If We Will It

Ben Wildsmith

It’s been a good week to travel the length of Wales. With snow dusting the hills behind my Rhondda home, I headed towards Elenydd and on to Eryri ready for a challenging drive.

My first stop was in Llanidloes, the charming and eccentric Powys town that was my first home in Wales.

Over lunch in the Red Lion (best chips in Wales, trust me) I caught up with old friends, savouring the warmth and familiarity of easy company.

And don’t we all need that now? The constant threats coming our way from Trump, Putin, Farage, Rupert Lowe, AI, climate change, Iran and everything else beaming off satellites into our homes with bad intent can be debilitating.

Face-to-face time with people we trust isn’t woven into our lives like it used to be. We’re in our dwindling pubs less often, our conversations are more frequently online in that strange, interconnected isolation that we’ve been shepherded into after Covid broke all our social habits.

With lovely Llani in the rear-view mirror, I press on through Staylittle up to the strange, mythical rockscapes around Dylife. I’m beginning to become nervous as the hillside grows whiter, and the air thins out to a cold, knifing reproach.

The radio’s on to soothe me as I wonder how icy it’s going to get. My car’s display is flashing warnings, but it seems to be ok. Deep breaths.

Donald Trump hints that Iran will be attacked this weekend… I switch to some music from a simpler time and descend carefully into the Dyfi valley.

Deep into Eryri, I link up with my pal, the novelist Niall Griffiths. We’re heading to a couple of events to promote my book but have an evening free to discuss the coming apocalypse and anaesthetise ourselves against its emotional toll.

After a lovely evening at Mold library, we head up to Caernarfon for a reading at Palas Print bookshop.

I’m a little nervous about this. My book about Brummie/Valleys identity hasn’t been this far from home before and who knows if it will resonate up here where a different type of Welshness swirls in the sea air?

Self-confidence

The town feels like a city state. Hearing Cymraeg on every corner as the castle towers over us, I savour the independence of its businesses, the self-confidence of the place.

Above the bookshop, Palestinian flags fly, and, in its window, there are works by Welsh authors who grace this nation   – Niall, Patrick McGuinness, Rachel Tresize: north to south, east to west, Cymraeg and English.

Inside, after our readings, the talk turns to politics.

Many of those attending are Nation.Cymru readers and their concerns are as pan-Welsh and outward looking as the books surrounding them.

We talk of how politics in Wales should flow from our culture not against it; how our languages inform each other; how the singularity of Wales is always a strength, whatever its detractors – those looking for salvation in Westminster – think.

The recent by-election in Caerphilly has energised politics here as it has back home. I wonder, has Valleys politics ever been so relevant here?

After a century of Labour dominance so total that elections were rarely in doubt, the crisp air of shared optimism seems finally to be blowing across our whole nation.

Defiance

Defiance at far-right attacks on Welsh democracy and community values sound the same here as they do at the packed Cymunedoli meetings that are being staged back home at the moment.

Afterwards, in a Bangladeshi restaurant where the owners spoke Cymraeg more confidently than English, we reflected on the quality of conversation that’s on offer in Wales.

People seem to be engaged, to understand the weight of the moment and our responsibility to it.

As alliances fracture, systems break down, and politics remakes itself, it can seem as if we are powerless in the face of chaos. Driving back south today, on the lower road so that the icy peaks could be observed rather than skated over, I listened to more news. If they are locking up royalty there’s no going back…

Worldwide, we’re at the end of something and to emerge from it will require imagination.

From our conversations, kindnesses, and shared values we will need to forge something new.

Here, in this country, we may not be able to prevent the obscenities of foreign wars, or the shockwaves of financial manoeuvring but we have choices to make about how we cope with it.

As division is peddled like a toxic drug by shysters and misanthropes, we can insist on our own way.

The forces that seek to divide us, dull and blunt as they are, can be subverted by our wit and common feeling if we will it. What seeks to cast us asunder could yet pull us together.