Wales Antiques This blog will from time to time complement my Wales Antiques Web Site and its printed companion. The guide is a developing listing of general suppliers of antiques and collectables in Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Powys and beyond; it now including auctions and in the future specialist heritage related attractions. Over 23 years it has become an essential resource for anyone with an interest in buying and selling antiques and collectables in West Wales and Beyond. If you would like to know more visit the site here. |
You are here: Home » Wales » ceredigion » cardigan » victoria gardens
It’s our second November at Umsinga and Remembrance Sunday has become already a strong presence in our lives.
As we live so close to the cenotaph (the final shot in this gallery is from our bedroom window) we are politely asked to move our car from the street the night before and we are awakened by the Environmental Services Team from Ceredigion County as they announce their early morning street clean with orange flashing lights.
I say this not with any sense of resentment but to illustrate how the Remembrance Sunday experience for me has been transformed. The bland, stuffy and hide-bound BBC coverage is nothing compared to seeing your own community paying its respects to dead and the living service men and women. The young, the old, the VERY old, the great and the good, the Ex-service and the serving; the crunching tramp of boots, the brass band, the chill, and the nervously wavering Last Post. You can not do anything BUT remember.
Photographing this event has its difficulties. The local press photographer, after years of covering it, doubtless has reconciled some of these difficulties; he knows where to stand, when it is appropriate to ‘shoot’ (with his ‘Canon’) and I guess even what NOT to shoot.
But because it is demonstrably an emotional occasion, a complex mix of personal and public grieving, I could not escape feelings of intrusion. I stepped back and the result is a set of photographs that I feel lack engagement.
You are here: Home » Wales » ceredigion » cardigan » victoria gardens
I’m up early today because the blacksmiths from Teify Forge (passim) have added to their duet of generator and reversing truck; a quartet now, they have recruited a youth with a chainsaw and an ancient with a lump hammer.
Aware of the need for rehearsing their expanded repertoire they have gathered in Victoria Gardens for a 7.00 a.m start.
The chainsaw is restrained in the first bars, coaxed repeatedly into starting. As it catches and finds it’s place the mood settles allowing the sharp high attack of the hammer to be introduced.
The Hammer of the Sods.
I give in and get up.
Anyway in homage to the navvy here are four great books about railways.
You are here: Home » Wales » ceredigion » cardigan » victoria gardens
If you want to get my goat then your best bet would be to start up some heavy plant outside my window early on a Sunday morning. The throb of generators perhaps with a counterpoint of reversing lorry is certain to bring me stumbling to the curtains with an oath.
I recall one Sunday, about 10 years ago, standing outside Isfryn (where lived before Umsinga), in the lane, in my slippers, in my flapping dressing gown, berating the driver of a JCB. He was making a nice early start on the building plot opposite. It was 7.30a.m fer c*****s sake! Fair play to the man he went home for an hour. In the cold light of (later in the) day I felt more than a little bit foolish.
So, to this morning. As readers may recall, Umsinga is moored close up to that Cardigan jewel, Victoria Gardens. I was dragged to consciousness at 8.00am by the offending clatter of 3 sturdy fellows from Teify Forge at Lampeter. They had a long flat-bed truck and another carrying their generators; they were busy taking down the railings on the north side of the gardens, torches aglow. They had already got work on the kissing gate and were loading up the sections to take away.
See how I’ve mellowed! I dressed (after all I don’t live on a quiet country lane now), I went downstairs, gave Elsie some breakfast, grabbed my camera and went outside and took some pictures. They weren’t particularly joyful about this and nor were they particularly forthcoming about what was going on. I don’t blame them either; I probably looked a bit mad. Just as well I was properly shod and attired though.
So today Victoria Gardens looks somewhat odd with a whole of a flank de-railed. I’m looking forward to what happens next.
Here are the pictures, made in anger.
You are here: Home » Wales » ceredigion » cardigan » victoria gardens
One of the attractions of living at Umsinga, in Cardigan, is that we overlook Victoria Gardens. A long triangle of trees, lawn, shrubs and borders, it is everything you would expect of a Victorian town garden. Since 1897 it has offered Aberteifi residents and visitors a scaled down version of a big city park. No tennis courts, fountains or lidos to be sure but it does have a (mostly silent) bandstand, winding paths, de rigeur iron railings and a kissing gate.
I notice today in the Cardigan and Tivyside Advertiser that the Gardens are in the news again. This time, rather than ‘underage’ drinking, or littering, it is the Dogs Running Wild Story/Call For A Ban story.
Now, I’m no dog lover. I’ve never owned one and probably never will. I don’t really like dogs. I am, like most people I suppose, disgusted by dog mess. I am often angry too that dog-owners or minders knowingly allow their dogs to foul public places and particularly those used by children. It’s is unhygenic, uncivil and selfish. And though I have never seen dogs ‘running wild’ in the Gardens, this weekend while hunting for Easter Eggs with my daughter and her friends, it was all too evident that dogs were fouling the grounds.
But would I support a ban on dogs therein? I don’t think so. Yes the gardens could be sweeter smelling but I am sure the majority of dog walkers who I observe using the park daily are responsible citizens clearing up behind their charges. Not only that, they probably make up the majority of the people who use the park regularly. I don’t believe a ban would be in the interests of the town. Dog mess will go elsewhere; playing fields, pavements and other marginal areas, already blighted, would no doubt be made worse.
I suggest, before demands for a ban, understandable though they may be, gain credence, that other measures are tried; maybe increase the number of bins available for disposing of bagged dog mess, better signage, and perhaps a designated area.
It would be shame to have dogs banned from the Gardens because often children like them and they can learn how to be around dogs. Dogs can be frightening to children yes but that applies to even the most placid and well controlled animal.
The Gardens are important to the town so how about helping its citizens to use them more, and use them more responsibly?
You are here: Home » Wales » ceredigion » cardigan » victoria gardens
We have net curtains in our new front room; pretty, traditional and the only furnishing in the room. Until now any who passed by could admire our minimalist taste and elan. From today we have established a kind of privacy that we can enjoy in a soft veiled light.
And today an unexpected and early autumn fog shrouded the Sunday-quiet street. Those busying themselves with their Sunday duties (the Ursuline Sisters our near neighbours) or their daily duties (the dog walkers in Victoria Gardens) became more shades than shapes.
And I guess that is how we will seem to the curious now, as they catch the twitch of the freshly hung nets.
|
My Ceredigion and Cardigan Bay
|
