On my mind

THERE are lots of interesting tourist attractions which bring the crowds in.

For example, the Cockroach Hall of Fame in Texas provides a creepy experience and dried roach-larvae barbecue-flavoured snacks. Those with a specific sensory deprivation will be better equipped to stroll through the underground tunnels of the Paris Sewer Museum.

The Gnome Museum in Devon provides tourists with hats, false beards and fishing rods to encourage a kind of gnome from gnome experience.

Then visiting germaphobes will be fascinated by California’s Bubblegum Alley, the sticky, colourful wall of chewed bubblegum, growing with increasing putrefaction since the 1970s.

On a recent visit to Blarney Castle I realised that it is only a certain nation that can persuade Americans to pay 15 Euros to bend over backwards to kiss the most unhygienic lump of stone in Ireland.

Not even the talking sheep of Llangennech could command such devotion. There was a time when visitors had to be held by the ankles and lowered head first, producing a medical condition only alleviated by a beverage brewed by Arthur Guinness (allegedly).

I am so impressed with how the Irish promote their culture, literature, traditional music, dance, food and drink. After being drenched with the richness of Ireland, returning to Wales was like being sprinkled with a jug of lukewarm daffodil and leek soup. Look around you. Where is the Welsh music, dancing, colour which seduces the visitors and tempts them with the cawl, bara brith, the Welsh cake, the cheeses and meats?

Where is the celebration on the streets – the harp, the whistle, the crwth, the pibgorn, the fiddle, the clogs, the choir? Where are the stories, the legends, the poetry? I will tell you: tucked up safely in a monoglot Eisteddfod, Welsh-medium schools and communities which have forgotten they are Welsh.