In search of a dream Part 8. Assorted stories, visitors and some night time surprises.

 

Meigan fayre was very special. They held more of them, bigger crowds, more music, better stages, but this first one was really a fabulous achievement, not a rock festival but an arts event, driven by the best of motives, offering hope and brotherhood at a time of immense change in the world. It brought together free spirits, thinkers, dancers and activists. 

Not so much a microcosm of that first free Glastonbury festival which inspired so much, but more like the Beckenham arts festivals that Bowie helped put on, where I first met him, pre superstardom. You don’t find these events often nowadays, especially not free, every little festival thinks it needs big name headliners and are  basically business enterprises.

Many of those who came to visit me ended up staying in the area, others came for some respite, short stays and some for recuperation from the rigours of city life.

Miriam would visit off and on as would others of my closest old friends. Two of my sisters visited, just to check I was still alive and well and a few waifs and strays would stop over on their way to communes/communities in other parts of the county. My new found friends in Gwernogle would drop by and I’d visit Lizzie and Hugh, while they were building their “Dome”, Val and Ian, John and Ase, Russ and Jan, Bob the lock-keeper with the lovely Vicky and other neighbours . It was far from a reclusive life. I met a lot of people on the market stall as well and would often then go on and visit them, or they would visit me. Giles , who had bought a derelict mansion further west would always try and get me to come and play drums at his weekly gatherings. I hadn’t played any drums since well before I’d moved to Wales and was then only a ‘good enough’ player to work a few holiday camp gigs and rehearse in peoples kitchens, when I was just out of school.

Miriam and Hillary ( To do a selfie then, you had to go to Woolworths and sit in a coin booth :-)  )

Geoff Mabeley ( ‘Chillum Geoff’ ) turned up a couple of times, unannounced and would always bring a gift. The first time a large brass Chinese statue of the buddha and the second time an 8 ft x 4ft antique embroidered Wall hanging depicting a scene of Knights and damsels, it turned out the wall hanging was nicked from a large country estate where he went for an interview as a gardener, he said they were so rude that he felt they deserved to lose it, so he helped himself on his way out .

Geoff was always larger than life, dressed as the Indian Sadhu , under his ex army winter greatcoat and inevitably engaged you with his pipe and Hindi prayers. He was very loveable and like John and Ase, filled me with yearning to travel East. He would stay with us a couple of weeks and do withdrawals from whatever hard drug he’d got himself too dependent on and then make his way back into the world.

During the first year I was there, basically camping while the water and drainage were getting done, I had three notable night time disturbances, the first was a bunch of local policeman and women who wanted to know if we had seen a teenager who had gone missing from Cardiff , they had a photo and asked if they could come in and check she wasn’t there, I asked if my girlfriend minded and we let them in, they chatted mostly about how many books we had on our shelves, had we read them all ?, what were we reading at the moment ? etc, like it was a huge surprise that we were literate and could string sentences together, they interviewed Hillary in bed  and seemed genuinely surprised at our concern for the thirteen year old's welfare, They left a card and we never had any calls again.

The second night time disturbance came when the big hole for the sceptic tank had been dug. The digging had been done by a local chap called Ioan (Ian) who only spoke Welsh and we’d had to negotiate with through his bi lingual wife, which had turned out rather well, because instead of the reticent (‘bloody English hippies’) style of welcome we had expected, she invited us in for more Welsh tea and cake , she was involved with the local Eisteddfod, was a Bard in her own right and was really keen to discuss old Celtic folklore , fairies, druidism and the like. We got a great price for the job and she came with him and brought some poetry and translated folk tales. Anyway, I digress.

I woke to hear someone coughing outside the house and was initially freaked out, wondering who was out there, the coughing would often be followed by a wheeze and was sometimes quieter than others. It took me some courage to out in the dark to investigate and to cut a long story short (I’d crept all around the house without a torch so as not to be target for thieves), found a poorly hedgehog that had fallen into the 7ft deep pit and only just had its head above the water that had accumulated at the bottom.

The third nocturnal disturbance was much more worrying, my girlfriend woke me up screaming with pain. She was holding her abdomen and bent double. She carried on for longer than I like to admit ( I had no idea what to do, what it might be, and no way to contact anybody). It would ease a little and then return. After about the third series of agonised cries I all but carried her to the car, laid her on the back seat and drove to the hospital in Carmarthen. I honestly thought she might die in the car before I got there. They admitted her immediately and it took some hours to make her comfortable. I went home about 7 in the morning to get some sleep and retuned the next day.

When I got back about 5pm the receptionist told me she had been moved to a private room and would probably be eating dinner ( I’d brought some sandwiches because I knew she wouldn’t manage hospital food) . Those of you that know her would know that she didn’t eat much anyway, but being a vegetarian in rural wales was a pretty rare thing in the early 70s.

When I went in she was sitting up in a massive private room, with books, magazines and a fabulous spread of wholesome vegetarian food that had been ordered in from the ‘Waverly Stores’ which was the local pricey delicatessen, hand prepared and delivered by the owner (possibly the only Welsh, vegetarian caterer in the city) . She looked cleaner, warmer and brighter than I can remember and it turned out that she mentioned to the consultant that her uncle was famous clinician, at one time the queen’s physician ( ? ), a published authority, she’d asked them to phone him. The news spread down through the ranks and nothing was too much trouble, it was like they felt they were entertaining royalty.

But getting back to our return from Meigan Fayre, life had definitely changed.

Photos; Miriam Mills and Ase Wadlow