Martyn in Europe

7

Tell her she can't watch the news in Swahili, tell her it's bad for her eyes.
Tell her she can watch Super Ted and Fireman Sam.
Tell her she can stay up late and have cockles and dandelion and burdock for supper.

Tell her they're attacking us, with adverts.
Don't confuse her now, just explain.

Tell her we're only losing by a couple.
Tell her that Michael Owen or Ali G or Catherine Zeta Jones or Dawn French ... will come to save us in our hour of need, tell her it's not the same game, but that's not the point.

Don't tell her that her cousin went to play Rugby League.
Don't tell her how many of them have been rubbish.
Tell her that Rugby League is for ... nothing ...
Tell her they're mercenaries.

Tell her they're useless sellouts
Don't ... tell her nationalism is inherited, in the male chromosone, just like ... disability
Don't tell her about the family of the woman who married the man, with the black dog

Tell her you can't believe what you see on the replays - tell her the camera plays tricks
Tell her we punched their hooker by mistake - it was only an accident
Don't tell her anything about the secrets of the ruck - what secrets? Exactly!

Tell her, tell her about the Glyndwr, Bryn Mawr, Glen Miller, Ffynnon Taf, Glyn Taf, Glendower, Glyn Win, Glengettie, Grand Dower, duff, dorf and, doh! Tell her to be proud of Cymru - am Byth. Tell her about the family of dreadfully dull Druids, tell her their names, why not, tell her it's early days. Tell her there's dead bards and bad and dead and bard and worse. Did she read poems, hear the songs, see the art? Tell her she's got nothing to be ashamed of, nothing that it should cross her mind. Why should it?

Tell her we was robbed, tell her we gave them a right hiding, a trouncing, a proper seeing-to. Tell her they want their children skinny to make people sorry for the poor dabs. Tell her I'm not sorry for them, tell her I'm not very sorry for them. Tell her not to be sorry for them, tell her we're not the ones to be sorry for either, tell her they can talk nation and empire to us, we will understand. Still, tell her we can help them without feeling sorry. Helping is good, feeling sorry is pointless. You can tell her that.

Tell her about the old and the new, the poets and the royals. The "Ladies of Llangollen" and the "people's Princess". Tell her we're maudlin, cloyingly and horribly sentimental.

Tell her that Wales, as now in England, and pretty much like the USA, finds it very easy to lose the plot as a nation, as a people and as a purpose. Just remember the death of Princess Diana, accompanied as it was, to steal a line from Stewart Lee, by the "hysterical and over-emotional shrieking-grief of twats".

Tell her we're the welsh dragon in the velvet muppet, tell her it's the fog of Barry, tell her we won't stop teasing them till we're safe, tell her I laughed when I saw the dead beat, down beat, low beat, stopped beat, dropped beat .. beet of beetle beetery. Flecked orf! Tell her there are fabulous animals living in Grange Town now, rats as big as cats, cats as big as dogs, dogs as big as barges, barges as big as tips, tips as big as Everest....  tell her I wouldn't care if we stopped thinking, the world would love us, that is the only thing, tell her I don't care if the world remembers us, tell her we're better than all of them, tell her we're also the chosen people, living in God's own country. School holidays soon, well ? Tell her I was only joking. Tell her we will, we will, we will. Dai! Dai! Dewch!

Don't tell her that. She'll think we've gone mental.

Go on, just tell her we love her, forget the rest. Just tell her we love her.

Just don't tell her we have to do it all again next year, and the year after that. And so on and on, ad infinitum. Until the world freezes over, and leeks, daffodils, choirs, miners, spring lambs, green meadows, cockles, shrimps and lava bread, Mrs Welsh Jones, sweet peas, the mountain ash, the train to Cardiff, the chapel bell, the silver birch, the bubbling crystalline brook at the back of your great-Gran and Granpa's house, and the Greig mountain, are no more.

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Part 1 - http://www.itsmarty.com/archive/2009/06/07/kids_valleys_1_7.aspx
Part 2 - http://www.itsmarty.com/archive/2009/06/07/kids_valleys_2_7.aspx
Part 3 - http://www.itsmarty.com/archive/2009/06/07/kids_valleys_3_7.aspx
Part 4 - http://www.itsmarty.com/archive/2009/06/07/kids_valleys_4_7.aspx
Part 5 - http://www.itsmarty.com/archive/2009/06/07/kids_valleys_5_7.aspx
Part 6 - http://www.itsmarty.com/archive/2009/06/07/kids_valleys_6_7.aspx
Part 7 - http://www.itsmarty.com/archive/2009/06/07/kids_valleys_7_7.aspx