You have spent weeks biting your nails wondering when it will be delivered… and then suddenly it arrives.
It is important that upon delivery you take hold of your book, gently flick the pages, weigh it in your hand, and perhaps let your gaze focus on a few sentences.
Show the book you love it.
Close your eyes and breathe in deeply.
Imagine your first few pages and a long journey ahead that could last days, weeks, months, or years.
Run your fingers slowly down the spine.
And then slowly mouth the name of your book…
Remember to wear your Sunglasses in Aberdare this week for the Christmas Sales. There are bright red ’sale’ signs everywhere.
The garish signs enticing people to spend even more money adorn nearly every shop window in our humble little town in the Welsh Valleys.
The fifty per cent Boxing Day Sales started on Christmas Eve in Aberdare.
Aberdare is an eccentric town and so it’s no surprise to see that the Pound Shop in Canon Street are having a sale making many items… fifty pence. If they go any lower, they’ll be paying people to buy from them.
Let’s enjoy One last Christmas Carol for the year, to the tune of Jingle All The Way :
Chorus
Profits here, profits there, profits everywhere
Christmas time is funny we smell money in the air
Advertise, glamorize, fool you with a flair.
Let’s make sure that Christmas is a businesslike affair.
You’re eating up our lies and dashing to the stores
Then all our prices rise and how the money pours
If we don’t keep you drugged and watching your TV
You might see the hypocrisy then where would business be?
Chorus
We’ll tell you how to think and tell you what to try
What to eat and drink and how to live and die
And if our plan succeeds, when Christmas-time is nigh
Instead of seeking love and peace you’ll hunt for gifts to buy
Chorus
Many more Carols and ideas about Christmas at Buy Nothing Christmas
A few weeks ago a large metal-framed box appeared in Trecynon, adjacent to the Doctor’s Surgery (see photograph). Staff at Park Surgery and the Local Health Trust claim that this is temporary office space whilst builders extend the Surgery. This was an unconvincing explanation and therefore we decided to investigate further…
The scene of enquiry was observed for a number of days, watched by some one disguised as a variety of local flora (privet hedge, bramble bush etc). No human being was seen going in or out of this metal … ‘office’. None of the local residents questioned saw the metallic structure being erected. It seemed to appear overnight… therein lies a clue to the origin of this structure. It wasn’t put there by humans, it simply fell from the sky.
The photo above has been rotated to illustrate our theory. What does this box remind you of ? It looks very similar to a giant computer case. We believe that this could be a piece of alien consumer electronics, and perhaps a discarded ipod-type device from outer space. Our investigation will remain open. The truth is out there some where in Aberdare.
Heed the whispered warnings of ghosts, listen to their advice and co-operate with them. They tell us about the past and foretell our future.
In the photograph there is a misty view across the Cynon Valley, from Cwmbach looking down the hill near St Margaret’s Church, towards Aberaman and Aberdare. The photographer has failed to capture a ghost, so instead offers to sketch some notes.
In Cwmbach the first Co-Operative Society in Wales was formed in 1860. On this little Welsh hill there was a magnificent Co-Operative store that lay at the heart of a vibrant Welsh community ‘growing-up’ in the era of industrialisation.
Borrow a Welsh Mam today
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In May 1977 hospital laundry workers marched in Aberdare protesting at the closure of Aberdare Hospital Laundry. They carried a banner (as photographed in the Aberdare Leader) proclaiming their protest in rhyming couplets :
“All you councillors that want our vote
read this plackard and please take note
Save our Laundry at Aberdare
to show the people that you care”
Perhaps the 1970s were the real Halcyon Years for Protest Poetry.
Nowadays protest marches in Aberdare are not so eloquent. Recently a “Freedom Rally” was held in Aberdare as reported by Gary Marsh the Editor of the Cynon Valley Leader.
In 1977 a protest was held by people who wanted to work. Thirty years later, a protest was held by people who wanted to consume and to act out their consumer fantasies at the expense of society. This difference seems to be lost on Mr Marsh who does not understand (or pretends not to understand) the difference between a real protest and a publicity stunt.
Capel Calfaria Chapel Rhigos will be demolished by developers within the next week or so.
Your last chance to see Calfaria … a piece of your local history transformed into rubble.
Drive to Rhigos, a few miles outside Hirwaun and savour the 146 years of history.
On Calvary, Jesus Christ was crucified. And so Churches choose to remember this ordeal.
The act of crucifixion was meant to be a public spectacle.
It was chosen as a deliberately painful and gruesome form of death.
Precise details of the method of crucifixation varied between epoch.
Today in the South Wales Valleys developers tear down our history and build supermarkets….
cheap cathedrals of consumption.
Please come to see a crucifixion in the South Wales Valleys this weekend.
Your shops crucified, your local village crucified, your public highways….
The fist of Neoliberal economics rules the Valleys and politicians betray us like Judas.
SHELL have confirmed that the fuel service station on Hirwaun Road, Trenant will close on 24th January 2006.
The fuel station site suffers from subsidence problems and Shell have decided that it is uneconomical to invest in a solution.The loss of the Shell garage reduces the choice for local motorists and strengthens the monopoly of the Supermarket fuel service stations within the Cynon Valley. ASDA and Tesco are both situated within a mile of Aberdare town centre. It seems very likely that the loss of the Shell garage will further increase the traffic congestion near Aberdare, in particular near Tesco.
It should not be difficult to celebrate Buy Nothing Day in Aberdare in future years… if the
supermarket corporations have their own way, there will be no shops left in Aberdare town or any of our local villages.
