Calennig. Charlie and I took a walk around Croesor at two this morning. We started off up the Nantmor track to see if we could see Porthmadog twinkling in the distance. We saw the inside of the clouds. We walked back down to the river and walked up the valley road a while. All was quiet, the breeze was picking up and we returned to the house aired and refreshed. At three, we three turned in. Blwyddyn Newydd Dda. At ten, there was a commotion outside. Chants rose above the splatter of the squalls on the window, bringing us to that fuzzed consciousness between dream and unexpected reality. Children were chanting and then the sound of their voices mingling with the rise and fall of the howling wind in the whooshing trees was abruptly obliterated by a hard knocking at the front door. It was the sort of knock that said - You in there...you WILL open the door... The insistence of the knock left no room for manouevre, no room for doubt or cowardly pretence of absence. The sing-song chant began again and then again, the hard-knock. By now the bleary search for trousers had begun and then once found, the damn buttons and oh I give up. Even as the locks were being turned, another crack of the knocker hammered our erstwhile celebrations a little deeper into my skull and as the assembly outside was revealed, the chanting started again. Process. Take it in. A clutch of small children, four red-haired, one not...with two well-wrapped mams. They are holding out plastic bags, already generously lined with sweets and from the depths of the Hoegarden and the San Miguel and the Tsing Tao and the Singha, surfaces the information. Ah...Calennig...you want gifts. New Year tradition in rural Wales and Ive got...no...sweets...I bid them wait at the door. I cant give them a half-opened box of Pringles...I find a kit-kat...but theres five of them...money then! Money FOR sweets. A pound each. Eyes light up. Whos going to look after it? A small hand shoots upwards. They offer profuse thanks and move next door where the transaction is completed smoothly and swiftly...and then they are on their way, happy faces in the rising storm, chanting as they go, keeping something alive.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 13:27:29 +0000
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