A load of old...

...rubbish.

Every two weeks on those Thursday nights when Troll is cosily holed up in the AAMC (where, naturally, Real Life does not intrude) a casual observer may be forgiven for thinking Chateau Angevin is the venue for a meeting of the Invent An Original Swear Word Convention. For once, this is not due to my having found something on the BBC News Website to offend my delicate sensibilities but because it is, horror of horrors, Bin Night.

I loathe taking the bins out. I loathe the fact I have to wheel the bins 100 yards down my drive because the idle binmen won't drive up into my yard to collect them (note, however, this does not stop various men in white vans using my yard as a turning circle several times a week - subject for another blog there sometime methinks). I loathe the necessity of removing the full bin bag from my kitchen bin into the large dark grey dumpster type bin the local council so thoughtfully provide. I loathe anything to do with bins in fact - their lack of aesthetic appeal, their smell and even those naff products you can buy which claim to get rid of the latter. BUT most of all I absolutely loathe, detest and revile the fact that the local council imposed a TWO WEEKLY cycle of collections on us.

Yes, gentle non-UK readers, you read that correctly. In this so-called First World civilised country in which I reside my rubbish is now only collected every two weeks, a fact which makes me virtually froth at the mouth. We are told this is because if we organise ourselves correctly, and separate out our rubbish into the correct receptacles helpfully provided by the council we should only NEED our rubbish collecting fortnightly - an outright lie which merely reinforces my belief that outside Chateau Angevin people live off ready meals and junkfood. For example, the little green bin we are given for food waste, which the council assure us will be composted once they collect it, is only about a cubic foot square. WHO ARE THEY KIDDING? I can almost fill that space with vegetable peelings from ONE MEAL, God alone knows what I'd do if I actually used the flipping thing for real rather than flinging my peelings on my own compost heap (oh no, you aren't getting any help from me, District Council in your cunning scheme to collect scraps free from people and then get them to pay you good money for it when it's been composted... I'm not that daft, thank you very much). I could go on about the inappropriate features of the various other receptacles we have been given for the various other forms of waste we produce but you get the picture...

I am angry and resentful NOW about this situation - I will leave you all to imagine just how incandescent I'm going to be if the Council carry out their threat of microchipping the bins to check we are all being good boys and girls and not putting anything we shouldn't in there - and merely make the point this is meant to be BRITAIN in 2009, not East Germany circa 1980 with the Stazi in control of rubbish collection.

I would also make the point that so far nobody at the Council has been able to adequately explain to me why Malta, one of the poorest countries in the EU with a population of half a million or so, manages to have DAILY rubbish collections whereas us Brits can only manage a piss-poor fortnightly one. Answers on a postcard please, readers....

Remind me not to read the BBC News Website!

Because, ONCE AGAIN, I've found something which makes me so cross only the blessed relief of putting fingers to keyboard is going to get it out of my system.

The article today is built around the results of a survey conducted by the Welsh Tourist Board:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8349935.stm

The report starts off with the phrase "Wales is "slightly old-fashioned" and the Welsh are "not friendly" in the minds of some potential visitors to the country, research has found." Those who know me in real life will probably be able to accurately assess the explosion which that would have generated at Chateau Angevin; suffice it to say it was not a pretty sight. Reading a bit further into the report it seems that - surprise surprise - what's actually caused the problem here is the English characteristically objecting to the use of the Welsh language. (Note, the Irish didn't have a problem with it and actually thought it was a good thing).

To me, that says a whole lot more about English insecurity than it does supposed Welsh unfriendliness. I am sick to the back teeth of hearing tales of visiting a shop where the other shoppers 'spoke in Welsh so I didn't understand them' - what the hell makes these people think the Welsh were speaking English beforehand and changed to Welsh just to be nasty to them? Does it never cross their bigoted little minds the likelihood is, especially in the North or West Wales, the other shoppers were indeed speaking Welsh before the grand entrance of the English Tourist and merely carried on their conversations? Oh, silly me, of course it wouldn't; everybody should speak English, now, shouldn't they? After all, the English have done their best over the past 1,000 years or so to eradicate Welsh culture HOW DARE the naughty Welsh continue to have their own language and use it??

If I am quite honest, in some ways I can understand, if not condone a bit of linguistic exclusion versus the English, after all, it's only the Welsh getting a little of their own back. Welsh was banned as a teaching medium in schools from the C19th onwards and matters got quite humiliating and vicious as such things usually do. My grandfather used to often talk of the times he was hauled up in front of the whole school and a board put round his neck with 'Spoke Welsh' on it after a teacher had caught him speaking in Welsh to his peers; and of the times he was slippered for continuing to do so. His only comfort was that oft as not his brothers and sister were up there too, along with a fair few other children from his village - can you just imagine the outcry now if a teacher took part in institutional humiliation of this nature and made a child wear a board with 'Spoke Urdu' or similar scrawled on it? We are talking about the early years of the C20th here, a time still just about in living memory, and it was only comparatively recently that discrimination against Welsh speakers was halted when the 1993 Welsh Language Act repealed a law, dating back to Henry VIII, which disqualified Welsh speakers from holding administrative office.

As aforementioned, I don't think it's RIGHT the English should be made to feel uncomfortable when they go on holiday to Wales, but on some levels it's understandable. Perhaps we should make as big a fuss about all the Welsh-English back history as the descendants of the slaves have done about the wrongs done to their ancestors (which, note, was considerably further in the past than 1993) - ask Gordon Brown to say 'Sorry' to us, shall we? Oh dear, Gordon Brown's SCOTTISH - and there's a whole other can of worms I'm not about to dive into today ... Anyway the chances of the English apologising are zero because apart from only letting their version of events be told in the first place, the teaching of history in English schools is close to non-existent (see blogs passim) as regards anything meaningful: Wales to them is a backward little place to be exploited for cheap labour, cheap holidays and cheap gags about sheep. Oh, and to be cursed when our little nation of 3m manage to put together a rugby team which can beat the English on a surprisingly frequent basis....

Which brings me to my next point - the other comment in this report which got me spluttering my tea across the kitchen was one person having the cheek to say 'I think Wales is almost like Birmingham's playground in a way, you can go mountain biking, beaches, you've got the walking..'. The words 'patronising', 'arrogant' and 'demeaning' come to mind - HOW DARE that person regard my country as a 'playground'? (My thoughts about Birmingham are pretty unprintable, suffice it to say 'playground' would not feature largely, although 'cesspool' might make an appearance).

And, pray, what is so wrong with being 'old-fashioned'? If that means being Welsh means having greater family ties, showing some respect to society and people around you, and being generally more full of the attributes whose passing is lamented almost daily when the English press comment on 'modern society', then I am more proud than ever of being Welsh. As one American visitor put it "I think the fact that Wales is slightly old-fashioned is one of its most endearing charms. It's a throwback to a simpler life with strong family values. I've been going to Wales every year for 15 years and have always found the Welsh people to be wonderfully warm and welcoming." So stuff that up your oh-so-modern-socially-dysfunctional bottoms, and leave us alone, dissatisfied English contributors to this survey: bugger off to Ayia Napa with your modern values and patronise the indigenous population there. There are 1.5 Americans who claim Welsh ancestry and that's a nice big pool for us to go fishing in with our tourist attractions, and I doubt they'd make so much fuss if they heard somebody speaking Welsh. They probably don't get so bladdered and tolerate their teenage girls having sex with every available local male whilst on holiday either.

Jonathan Jones of Visit Wales is quoted in this report as saying "What we have got to make sure is when tourists come here they are treated properly." True... but it makes no recognition of the fact that tourists should BEHAVE properly when they're in somebody else's country: ie. not call it a 'playground', wander around the mountains in blizzard conditions wearing jeans and trainers (and expecting the Mountain Rescue personnel to endanger themselves to save them) and treat the local people like lesser-evolved beings put on the planet to cater to their needs whatever they may be. Like it or not, the English have got an justifiably appalling reputation around the world for their holiday antics and perhaps some public money should be spent on attempting to put this right rather than wasting it on asking them what they think of Wales?