I was born in a small house on the banks of the River Taff in Pontypridd and grew up in a large house on the banks of the River Taff in Cardiff. Our capital seemed a paradise on earth then, as I blasted along those river banks as a child, taunting the lovers in the long grass and asking for a tanner to go away or else playing hide and seek with my pals in the museum – what else is a museum for? - I never thought I would leave the city and indeed, when I did end up in Fleet Street, the plan was to get back to Cardiff asap. This was a city I had loved unreservedly all my life and to this day I still feel a percussive throb of anxiety on Saturdays as I wait for the Cardiff City football result. I was also fond of nearby Penarth, where many thousands of alcoholics cling shakily to the cliff hoping not to fall into the sea, although in my coastguard tower there, where I lived, I could still see Cardiff from the top floor.
Yes, I was a Taff all right. Had you pricked me you would have seen coal-stained blood. My favourite meal was faggots and peas in Cardiff Market and I wanted my ashes scattered over the floor of the Old Arcade pub when I died.
But everything changed when an ageing aunt of my wife Liz died and left us a some money and a somewhat derelict house in the village of Llandrillo in the rural wilds of Denbighshire in North Wales.
I couldn’t even spell the name of the place – let alone pronounce it – but we decided to go and live there, do up the house and sell it for as much money as possible and then scarper back down South. My worst fears about the place were confirmed from the first day when I was awoken at the crack of dawn by a neighbour’s cockerel who, I was to learn, began blasting away as soon as a tiny sliver of light got into its even tinier brain.
A bull escaped from his field and half scared me to death one morning as I was on my way to buy a newspaper and sheep kept breaking into the garden and eating anything I had just planted. I was also deeply worried by the locals because I had always hated North Walians. Indeed the only North Walian I’d ever really liked was my wife and I’d only picked her up in the union hop in Cardiff University many years before because, with her nasal twang, I thought she was a Scouser. But she was a Gog from Anglesey and we immediately bonded over a common love of the Rolling Stones.
I didn’t bond over anything with her North Walian father though and it was easy to hate him because he clearly hated me. I asked him for his daughter’s hand a few times and, after pouring a few relaxing pints down his throat in a pub and asking him again, he just jumped up without a word and ran for the door where, in a drizzling night in Menai Bridge, he disappeared like a ghost at dawn.
When our first child did come along and he did the maths he didn’t speak to any of us for more than a year. So there I was, menaced by wandering bulls, awoken by insomniac cockerels and surrounded by a people who, to make matters a lot worse, all spoke in their native Welsh. It barely seems credible that, five years later, I have become a proud Gog.
Everything changed almost as soon as we set foot in the neighbouring town of Bala and fell in love with the place. Everyone greeted us with a warm Bore Da and the streets reeked of a warm innocence. There was also Bala Lake, the largest natural lake in Wales, which shivers with gorgeousness even on rainy days. I now want my ashes scattered on Bala Lake and not in the Old Arcade.
One morning we paused outside an old butcher’s shop in the High Street which was for sale. There had been no planning or even discussion. Now we knew nothing about running a business or art and didn’t even know what we liked but we converted the shop and sat in the middle of the glistening gallery wondering what to do next. We hadn’t the smallest clue but soon learned, visiting most of the major artists of North Wales and taking advice from them as well as their work. as we decided there and then to buy it and turn it into an art gallery.
William Selwyn gave us immediate and amazing support. In no time at all we were even making money: eye-watering amounts on some days which enabled us to take long cruises every winter in which we visited almost every corner of the world.
At first, hopeful of starting a big row somewhere, preferably with Tate Modern, I wanted to call the place Tate Bala but Liz, who is a hundred times more sensible than me and has saved me from no end of trouble over the years, ruled that out and we called it Tan Yr Hall, its original postal name.
As a writer of some 20 books over 30 years I also decided to start my own publishing company, the Berwyn Mountain Press, upstairs, certain I could do a far better job than most of the other publishers I’d had. I would give my books the best of everything I promised myself: advertising, high quality printing and an extended shelf-life in the gallery unlike some of my other books which had sometimes been remaindered even before they got into the shops.
My first production, The Tyranny of Ghosts, a novel, was printed in Dubai, got advertised in The Guardian, picked up a number of good endorsements and had a ravishing portrait on the cover done for me by the artistic genius that is Harry Holland. Soon I was on my way with a memoir, The Reporter’s Tale, which is now doing very well and even starting to make a little money which will be invested in its future growth.
Skinflint publishers can’t touch me any more. In a bound we both leaped free and Liz still sends up a nightly prayer of thanks for her safe deliverance from BBC Wales. But my biggest surprise was the warm dignity of the Bala people and in five years I’ve not had a row with one of them which was more or less a weekly occurrence in nutty old Penarth.
I’ve not even had a moment’s problem about the Welsh language; they’ll tell you all you need to know in English and I’m sure I’ve managed years of sobriety here because no one has ever upset me.
We all drink so much, I’ve often thought, to help us deal with one another. We can only handle most of our wearying, often boring, relationships with a good skinful. We laugh and be jolly when all we really want to do is cry.
I am immensely proud of what Liz and I have achieved here in this small town by a lake. Every box has been ticked. We came here as a couple of fearful pensioners with not a lot to look forward to in the autumn of our years and we were made happy by a friendly people as we put together two good businesses which we will keep working until we drop.
The plan now is for me to share my diary on how we get on in the land of the Gogs in future issues of Cambria. I’m going to try and use my words as bricks to build a little bridge of understanding between the two tribes of the North and South; a bridge between the South I have always loved and the North that I have come to love.
A big ambition, you cynical lot in the back row may think, but that’s always been me. No matter how old you may get, hold your God by his hand, take a deep breath and go for the big.
There is no other way my lost and divided people of Wales. Come together and lift up your eyes to the hills. Go for the big and die.
