man_pasio

Growing up my dad, John Morgan Phillips, worked as a lorry driver collecting animal feed from Avonmouth in Bristol and delivering it to farms far afield; he would often cross the Severn Bridge multiple times a day. It was only last year that I discovered the iconic image of Bob Dylan, one of the most famous musicians of all time, waiting in front of a large motorway suspension bridge, was in fact the Severn Bridge (Pont Hafren in Welsh). The same bridge my dad crossed daily, and a key service crossing between the West Country and South Wales. Two-thirds of the Welsh population live in South Wales and it's a key tourist destination so a very popular route. I’ve always assumed that because of Dylan’s fame, and links with American culture that this image was some far-flung exotic place/America (possibly the Golden Gate Bridge) not somewhere local like Aust Ferry Crossing. The ferry service ran for 137 years until the bridge made it obsolete. The photo was taken in 1966, by Barry Feinstien, and was used in 2005 promo of Scorsese film about the musician; as an image it is perhaps one the last documents of the ferry crossing in use.

I have crossed and been stuck on this bridge 100s of times. Traffic can be frustrating! But also, an interesting psychological headspace, in which to sit and daydream. I watch the queues of tailgated cars and cascading flickering red brake lights dance for miles on end. Since the advent of smart motorways, there are now large, illuminated signs that flash ‘Damwain’; the Welsh word for accident. Damwain ar y bont; accident on the bridge. Dw i’n aros ar y bont. I’m waiting on the bridge. To wait can also mean to stay in Welsh. Unconsciously, I slow down as I pass the accident, a compulsion for morbid curiosity. It was a scooter collision due to oil on the road. Later I learned the word for what I did as ‘rubbernecking’; a derogatory term that also refers to anyone staring at something of everyday interest compulsively. It was coined as a term in America in the 1890s to refer to tourists. By 1909, rubbernecking was used to describe the wagons, automobiles and buses used in tours around American cities. The tours included a megaphone-wielding individual offering commentary on the urban landscape.

The Royal College of Physicians estimate 40,000 deaths a year in the UK are linked to air pollution, with engine idling contributing to this. Idling increases the amount of exhaust fumes in the air. A new study says UK drivers spend on average 38 hours in traffic delays each year. Perhaps this is why I use this time to try and learn Welsh via a listening app called ‘Say Something in Welsh’. Like the spectre of capitalism, time is money. I am self-policed by a neoliberal zeitgeist in which time must be used fruitfully and purposefully. Since working as a waitress, I have had Ray Croc’s (the founder of McDonald's) mantra drilled into my head: ‘If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.’
My ethical guilt of driving thus contributing to global extinction, is in a small way offset by my decision to invest time into preserving a minority language. Welsh is believed to be the oldest surviving language in Europe and has been spoken continuously in Wales throughout history; however, by 1911, it had become a minority language.
Another time, whilst waiting at the dentist, I read a magazine article which states that:
‘Welsh is one of the toughest Western European languages to master and is even harder than Swahili, …..at 1,040 hours, learning Welsh takes nearly double the time than it does to become fluent in French, which at 550 hours is one of the easiest of languages examined.’ A sense of futility is echoed with regards to the plight of the climate crisis and my small, personal goal of fluency in Welsh.

As someone who lives in a rural place in the UK with no transport links, I am dependent on my car to commute to get to work. Not needing to have a car in the cities, I learnt to drive in my mid 30s. Sometimes I go alone and drive out of town, to places such as Nant y Moch; there is no phone signal there, I have anxiety about getting stuck, injured or my car breaking down! What I welcome about the quintessentially Ceredigion landscape is that I'm never truly alone, there are always bodies in the landscape aka sheep somewhere in the vista.

Whilst driving to Nant y Moch, I like to visit road signs that have been faded by the sun or reclaimed by lichen. A road sign is a marker of people, infrastructure and of being in a place i.e. not lost, I’m always much happier to see signs and ground myself rather than an open single-track road. There are some good road signs near Ystumtuen or Llanurig where the red has been totally bleached away. This area was once a bustling mining village during its 19th century heyday. It became a ghost village before being repopulated by Hippies who moved to the cefn gwlad (countryside) in the 1970s.

Interlopers, outsider, incomers or mewnfudwyr, a sense of place is guided by these ebbs and flows of capital and industry. In 1960s Britain there was an inward migration that increased the population of rural areas and Y Fro Gymraeg/traditional Welsh heart lands; young liberal people seeking a means to a ‘Good Life.’
John Seymour writings and lifestyle in Pembrokeshire popularised a hippy, ‘back to the land’ idealism in books such as his most famous manifesto, The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (1976). This book sold millions, and I look to my friends (and institutions such as Centre for Alternative Technology) that are now 2nd and 3rd generational fall out from this influx.

My work colleague Gwdion lives on a smallholding near a wind farm; He said that 2 years ago some ‘Down from London’ types bought the old dairy farm next to the turbines. Inheritance tax dodge or back to the land Hippies perhaps? They lasted 6 months as it is rumoured, they developed an illness called ‘turbine syndrome’, a controversial condition that some believe is caused by the infrasound emitted by the structures.

The Welsh Parliament last year introduced a new bill ‘The Environment (Air Quality and Soundscapes) Act’. Resulting from this, is the recognition of the importance and protection to a national soundscape, and makes Wales the first country to undertake this task. I found the quietness of the countryside unnerving; I don’t think one can preserve that feeling. Disquieting.

The hammering of rain on the car’s roof is interjected by a sudden honk from a car horn. I jolt back to the present; the traffic picks up. I speed past the ‘Croeso i Loegr’ and indeed my journey through Wales and across the bridge has ended. I look ahead and see the yellow flash of letters: Diwedd. The Welsh for ‘end’.
( ‘End’ Cue: for scooter riders to honk horns, rev engines and drive off.)
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