News of the World out, R&Y blog in

The News of the World may finish this weekend but here in Blog land, life goes on as usual.

Tired, aloof, old, calculating, diffident, traditional, aggressive, self assured, monarchist. These are the words that are currently coming to my head after just a couple of days in Wales/Great Britain. The weather has been quite poor over the last few days as well and this may be contributing to my slightly indifferent feelings at the moment.

But compared to the Irish, even in their current financial plight, Great Britain seems quite a way out of touch. The service to travellers like us is certainly way behind Ireland. We are often left with the feeling that here we should be grateful for the opportunity to be in the shop/pub/restaurant and we will get around to you when we think it is your turn for our focus.

Here in Anglesea and Snowdonia in general, the natural settings are quite sensational and very easy on the eye. So there is no shortage of opportunities to be enchanted. But it is just not happening and it is coming down to the people thing.

The drivers are also a lot more aggressive on the roads and courtesies are few on the narrow back roads. Parking for any cars in and around the towns/villages/seaside is tightly controlled, expensive and not well planned.

But there could be layers in here within me that are also in play. I am more than half English by heritage and coming here may be bringing long suppressed experiences out. I could be back in the 1950s at times with the Enid Blyton, Noddy, Beano and Dandy, Rupert, Biggles and the Daily Mirror experiences of my youth now front of mind and I may be “coming home” to my own ghosts in some respects. Even here in Wales, I have seen my own mother and her other English friends in the many elderly women getting around these old Victorian era towns. The ways they walk, talk, dress and engage with each other are very familiar to me.

We mat report on what we did in Wales later.

And politically the whole place seems to be erupting around the News of the World issue.

So as we move soon up to Scotland for a week, I wonder what I will be thinking this time next week?