The Summer of '93

A surprise delivery

I had worked very closely with the people in the design office upstairs on the software for the trading standards system. My feedback and design specs shaped the software for each of the Councils and i felt like my input was respected, which was a good feeling. Consequently the system had been shaped quite nicely and had been signed off as acceptable by the Welsh trading standards' team. It was a complete turnaround from the start. So I found myself back in Carmarthen doing training with the people who were really pleasant. It was a real farming community as it turned out; some of them were married to farmers. It was a very different world to mine. One lady had lost her husband after just a year of marriage, which was tragic to hear about in her obvious grief. Consequently I really got to know them very well as I spent a lot of time down there. So much so, that the Director of trading standards actually invited me back to his home to go horseriding with him, as I told him that I loved it, and missed it. He had five horses; one being a thoroughbred and that horse was tall and glossy coated. Graham lived in a place near Llanelli. One friday afternoon I drove down and we rode the horses on the beach. However it had been a while since I'd been horseriding. After all, I spent my life in my car, living out of my suitcase. Horseriding, sadly, was not my priority anymore as most of my weekends were taken up with travelling to the next place. I got on the horse and unfortunately that horse did not want to go in the direction that I did. It was very hard to control. All it wanted to do was walk along the beach at its own pace and eat whatever was there, whether it was grass or something else. So I waited patiently and I watched Graham fly across the beach on that stunning creature that he owned. My horse showed no interest until the thoroughbred passed flying, literally flying, and my horse soon decided that it was going to fly too and, unaware of its agenda I was relaxing and not holding on to the reins tightly or properly. I had the shock of my life as my horse lifted his head and he reared. I did fall off but it was nothing serious and Graham turned around and rode back to where he found me crumpled in a pile on the beach near barbed wire. He laughed loudly and so did I. I told him what had happened. We got on so well and rode happily back to his house, where is wife made a dinner. It was a wonderful experience - my job in terms of the people that I met and trained; well I felt very privileged to have the experiences that I had, as I look back on it now.

One particular evening I decided to travel down to the Pembrokeshire coast where there was a national park. Unfortunately of course it was after hours, and so I tried to park my car but I hadn't experienced a car park like this before. As I tried to go through the entrance the barrier was down and was not for moving. So I tried to back up and these metal spikes lifted out of the ground from nowhere and I was terrified for my tyres, because I was stuck. I did manage to drive left and avoid the tyres getting damaged. I got out of the car in the end and decided to travel on foot into the National Park itself. It was light and there was nothing vulnerable about where I was heading. I wandered around the woods and it was very pleasant. The smell of the ground was fresh. The trees and woodland underfoot was lush and beautiful. I decided to collect some pinecones that had fallen on the ground and I as I pick them up I was aware of a prescence. I turned around, and to my surprise there was a chicken, the last thing I expected to see in this woodland! She was very upset with me, screeching profusely and the farmers back at the office later told me that perhaps she had a nest nearby and the reason that she was so aggressive, was because she was protecting her chicks. One thing for sure is I didn't ever expect to find that I was being pursued and chased aggressively by this wild creature. I ran. She pecked painfully and profusely at my ankles despite my speed of exit. How ridiculous! When I relayed the story back in the Leeds office later nobody believe me and I was the subject of ridicule, but I found that chickens are particularly nasty when provoked!

The highlight of my trip in Wales had to be my trip to Cardiff. Specifically in Cardiff was the local folk Museum. The reason I went there was because I had not really seen much of the local highlights because everything was closed after hours. I might get into a restaurant or watch some television but it was a really sleepy town of Carmarthen, which in the evening, it did not have a lot going on in it. So, I decided to make the most of it and I was lucky enough to finish on a half day. I was due to drive home because after all it was a 330 mile drive.

Saint Fagan's museum was a real highlight for me. What I loved about it was it is it was an open air museum. What was particularly interesting was that they had taken different buildings from all over Wales. Each one had been painstakingly labelled with numbers brick by brick, then taken apart and resurrected on the grounds of Saint Fagan's Castle. It was mesmerising because not only that, but what they had tried to do was recreate the sights and smells so inside each building, the objects inside were appropriate for the age of the building. at a particular time slice in history. So for example, I walked into one cottage and fish had been rotisseried over the fire so that the smells and the equipment where in keeping with that particular property's history. The people really knew the history behind these buildings and had plenty of stories to tell their visitors about why the buildings were there, why they had been relocated and everything else associated with that individual property. I could see the construction of a rebuild in progress. The other thing that was I was introduced to 'Tales of the Mabinogion'. I bought a copy. It is a collection of Welsh stories from the 12th century. I had a memorable time. There was a case of local artifacts. I was particularly curious about Mari Lwyd - a wassailing custom local of a horse head. It was pretty grim, as was the doctor's case, used to remove the limbs of the afflicted. It looked like a portable case of butcher's equipment.

I had still lived in hope that I might get a letter or a call. I had finally written Dionisis off (for the last time, it was so final). I decided to be treated like that was not good enough. I just felt I deserved someone who was consistent and was straight forward to understand. But in my heart of hearts when the head is overruled, it did seem to me that I had had my heart shattered into pieces an inordinate number of times but I had let it happen. In reflecting on the circumstances I suspected it was down to it being my fault; it appeared that I unwittingly brought out the worst indifference in the men I had been attracted to. I was further surprised, given that Dionisis was a dear friend of Alexandros and I had hoped he would be a bit more trustworthy as a result. Whilst I hadn't involved Alexandros, Dionisis wasn't unknown. The trouble was that I had no control over loving this man to distraction. Yet he had so easily blown cold, his behaviour was sharply contradictory and he had proved feelings were unlike mine, and not genuine.
"Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option". I knew I would never quite be the same again. I knew however, for my sanity, I had to move on. But it was cruel.