A Simple Life of Luxury

‘Trick or Treat?’, I wonder how many websites and blog entries have that title today? Well it is Halloween so I thought I’d be topical too, but what is it all about? Why do we celebrate Halloween? Why do we dress up in ghoulish costumes and carve out pumpkins? Why do we play ‘trick or treat’ and why do we bob for apples. More importantly now that I’m a responsible parent do I want to encourage Morgan to go out and blackmail people into giving him treats?

To be honest with you I don’t know the answers to most of these questions. All I think I know is that Halloween is a Pagan festival and that the word itself is derived from ‘All Hallows Eve’, but that doesn’t really mean much to me either. So, with the power of the internet at my fingertips I shall do some research and see what I can discover.

Well, it seems I was correct as far as the derivation of the name goes and the fact that it was originally a Pagan festival. It is so called because it is the evening before ‘All Saints day’ (which is November 1st and an important date in the Christian calendar). The ‘All Hallows’ bit comes from All Hallowed Souls (Saints).

In Britain and Ireland in particular, the pagan Celts celebrated the Day of the Dead on All Hallows Day (1st November). The spirits supposedly rose from the dead and, in order to attract them, food was left on the doors. This goes someway to explaining the association with witches and ghouls and pumpkins left on the doorstep. To scare off the evil spirits, the Celts wore masks which explains the dressing up. Further connections with ghosts, evil spirits and all thing ghoulish comes from the fact that Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the “liminal” times of the year when the spirit world can make contact with the natural world and when magic is most potent.

But what of the traditions, in particular Trick or Treating? The origins of this activity come from the Celts who tried to appease the evil spirits: ghosts, goblins, and demons. They would leave out food, hoping that this would please the spirit world. If they did not leave a thing, then the spirits would play evil “tricks” on the living in that house. The Druids required human sacrifices, they would go door to door asking for the virgin daughters. If this was not obtained at the chosen homes, then a hexagram was painted on the door in blood to show the appointed evil spirits to cause all kinds of evil to fall on the home.

Trick or treating is much more popular in North America than it is on this side of the Atlantic, but as with many US cultural influences it is slowly gaining in popularity here. I remember doing it when I was younger and I’m sure Morgan will do it when he is a little older. Of course, shops and businesses have caught on to the tradition and at this time of year everywhere you look there are things packaged in black and orange and shops and supermarkets have costumes for sale. All of which I’m sure will help encourage Trick-or-Treating to grow. But is it something we want to encourage?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a killjoy and as long as it remains good healthy harmless fun then I am all for it. We certainly need something to help brighten these suddenly dark evenings, but it strikes me as the sort of activity which could easily be abused and become as sinister as some of the costumes. After all, in essence we are dressing up in scary, intimidating costumes and black-mailing people into giving us treats or else we’ll play a trick on them. I guess the important thing is that the trick remain harmless.

I know when we did it the most we would do would be spray some crazy-string at our victims. Although there was one year that we came up with the idea of leaving a note for the milkman saying ‘No Milk Today Please’ as our trick… Again, fairly harmless, but probably a little annoying for our victims when they were expecting some milk for their cornflakes the following morning!

Thankfully out here we don’t expect any problems from Trick-or-Treaters, but I could imagine in some places certain rogue elements will use it as an excuse for vandalism and general yobbish behaviour. Maybe that is one reason why it has never really caught on here. Perhaps deep down we all have a slight reticence about the whole idea and don’t really want to encourage such behaviour. For me as a new parent I’d like to think of Halloween as a celebration and a time to have some fun, dress up, enjoy ourselves play a few harmless tricks but not to cause anyone any harm or worry.

Maybe the Romans had the right idea. When they invaded Britain, they embellished the tradition with their own, which is both a celebration of the harvest and of honouring the dead. They honoured the dead with a festival called Feralia in late October. It honoured Pomona, their goddess of fruit trees who was often pictured wearing a crown of apples. During this festival, they ran races and played games to honour the “Apple Queen”. These Roman customs led to the now well establish Halloween game of ‘Bobbing for Apples’.

Personally, I quite like the idea of some kind of celebration at this time of year. Dressing up and playing games is always fun and that I’d like to encourage, Trick or Treating is fine as long as it is properly supervised and not intimidating or harmful. I’m quite looking forward to taking Morgan out to do such things in a few years time (if he wants to) and at least now when he asks why we do it or what Halloween is all about I’ll be able to tell him.

OK, so we are officially out of Britsih Summer Time, but what a weekend… Gorgeous sunshine for most of the day today, warm temperatures and even bikini-clad girls on the beach and swimming in the water. We don’t get manye days better than that here in Wales during August!!

It was pretty busy out on the water with about 6 windsurfers out at any one time enjoying the good winds and rough seas for what turned out to be an epic windsurf session. I did end up breaking my favourite board so it is currently in the house drying out so that I can repair it tomorrow, and I won the wipeout of the day award for a pretty messy forward loop attempt. I also seem to have a few unexplained bruises following my time on the water today as well.

A pretty perfect weekend really and who would believe it could be so mild at the end of October…. If this is the result of global warming, then bring it on!!

Last night we travelled all of about 10 metres to the now annual bonfire party at our next door neighbours. Now that they live here full time and are not just weekend visitors, the bonfire party seems to be growing in stature with more and more members of the local community coming together for an evening of food and fireworks. Last night was probably the largest gathering so far and as usual the fireworks were good (although anna and I aren’t that keen on fireworks oursleves). It goes without saying that the food and company was top notch too.

One thing has changed though, in the early years of this event most attendees were either staying with Dave and Sarah (the hosts) or didn’t have children so the event used to go on until the early hours with people drinking and chatting around the fire. Now that most of the people their have children things tailed off pretty quickly after the fireworks were over at about 8pm. We headed home soon after as well in order to get Morgan off to bed, but I’m sure a few people hung around to help the hosts finish of the alcohol! I doubt they sat around the for too long though as not long after we left it started pouring with rain.

All in all a good night that helps bring the community together and it seems as though most of them enjoy it as there are now plans for an Ynyslas Community Christmas party.

Here we go again, time to leave BST behind us and revert to Greenwich Meantime… To me it all seems a bit silly Greenwich Meantime (GMT) is the way things ’should’ be but in the spring we have to put our clock forward by one hour in order to enter Bristish Summertime (BST) as part of a ‘Daylight Saving’ exercise! Why we need to save daylight hours during the summer when there is plenty of daylight is beyond me. I don’t actually mind the changing of the clocks. In fact I actually quite like it as it tends to accentuate the seasons a little more and I really enjoy the constant change of the seasons. However, the reasoning behind it always seems a little vague, which probably explains why the arguments for and against BST continue to rage.

So I thought I would do some research into the history of BST and it seems it was first suggested by William Willett, a London builder. Basically, he thought that you could improve the population’s health and happiness by putting the clocks forward by 20 minutes every Sunday in April and then putting them back 20 minutes every Sunday in September. This idea was never introduced, but a ‘Daylight Saving Bill’ was introduced in 1916.

Then in 1968 Britain decided to experiment with advancing time one hour ahead of GMT throughout the year. However, this made the mornings particularly dark throughout most of the year for people living in Scotland so this was abandoned in 1972 in favour of the system of GMT in the winter and BST in the summer that we have today.

Want to know more? Take a look at this site dedicated to Greenwich Meantime or the Wikipedia guide to Daylight Savings

It isn’t very often that there is any showbiz news emanating from the Aberystwyth area. We do have a few famous people living around here, but most have come here to get away from the limelight and therefore tend not to generate any news stories. However, the front page of yesterdays Cambrian News ran with the following story:

Scorpions star is declared bankrupt

A World-famous rock guitarist who lives near Aberystwyth has been made bankrupt. German-born Uli Jon Roth enjoyed massive success in the early nineties with his band The Scorpions with their anthemic tune Wind of Change. Ulrich Hans Joachim Anton Josef Roth, appeared before a district judge in Aberystwyth County Court recently where he was made bankrupt. Mr Roth has lived in Tanybwlch for around 10 years at Tanybwlch Manor in Rhydyfelin and has enjoyed a successful career spanning four decades. Despite moving to Tanybwlch , Mr Roth is still involved in the music scene and is currently away in Germany, touring with The Scorpions. Last month the band played to a sell-out 8,000 gig in France. He moved to Tanybwlch Manor, originally built as a hospice, in the mid-nineties when he bought it off Coleg Ceredigion who used it as a catering college. Mr Roth was unavailable for comment as he is currently on tour.

Not the most significant of news stories in the grand scheme of things, but one of quite a bit of significance to me as I have been working for Uli Jon Roth at his mansion for the past 6 or 7 years, so news of his bankrupcy will inevitably lead to the loss of some work for me. Fortunately I had been fore-warned of this and had been cutting down my hours there anyway, so hopefully when I finally stop working at Plas Tanybwlch the loss of income won’t be too devastating. As for the future of Uli Jon Roth and his family, only time will tell, but he has plenty of faith in himself and his destiny so I’m sure he will find success, hapiness and wealth once again.

As Al mentioned the other day we have been living in Mid Wales for a few years now and do see ourselves as locals, especially now we have someone Welsh in the family (Morgan!). It can be difficult to integrate into close-knit rural societies and often the advice is ‘get a dog’ (especially where we live) ‘and you’ll soon meet lots of people’. I suppose this could work and to be honest we haven’t tried it. As Alan said we got to know lots of proper locals throught various different paths so a) didn’t need a dog to meet people and b) didn’t fancy all the wet windy walks before work!

My advice now though for those people looking to integrate into a community would not be ‘get a dog’ simply ‘have a baby’. It has certainly done wonders for our social life. I’ve never been to so many parties and it really has introduced us to a whole new set of people who don’t mind talking about baby stuff (topics that most people aren’t really interested in!). We’ve got a 1st birthday party this afternoon which should wear any excess energy out of Morgan and give me a chance to spend some time with other adults….something you miss when you are at home with a baby.

The other plus is that when it’s really wet and windy Morgan doesn’t seem to mind if we forego the long walk on the beach in favour of an afternoon in front of the fire.

If there’s one thing that everyone knows about Wales, it is that we get more than our fair share of weather. Indeed, today we have had gorgeous sunshine, torrential downpours, light winds, gales force winds and probably a few other bits and pieces of weather too.

This may well explain our fascination for the weather, so, as this website is supposed to be an insight into our life here in West Wales I thought I’d add a weather feature to it so that those of you viewing it from afar can get a feeling of the type of weather we are experiencing at any one time. It is nothing too fancy, just a live weather feed from a nearby weather station, but it can be seen in the right-hand column of this page and hopefully will help you immerse yourselves into our little world here in West Wales a little better.

Since moving to this area of West Wales, Anna and I have always tried (without trying too hard) to integrate with the locals. It has to be said that it isn’t a difficult thing to do as many of the ‘locals’ are actually well established incomers. However, even as students at Aberystwyth University we tended to integrate with local people, whereas most students tend to only associate with other students.

Anna was a member of the local band and worked in a local shop. I worked in the household of several locals and surfed and windsurfed with local people. Through these activities our network of local contacts increased and we felt more and more integrated with the community. Maybe this is one of the reasons we wanted to stay here as to feel settled anywhere you need to be accepted.

We’re not the first and won’t be the last people to do this. In fact many students do tend to stay here as this area of West Wales seems to have that effect on people; once you have experienced the place you won’t want to leave. Most students do leave once their studies are over though and those that stay do tend to be the minority who looked beyond student life and made contact with the locals.

Now, as accepted ‘locals’ ourselves we still tend to support local people as much as possible. We shop in local shops if at all possible, use local businesses for goods and services and generally help out with local happenings. We aren’t busy-bodies and we don’t go out of our way to be a part of the community, but when we need something we find we are better served by local businesses than the big national chains. Just yesterday on my way to work in some of the best weather Wales can throw at us (torrential rain, black skies and gales) my van decided to stop working, all electrical functions stopped including the lights and windscreen wipers, so it was off to the garage to get a new alternator. The big chains couldn’t get the part or fit me in, but a tiny, local back-street garage managed not only to get the part, but to have it fitted and ready to go within a couple of hours. On top of which they only charged just over trade price on the part as well. Of course, he knows it will pay as I’ll recommend him to other locals and will probably end up doing him a favour in the future.

Just one way that being part of a local community can add to the richness of life.

Well, this website and its blog may only be a week or so old, but I have been meaning to ‘play’ with the blogging software WordPress for a while now. So before this site had too many posts I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to give it a go. So far I have been impressed.

WordPress calls itself a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Quite a mouthful and all very modern, proving that just becasue we live ‘out in the sticks’ we aren’t luddites. It is scripted in PHP and has a MySQL database backend which are my preferred website development technologies, so it didn’t take me too long to get my head around it. However, the documentation provided by WordPress is some of the best I have seen and even a beginner should be able to figure it out without too much difficulty. The system itself seems robust and feature rich and from a developers point of view it is a joy to work with.

I haven’t concentrated solely on the backend though as I have also redesigned the front end with a new CSS template which I hope you like. I shall be continuing to experiment with various aspects of WordPress and may add some new features in the future. However for a while I think we should now concentrate on the content and decide exactly what the purpose of this weblog is!!

On a completely different note, I do seem have finally shaken the cold that has been holding me back for the past week or so.

I was chatting to someone yesterday (who shall remain anonymous) who had recently moved to this area after having lived in London, Bristol, Stroud and a few small places. It seemed to me (and to her) that she had yet to find her true ‘home’ and in her words she is ‘never happy’.

From what I could tell, she didn’t like the lack of community in the bigger cities and when she had lived in smaller areas she then missed the anonymity of the cities, so was just not happy. Somehow though, now that she is here in West Wales I wouldn’t be surprised if she has found a happy medium. I certainly have. Living here may be all about compromise, but sometimes that can lead to having the best of both worlds.

The area we live in is big enough to allow you to keep yourself to yourself if you wish, but small enough that most people know who you are and will say hello when walking on the beach or if they see you in the pub. There is a friendly, community spirit, but the community is big enough that you don’t know everybody’s business and they don’t know yours.

It isn’t just the community side of things either. When it comes to amenities, we have the best of both worlds. Enough of the essentials within easy reach, but without the hustle and bustle of the city. Then, if you just can’t survive without an M&S, Bodyshop or Ikea it is only a 2-3 hour drive to get somewhere that has it all. In fact, it is then actually quite a treat going to Ikea or somewhere similar and we tend to make a weekend of it. For me, I’d much rather be able to walk on the beach EVERY day and then visit the shopping mall every few months than have it the other way around.

Living in Borth gives me the best of both worlds as far as most things go, so lets hope the girl I was talking to yesterday finds a similar happy medium here and finally finds the perfect balance for happiness that she seeks.