Mimosa

This was today's blip, I knew as soon as I saw it on the screen, even if I had looked for shadows and textures. I stood where we often stood, camera in hand, turning, looking for chances. These shapes suit my mood: a mixture of light and dark, of soft and uncomfortable, of organic and mineral. Eight months.

The Mimosa was the name of the ship which took the first Welsh settlers to Patagonia in 1865. Many of the settlers, who were seeking freedom to speak and worship as they wished, came from the Bala area, and the Mimosa sailed from Liverpool. Teleri and I met two people from Y Wladfa, as the colony was called, on a Welsh course in Aberystwyth in in 1986. It was curious to meet people whose languages were only Welsh and Spanish, and even more remarkable that the elder of the two had come for the first time to Wales but spoke with a pronounced North Wales accent. There are still 5,000 Welsh speakers in Patagonia.