#Welshman

[livhowlett]

Neil Gaiman: So, Crowley and Aziraphale both have English accents

Production: Okay, so we'll get the best Engl-

Neil Gaiman: I got the best Scottish and Welsh man!

[scotianostra]

November 10th 1871 saw the Journalist Henry M Stanley find the missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone with the classic “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”

In 1867, Henry Stanley became special correspondent for the New York Herald and two years late would be sent to Africa in search of the legendary explorer David Livingstone.

Livingston had been following his obsessional search to find the sources of the Nile River and no one had heard from him for three years.

Stanley got to Zanzibar in 1871 and headed out on a 700 mile trek through tropical rainforest. Because the Herald had not sent the money promised for the expedition he borrowed in from the US Consul. He used this cash to hire over 100 porters for the expedition.

The trip did not go well. During the expedition through the tropical forest, his thoroughbred stallion died within a few days after a bite from a tsetse fly. Many of his porters deserted, and the rest were decimated by tropical diseases.

Seven months after arriving in Zanzibar Stanley found Dr Livingstone near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania and greeted him with the famous quote: “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” Or did he?

There is some doubt about whether the line was actually ever said.

Pages that relate to their meeting were torn out of Stanley’s diary by the man himself and neither he nor Livingstone mentioned them in their letters.

It surfaced over a year later in a summary of Stanley’s letters in The New York Times.

When Livingstone died a few years later Welshman Stanley continued to explore huge amounts of central Africa.

The rest of his career was just as eventful.

He was a key part in opening up the lower Congo to trade which meant the creation of the Congo Free State under King Leopold II of Belgium.

Despite his supposed famous line and explorations giving him his place in history there have been a number of criticism levelled against him.

He was accused of indiscriminate cruelty against African even saying himself: “Many people have called me hard, but they are always those whose presence a field of work could best dispense with, and whose nobility is too nice to be stained with toil.” It is also argued that he had a very conflicted view of women describing them as “toys” and “trifling human beings”.

Livingstone died from dysentery and malaria on May 1st, 1873, at the age of 60, in Chief Chitambo’s Village, near Lake Bangweulu, North Rhodesia (now Zambia).

[thealanwrightblog]

An Englishman, Irishman, Welshman and a Scot were captured by the Iraqis and sentenced to face a firing squad.

The Iraqis asked the Scot for his last request and he asked for 1000 Scot’s guards to play the bagpipes.

The Irishman was asked for his last request and he asked for 1000 Irish dancers to perform River Dance.

They asked the Welshman for his last request. He asked for a male voice choir of 1000 men from the Welsh valleys.

The Englishman was asked for his last request. ‘Shoot me first’, he said.

[disgruntled-welshgirl]

Nice to see Cymry on tumblr

The Welsh Viking is pretty cool! 

[nathjonesey-75]

Heart As Big As Liverpool – A Forty Year Celebration

Life-changing experiences. So precious are they - that a life can’t be guided or altered too often if the experience is so profound. It is with a full-bodied and passionate gratitude that I can celebrate and give thanks on the fortieth anniversary weekend of what I could see as my first visit to a soul’s temple – Anfield, L4.

How uncanny is it that the weather in Liverpool today reflects that journey on a cold Saturday morning in January 1985, as we drove the hundred-and-eighty-eight miles from Llanelli, through the ice and ever-increasing snow; up the hills of East Wales to somewhere which immediately became a second home to me. Pictures of a white city’s surroundings and reports of safety checks before, who else? Only the biggest rival of all this time visiting the now-expanded Anfield – but Manchester United. This intensifies the nostalgia further between the memory of a nine-year-old boy’s dreams becoming further reality.

Of course, the academic result of Liverpool 3 Aston Villa 0 in the third round of the FA Cup was but a part of the whole magic, in the coloured mosaic of the day. In an era of mass unemployment, hardship and industrial collapse which certainly linked my hometown Llanelli, with its closing steel factories, encompassing coal mines and its working-class ethos alongside that of the Mersey city – in looking back at the eighties, the myths; cultures and legacies of the era were nothing short of astounding.

When football hooliganism was a torrid black flag, synonymous with regular news of the period, the violent mentality of too many impartial “fans” of what’s seen as the beautiful game could justifiably be sneered at, for being nothing short of empty-headed, misogynistic and base in their values and goals. Liverpudlians at the time, while concurrently being neglected by a Conservative government via its refusal to aid funding, were often patronised and ridiculed by other team fans, branded as thieves and unequal by regular stadium chants.

Even Harry Enfield’s famous satirical look at “The Scousers” towards the end of that decade and into the nineties – cemented urban belief in an equally self-deprecating way, as native Liverpool actors such as Joe McGann were a part of the joke – showed the depth of character and community that I found for the first time on the fifth of January, that year. The welcome we received everywhere was another marker for why it instantly became a second natural haven. That quick-witted humour which has always influenced me since, still has a warmth unrivalled in my life’s experiences. Billy Connolly has paid testimony to it from his early stand-up comedy shows in the 1970s as a similar match for his own Glaswegian, rugged-but-sharp outlook.

Thus, it speaks volumes for resilience oozing from the cracks of the Liverpool pavements to the flowing Mersey – through that time of hardship for the city, always countered by humour, togetherness, backbone – and of course, beautiful football; played in the best atmosphere a nine-year-old boy could imagine. But - it gets better. Not only did my father manoeuvre the risky roads of winter to get to the city, through the snow for a quick lunch at the Berni Inn Beefeater, then to Stanley Park in time to walk to Anfield – but upon the rapturous entrance of the team before kick-off, the signed plastic ball, sponsored by Crown Paints and autographed by our Scottish fullback Steve Nicol – was caught by my father as well, when it was booted into our block of the Kemlyn Road Stand. If there was a Match of the Day equivalent to its player of the month via ‘Dad of the Month’ – it may have been a walkover in the first weekend, in my opinion. If only I had looked after that ball and kept it, rather than practising overhead kicks on my bed for the ensuing years…

Anyway, the atmosphere. I was already used to between ten and twelve thousand people (which felt like twenty in those days) each Saturday with a passionate, vocal crowd watching Llanelli RFC in its heyday at our own temple inside Stradey Park. In a tragic sense, those glory boyhood days of my clubs in red being the top national teams in both association football and rugby union didn’t follow in parallel for city and town, respectively as I grew older. As Liverpool became announced as European Capital of Culture in 2003 and managed a level of regeneration industrially, the iconic squalor and destitution captured in photographs of Liverpool’s more run-down suburbs of the eighties (as well as many neglected cities across the north of England and rest of Britain), has subtly and less clinically swapped places with Llanelli’s job market. A vibrancy which still existed forty years ago in my home town and indeed, up to the early years of the new century – has been silently nuked by the bomb of 21st Century deindustrialisation. This, in the age of professional rugby, competing with the Premier League and modern football world has made sustaining a successful rugby union region as tough as town regeneration in Wales, where highly employing production sites have not been replaced by alternative secure jobs.

Which brings me to the question; the grimaces and raised eyebrows – a reaction I’ve faced for the last forty-odd years. “Why do you support Liverpool and not Swansea or Cardiff City?” It’s simple. Despite my uncle’s efforts in indoctrinating me to the old Vetch Field and Swansea City’s faithful from the early eighties – I’m from Llanelli. The passion of Scarlets fans against the All Whites of our neighbouring city – always seemed to me a rivalry as relevant as that of Liverpool and our Manc adversaries, with losses against them as painful as those of football defeats. So why would I support Swansea City when we “Turks” were the subjects of jibes from the Swansea Jacks? I wouldn’t expect a St Helens rugby league fan to support Wigan Athletic or another rival rugby league team’s football club.

So, after the non-plussed first visit to the Vetch Field on my seventh birthday, it was during the following year my attention turned swiftly to my heroes in L4. With a national hero such as Ian Rush, one of Liverpool’s key players and reigning top goalscorer, alongside the warmth and genius of Kenny Dalglish and the like-minded, genuine community I always found from that day forward in Liverpool – it was always my home and team. I’ve lived through the dark times at the club as well as those glory days. Only a few months after I visited Anfield on this occasion, I watched the European Cup Final against Juventus at Heysel Stadium. I remember the horror. I remember seeing our manager Joe Fagan’s face on the news, the sheer devastation and years of hurt following as inquests began and fingers were pointed at us. Only to be followed by worse, widespread tragedy four years later at Hillsborough in the FA Cup semi-final, a horror which has still not – for many, ended or been personally overcome.

Some of my biggest heroes are people such as Anne Williams, Margaret Aspinall and Trevor Hicks, along with their families and iron-fisted community support against the so-called “Iron Lady” and her corrupt institutions of the age and beyond. I’ve lived through the humiliation of the Fergie days, where we played second fiddle to our enemy who categorically aimed to become bigger than Liverpool, in reaching the highest point of British and European football. And I’ve never been prouder of both club or city for what it’s always done for me. As Granby councillor Margaret Simey (also originally from Glasgow) stated, “the magic of Liverpool is that it isn’t England.”

Having lived across the world in the past few decades, some of my flagpole greatest memories are of watching Liverpool from my homes in Australia, Qatar, London and now Brighton and Hove, as well as in huge European matches in Germany and Spain. I’ve held memberships at the LFC Supporters Club at the famous Imperial in Melbourne. I fell in love with dancing at Cream on Wolstenholme Square, after numerous visits in the mid-nineties which was an incredible influence on my DJ career, as well as naturally knowing most of The Beatles songs by that point as a twenty-year-old. So, it was one of the most fitting celebrations to be at glamorous Butlin’s in Bognor Regis for Rockaway Beach festival, where I now write these words. After seeing proud Scouser Pete Wylie perform here on Friday night – on the fortieth anniversary of my first trip to the ‘Pool, where his penultimate song, “Heart As Big As Liverpool” was dedicated to the sufferers of the Hillsborough tragedy, I could never have been prouder. It was almost like a full circle has been reached from nine to forty-nine-year old’s experiences.

All that remains now, to fully accomplish a glorious weekend – is to beat the old enemy in just over an hour. Either way, my blood will always be pumped with blood as red as from a heart belonging to Liverpool.

N.B. Despite the result from the match following this writing exercise – it changes absolutely nothing. YNWA.

[thescholarlystrumpet]

Celebrity Bake Off with Michael Sheen and his HANDS

(2/??)

[katherynefromphilly]

The fact that I didn’t see Merlin trending on Tumblr even once this Christmastime leads me to believe that Alex Vlahos has taken over the app and is currently laughing his little Welsh arse off at all of us.

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Star Beast - Part Nine

Excerpt from Emily Cook's interview with Miriam Margolyes for Doctor Who Magazine #596:

It was Tom’s Fourth Doctor, albeit in comic form, who originally encountered Beep the Meep in Doctor Who Weekly’s comic strip Doctor Who and the Star Beast, published in 1980. Ten Doctors later, the story is revived for television featuring David Tennant as the Time Lord. As fate would have it, a couple of months before she was cast in Doctor Who, Miriam had lunch with David. “A mutual friend arranged it,” Miriam explains. “I’d never met David before. I was so nervous of meeting him on my own. I was worried he’d find me boring, so I thought I better invite somebody who would be more interesting than me. So I asked Julian Clary. I thought I was going to be affecting an introduction between David and Julian, but I hadn’t realised they knew each other already because they’d previously worked together. But it was wonderful. I loved meeting David and his wife Georgia. I thought they were heavenly. Lovely people. The sort of people who you’d want to know. I think David’s an exceptional performer. I love that thing he does with the Welshman [Staged, with Michael Sheen]. That’s terribly clever. I loved Broadchurch, too. And he played the serial killer Dennis Nilsen [in Des, 2020]. He’s able to convey a reality gap with characters on the edge so profoundly. He’s quite brilliant. So just knowing him is lovely. I couldn’t believe he wanted to know me. That truly amazed me.” As part of their lunchtime conversation, David expressed surprise that Miriam had never done a Doctor Who before. She has, of course, previously voiced a Blathereen in The Sarah Jane Adventures alongside Simon Callow. “I’d forgotten I’d done that,” says Miriam. “I mean, I’ll do anything for money. I was very jealous of Simon Callow who played Charles Dickens in Doctor Who [in 2005’s The Unquiet Dead], because he’s a friend, and a great Dickens scholar.

Additional parts of this set are in the #whoBtsBeast tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

[anli-rambles]

Nah bc the way Haytham looks so offended whenever someone calls him British is just— ☠️ The way he'll take every opportunity to insult the British army, the pure disgust on his face when Connor calls the redcoats his "British brothers", calling the King an idiot, and most hilarious of all using "looking British" as an insult towards Charles Lee in his journal like... Haytham. Haytham my man. You're the most British man to have ever britished, what the fUCK are you on about 😭☠️

[parttimesarah]

I’m glad I have twitter notifications on for Michael

This is the kind of crazy chaos I need to pop up at random on the top of my phone

[sspadfoot]

“Remus is canonically Welsh!”

Well, in my fic he isn’t. Leave me alone please 😭

[moiraxrose]

Elsbeth winter promo ✨

[ingravinoveritas]

Forever imagining 20something Michael and David in a (gay, let's be honest) club in the late '90s and Michael spotting David dancing to "Spice Up Your Life" and being completely enraptured at the sight...

[on-a-lucky-tide]

I think I've reached some kind of teaching nirvana.

a) the two roughest girls you have ever met in your life, when asked if there is any teacher and subject they like, saying to a harried assistant head, "yeah, that Mr. [redacted], he's always fair, like, yous can't mug him off, like, he's fair and always respects us even he's mugging us off, like. He has standards."

b) being told by two sets of parents of nerdy, quiet kids at parents evening that they love my lessons and think I'm "cool" because I know so much, and that they can actually learn cause I "don't take any rubbish from the loud ones".

Me, every October: I hate this fucking job I'm gonna fucking resign and become a fucking accountant or analyst because it fucking sucks. Fuck you and you and ALL of you wankers.

Me, by the time we hit summer: They will have to remove my corpse from my classroom at the age of 97, still clutching a board pen and a copy of History Now.

[kwistowee]

TOM ELLIS as THOMAS MILLIGAN ➥ DOCTOR WHO 3.13 | Last of the Time Lords

[chaosducks]

To me, Gabriel is like the captain Jack Harkness of Supernatural.

That Trickster/Archangel is a flirt with anything that moves kinda guy I just know it.