Praeterita

What do you mean, you don’t know what a love spoon is? A love spoon is a gift given between lovers that originates in the middle ages in Wales. Patty and I found about this during our research for a travel article in Wales (see previous post). Designs representing love, such as intertwined braids, are carved into the handle. The couple is supposed to hang it from a nail to bring them future happiness. They come in many different designs: And many different sizes. While we were in Cardiff at Christmas 2007, a chap was just finishing the largest carved love spoon in the world. He was doing it with a chainsaw on the grass in front of Cardiff Castle: I think he was responsible for carving the previous ‘largest love spoon in the world.’ I recalled this because of the Richard Burton anecdote that came back to me last weekend. But also because it shows how the loony obsessiveness of art-making is not confined to addicts of gigantism such as Richard Serra or Anselm Kiefer...

                                                    People at eisteddfod, isn't it? Thinking again about Wales made me try to recall all the things in life that connect me to the land of sheep and nice singing: My father’s mother was born of Welsh parents, which makes me, er, one eighth Welsh? Because my father’s family all lived in Liverpool, we often took day trips across the border into north Wales whenever we visited our Scouse ‘rellies’. When I was about fourteen, we spent a summer holiday in Llangollen. I remember visiting an eisteddfod, and thinking how weird and beautiful it was. I once learned to say (with a bad accent), the longest place name in the UK (it’s in Anglesey):  Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwy rndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch . At a wedding party in the 1980s, I nearly got into a fight with a red-headed Welshman after...