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Secretly Welsh

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The comedian Mark Watson started his career by adopting a Welsh accent, even though he was neither from or living in Wales. It wasn’t long before he fessed up to this deception though, and got on with the business of being a very entertaining comedy performer. I sometimes like to imagine an alternative universe in which he got in too deep with this mythology and had to carry on adopting this accent throughout the rest of his career. I myself am not Welsh and have never claimed to be. I did consider moving to North Wales at one point in my life … and perhaps a part of me retained memories from my younger life when English people moving to Wales were greeted with some hostility by nationalists. (This was as far as I remember, mostly aimed at those with holiday homes - and similar feelings remain down here in Cornwall.) Of course despite living half my life here, I also don’t call myself Cornish. Even though my mother grew up in this county (although born in Sri Lanka, so herself not ...
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“Well, actually…”

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‘Look, there it is, do you see it? The tank.’ Two men are deep in conversation. One is pointing to the nearby carpark where a camouflaged vehicle rests on the back of a flatbed truck. From nearby another man interrupts their conversation: ‘Well, actually that’s not a tank, it’s an armoured vehicle.’ The original speaker turns towards him, scornfully. ‘Oh, you’re probably too young to remember these.’ ‘That’s not the point. It’s not a tank.’ There’s a model exhibition being held this weekend at the café overlooking the slipway in Saltash. The above conversation is being held between a group of middle-aged or older men of a certain type. I’m tempted for a moment to join in, even though I’ve just caught this exchange in passing as I head back home. It’s a quiet Sunday morning, just starting to spit with rain, and from the weather radar I know the rain will soon get heavier. ‘Tank/ armoured vehicle? Nerd/ geek? Po -tato/ Po- taht -o?’ But naturally I don’t actually say anyt...
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We Grew Old, The Music Didn’t

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'In spite of time, death and decay, we are still all together!' - Arthur Schopenhauer *  There’s a reason I’ve been inspired to write this, but we’ll get to that another time. There was a social media post the other day (I mostly avoid social media these days), which was romanticising some 80s band or other and by way of emphasising their point they added a pay off line in reference to another band of that era. I don’t remember it verbatim, but it was something like, ‘no one grew up wanting to be Cabaret Voltaire.’ The implication was, pop music was glamour, excitement, a sugar rush, multicoloured dreams. (And I love pop music and the sugar rush the best of it brings me.) I probably even liked the band they were writing in praise of. But the last line stung me. Because I did grow up wanting to be Cabaret Voltaire . They were one of the first and earliest of my many music addictions - and certainly by far the biggest influence on the music I was trying to make. It’s a lazy cl...
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Whose Space Was It Anyway?

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'Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey/ I ache in the places where I used to play' Tower of Song – Leonard Cohen * Ghostword had its own Myspace page. You can still find it if you choose to search hard enough. The profile photo used to show a picture of a pinball machine taken from one of the stock locations (Czar’s café) in the TV show Press Gang. ( Press Gang remains the greatest work of one time Dr Who showrunner Stephen Moffat, but that’s by the by for now) You can still see a list of the six songs featured on the Ghostword Myspace page – a mix of, at the time, released and unreleased material that included an instrumental cover version of the Sparks classic ‘Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth’. The tracks are enticingly shown there, but you can’t actually play any of them. What you have is the equivalent of an animal that’s lain dead for years out in the desert. Bones have been stripped of all their flesh, but the carcass retains a familiar shape....
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Case Closed

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‘The pleasure and pain of love, once breathed upon the air, rose but to fall again, like blossom or like rain, infecting all things living with pain and ecstasy’   - Castle Dor by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and Daphne du Maurier *  CSI: Kinterbury Creek 3.00 pm Wednesday 7 th October, 2026 Tides have rendered the morning investigations pointless. With the creek bereft of water, nothing stirs save for the birds in the trees and the dogs and their owners walking through pathways carpeted in fallen leaves. It is time, the young detective decides, for a new approach. Wind has risen to fever pitch and the times of fog are but a dim memory. There are clouds and the hint of rain in the air. But patience is its own reward. After a restorative lunch, they set forth again across the bridge that carries them from Cornwall to Devon. The creek is sheltered mostly, and with the sun now out the scene is almost an opposite to the previous days – filled with both colour and an eve...
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Autumn Country

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‘Autumn country’s calling me, louder every year.’   Autumn Country - The Goodbye Look *  CSI: Kinterbury Creek 9.00 am Tuesday 6 th October, 2026 The rookie detective dreams of future triumphs – dashing assignations, breathless on night streets with only the stars to navigate by. To feel something, to feel everything. In their head they are more Arsène Lupin than Sherlock Holmes. In the real world, mud rules and a low tide is unforgiving. With no water in the creek even the ducks are gone. To reach the end of the road when there isn’t even a road must amount to something. Today is that most depressing of scenes – a black and white movie that’s been coloured for the modern age, only they ran out of patience halfway through and now it’s all just a disjointed sepia mess. A hum of distant construction work battles against the rumble of traffic crossing above the river. Birdsong is faint and stripped of half its range. Autumn country. Fallen. Leaves the o...
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A New Hope

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‘And in the midst of life we are in death, etcetera’ Sweet and Tender Hooligan - The Smiths * CSI: Kinterbury Creek 11.00 am Monday 5 th October, 2026 Commitments elsewhere have detained the rookie detective and they are unable to resume their search along the banks of the creek. Office bound, they decide instead to consult the latest CCTV footage. Unfortunately it turns out there are no cameras in the vicinity. The best they can find is a view of trains entering and exiting the adjacent railway station at Saltash. The Tamar is just a smudge in the background on this low quality camera. Elsewhere the detective is momentarily distracted by images from nearby Dawlish Warren. A black swan sits atop its nest, incubating six eggs. Black swans first came to Europe in 1804 (from Australia), but all these generations later they still reproduce in autumn. Some unbreakable racial memory tells them it is spring back in their ancestral homeland and spring is the season to birth your y...
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