let it go

I have a decently vivid memory of a drive out to Bodega Bay somewhere between 8th grade and sophomore year of high school wherein my friends tortured me by playing country music the entire time. Being the wayward American Bandstand-er lost somewhere in the wrong musical generation that I was (in between teenyboppering too of course) I could not bear the twang and "my girl just left me so I'm going to go milk a cow" sentiment to just about every song I heard. Nothing too terribly against it... I just couldn't dig it.

An unfair generalization, yes. But I was thirteen (or possibly fifteen, like I said, decently vivid memory, not  a solid flashback) and had yet to finalize my taste in music.

Anyway, hit the double arrow to fast forward (or arrows and a vertical line to skip a few chapters ahead for the DVD generation) to college, now somewhere between sophomore year and senior year (timeline here more an ongoing thing than a specific incident) (what's that? more parentheticals you say? SURE!) (ok, this one's just for kicks, we're getting off topic...)

Where was I? Oh, yeah, country music. Meeting Blake meant the occasional Texan coming out and this in turn meant a dose of country (though to this day I have yet to hear to full expanse of his true Texas accent, despite so many margarita nights). Nights spent spazzed out on Blake's extra-long twin in his dorm room were often to the tune of Enya, various Disney classics or the occasional country classic. "Who's Your Daddy?" became a beloved sing-along with HRH belting it out in his fabulous baritone along with my now personal favorite "My Maria".

But that's a lot of backstory to bring things back around to my point here (bless you for sticking with the post thus far)...

So a friend of mine recently tuned me into Zac Brown Band and in spite of myself, things were sounding pretty good. My genre of choice has fallen into a sort of folk rock/folk punk direction with a little bluegrass thrown in for good measure so with ZBB not being too twangy I quickly found that I was keeping their album on repeat. Song after song I was totally into it and, gasp!, loving it! At first I only downloaded one album but was soon going back for more.

And in that second album, one song in particular hit dead home for me. I was leaving Mari's one night after one of the most meaningful nights of wine and conversation I've had in a long time and popped The Foundation into my car and headed home. The first song on that disc was "Let It Go" and following what Mari and I had just been talking about for the last three hours, I knew that God had carefully crafted this moment for me. He had done it so that I would hear exactly what I needed to hear exactly when I needed to hear it. (Funny how He does that, eh?)

The chorus goes as follows:

You keep your heart above your head and your eyes wide open

So this world can't find a way to leave you cold

And know you're not the only ship out on the ocean

Save your strength for things that you can change

Forgive the ones you can't

You gotta let it go

Well said, ZBB. Well said.

Ever since the proverbial ::cough:: expletive ::cough:: hit the fan back in April, I had been fighting things so hard and I was losing steam. London had helped beyond all measure and adequate adjectives, but there was still that little twinge in the back of my mind/heart/soul that wasn't freely giving up what had been taken from me. Incidentally, that was one of my earlier epiphanies about the whole break-up mess - in it all, I  found myself in no way doubting God's plan, but certainly not understanding what I did to deserve that swift hand of change. But it did bring me closer to Him and in doing so, made me look back over the stories that have comforted so many of the centuries. I returned to the story of Job and realized that if I was ever going to find comfort and peace of mind again, I would have to freely give up this thing that I had held so dear. 

But folks, we all know this is easier said than done (if I've done my job right, there should be a resounding "DUH!" echoing through your homes right now).

But what a thought, right? "Let It Go" had unknowingly just summed up the exact philosophy I was trying to put my finger on in order to move forward. "Save your strength for things that you can change, forgive the ones you can't..."! Wow. You all know the weight and importance that I give words and the power that they have for me, so to hear/read something so simply profound as these lyrics was practically a little religious experience itself! And I was so excited to have it!

And so I'll tuck that sweet chorus away in my canon and keep the advice close at heart. The song references those words being a "message from [his] father"... I think I'll put that thought in a box and show it to my children someday when it comes time for me to pass along a little bit of wisdom. Until then, I'll keep repeating it in my mantras. 

London's Burning

The scenes tonight on BBC News 24 are horrific. It's heart-breaking. The scenes from Hackney and tonight, Croydon, were bad enough but now I'm hearing of looting in Clapham. I was in Clapham staying with friends only last month and I've already texted them to ask them to stay safe.

My thoughts go out to everyone suffering at the hands of a mindless minority tonight and over recent days.

england keep my bones

exterior of the victoria & albert museum

brompton

inside the v&a

artwork at the v&a

the natural history museum

peter pan

j.m. barrie's house on hyde park

whitley bay playhouse for the frank turner show

storm rolling in over whitley bay

guinness

firefighter memorial for those who died in the blitz

st. paul's cathedral

st. paul's over the thames

london bus

classic

kensington creperie

dark chocolate & banana crepe with cafe au lait

buckingham palace

hi feet. 

inside st. paul's

"will you light my candle?"

st. paul's dome

went ALL the way to the top 

yes. i do. 

view of the globe theatre & tate modern from the top of st. paul's

85 metres up at the top!

champagne & pate after the st. paul's climb

frank. turner.

view of london from the plane... wow

my favorite picture of frank form the show

There is an old English saying that says,

Heaven take thy soul, but England keep my bones.

I found it inspiring not only that this saying exists but also that it finds itself the title of Frank Turner's most recent album (the album destined to become the soundtrack of my sojourn to the land of my ancestors). I don't think there could be anything more appropriate to perfectly sum up the last two weeks of my life.

Though my adventures in London officially began in 2004 when I ventured across the pond at 17, I did not truly find my London until the following autumn when in 2005, along with thirty-six other students, I found myself living in one of the poshest neighborhoods the city has in a six-story Hyde Park mansion along the famous Prince's Gate. I made peace long ago with the fact that I would never again live in South Kensington unless I found myself married to a Duke or a Lord or something like that... Of course, I would live there again in 2007, but after that certainly only a monarch or member of court could get me back there. 

Anyway, the reasons for yet another return journey this year were numerous. The simplest explanation was that with everything that had been happening in-and-to my life the last three months, I desperately needed to find the place where I first found myself and London was my only option. It was there that I had first found my heart, my own center of gravity those years ago and with no other option panning out I realized the one place I needed to be was away. 

London. 

Just the word - London - has a magic to it. And I needed that magic because my life was dangerously close to taking on a shade of grey that didn't resemble anything I'd known before. It wasn't a depression but it was the simple sadness of losing something so dear that it may well have been one of my vital signs. My heart was not broken, but the bruising was significant and it was taking over. 

J. M. Barrie  was a man who wrote extensively of magic and, having lived on the edge of Hyde Park himself, knew of the magic of London. Especially when it came to feeding the mind. The beloved Peter Pan statue in the park is tribute to such beliefs (legend has it that he had it placed in the park during the night so that come morning, the children on their way to school would find it there as if by magic!) And so of course, I made a my usual pilgrimage to the spot there along the Serpentine to visit with Peter. 

But I digress.

I went to England to make myself right with the world again and the trip very quickly became exactly what I needed it to be. More even. This was the first time I have ever made the trans-Atlantic crossing on my own and that inandofitself was phenomenal. It was also the first time I have broken up the flight into two parts and I will say I definitely prefer it, even in the hassle of changing planes in Dallas. One 3-hour and one 8-hour flight is by far superior to one solid 11-hour headache (I can't sit still for that long, I get a little wound up and need to bounce around). 

Arriving at Heathrow will always be a spectacular homecoming for me but this time, God decided to give me an even more impressive entrance: clear skies! Never, in all of my landings in the Motherland, have I been able to so clearly trace the river Thames through the city and see the many landmarks along the banks. Aerial views of Big Ben, Westminster, and the London Bridge -- oh! Oh my! I was in heaven upon landing. 

Crawling through border control and boarding the Tube took me straight to the city center - Piccadilly Circus. Because Rachel and Benita were both working that day, I picked up a set of house keys at Rachel's building, hopped a cab to their flat and dropped off my bag (yes, bag, singular... one piece of hand-luggage was all I took for nearly two weeks) (of course, I came home with one more, but let's not tangle with little details like that).

Then? Then I dissolved into the city. 

I walked the streets that for so many may seen foreign, but for me are simply home. For a city of 7 million, it seems startlingly small and cozy, albeit easy to wander aimlessly and anonymously if you so desire. Perhaps it is because I know it so well and have no fear of losing my way within its streets, needing only to find the nearest Tube station to right myself once again within the grid. 

That first day was delicious. I was famishingly hungry but first things first: I had some paintings to visit. That the Bakerloo line took me directly from the girls' flat in Kensal Rise back to Piccadilly meant for day one I would settle into the National Gallery which is virtually just around the corner in Trafalgar Square. I paid respects to Caravaggio and Giordano, Michelangelo and Da Vinci. I will never tire of staring down these works of art. 

Wandering meanderings then took me to a quick nosh at Pret before heading back out for a bit longer until it was time to meet back up with my girls. Our reunion that evening was wonderful! Seeing Rachel and Benita again after two years was yet another addition to "exactly what I needed". This, to me, is a mark of true friendship - picking up exactly where you left off. We caught up over a dinner of hamburgers and hotdogs (hey, it was the 5th of July... We had to pay tribute to our homeland, even if we were a day late!)

The days that followed were  a continued stroll down that memory lane. Revisiting old haunts throughout the city. Stopping at the Pepperdine House was a must, of course. Though the whole of Exhibition Road is torn apart for the 2012 Olympic-inspired renovation, it was still the beautiful home turf I remember. From the South Ken station, past the creperie, the V&A and the mews, I made my way to the place I called home so long ago. It was wonderful to pass through those enormous doors again and plop down in the leather chairs of Professor Vos Strache's office. I caught her up on the goings-on of all the past Londoners and she filled me in on the happenings of the house. We talked of how sweetly poetic it was that the sadness of Thomasina's passing somehow coincided with the renovations to the house itself being done, so that the heart of the house that once was closed with that chapter of history.

Leaving the house I returned to my walk through the eternal city and wove myself back into the mews. This not-so-secret passage just off Exhibition - and nearly every main drag in this part of London because when the mansion homes were first built these same mews, which are now pricey homes themselves, served as stables for the horses of the wealthy - always served as a Narnia shortcut between our house and the church I so often attended while there, Holy Trinity Brompton. It's also my favorite walk to Knightsbridge.

Dodging through the crowds at Harrod's, I decided to make a quick stop in the food halls to seek out what remains to this day, the best dried mango I've ever had (yes, I know, I'm having a moment here over dried mango... But trust me... There is no dried mango like the Harrod's dried mango in the world... I've done the research). I still remember going to that city-block-sized monstrosity for the first time and the echoes of some old movie where the character references "spending the afternoon getting lost in Harrod's..." Folks, it's funny because it's true. Even after all these years I still manage to need a trail of breadcrumbs whenever i delve into its hallowed halls. Will that stop me though? Hell no. Dehydrated fruit is at stake here.

Mango in hand, I was finally ready to put the finishing touches on my impending trip to Whitley Bay for the Frank Turner concert. When traveling in the UK I found that the best travel snacks are found at the train stations themselves but this time I made an exception with my mango. Still, I had to grab a treat at Cafe Nero before boarding my train to Newcastle,up in northeast England. Keep in mind, this is the first time I've really done the whole travel thing entirely on my own (the only other time I had traversed the globe solo was flying from London to Florence in 2008 to visit Blake). And it was entirely liberating! I've long loved flying by myself and now I can add train travel to that (short) list.

The option of buying a roundtrip ticket was there but I opted for a BritRail pass to make my adventure a little more fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants in nature. In doing so, I had the freedom to take any train at any time which, in my opinion, is the way to do it. So up north I went, arriving in Newcastle three short hours later. Hindsight, I should have spent a lot more time in that city itself. Everywhere I looked there was history waiting to be discovered. Coming from California (hell, America in general) I'm more accustomed to the government finding something that's been around for fifty years, slapping a "historic landmark" sticker on it and calling it a day. But Newcastle was just teeming with an aura of eons gone by and it was all I had to not launch out of the cab and worry about meeting up with Frank another day.

Blessedly though, I controlled my urges and poured myself into a cab bound for Whitley Bay, a small, seaside town about 15 miles from Newcastle city center. After getting lost circling a single block, the cabbie dropped me at my lodging for the night, the Esplanade Lodge. It was a sweet little guesthouse run by a man named Neil and his wife (I never got her name) and between the simple hospitality shown to me and the sheer location of the place (um, three blocks from the coast of the North Sea? Done.)

Timing is apparently not my strong-point so I realized (too late) that I arrived hours before the show so I toured myself through the town, along the coast and back to my room within about three hours. Theoretically I could have stayed out but it's a small town and I was exhausted... And I had some serious Frank Turner-ing in my future so I spent the last couple hours before the show lounging in bed, drinking tea and watching English comedies.

And then... Then it was time. Time for Frank.

Oh. My. God. 


Though seeing him without my friends there to throw my arms around and sing along with by definition sucked, it was easily the best show I've ever seen. And certainly one of the most moving, soul-awakening experiences. My feelings about Frank Turner are well-documented. Much as I could go on for pages about this concert, I'll spare you. Use your imaginations. Photos will touch on it, I'll post some videos that will drive the point closer to home, but nothing - and I mean nothing - can do justice. So I won't try and let that night live on in my mind as a perfect, poetic, epiphany in my search for the person I always was, but who got lost a little along the way. Frank helped bring me back to me and for that, I will be forever grateful.

To be honest, the same can be said for this trip as a whole. I want to write on for the next two weeks, documenting each moment, each point second by second in order to recreate those nine days for you all but... In the interest of saving time and protecting the sanctity of what I accomplished for myself, I think I'll just leave it at that.

Returning to London will never be just any other vacation, any other plane ride, any other place I happen to find myself in. The actor Gael Garcia Bernal actually said it best in a quote I stumbled upon reading an old issue of The Guardian back in 2005,

But for me, London sends you down a route of introspection in a way that no other city does… The city confronts you and exploits the most creative side of you.

How can I best describe what London is for me? What London does for me? I'm going to defer to Samuel Johnson here...

Why sir, you find no man at all intellectual who is willing to leave London. No sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life for there is in London all that life can afford.

I'm going to make a promise here... I will never tire of life. 

My Weird and Wonderful Lib Dem Family

It's been a long weekend away in London.

The primary reason for my visit was to attend Andrew Reeves' Memorial Service in the Union Chapel, Islington, yesterday afternoon. I blogged about my long trip to pay my respects at his Edinburgh funeral last month and I wanted to do the same with his friends in London at his memorial service.

As I rarely visit London more than once a year and hadn't done so since last summer, I took this sad reason for a visit to clear my diary and to make a long weekend stay of it to catch up with old friends. What it has reminded me is that I am a very fortunate person in that as well as having my own family here in west Wales and my family of University friends, I also have a full-on pseudo-family of Liberal Democrats who span the length and breadth of Britain and it is a family that continues to grow.

The Aberystwyth Link
I arrived in London on the National Express from Swansea at 5pm on Saturday and met up as planned with old Aberystwyth University Liberal Democrat friends Alistair Mills, Jo Gudgeon and Beth Fullana at their home in Clapham where I stayed the night. They shared a house in Aberystwyth back in 2005 and 6 years later, are recently back doing the same again! I'd stayed with Alistair and Jo at their previous Clapham address back in 2009 but I hadn't seen Beth since she graduated so it was great to see them all together again and it felt as if nothing had changed from those golden Mark Williams campaigning days of 2004/2005 which resulted, with help from this great gang, in Mark's election to Parliament that May.

It got even better because I then met with more old faces from the same era as their close friends Simon Columb and his partner Sarah Meadows happened to be celebrating their mutual birthdays on that same night as I was in town. I was invited along and it was great to see them again (Simon has a really good film blog at http://screeninsight.blogspot.com/ for those who are interested) and also another member of the gang, Kaff Cornwall. After a meal by Clapham Common, we went on to the local club 'Infernos' where by sheer randon chance, we bumped into another Aber Lib Dem alumni Malcolm James who I last saw in Brussels when he was working with NATO back in 2007 - he's now working with the MoD. The chances of randomly seeing him on the dance floor of a club in Clapham must be up there with winning the Euromillions. Absolutely staggering but brilliant all the same!

Lib Dems Nation-wide
The Aberystwhyth link continued because on Sunday and Monday evening, I stayed with great mate and fellow Welsh Liberal Democrat Sarah Green and her fiance Luke Croydon in Shepherd's Bush as I have also done before. We used to share a house togeher with other friends in what was my 5th and final year as a student in Aberystwyth (again, that fateful year of 2004/2005) in the Trefechan area of town.

Before I checked in with her and Luke for the evening and a pub quiz with their friends (in which we came a frustratingly decent but could've been better 3rd place), I'd spent much of the day with another good Liberal Democrat friend Hywel ap Dafydd who has been unwell recently and who I visited in University College Hospital near Euston. I've known Hywel as a fellow Pembrokeshire lad but who has spent much of his time around the country helping the party in numerous by-elections and also particularly in London and Bristol. My fondest memory of Hywel is when he accidentally locked himself in the HQ toilet on the day of the Blaenau Gwent by-election some years back. Much of our time on that day was taken up by trying to get Hywel out of that toilet!!

On Monday, I met up at Trafagar Square with good friend Anders Hanson who is now a top bod at ALDC but who has worked in his time for Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and also as the Mid & West Wales regional organiser back in the 2003 Assembly election campaign, based in our Ceredigion office on North Parade. It was then, as a young and keen student member that I first met him and it was nice to catch up with him over lunch before Andrew's memorial service.

Andrew Reeves' Lib Dem Family
It was an excellent turnout at Andrew's memorial service for his partner Roger and I have re-produced photos of the order of service in this blog post to show off what was a brilliant pink theme for the occasion (to which I added my brand of colour with pink-ish shirt and pink-ish tie). I'm sure Andrew would've been bemused at the spectacle but would've chuckled away at the same time. Neil Fawcett blogged here of his recollections of Andrew which sum up the man as well as anyone did in the service itself.

Caron Lindsay has also blogged here about the service itself and I can't add any more to what she said other than that it showed just how strong we are as a party. It was Simon Hughes who said (I'm pretty sure) that it is at sad occasions such as this, that we show that we're not just a party, but a family.

His words particularly rang true to me as we all raised a drink in Andrew's memory afterwards in the chapel bar (yes, you read that correctly!). I bumped into Pete Dollimore there and we caught up briefly and I noted that I only ever saw him at the bar in conference and now here we were, at a bar, at a wake. It was all slightly surreal and so it continued. Seeing good colleagues who I have not seen in some time like former Aberystwyth student Adrian Smith, top trainer-extraoinnaire Candy Piercy, Sally Burnell who I hadn't seen since she worked in Cardiff back in 2003 (full marks to her for picking me out of a crowd because I'm hopeless at such things!), Grace Goodlad and Duncan Borrowman who I also haven't seen in a long time (but who I recall first meeting as a couple when Duncan led a Pageplus artwork designing course in Cardiff back in around 2006) as well as those who I have seen more recently in conferences such as Rhiannon Wadeson and Chris Leaman, Austin Rathe and Katy Riddle, Lucy Watt and Laura Gilmore as well as countless others from across the country emphasised the point more than words could express.

Because, we are a family. We don't always get on with each other, there's often disagreements and arguments but there's a common bond that ties us all together. We all happen to believe that a liberal progressive Britain is the kind that we'd like for future generations and we have all made the decision back in our mutual lives, that the best way to bring about this positive change is through the Liberal Democrats. Like a family, we see it through the good times and also (quite aptly at present) through the challenging times. Like a family, we are so spread out around the country that we often only see each other at weddings or funerals and in our case also of course, conferences. We're a rag-bag of oddities with our quirks, our annoyances, our hobbies and our passions.

Most of all, like a family, we're there for each other in times of need and it was in that kindred spirit of mutual support and care that we gathered at Andrew's funeral in Edinburgh and again yesterday, at his Memorial Servce in London.

I'm sure that Andrew was proud of his weird and wonderful Lib Dem family and this weekend has proved to me if it didn't need proving already, that I am likewise incredibly and fiercely proud to be a small part of this wonderful extended family.

Dyfed Celt Troops the Colour! **Photo Special**

Back in the old year, I blogged about a real Dick Whittington style story as our family's Shire Horse, Dyfed Celt embarked on a new life in London with the Queen's Household Cavalry.

I blogged then of Celt's debut in the Household Cavalry during the Emir of Qatar's State Visit at Windsor Castle.

Now, aged only 6 years old and less than 3 years after we sold him, he was the pride of west Wales as he took centre stage at Horseguards Parade during the annual Trooping of the Colour parade to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday last Saturday.

My brother Huw and his family went down to London to see the event in person. I was delighted after an emotional few days in Edinburgh, to be able to watch it on TV as our hero carried out his responsibilities as one of only two drum horses on display in front of the Queen and her family and millions of television viewers.

His official name was also finally disclosed after months of waiting. Whilst his stable name will remain as Dyfed Celt, his name for official functions will now be Mercury! He also has the rare distinction of having been given an honourary rank in the British Army as a Major!

So please enjoy on this page, thanks to the eagled eyed camera lense of Preseli Pembrokeshire's MP Stephen Crabb, the first photos of Major Mercury strutting his stuff for Queen and country!

Well done Celt! As a family, we're all very proud of you!

London this and London that - it isn't the centre of the Universe you know

It frustrates me and it frustrates me greatly.

I have my personal gmail.com e-mail account and also my official Ceredigion Council .gov account. When I go through my official e-mails in the latter, I usually find myself faced with countless e-mails inviting me to conferences in London.

It drives me absolutely spare. They're all well intentioned yes, but getting an e-mail inviting me to the Barbican as an example, for a policy conference at an extortionate rate really does leave me wanting to pull my hair out.

Hello?
Check where you're sending the e-mail too - ceredigion.gov.uk. Yes, that's C-E-R-E-D-I-G-I-O-N. Look it up on a map. It's in mid and west Wales you know - not exactly a quick car ride down the M1 to our fair capital city.

Now don't get me wrong, I love London. I try and visit at least once or twice a year and will usually mix a necessary business visit with the opportunity to catch up with friends. I love the Underground in particular I must admit and as a historian, there's plenty for me to feast upon when I'm there (to my amazement, I still have yet to visit the Tower of London).

But let's get a reality check here. Councillors like myself here in the far west or my colleagues I'm sure down in Cornwall or up in northern England aren't just going to suddenly drop everything because we've received yet another invitation to an event...IN LONDON.

No, we're going to get on with the work that we've got here at home thank you very much.

Experimentation Maybe?
Why don't these organisers try something radical - and I mean really radical.

Why don't they consider holding their events, just once in a blue moon even, OUTSIDE OF LONDON? Is it such a ridiculous, revolutionary thought? How about Cardiff? Or Bristol? Or Shrewbury? Or for my south western friends, how about Exeter or the like? What about Sheffield or Leeds or Derby for those with a more northern geographic base?

Because for as long as I receive e-mails from the LGA and the like asking me to yet another event in London, the response will be the same as for those requests that have gone before - the 'delete' button.

End of rant.