Country Mouse
Surely it would be fine for me to visit my elderly mother on Anglesey, where she had spent no fewer than 12 weeks alone without so much as a cat, dog or budgerigar for company?
It was a humanitarian ‘issue’ and also, like so many things in modern Britain, a mental-health issue – my own mental health rather than my mother’s. I needed a break from Mary; she needed a break from me.
Moreover, the headlines told me that North Wales would be hotter than Ibiza.
But a cursory glance at the lockdown scene in Wales suggested that Welsh police would not suffer English fools gladly. While not exactly offering a pitchfork welcome, they had turned away 1,000 cars in the Brecon Beacons after day-trippers from the likes of Bristol and the Midlands had attempted to visit the area around Ystradfellte known as ‘waterfall country’.
Officers said excuses for breaking lockdown rules had included buying lamb, collecting a bouncy castle and ‘coming to look at the sea’ and the miscreants were sent packing.
The diktat extended to one unfortunate Welshman who had gone over the border for a hip replacement in England and was barred from returning to his own home for convalescence.
The hashtag #Dontvisitwales had been trending on Twitter with parody vintage travel posters advising the likes of ‘Llandud-no – Stay at Home’ and ‘Snowdonia: Don’t Even Think About It.’
As for second homes, one Birmingham woman, who rang her cleaner to test the waters about moving in for a Welsh lockdown, was pre-empted before she could even suggest it by the cleaner gushing that she’d like to thank him. ‘Everyone locally is so grateful to you for not coming down.’ It was enough to give an Englishman a chip on his shoulder.
No need for a ‘real fires’ campaign from Owen Glendower fans to keep the English out. COVID was doing a much better job.
Nevertheless, with Dominic Cummings in mind, I reassured myself that I would be causing fewer problems to fewer people if I relocated ‘up North’. Unlike him, I didn’t even have COVID, but like him I saw myself as a special case. Yet first I had to get there – a non-stop journey of 248 miles – at a time when Welshmen themselves were being told to drive no more than five miles from their own homes.
In my mind, there would be a Welsh version of Checkpoint Charlie as I made my way onto one of the two entry points to the island – the Britannia Bridge and the exquisite Menai Suspension Bridge. That’s where they would stop me and send me packing back to England.
But Mary had been in correspondence with a Welsh official, who had sent her a ten-page guidance document. It pays to read the small print, for within it Mary had found a link to the following key intelligence:
‘We are unable to give a yes or no response for every circumstance. Instead we ask people to form their own judgements from our guidance documents and to make a balanced judgement that fits their own individual circumstances.’
A let-out clause if ever there was one. Armed with a print-out with the relevant passage highlighted in fluorescent green, I set out.
‘ Hapus i gyfathrebu’n Saesneg neu yn y Gymraeg/ Happy to communicate in Welsh or English,’ proclaimed the document. Now is not the time to discuss whether the cause of Wales’s somewhat retarded economic growth might stem from the fact that all official documents and even road signs must be translated into Welsh. It must be expensive – but they give so much pleasure.
No effort is spared where no Welsh equivalent of an English word exists. It must be de-anglicised anyway. Y Fflint, for example, instead of Flint. Sgitsoffrenia instead of schizophrenia. Toiledau for toilet. And my favourite – bisgedi, instead of biscuits.
Yet, I noted, as I proceeded through Wales after Wrexham, the passion for bilingual signage curiously petered out where COVID was concerned. All Covid-related signs were still in English: ‘Welsh COVID rules apply’ and ‘Local traffic only’.
Why were the signs only in English? This was what I call passive aggression. It reminded me of the time Mary and I went, in our student days, to experience the atmosphere of the Paris restaurant Les Deux Magots, famous for its historic patronage by the likes of Jean-paul Sartre and James Joyce. Clearly we were not the only cheapskate English students to pay a visit there. The menu was entirely in French, save for a single sentence in English: ‘And no side salad as a main course.’
In our day, we laughed. Would today’s student equivalents view such a sentence as ‘gaslighting’ and ‘racist’?
Yet far from there being any Stasistyle checkpoint halting my progress on the Menai Bridge, I proceeded onto the island, with a wonky brake calliper triumphantly whining my arrival.
A warm, distanced welcome awaited me at the bungalow, but Mum cautioned against too much elation. A new COVID outbreak had been discovered that very morning at the 2 Sisters processed-meat factory in Llangefni and 175 workers had tested positive for the virus. As I write, the Welsh authorities have not ruled out locking down the whole island for safety reasons.
Uncertainty has become the ‘new normal’ in both Welsh and English, but what if I’m locked down here for eternity? Even Mary doesn’t want me gone for good.