The last day of my first week. Only seven days and already my life is turning upside down. I cannot understand why I have ever in my life put unnecessary chemicals into the drains, there is absolutely no need as far as I can see now. Washing powder I am using as it comes in a cardboard box, which I can dispose of and I do not own a scrubbing board even though I know what one is. The Fairy soap has become my saviour and should supplies ever run out Holland & Barrett do a bar of pure olive soap in a cardboard box for 79 pence. No perfume just good old soap.
I went today to Brecon and Hereford with good friends. Just over the border from Wales to flat farm land with huge farm shops and pick your own. I wanted to cry out, why here, what is wrong with my semi rural home-town that we have no fields full of cabbages, potatoes and swedes surrounding us any more. We can grow apples I wanted to say, why don’t we. Four hundred years ago there were in excess of a hundred varieties of apples growing wild in Glamorgan, I know. I have the names of them all in Welsh and English. There were also over twenty varieties of plums that a travelling man logged on his travels through Glamorgan. I watched the trailers full of dirty potatoes trundling along the roads and picked crispins, russets and bramleys to my hearts content. Local walnuts were dropped into my bag along with a net of four monstrous local organic beetroot for a pound. The farm shop boasted the best of every product, cheese, free range chickens, beautiful cured hams, jams of every description and empty glass jars of all shapes and sizes for you to fill with your own produce. I bought the Brecon & Radnor Express and read about the Hay Fire Festival, I read about Talgarth a little town in Brecon and how they have a regeneration society which is already, after just one year, making remarkable progress. get people back into our centres for local produce, we need to have fire festivals too. We need to have parking so people can get to the shops and the buses back so people can hop on the bus outside the market not walk half a mile carrying their bags to a bus station that reeks of the old cattle market stalls where they herded the livestock. Why did they build the bus station back to front. One can reach the top of Queen Street with heavy bags and see ones bus in the docking station. By the time you wait for two sets of traffic lights and force your way through the queues of people trying to get on their buses your bus has invariably gone. Planning !!!! Anyhow action speaks louder than words. I am purely selfish in my desire to see Neath regenerated. I cannot walk five miles to pick up my little bit of shopping. I need to retain my independence. I refuse to give a supermarket whose profits go to obscure places my money. I want to give my little bit of money to the person who will plough their profits back into the town and give me a smile and appreciate my custom and I want people to see the benefits of keeping our local areas alive. In a time of crisis it is these people who will help one another not the supermarkets, who when there is no money to be made will ditch areas without a thought. We need self sufficiency with food. For that we must all push, Wales can do it. We appear to be top of the pile for food innovation and up and coming restaurants according to statistics out this week. Well let’s grow our own food and complete the picture.
