Friends and Relations

Sorry I've neglected the blog! It's been so busy and I have so many pictures to upload and label each night that its been all I can do to keep up. Our cousins in Laughrane and St. Clears are all just really sweet people and could not be nicer.

First, there is our cousin Irene, who is 87. She is in poor health and at the moment, I am sorry to say she has been taken to hospital. She was ill before we came and of course everyone is very concerned. She and my mother sat the other day looking at old pictures and tracing the family tree while William went outside to the park behind the ancient castle motte behind the house and played football with the local kids. Thanks AYSO, because he actually knew what he was doing and when I went out to call him, the kids all waved bye and said 'Come back tomorrow, Will!'

Irene's son Colin was killed in a terrible car wreck last year. His wife Mary came down to meet us in person as well and is just the kindest, most generous person you could care to meet. She and mom and I got on like a house afire and her son Richard Evans and his wife Tiera and their baby Dylan came down from London as well. We actually did not get to spend as much time with them as we would have liked, due to Dylan's getting car sick, Tiera having had her wisdom teeth out and then everyone coming down sick the next day. Mary wouldn't let us in past the door because she didn't want us to catch it too.

Then we met our cousin Christopher and his wife Sharon and mother Chrissy. Chrissy's husband (Christipher's father) John was Irene's brother. He was the first cousin my mom made contact with in Wales when she was here 14 years ago. He passed away a couple of years ago and Christopher took us to the churchyard to put flowers on his grave. (It's the same churchyard where Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlan are buried). John Rees was a botanist and did the flowers and garden at Dylan Thomas' boathouse for years.

One other interesting thing about Christopher Rees (and previously John) is that he is a burgess of Laughrane. Orignally, going back to Mideval times, burgesses were the prominant businessmen or property owners of a town or village. You can only become a burgess by inheriting it from your parent, or marrying the son or daughter of a burgess. In Laughrane, there is also a Portreeve. Our first night here, we ate dinner at a resturant called the Portreeve and there was a picture of a man in a long robe with a sort of gold chain of office around his shoulders. I asked Christopher what it was and he explained that a Portreeve is an official public title, very very ancient. The Portreeve holds court in the town or area under his jurisdiction on the third week of the month and mostly adjucates land disputes. There are only 3 other towns in the UK that still have a Portreeve, because the title has died out almost everywhere.

To maintain status as an official 'burge' every three years, the Portreeve and the town burgesses must walk , measure and maintain the bounderies of the land. Christopher says it is an all day event. The burgessese and the Portreeve all meet in the morning for tea and a bun and then set off across country, fording streams and climbing over fences, pacing the bounderies of Laughrane so it can maintain its status and title. Isn't that cool??

Christopher, Sharon and Chrissy took us out to lunch the other day. The pub is called the Carpenter's Arms and had a Sunday carvery. A Carvery, - quite popular here- is a sort of buffet with carved meats, lots of vegetables and huge portions of everything. Actually, all the food here is just huge- everything comes automatically with something like 4 or 5 sides- like roast beef WITH roasted potatoes WITH chips WITH boiled cabbage WITH boiled carrots WITH boiled or mushy peas WITH gravy WITH bread or a roll WITH parsnips. If you get a salad you get a green salad and probably a roll and butter, and possibly cold slaw and some other sort of cold mixed salad thrown in for good measure. Dessert portions are enormous as well- we are eating for America here, trying to prove that Americans are not rude and wasteful, etc. but really its pretty comical. We just keep trying to eat enough so no one is offended.

Everyone here is so nice, but Chrissy, Christopher's mother, is the best. She made us an enormous Welsh tea- all baked from scratch- when we came and after we dropped in the other day, after Christopher and Sharon drove us up the coast to Pembray and Temby where the beaches are, Chrissy made us just a 'small' tea. There were sandwiches, welshcakes, two kinds of cake, ...it was all so delicious!

The Welsh are very polite. Even strangers on the motorway are polite and anyone you ask for directions or so on don't seem to mind. The other night in a pub as we were paying our bill, I asked how far we were from St. Clears and a guy at the bar started telling us all the other most beautiful places to go and how to get there, lol, I can see now where I get that gene from anyway.