Cardiff Days

When I was eighteen, I went to Cardiff for the first time and stayed for four year.  Happy days.  The exuberance of youth.  Today I went back to see friends and have a look around the City for the first time in many years.  I was particularly attracted to the Castle and with my newly aware photographic through the camera eyes, became intrigued by the clock and figures on the tower.  I spent the evening of my 21st birthday at a medieval banquet in this castle with the History Society Outing!  What memories today has brought back!  The extra is the four of us, four 60 somethings practising selfies!

Cardiff Days
 
Cardiff Days when I was young
And oh so naïve and ingenuous.
Never been away from home,
In a land of strange words and accents
Finding that it was normal to arrive
Two hours late for an evening “do”.
 
Memories of homesickness,
Wondering how to cope with three more years.
The loneliness of being English in Wales.
 
It all soon changed.
Good friends came along.
Taught me Welsh words…
 
I can’t tell you them!
Much too rude.
 
And now, going back.
I know it’s never the same,
Bit it felt like going home,
Like a familiar place
With lots of differences
But that loneliness turned
Into friendship
Now over forty years old
 
A Cardiff that’s changed
A beautiful growing organic
Place.
 
I must go back more often.