Shaw / Holloway / Marland New Welsh Review 135 (summer 2024)

Threshold
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-913830-27-4
Verlag: Parthian Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 135, 70 Seiten

Reihe: New Welsh Review

Bringing together the best of Wales' review-essays, including a comparison of new editions of nature classics, 'Back to the Land' by Pippa Marland. The books under review, Thomas Firbank's I Bought a Mountain and Margiad Evans' Autobiography take contrasting blustering and humble approaches to stepping over the sub/urban doorstep into nature. A showcase of new nonfiction, previewing forthcoming titles from some of Wales' key English-language publishers, exploring books on anti-Welsh media vitriol covering the early Manic Street Preachers, and historical flooding and the riches of an Eton-owned Benedictine fishery on the Gwent Levels. In original fiction: a wonderful story about a teenage boy on the cusp of bodily and emotional change, 'Trout', by Satterday Shaw, and a second, finely crafted story about the effect of geographical dislocation on teenage identity emergence, 'Another Place' by Philippa Holloway, set on Crosby beach. Plus Editorial by Gwen Davies and a new opinion feature, Last Page, by Richard Lewis Davies, in which the writers note that magazines in Wales are undergoing a transition, during which readers and subscribers will need to step up to the plate if a commitment to expressing - without interference - our particular place and time, is to be maintained. EDITORIAL Half-in, half-out Gwen Davies NONFICTION Bears at the Fridge: From Goldcliff to Whitson Preview extract from This Stolen Land by Marsha O'Mahony The Kinnock Factor: The Manics and Anti-Welshness Edited abridged preview from International Velvet by Neil Collins FICTION Another Place Story by Philippa Holloway Trout Story by Satterday Shaw ESSAYS Dark Formula Timothy Laurence Marsh on why reckless travel writing matters Books for Alien Girls JL George's personal and practical reflections on the role neurodivergence can and should play when writing fiction REVIEW-ESSAYS Back to the Land Pippa Marland on two nature memoir classics, one of hubristic bluster, the other humbly receptive 'Queer Old Codgers' Claire Pickard on the portrayal of highly nuanced gay identities and history in recent nonfiction titles and a major short story anthology THE LAST PAGE Back to the Future Richard Lewis Davies on how a culture with ambition needs critics and readers

Satterday Shaw writes fiction for adults and young adults. When she was a teenager, she wished she could be somebody else for a day, and writing is the closest she's got. Her stories and articles have been published in Mslexia, the London Magazine, Wasafiri, the Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology, Wales Arts Review and other places. She lives in Eryri. Past teaching includes writing workshops for adults, including Creative Writing students, women with long-term mental health problems. She has also taught young adults, including Roma teenagers. She has worked in anti-racist education, as a family carer, and as a film and video editor.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shaw, Satterday

Holloway, Philippa

Marland, Pippa

Leseproben

BEARS AT THE FRIDGE: GOLDCLIFF TO WHITSON
PREVIEW EXTRACT FROM THIS STOLEN LAND
BY MARSHA O’MAHONY The cider press was kept busy at the coastal community of Goldcliff [on the Gwent Levels] as one resident, Margaret Gutteridge, recalled. I met Margaret at a bingo session I dropped into at Whitson’s old school, now a community space, one Thursday morning. I had come off the path for a wander, and when I heard laughter coming from the hall I popped my head around the corner. I’ve not been lonely on this walk, but admit I need the company of others at times. I was encouraged by the lovely ladies to tuck into the refreshments. I squeezed onto the bench next to Margaret, a neat lady with short grey hair and a soft Welsh accent like so many down here. She’s quietly spoken and I mistook it for shyness. Once I got to know her, I realised there was nothing shy about this lady. She was gutsy and got things done. I warmed to her immediately. She remembered Melvin Jones, the cider press man: ‘We used to have three orchards, but they’ve cut all the trees down now. We had apples, pears, damsons, plums, Cox’s orange pippins, russets, and Victoria plums, loads of cooking apples and the red apples. Mr Jones’ cider press came from Nash, pulled by a horse. They used to turn a wheel and crush the apples and then put the pulp in the press. The pressing would take a whole day and [the press] would be there perhaps for a few days. When the cider was ready, they had casks and they were kept in the dairy. Great big casks they were.’ Margaret developed a taste for it. ‘I used to love it when it was first made because it was really sweet. My grand-dad caught me drinking it once. I used to go to the dairy when I came home from school and dip a mug in. But in the end they put a lock on the door to stop me gaining entrance.’ The Levels, said Margaret, were once full of fruit trees: ‘There were orchards all over then.’ In an interview recorded in the 1990s, Angela Horup noted the decline in orchards too. Her grandparents ran a farm in Nash: ‘As a child growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, I have vivid recollections of the orchards that were in abundance in my area of The Levels. If I close my eyes now and recollect, I can see an orchard neatly laid out [in] rows, where in autumn the trees were weighed down with fruit.’ Many hours listening to her grandparents’ stories have left a clear image: ‘This farm had been in my family for generations, so I had vivid pictures of my long-gone ancestors working hard to plant these very trees. It must be remembered that orchards in bygone days were extremely important; life was far removed from what it is today.’ People depended on fruit for desserts, preserves and a healthy diet. ‘The apples [were] sold in shops because people relied on home-grown produce rather than imports. Fruit that was carefully picked and placed in the correct storage facility lasted well into the New Year,’ she said.   You can walk from Redwick to Goldcliff along the foreshore. But if you take the lanes higher up, past Green Moor and Bowleaze Common, the road drops down to the village, passing Whitson Court. It’s a fine-looking building, with nothing to indicate its former life. As the Christmas holidays approached in December 1975, an estate car left Whitson Court heading for Caerleon. The occupants included the driver and her unlikely passenger: a donkey. The animal had been booked to appear at a nativity event for a local school. Normal means of haulage had failed, but the driver saw no reason to cancel the booking. Instead, she used her car and got the donkey in the back without too much of a struggle. It appeared to be quite happy, enjoying the passing scenes, with its nose pressed against the screen. Midway to Caerleon, however, Margaret’s car was stopped by a policeman on a motorbike. He was naturally curious about the occupant. After a quick check and probably some bewilderment, the donkey and his keeper were sent on their way to Caerleon, with a blue-light police escort. Welcome to Whitson Zoo. Built in 1795, Whitson Court was one of the finest manor houses on The Levels. It was designed by John Nash, the man also responsible for Brighton Pavilion and Clarence House. It’s had an intriguing history and a variety of residents. In 1901, French nuns fleeing religious persecution sought refuge there. Later, in 1923, it was a school for trainee missionaries, young men bound for Africa. And during the Second World War, it was a haven for Jewish refugees escaping Nazi persecution. It was later turned back into a private home, having undergone extensive restoration. But between the 1960s and 1980s, its most unlikely incarnation was that of a zoo. Whitson Zoo was opened in the 1960s by Mrs Olive Maybury, an ardent animal lover who provided a home to all sorts of waifs and strays including bears, foxes, donkeys, raccoons, peacocks, terrapins, llamas, red deer, monkeys and lions. The zoo became a popular visitor attraction, but it was Kath Johnson’s nearby farm that appealed more to one of its residents. ‘Mrs Maybury was lovely,’ said Kath, who still lives in her childhood home at Goldcliff. Imagine your favorite aunt, and you have Kath. She’s lovely, warm, and chatty. ‘I was a chopsy little girl,’ she said. The local policeman used to accompany her as she cycled to Goldcliff school. ‘He knew all the news because I would be telling him what I’d heard from all around. ‘We lived a few fields away from the zoo. Mrs Maybury had a deer there and she had to keep it tethered because every time she let it go it ended up here. No sooner had we got it back to her than it was back again. It must have liked us. But it wouldn’t stay with her, and she got fed up coming to get it.’ By mutual agreement, the deer quit Mrs Maybury’s zoo. ‘In the end she said, “I’m going to give you the deer,” and it never left us after that. Perfectly happy it was with the cows.’ The Johnson farm supported the zoo in other ways: ‘If you had an animal die, you would take it over to her and she’d give it to the lions. But all she had to keep these lions in, was something like an old-fashioned chain harrow, the sort they would pull behind the tractor to level the ground off. We [would] hear the lion roar here if the wind was in our direction. You just got used to [the roaring]. It never escaped, as far as I know.’ The care of this menagerie became the job of animal lover Margaret Gutteridge, the lady I had met over bingo at Goldcliff. She was devoted to her charges, especially a pair of Himalayan bears. Sitting in her little front room, she entertained me with stories from her zoo-keeping days. What I found so amusing about Margaret was how she could talk about extraordinary events as if they were the most ordinary things in the world. The bears had been languishing in a Newport department store before Mrs Maybury stepped in. ‘Reynolds store had a promotion on fur coats,’ explained Margaret, ‘and the bears were being used as part of the advertising. There was a hot day and people were complaining because the bears were sweltering in the window. So, Mrs Maybury was asked if she could house them and that’s how it started. It was an animal rescue really. ‘The bears were big. If they came through the door on their hind legs they would be as tall as six feet.’ On one occasion, Margaret’s daughter Julie came running into the house shouting, ‘Mum, Su Su is out!’ Margaret went to investigate: ‘There was Su Su, one of the bears, coming out of the shrubbery on her hind legs.’ Unperturbed, Margaret fetched some fruit from the kitchen: ‘We opened the door and we put some oranges in there and she went back in her den.’ Su Su even attended the village school at Nash: ‘I took her down in my car, the same estate car of course, with Mrs Maybury’s grandson, and all of the children loved it.’ Su Su stayed at the zoo, but the second bear, appropriately named Rupert, was not so fortunate: ‘Rupert went to a circus.’ Some of the zoo’s other residents were more of a handful, including an inquisitive pair of sun bears. The smallest of the bear species, and nocturnal creatures, they tend to shy away from human contact. But they trusted Margaret. ‘They were Basil and Barbara. Sometimes they escaped because, initially, they were only in a temporary cage.’ But Basil and Barbara were smart: ‘They would go into the house and open Mrs Maybury’s fridge. They knew where to go.’ A lion cub called Jason arrived at the zoo in a minibus packed with children. They were from a children’s home in Cheshire where Jason had been kept as a pet. ‘The children loved him,’ said Margaret, ‘and he used to play with them, but he was growing, and they were struggling to rehouse him. So someone contacted Mrs Maybury and she said, yes, she’d have him.’ ‘That was the first lion we had.’ Jason became a firm favourite of Margaret’s and the zoo’s visitors. ‘Oh, he was beautiful!’ The young lion was also popular with a...