Welsh outside of Wales: The World Cup and my turtle shell

Kai Marshall

Not everyone longs for home when they leave. “Don’t come back. Don’t give in to nostalgia. Forget us all”.

That’s a quote from Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 film Cinema Paradiso, spoken by a village elder as he places a young man on the train to Rome to pursue his dreams.

It is no secret that the importance of sport to our sense of Welshness is perhaps overlooked and underappreciated by outsiders. Of course, for every country, sporting events are an excuse to dip your head in to a local bar with your friends and family and root for a common and, in the grand geopolitical scheme of things, benign cause.

The centrality to Welsh identity of sporting events is disproportionate compared to most countries. How many events are there that guarantee tens of thousands of Welsh people to be present in the same location at the same time in the name of Welshness?

The rugby has been the only consistent occasion over the last century or so. The growing popularity of football, now surpassing rugby union in terms of popularity, especially amongst younger Welsh people, has provided another welcome reason to talk about our nation and even to learn some more Welsh (Yma O Hyd was not a song we learned in my southeast Wales schooling days).

That inevitably brings me to this year’s World Cup. What a shame it is to have missed out despite the larger pool of countries heading to the tournament this year and our genuinely excellent performances on the field. With our rugby attendances falling each year, we did not need to lose another reason to talk about being Welsh.

As someone who grew up in Wales but moved out for University nearly a decade ago, those footballing memories of 2016 and beyond are something I am desperate to recreate with every passing tournament, even if I am one of the only people in my immediate circle in a red shirt rather than a white one.

Living in the Northwest of England now, our qualifying heartbreak is likely the last time this year I get to celebrate my Welshness in a way that is also shared with the people at home.

Hiraeth

The word hiraeth didn’t mean much to me until I had left Wales and, even then, it took several years of adjusting to student life before I realised what I had been missing. In my eighth year away from home, I have been reflecting on my Welshness-in-exile. In trying to get to grips with this sense of belonging, strong enough to encourage a deeply lodged yearning but not strong enough to physically take me back home, I have come up with an allegory for what Welshness means to me.

I have come to see my Welsh identity as my turtle shell. The values and dialect instilled in me as a young boy from nought to nineteen I carry with me on my back and are often the first thing that people notice about me.

Although I am away from home, with my back turned, as things stand, I also in a sense have it with me at all times. When times are tough and I forget who I am, maybe I am bogged down in money troubles or I am frustrated creatively, maybe it is just a bad day, I can set myself down and return into my shell.

Memories

That shell contains memories of people long gone and their words of wisdom. It contains the most absurd stories and characters that only the hills upon hills of the Valleys could produce- straight out of Under Milk Wood.

I remember the greenness that is replicated nowhere in the world. I remember tiny pubs when pints were cheaper; walking there in the cold, walking back in the rain.

I’m not sure if I speak for all of the Dai-aspora with this next part.

One day, I intend to take that shell off my back, open it out and make that internal world my external world. I spent the first 20 years of my life in Wales; I’d like to spend the last 20 years in Wales too.

Naturally, I’ve no idea when that 20-year countdown officially starts. At 27, I feel I am currently in between those two parts of my life.

That brings me back to this year’s World Cup. I have not heard the Three Lions sung yet, where during other tournaments I’d be sick of it already (it’s a good song, really).

It hurts, genuinely hurts, not to be able to cheer on Kieffer Moore’s wand of a forehead.

I am one of those people that will take up support for England’s opponents; my intuition is that many readers will actually disagree with that approach. However, if that is the way I insert myself into this World Cup then so be it.

I’ve got a nice new telly in my turtle shell- it would be a waste not to use it.