Thursday, 24 August 2017

A nice cup of tea


Subject: A nice cup of tea.


One of the most attractive aspects of living in Swansea is its proximity to the sea and the variation of its localised countryside. From the sweep of Swansea Bay to the many headlands and coves which adorn the coastal landscape, to the hills and mountains of the Brecon's. 
A couple of days ago we drove inland to the Brecon National Park to visit the small town of Brecon. It was Andrews idea and as usual it had the image of food and a good meal in it. Being a Vegan his attitude to food is influenced in a way mine never was. I have always eaten what I liked and never given much thought to the distress of the animal before "part of it" landed on my table. It was always a matter of "that's what it is" we eat and kill animals because we can. The horror of the slaughter house was shifted into the back of my mind as my knife carved out the first tasty chunk of meat, the immediate pleasure more than overcame the ethical profundity of killing animals. 
Anyway as we crossed the wide expanses of open heather, the strip of road twisting its way through the valley and over the top of a hill we could see the shiny reflection of cars parked just off the road and a ribbon of people labouring up the path which seemed to go straight up Pen y Fan the highest mountain in the Park. These are not the Himalayan colossus, not even the grandeur of the Alps but each large hill has a name and people set out to climb or rather walk up them because, to quote the bard, they are there.
 It's an interesting feature of man's psych that he engages in in these urges to conquer the landscape. The mountains and the deserts, the inhospitable features of the Antarctic, the depths of the ocean. It's all fair game to mankind to say he's been there, done that and there's an element of that in the hearts of the people who struggle up 
Pen y Fan.
Our own objective was far less challenging. A few years before Andrew had visited Brecon with his girlfriend and found a rather inconspicuous but rustically stone Gurkha / Himalayan restaurant right in the heart of the town. I suppose the hills of Wales have little in common with Nepal but the outward bound philosophy of the people living there has more in common than Cardiff.
The food was good and I'm sure the memories Andrew had of the place were an added treat. 
But back to the sea front of Swansea. Yesterday was another of those regular features of Swansea life. The  food fair. Vegan/ Vegetarian / Overseas specific, often spicy (for me sometimes more daring than I can dare) wrapped in pastry, Mexican, Moroccan, Indonesian, Somali each an extravaganza of taste and chilli, of exploding questions, and what have I just put in my mouth. People wander between the stalls pondering the likelihood of this or that, the theme music was West Indian reggae, quite loud but appropriate it gave the gathering the flavour the input to disengage from Swansea proper and become more cosmopolitan. 
50 yes away on the port tack lay the sleek hulls of the Swansea playboys, the yachts tethered for another day which no one seemed to visit, perhaps they were simply an item on the balance sheet. I love the sound of the halyards ratting on the aluminium mast a reminder that these toys should be out at sea straining on the wind, reaching on a starboard tack until turning quickly they scoot back across the choppy waves edging their way out of the bay and into the freedom of the open sea.
For us our bellies full, our digestion system trying to cope with a new circumstance we made our way to the car and home to a nice cup of tea. 

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