Ynysybwl

Today I did some gardening work in Ynysybwl for an elderly couple. That's his shed at the top left hand corner. He told me that this bucolic scene has only been green since the 1960s. On the right is the site of the old Lady Windsor colliery. After the Aberfan disaster, the NCB made efforts to green over the slag heaps to make sure they stayed stable. Then when the mines were closed one by one, nature took further hold. Still, this isn't necessarily the rural idyll it appears here: when I was weeding Len's garden there was a lad sat by the river building a spliff (I also surprised him trying to make a bong out of a discarded water bottle). Behind the bridge on which I was standing to take this is a fly-tipped plasma TV. I know I keep returning to this theme - examining the idea of countryside as idyllic. There's a great bit in the film, Trainspotting, (but not, I think, in the book) where they take a train to the countryside with the Highlands as a spectacular backdrop. And they can't wait to get back - no restorative, bucolic nonsense for them! Don't get me wrong, I adore being outside in the green but it's a place that has poverty and its subsequent problems too. A friend of mine can't listen to The Archers as the teenagers are such vile little capitalist achievers - nothing like his experience of growing up somewhere rural where everyone was dabbling with drugs and cider. On the left, at the end of the row of terraced houses, is a scrap of wasteland. Len, who is in his eighties, told me that was where fairs were held when he was a teenager. As he told me with relish, 'oh, the fights we had!'