a PhD, in politics, at Cardiff University in Wales. For your entertainment and immense delight, I share some snippets of my week with you.

Sunday, Sep. 25

Where the Towns Have Two Names

Traveling from England to Wales by train, I immediately knew I had crossed the border when all of the towns had English and Welsh names posted, which inspired:

I've got the runs
From that dodgy pie
And I understand
Not one word passing by
They say that it's English
But it taxes my brain
Where the towns have two names
Where the towns have two names

I want to feel
Sunlight on my face
But the clouds don't let in
Even a trace
I want to take shelter
From that Welshman with a cane
Where the towns have two names
Where the towns have two names

Random Sightings

* Many, many phone booths in the UK have a gnawed-up chicken bone lying on their floor. Reason unknown.

* I learned of this from a poster hanging over a urinal trough in a Cardiff pub today, and folks, this is real, and you can see I'm not making it up here. There is a cell phone service in the UK that, for a fee, will, if you send them your postal code, text you "honey alerts." As far as I could tell from the pictures in the loo, this means that, if in your postal code, there are two really drunk women rubbing their breasts against each other, you will get a text message telling you where you can go to gape at them.

* In a football match today (listen, you bloody Yanks, that means soccer) I swear I saw a referee push a player down. Can you call a foul on the ref?

* The person checking me in to my hotel told me I was not allowed "to smoke, eat, or drink alcoholic beverages" in my room. I responded that on 2 out of 3 she was absolutely safe: I had never smoked alcoholic beverages or eaten alcoholic beverages in any room.

* Now I've seen it all: As I understand it, the significance of the "urban fashion" trend of wearing pants with the waistline well below one's buttocks is to make the statement, "I'm so cool, I don't care how un-cool I look to others." Well, today I saw that there are now pants available with fake underwear sewn into the back! For those who want to make the statement: "I'm so un-cool that I want to appear as if I don't care how I look to others while making it obvious that I'm actually obsessed with how I look to others."

Get 'em while they last!

* The loo at my hotel features "easy-on" condoms. Isn't that the opposite of what you need if you're going to use a condom?

* And lastly, always remember: Atailwich lleidr rhug llugddo! Rhwystrwch trosedd!

Monday, Sep. 26

Overheard on the Street

One chav to another: "You remember that bloody girl from last night – what was she, Portugese, or Dutch, or Bulgarian, or Finnish or somefin’?"

Reminded me of the London newspaper headline: "Fog halts all transportation across Channel; Continent isolated."

Tuesday, Sep. 26

Seen on a Menu

(No, I'm not making this up.)

Welsh Faggots – £4.95

Two tasty Welsh faggots served on a bed of cracked pepper mash topped with carmelized onions and dark gravy.

If my friend Sal finds out about this, he's over to Wales in a flash: not only are there two of them, but they're tasty, they’re only £4.95, and they're already in bed!

Wednesday, Sep. 27

The Rule of Law

This morning at about 2:30 AM I was awakened by a sound like someone running a lawnmower right outside my window. I looked out and saw a police helicopter hovering about half a mile away, right over the centre of Cardiff, its searchlight casting – for faults in the clouds of delusion? It stayed there until about 3:00 AM.

I would guess the copter may have kept, oh, say 100,000 people awake for that time. Can you imagine if you or I, and not The State, had tried this stunt? We would have been shot out of the sky – even if we had some urgent reason for being there, say, we were searching for a missing child. Of course, if our child was missing, we could beg The State to send up its helicopter – and it might or not. But notice how far this is from "the rule of law." You or I are never permitted this activity, no matter the circumstances, while The State can do it whenever it declares it to be "necessary." Different rules apply to our masters than to you or me.

Overheard on the Train

Traveling back from Cardiff to London yesterday I heard someone talking on his mobile phone say, "Yeah, that so-called train thing."

I immediately became quite nervous. I had been fairly certain I was on just a plain-old, straightforward train. Was I really on a so-called train thing? In what sense was in not really a train? What effect would the difference have on my journey?