Cardinal Nichols, Cardiff City, Reds V the Blues

In a week when Mr Fox snacked on our chickens, we needed something to lift our spirits.

How nice then to see Cardinal Nichols with a Cardiff City shirt.

Such a shame that he chose the red version and not the Marian blue (with yellow and white Vatican trim), so beloved of many popes.

I know he got a red hat, but to empathise with Cardiff fans perhaps he should have chosen a blue hat?

A blue hat for blue times...

Still, as St Thomas More - friend of Cardinal St John Fisher - said, no one gets to heaven on a feather bed. That's a sentiment Cardiff fans can associate with!

Cardiff City & Mother's Day

The poem I sent to my mum for Mother's Day, 2013:

Roses are Red
Cardiff are too,
You're the best mum
(They used to be blue)

Now that is love!

Shaking the Tins for SPUC with a Flat Top!

I came across this little gem the other week when clearing out some old keepsake boxes in the loft. Dated 1988 it comes from the SPUC's famous White Rose flag day when they collect at churches and the like to raise funds.

Well in 1988 a few of us thought we'd shake the SPUC tins outside Woolworths in Roath, Cardiff and make it a bit more "public." It must have been a sight to behold because a few people came running over to accuse us of raising funds for this, that and the other. Either that or they were so used to the usual 'student-rent-a-cause' crowd bothering the shoppers so didn't know what to make of us.

One chap who waved on jovially was my Italian barber who had just given me my first ever "flat top" haircut (hey, it was the 80s) and was thrilled to see me wearing it in public. After so many years of crew cuts and shorter, it was quite an audacious move to go for the flat top. I think the barber was secretly thrilled to be doing something more worthy of his skills.

As a youngster (I would have been 17) my friends and I used to have have such fun promoting the Pro-Life cause in Cardiff. Once a few of us went to a SPUC meeting in St Patrick's in Grangetown only to sit directly behind a mum of a friend (she and my mum were good friends) and her chums who were pleased to see us there.

On another occasion we went fly-posting with SPUC posters supporting the (parliamentary) Alton Bill around Cardiff. I think it was the first ever time SPUC posters appeared in the city, and on popping them on the metal boxes near the lights at the big junction between Albany Road and Newport Road, by Summers Funeral Home, I turned around to see a police car queueing at the lights. I gave the WPC a cheeky wink and a smile and pottered on to join my chums. She either agreed with the message or wasn't too concerned as we carried on our merry way, unmolested by the long arm of the law.

On another occasion me and my friend Paul went to the LIFE headquarters, which was then in one of the many arcades in Cardiff town centre. We wanted to give them a donation and pick up any leaflets or similar they might have. On seeing two young men with short hair etc. they were all flustered. It seems they thought we were the aggrieved boyfriends of pregnant young ladies out to give them some stick. We all had a good chuckle once they realised we were there to show support.

Perhaps best of all was when we organised a noisy counter-demo to a pro-death march led by Ann Clwyd MP... That was a noisy and fun event!

Ah they were innocent and fun times. Paul died a few years later in a tragic accident, just before I left Cardiff - for good it would transpire - so when I came across this little piece of paper (signed by the inspirational Paul Botto, who still organises SPUC in Cardiff) it brought all the memories flooding back.

West Ham Win: Catholicism Is the X Factor (Lessons for Cardiff City)

Change it to a Bluebird and we have CCFC's New Logo!

What a thrilling game today - and West Ham were the deserving winners. Right from the start of the play-offs they had the right fight and spirit and wanted to win.

In reality, despite good starts in both matches, they wiped the floor with Cardiff who looked tired and played as if they knew they were going to lose.

So what was the key ingredient for West Ham? Well Vaz Te who scored against Cardiff and scored the winner against Blackpool is a Catholic.

I said before Cardiff's last match against West Ham that only if all the players said a public prayer, reciting the Nicene Creed on the pitch, chances are they would not overcome the London side. After scoring Vaz Te made the Sign of the Cross.

Even the (ex?) Protestant team Man City have a Catholic manager in Roberto Mancini, Chelsea have a Catholic goal-scorer in Didier Drogba, and Swansea's success in getting to and staying in the Premier League is down to their Catholic manager Brendan Rodgers.

So come on Cardiff! In honour of your famous (to me!) Catholic Churches: St Joseph's, St Alban's, St Brigid's, St Patrick's, St Teilo's, St Mary of the Angels and the jewel in the crown: St Peter's (of Holy Roath, the site of the Martyrdom of Sts Phillip Evans and John Lloyd).

We need a Catholic flavour to our football team. Never mind a change to a red team strip, let's trim down the blue just a little (stripe on the shirt, plus blue shorts and socks) and get the yellow and white colours of the Vatican prominent on the shirt!

Name the stands after famous Saints or prayers: St Ninian Stand, Pater Noster dugout. A quick prayer before each match. Fr McKnight from St Peter's could sprinkle the team with Holy Water, perhaps the fans might intone the odd Ave Maria.

It's what Cardiff need to hit the big time!

So come on Cardiff! If you need an adviser to help you get the right ideas, names, logos, prayers etc... I shall be waiting for that email! My rates are very reasonable (in footballing terms).

Save the Old Roath Steam Laundry Building - In Memory of Betty!

This is the "old laundry" in Roath, Cardiff along Marlborough Road. There is a campaign to stop this beautiful building being torn down for new housing, and to turn it instead into a community resource, saving the building and giving a valuable centre for everyone in Roath and Penylan.

If you want more info contact the people who put the leaflet out - details on their poster pictured below.

You'll be surprised to hear I wasn't around in 1898 when the "Roath Sanitary Steam Laundry" was opened, despite some rumours to the contrary.

No, you see as a cute, adorable and cherubic child in the halcyon days of the 1970s, despite strikes, the four minute warning, the three-day week etc. etc., I had not a care in the world beyond what was for tea, collecting Panini football stickers, playing with toy soldiers at home and what we would play at dinner time in school.

The walk to school was a short one, and there en route was the old laundry, better known to us at the time as Marlborough Carpets - for it was they who occupied it at the time (they later decamped to Penarth Road).

The front of the old laundry had two gates, allowing vehicular callers to pull in via one and drive out through the second, if they were dropping off or picking up via the front doors. All very 'Downton Abbey' so far.

They also took to parking their fork lift truck outside the front of the shop, and what else could guarantee the attention of boys walking home from school than a fork lift truck? It speaks of adventure, of dreams-fulfilled, of industrial hijinks. Think Biggles - but scuttling around a fore-court, rather than over the skies of Flanders.

Thus it was, as a dare if I recall right, certain little legs scuttled over to the fork-lift truck. Then a school chum took to pressing the up/down button, and the fork lift kicked into life and whizzed and whirred loudly. As you can imagine this shocked everyone, and little legs scurried away as fast as they could.

Still, we weren't discovered and the fork lift remained in situ in the days ahead, and so it became a dare to get over to the fork lift as quietly as possible, push the button for a split second, and then get out of there immediately before being discovered.

Oh the naughtiness of it all. It all stopped ingloriously when Old Ma Hurley asked who had been doing such naughty things. Oh oh. It seems Betty the Crossing Lady had, from the side of the old laundry, through the railings, witnessed the little people up to their split-second adventures and naughtiness.

Old Ma Hurley's spies throughout the community had struck once again!

So if not for me as a naughty herbert pottering home from school, if not for Old Ma Hurley, if not for the fork lift truck, then vote to save the Old Roath Steam Laundry building for the memory of Betty the Crossing Lady (RIP).

Links:
Campaign Launched
Sign the Petition

Riots in London - Very, Very Sad

What sad, sad news coming out of London the last few days and especially last night. You have to feel sorry for the small businesses wrecked, the poor people whose homes were burnt, and as reports of muggings and worse flood the net one has to wonder what on earth London has become!

Having lived in London, if briefly, I was always aware of the possibility of crime, and on dark side streets or if a gang was near, you tended to be aware, but this is unreal. Visiting the Imperial War Museum with the sprogs a couple of years back we saw a police notice about an "Operation Trident" gun crime. Unbelievable.

Old Ma Hurley says there are rumours of people planning looting in Cardiff. I just hope Old Pa Hurley isn't forced to join vigilantes in the alleyways of Roath, bag of 10p doughnuts used as a mace.

But seriously I feel so sorry for the people of England. They must look on their capital and weep at what it has become. I know it sounds trite or like purple prose, but this is a Godless society with little or no family structure, sense of right and wrong, sense of duty, sense of belonging, sense of responsibility.

Absolutely shameful.

She Hasn't Washed Since the 50's? What A Tommy Steele Kiss Can Do.

A vinyl recording from the 19th Century.

I received a rather disturbing email this week.

go to you tube to: - Tommy Steele "Singing the Blues"  and Bill Haley "Rock around The Clock"    and show the kids the music Nan loved and went to see them in Concert.

Tell them that Tommy Steele came out at the back of The Gaumont Cinema in Queen Street (Where Top Rank was afterwards) sang this song and kissed me on my cheek... told my friend Nesta I wasn't going to wash my cheek for a week!!!!!

They will wet themselves laughing at that..

Also Jim Reeves  I love you because and the special one of Nat King Cole singing "When I fall in Love"  Poppa ###* asked for this to be played on board the cruise ship for my Birthday he always says it was his song to me.............. Got the bucket ready!!!!!!! 

Indeed I have! I think it will have to be a vomit trough for the whole family though!


*I have deleted the name for his sanity, his good name down the Cons Club, and just in case I get sued (bad taste etc.)

Carwyn Jones: Is Libya on the Brink of Anti-Welsh Revolution?

As a young whippersnapper I would sometimes be found on the legendary Bob Bank cheering on the best team in the world.

Yes, Cardiff City.

As an old curmudgeon I now look on from afar, but the fortunes of the team still raise my spirits from time to time (or as often than not have me wondering at the vaguaries of the sporting professions).

One memory of those far off days (did they really play with a pig's liver?) was a certain chant.

Mr. Gaddafi wearing his Bluebirds colours

With the news from the Barbary Coast of North Africa and the Middle East of uprisings, rioting and general unquiet, I couldn't help but recall the football chant of the Cardiff fans:

"Gaddafi, Gaddafi, Gaddafi is a Taffy"

This of course at the time when Mr. Gaddafi was an international pariah.

One wonders what the football-going community (everything's a community today!) will make of this last week's events, and whether Gaddafi is still indeed a Taffy.

Will they bow to the demands of the uprising? Will they embrace some other world statesman who is currently, to borrow from Ireland's days of Imperial oppression, beyond the pale?

Perhaps more worryingly, is Mr. Gaddafi's Welsh heritage a factor in the violence - and if so will the Sennedd move to quell such blatant stereotypical discrimination?

Watch the news fellow Hurleys, Welshmen and all in between!

If you see evidence of inflatable sheep, cat-calls of "baaaa," or wheels of Caerphilly cheese being ceremoniously burnt on the streets of Tripoli: then we will know the awful truth!

Can someone notify Carwyn Jones? Better safe than sorry.

Heol-y-Plwcca & City Road: Growing Up Where Two Welsh Martyrs Were Killed

St Philip Evans

I still remember to this day coming across a small plaque on a wall at the very bottom end of Crwys Road, where it met Mackintosh Place, Albany Road, City Road and Richmond Road, quite a thoroughfare in Roath, Cardiff.

I believe it was on the wall of a branch of Nat West Bank which stood on the corner between Crwys and Richmond Road - but I might be wrong there (lap it up, it may be the last time ;-) ).

Anyhow, this plaque struck me because it told me that I was standing on the spot where two Catholic Saints were martyred for their Faith.

It seemed weird to read that in the middle of urban Cardiff with cars whizzing by in all manner of directions (a five way junction is a startling place by anyone's reckoning).

Here was the place where St John Lloyd and St Philip Evans met their fate on the scaffold, merely for being Catholic priests in Wales. That is how terrible (in its real sense) those penal times were, when men could be killed for offering the Mass to those who were practising the religion that their forefathers had, for many generations.

You might even say that Welshmen had witnessed the Sacrifice of the Mass since the time of the Roman Empire, since circa the third Century A.D.

Maybe I was crass in my ignorance not to have hitherto known this historical reality, but to discover that two Saints had died on that spot really made an impression on me as a teenager (yes, I have a good memory, before anyone quips in!)..

The B4261 is City Road, the A469 is Albany Road

So it was the other day on researching some part of Cardiff's history I fell upon a reference to the Saints being martyred at a place called Pwllhalog.

This struck me as strange, as I quite literally grew up just around the corner from the spot where the martyrs were hung. Yet I had never heard of Pwllhalog as a place.

I know enough schoolboy Welsh to know that Pwll means Pool, but more than that? Just lake Manuel in Fawlty Towers I had to state "I know nothing."

On researching this further, it seems that the place name may well be Pwll Halog and translates as Unhallowed Pool.

According to the Real Cardiff site, City Road used to be called Heol-y-Plwcca:

Up until the middle of last century it was known as Heol-y-Plwcca after the gallows field at its northern end. Here, in a plot known as 'the Cut Throats', more or less where the Road has its junction with Albany, stood the town gibbet. Nearby were plots called Cae Budr (the defiled field), Plwcca Halog (the unhallowed plot), and Pwll Halog (the unhallowed pool). Today they've got side streets built across them and are happily called Strathnairn, Glenroy and Keppoch. The grimness has been vanquished, buried under backgarden clay and foundation, forgotten.

 According to the site/page Walk Down City Road:

City Road used to be called Plwcca Lane.

Plwcca means reeds or rushes. Before the houses were built this part of Roath was rough scrub land. People used to come to collect the rushes to make baskets.

In 1829, the building that is now the Mackintosh Institute was a mansion out in the countryside. It was called Roath Castle because the tops of its walls looked like the turrets on a castle.

In those days, City Road was called Castle Road because it led to Roath Castle.

In 1905, Cardiff was granted the status of city rather than simply a town and Castle Road became City Road.

So we are left to wonder did Heol-y-Plwcca gain its name from the rushes that people gathered there, or from the gallows where the Saints met their end? Plwcca seems to mean plot and/or scrubland, with Halog (unhallowed) seeming to be the part of the name(s) from the area linked to the death of the guilty and possibly the burial-site on unconsecrated ground of 'criminals.'

I wonder if the 'unhallowed plot' refers to a burial plot where the Saints may well have ended up, discarded as common criminals by the government officials that oversaw their martyrdom?

If so (and I realise I am taking a little poetic licence here) might the fact that "today they've got side streets built across them and are happily called Strathnairn...." mean that the street I spent most of my youngest years on (the same Strathnairn near the City Road end), be at least near the place of their martyrdom, if not even closer to the site of their burial?

I have found one reference to their being hung, drawn and quartered (a particularly brutal manner of death - the fate of William Wallace in the film Braveheart), but other information seems scanty, so I simply do not know if they ended up being scattered around Britain as a warning, or put in unmarked graves locally.

But how fascinating to find out more of the background of Heol-y-Plwcca, which would become City Road.

When I was up my Nan's, Anne Huzzey's house in Pentwyn a few years before she passed away, she told me about when she was young, growing up on Strathnairn Street and her Uncle Walter would come home from working on the railways and send her around to City Road to buy fish and chips.

It's funny that two Welsh priests found martyrdom at the end of City Road, where my Nan bought fish and chips, where I spent my very earliest, formative years and later would return to drink in the Roath Park - a pub which made it into one of the tabloid papers for being in the top ten "worst pubs in Britain." I still remember starting a tour of Cardiff's pubs on my 18th birthday at that very establishment.

As a youngster in the late 70s I remember City Road being full of car dealerships (seems weird now) and someone once told me it was in the Guinness Book of Records for having the world's greatest concentration of car dealers in a road. I still don't know if that was an urban myth.

Isn't it weird how one single road can change so much and encapsulate so much?

From Heol-y-Plwcca and the Martyrdom of two Saints to City Road, take-aways and allegedly one of the worst pubs in Britain.

Life rolls on...

When Roath was Rural, 1886

This map of Roath in 1886 shows Albany Road (unnamed on this map) running through the middle (West to East, ending as it still does at Roath Court).

Wellfield road as yet does not exist, but where it will run is written "Fynnon Bren" (though the last name is unclear) - fynnon being 'well' in Welsh.

Roath brook runs to the north, almost parallel to, Albany Road, though the gardens that would eventually run along it aren't present (presumably put there once the roads to the north and south of the Brook were built (including Alma Road, where I grew up).

Oakfield Street and Partridge Road (where school friends lived) can be seen at the bottom of the map. Where the small dark word Roath is written, you can see Roath Court (now the site of the Roath Court Funeral Home) and just across the road is St Margaret's Church (recently rebuilt by the Marquis of Bute).

The original Norman-built St Margaret's Church was a daughter chapel of Tewkesbury Abbey and so would have been serviced by the Benedictine Monks until the monastery was dissolved in 1540.

The overwhelming picture of Roath from this map is the rural nature (Albany Road surrounded by fields!) but the creeping urbanisation of the large houses on and off the Newport and City Roads.

For more history visit: Penylan & Roath

For history on Tewkesbury Abbey visit: Tewkesbury Abbey

St Peter's Church, Roath, Cardiff

St Peter's Church, Roath

It's been quite a few years since I've been to St Peter's in Cardiff.

It has changed quite a bit from images I've seen on the internet since I went there as a child, and was married there in 1994.

The beautiful stain glassed windows and breath-taking Pieta statue (the Virgin Mary holding the dead Christ, taken off the Cross) is still there, but the decor has changed for the better as far as I can tell. I seem to recall white-washed walls and ceilings.

As this picture shows the ceilings now have motifs, including a 'Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus' above the altar.

There is similar decor (on a purple backdrop) around the Pieta.

Michelangelo's original 1499 Pieta in St Peter's Basilica, Rome

Sadly there is no history section at the moment on their main site. Hopefully this is something that will change in the future as St Peter's is the oldest existing Catholic Church in Cardiff and so I'm sure has a great history to it.



Link:
St Peter's Parish Roath
St Peter's Parish Archives/Records

Remembering Newtown: The Story of a Near Forgotten Community

...the Irish newcomers quickly made Newtown their own. "Little Ireland", as it became known, had a school and its own church, St Paul's. The church in particular was central to the devout Catholic community. Musical and sporting talents like boxing legend Jimmy Driscoll were also nurtured. It was, as resident Mary Sullivan - whose Irish grandmother emigrated there - recalls, "a town within a city."

Above Right: World famous boxer Jim Driscoll, outside his pub in Newtown with the famous 'Cork Pipers'.


Call me an old romantic ("old?" I ask pleadingly, "romantic?" Mrs Hurley asks cynically) but I like to think that just as the Welshman, St Patrick, took Catholicism to the people of Ireland, so the new Irish settlers of the 19th Century brought the Catholic Faith back to a Wales that had it ripped from them in the 16th and 17th Centuries.

Just as St Patrick took the heathen Irish and created a land of monasticism and devout Faith, so the Irish settlers would bring at least some of the Welsh, amongst whom they settled, mixed and married, back to the Faith of Our Lady of Cardigan, Our Lady of Bala, and Our Lady of Penrhys. In that noble aim, born initially out of economic necessity (even survival!), the small enclave of Newtown, Cardiff, played its part.

(1536-40). The loss of the monasteries and the sustenance that helped the Welsh poor to survive; the giving of food and medicinal herbs to keep the body whole, as well as the sustenance of the spiritual soul was devastating, not only to the economic well-being of the populace, but to the very heart of the Welsh nationalistic veracity. These calamities forced the Welsh to rethink their attitudes toward the monarchs of the era

Link:
Remembering Newtown by Maxine Roper

Newtown: Cardiff's 'Little Ireland'

St Paul's Church, Tyndall Street

Newtown was an area of Cardiff between Splott and the Docks, known as 'Little Ireland.'

My dad has often spoken of his childhood in Newtown and when travelling on the "new" flyover that goes from Cardiff jail to the new revamped Docks with the Welsh Assembly building etc. one can see the area where Newtown used to be.

The area was demolished (I got the impression of slum clearances, but perhaps that is unfair) the year I was born, 1970.

Did my Irish grandfather end up living in Newtown with his Welsh wife because the Irish tended to gravitate there? Or were the rents cheaper? Or was it a work-related move?

Furthermore, it's interesting to read that Newtown was established by the Marquis of Bute, specifically for Irish workers. In the superb essay When the Heart Stopped Beating, published in the South Wales Echo, Dan O'Neil marks the irony of the Marquis of Bute who built Newtown for the Irish workers escaping the Irish famine all but begging forgiveness for bringing in "Papists" -- when his own son would convert to the One, Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church.

Certainly reading a booklet on the Catholic history of Cardiff some years back, there was an editorial from the (19th Century) South Wales Echo which tried to paint the growth of the Irish population in Cardiff in general, and the establishment of a Catholic Church in particular, as if the Spanish Armada were en route again, as if the gunpowder plot were happening again: it was full of hysteria and hyperbole akin to an Al Qaeda cell being discovered in the city.

Altar boys in Newtown

The following site (see link at end) gives an excellent overview of Newtown, a community torn down 40 years ago.

Here's a piece from the When the Heart Stopped Beating article:

The last Mass was celebrated in Saint Paul’s Church, Newtown, on Sunday, October 22, 1967.And that, more than anything else, more than the sight of old houses falling, familiar pubs reduced to dust, men, women and children moving from the homes where they were born - that, more than anything else spelled out that this was truly . . . .The End. For Saint Paul’s was the beating heart of Little Ireland. When it was built it signalled that the men and women from the Ould Sod had come to stay.  They had come fresh from the terrible famine, that calamity imprinted on the world’s mind as the Great Hunger, and they had built the vast docks which were to make Cardiff the coal capital of the world; and they brought their customs, and their religion with them.

Link:
Newtown, Cardiff

John Keats to Cardiff City (Enjoy it While it Lasts)

I have to admit that when I was in school I always thought John Keats was 'a bit of a weirdo' to put it bluntly.

Anyone who can't enjoy something beautiful because it will (soon) be over has to question his sanity. If I see/hear a nightingale sing, it reminds me how wonderful creation is, regardless of what "we" try to do to it, often in the name of progress. I don't sigh and mope because the nightingale is going to fly away like Mr. Keats would.

I guess this is what comes of supporting Cardiff City over the years. The good times are usually followed (very swiftly) by the bad times, a perfect pastiche on life itself, even down to the strange characters who come long for a while only to be replaced by others along the way.

It can be twee to say to those mourning the loss of a loved one that the good times will follow, or that 'time will heal.' Let alone to be like Keats and warn picnicking families of their ultimate demise!

Nevertheless I have to warn friends and relatives that the sight of Cardiff City sitting atop the Championship may yet be followed by leaner times. But let's enjoy the good times while they last, and ignore the worldview of Keats and his ilk.