Sardis Road
For those that are interested, nay, rabid, passionate supporters of the greatest game on the planet, and live in Ponty and/or the valleys please find below an online petition which seeks to bring ‘proper’ regional rugby to Wales and top class rugby back to the largest population base / playing base in the country.
P.S. – you don’t have to pay, ignore that page 
Filed under Politics
Happy New Year and Happy New You. Yes, it’s that time of year again when the serial dieters are out in force. All those people who made the same resolutions they broke after 2 weeks last year. The people who clog up the treadmill at the gym, the people who tell you they’re ‘on a diet’ ‘cos they overindulged so much at Christmas and they simply must get those extra few pounds off before Easter. Aaargghh! Give me strength. Strength not to smack them in the face with a banana for getting on my nerves with their constant moaning.
OK, maybe a little harsh, but how about this for a diet – don’t eat as much. There, easy. Can I have my million pounds now please?
And for the really technically minded out there, those who want to go that extra mile – if you want to lose weight, exercise more. Yes, every day or week or month, whatever, just as long as it’s more than you do now.
It’s not rocket science is it? Yet every year we are bombarded with the new celebrity diet for those of us so important we couldn’t possible consider putting in some effort ourselves. Oh, no, we need to buy the new book – ‘Eat Your Own Faeces and Lose Nine Stone in a Minute’ – a bestseller by some old has-been whose just had her stomach stapled after she downed a vat of lard over the festive period.
In Western Europe, sales of weight-loss products, excluding prescription medications, topped £900m ($1.4bn) in 2009, and in the weight-loss capital of the world – North America, a staggering $1.6bn (£1bn) a year was spent on weight-loss supplements.
OK, this next bit is sick, politically incorrect and I apologise lest I be accused of being a pissed fashion designer or a Hollywood Aussie. My great grandmother used to look at fat people who wanted to diet and say ‘There were no fat people in Belsen’. And guess what, she was right. The reason being they’re intake of calories was so low their bodies wasted away.
So here’s my bestseller, no not 300 pages, not even 1 page, just 1 sentence – ‘Eat a bit of everything (not your poo though), exercise 3 times a week (carrying heavy boxes of old dieting books to the skip is a good one) and weigh once a year’.
Right, I’m off to the chippie until the gym gets back to normal.
Filed under Columns
Photoshop drawing
a quiet afternoon
once in a lifetime
- Zanzibar turtle
Filed under Poems
off the rocky coast,
sipping salty beer
the wind grabs my gaze
and hauls me off
across the sea
past Ireland and America
while towing in my
mackerel line
for supper safe
in dunes
by camp fire
sleep
Taken from Dave Lewis’s third book – ‘Sawing Fallen Logs For Ladybird Houses‘.
Filed under Poems
Wow! Oh No! OMG! Stop the press!
When most of us get chest pains we put it down to indigestion, too many lagers or a rather hot curry and get on with things until we die on an NHS waiting list but not the ‘Iron Duke’, oh no. He gets flown to a specialist heart hospital by an RAF helicopter and has an immediate operation. He was due to go to Sandringham where he was looking forward to slaughtering some fluffy animals with his shotgun but that will have to wait now.
Meanwhile in Nigeria 50 people are dead after days of fighting, 6 are killed by a suicide bomber in Pakistan and Prince Philip has had an operation on his heart.
Libya has celebrated independence, thousands gather in Moscow amid fears of rigged elections and Prince Philip has had an operation on his heart.
Kim Jong-un is declared supreme leader and new nutter in charge of Nukes R Us, 44 people have died and 150 have been injured in Syria and Prince Philip has had an operation on his heart.
In sport today someone has called someone something nasty again on a football pitch and Prince Philip has had an operation on his heart.
Business news, see-sawing shares continue to make millions for those with millions and Prince Philip has had an operation on his heart.
The Queen will address the nation on Christmas Day but no-one will listen because they’ll already be fed up listening to the news that Prince Philip has had an operation on his heart.
What is it with this country that makes our media want to worship a racist benefit scrounger in this way?
Finally managed to publish my Facebook, cyber stalking, crime thriller, murder mystery, love story set in various locations around south Wales.
Ctrl-Alt-Delete is now available on Lulu.com as well as on Amazon kindle.
Plenty of great reviews (4* and 5*) on Amazon.co.uk page already but could always do with some more of course. Fingers crossed after Christmas (when everyone has a new kindle for a pressie) I’ll see a big increase in sales in order to buy me some time to write the second in the series Well, can only hope eh! 
All I can say is if you like Wales, crime thrillers with a difference, black comedy, the internet, politically INcorrect heroes then you should enjoy this.
More here.
Happy Christmas.
Filed under Uncategorized
After spending $515 billion bombing, shooting, torturing and generally abusing millions of Iraqis the most hated country in the world finally announced that it is to leave Iraq to potential civil war this month, with a complete withdrawal by the end of the year. But the good news is that they only took 8 years (12 years unofficially) to lose this war and totally bugger up a country whereas they took 20 years to lose Vietnam.
Other facts worth mentioning might be the 4.7 million refugees created, the 100,000+ civilian casualties (possibly a million if you include the effect of sanctions prior to invasion) and the $13 billion arms deal signed with the new government.
OK, let’s not be biased. It wasn’t exactly a picnic in Iraq before the invasion when a tyrant like Saddam Hussein was in charge. The streets were safe to walk, the religious factions oppressed and Al Qaeda nowhere to be seen (unlike now) but oil to run Humvees was going up in price wasn’t it so it all made perfect sense to takeover Iraq and its oilfields if only as a means of controlling supply, protecting pipelines and ultimately the price of oil.
During their secret war with Iraq, Blair and Bush were happy to sell Saddam chemicals to gas the Kurds but when they realised someone might find out they decided to pretend to care, declare war on him, and let the Turks do it instead. But diplomacy is such a nice word eh?
Almost as crazy was the 50% of Americans that thought Iraq had something to do with the 11th September attacks! But rest assured that all’s well that ends well and words like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘cup cakes‘ can again ring out from the world’s most powerful media liars while the Iraqi people now earn an average wage of $2 a day, if indeed they have a job at all. Oh yes, and President Obama can sleep well at night.
In fact Mr Obama has already been quick to praise the incredible achievements of US troops although he didn’t say for doing what (how could he?), while in Falluja, Iraqis celebrated the Americans leaving by burning the stars and stripes.
And so at this seasonal time of year I wonder what country is next on the hydrocarbon Christmas list? Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria or Algeria perhaps?
I wonder if people like Clinton, Blair, Bush, Cameron, Obama et al have a big fluffy chart with ticks against certain countries like Iraq (invasion, anarchy), Libya (anarchy?), Saudi Arabia (arms deals?), UAE (golf courses, tourism, military bases) or am I being cynical again?
Virginia creeper
painting rust
on the old grey locomotive
Pia mater, dura mater –
the clouds above my head
a trillion molecules of consciousness
killed by next door’s cat
while looking for worms -
The blackbird
the hush of bamboo
soothes the roar
of racing cars
Thrush on the ground –
the sycamore branch
still bobbing
Filed under Poems
…incongruous car
alien
shiny-red, carwash-clean
not the usual
sharp edges
not stolen, like glances
not abandoned, like puppies
not torched, like memories
not peeling, like marriage
not rusting, like opportunity
not dumped, like dreams
not burnt out, well…
his coat was left on a rock
overlooking the industrial estate
while drinkers and drivers
leave the Rose and Crown
past farms
and blissful sheep
his purple face
his bloated tongue
the hosepipe and
the kitchen knife and
the stomach wounds and
the shiny-red, blood
he stares at buzzards
catching hot air
from the engine
as the coppers
let the fumes out
they joke about it
concerned as cows
‘What a waste
of leather seats, ha ha’
before they drive home
to tea with the wife
‘Good day luv’?’
‘Aye, usual.’
Taken from Dave Lewis’s award-winning short story, prose & poetry collection – ‘Urban Birdsong‘.
Filed under Poems
On the news last night we heard that unemployment had risen again. The figure given was 2.64 million but we all know the actual number of unemployed people, i.e. those ‘not working’ is much, much higher.
Even within these sanitized figures though the government admitted that over 1 million unemployed were between 16 and 24 and that it was the highest number since records began.
Of course, if we consider the long-term sick, disabled people, those in education, carers, illegal immigrants and criminals then you’ll probably arrive at figures closer to 8 to 10 million of working age people not in employment, which equates to well over 20%. Not sure if we can slot bankers and MPs into any of these categories but we’ll move on…
Also on the news was another story about people under 35 being the most ‘disengaged’ and ‘mistrusting’ of politics. I wonder why?! And then we had various ‘experts’ arguing over why this was. They were all wrong of course. I know why.
And the reason the Electoral Commission found 56% of 17 to 24 year olds were not registered to vote is that kids today are cleverer than they used to be. They have the internet on their iPhones don’t they!
They don’t have to swallow the lies, bullshit and propaganda that their privately educated, privileged ruling classes thrust upon them anymore. Why would you vote for someone that couldn’t possibly know what it is to be poor? Someone who has never worked yet still has a £131,000 salary.
Of course the problem the ‘youth’ have is that they don’t know how to change the corrupt system yet. But with Facebook, the new iPad2, their iPhones and other gadgets I’m sure they’re working on it.
Most of us would agree that kids are growing up too quick these days. But when I say kids I’m not talking about teenagers binge drinking in our Park or Bebo gangs terrorising each other for nonconformity in chic street-wear. No, I’m talking about our ‘tweens’. Yes, I spelt it right. Tweens are the new group (children aged between 8 and 12) which marketers (the new estate agents in my view) have targeted with the very latest ‘make parents poor’ schemes.
You must have noticed that in between the latest episode of Peppa Pig or Lazytown there is an advert for make up or hair curlers. Unfortunately, Tweens are becoming more like teens, leaning more toward teen styles, attitudes and behaviour.
Already we have young kids describing themselves as ‘flirtatious, sexy, trendy, and cool.’ Among the products targeted at this age group are body paints, scented body oils and tween-sized bikini panties.
Tweens are also demonstrating many of the deviant ‘risk behaviours’ we usually associate with adolescence. Crimes committed by this group have increased in the last decade, tweens are becoming more sexually active whilst drugs and alcohol are also seeping into their culture.
Think about the glossy women’s magazines read by young girls in their thousands these days, or the ridiculous ‘school prom’ culture seeping into less aware primary schools. There is a growth in eating disorders — anorexia and obsessive dieting, especially amongst girls, as a result of a premature fashion-consciousness.
What causes this and how can we stop it? Well, I’d lay some blame with absentee parents and the rest with a sexualised and glitzy, media-driven marketplace.
The loss of family life invariably expands the power of the peer group. Boys understand that their popularity depends on ‘toughness, troublemaking, domination, coolness, and interpersonal bragging and sparring skills.’ Girls derive status from ‘success at grooming, clothes, and other appearance-related variables.’ Popularity is gained through romantic success and material possessions.
With less life experience and less self-awareness, pre-adolescents have fewer internal resources to fall back on. Kids are having much less time to develop into individuals.
A recent survey suggests most British parents think childhood is over by 11. Personally, I believe that childhood is a precious time which is being overrun by adult notions, ranging from what extra-curricular activities kids should do in their spare time to the crazy Health and Safety inspired ideas of what’s just too risky nowadays, like climbing trees, playing conkers or throwing snowballs.
Think about the effect of an hour of ‘soaps’ on your toddlers? And remember if you’re kids are watching 2 hours of telly they’ll get 15-20 minutes of commercials from most channels!
In contrast, Australian youngsters grow up much slower. Advertising on children’s TV channels is either banned or limited by government. Kids there, are kids longer, they have a more active, outdoor lifestyle, beach, bike and water activities to name but a few healthy distractions available to them.
Many studies also point to rising obesity and lack of muscle tone as being directly attributed to sedentary lifestyles and fast foods. So get outside with your kids, sit on the grass, ride a bike, walk to the shops. To not grow up too fast means not taking things so seriously. Not being driven by a strict time table. Not allowing yourself and your children to be consumed by schedules and stress.
Oh yes, and turn that telly off.
High home summer hill
straining, sucking, sitting
staring, stopped and stick-
a pit-prop tight and gripped.
the trees across the valley
much higher than he can go now.
I pant to reassure him
in time with his withered eyes.
his tongue, tombed gritty green
he’s faithful, though he’s fading
bones in death-grey jumper
where will he lead me next?
Taken from Dave Lewis’s first poetry collection – ‘Layer Cake‘.
Filed under Poems
I read today that astronomers have found a ‘twin-Earth’. The ‘bluey-greeny’ Earth-like planet orbits a star (or sun) similar to our own. The planet is named Kepler 22-b, which I think is rather cute. Unfortunately at 600 light-years away it’s not likely we can visit unless Richard Branson gets a move on with his space holidays. And no way am I traveling all that way on a crappy Ryanair plane with no free toilet facilities.
Anyway, being about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and with a temperature of about 22 C not only would we have plenty of room for all the Indians and Chinese but we’d also have enough space to save all the tigers and pandas too!
The amazing thing (not so amazing if you believe in the law of averages of course) is that although Kepler 22-b lies 15% closer to its sun than the Earth is to our Sun, the planet’s host star puts out about 25% less light which keeps it cool enough for life and the existence of liquid water. That means, in theory anyway, we could still get a pint of real ale there and we’d probably also have a year round tan. Wow! Like Australia with drinkable beer!
A year is a bit quicker though at 290 days so that means we’d have to adjust the 6 Nations timetable, start saving up sooner for Christmas and bankers would be so rich with the bonuses they’d get that no-one need ever work again.
I wonder what else might be different on Kepler 22-b? Maybe there’d be some kind of alternative dimension where David Cameron is nice and doesn’t want to destroy our health service, kill the poor or be friends with Jeremy Clarkson or Kirstie Allsop?
Perhaps the meek really will inherit the earth and we’ll all believe in science, plus stuff we can see and explain rather than the made-up nonsense that some rich bastard invented in order to try to subjugate us all with.
Maybe Terry Wogan and Simon Cowell have already died? And celebrity is something to be ashamed of and we worship doctors who find cures for cancer, humanitarians, pacifists and vegetarians. Maybe on Kepler 22-b the inhabitants don’t need a World Wildlife Fund?
Ah! I could go on and on of course, but I guess the really nice thing is if there is one ‘Earth 2.0’ out there, there must be loads more. And somewhere there might just be one where people don’t f*** each other over for a dollar, a shekel or a yen.
Ponty Town Online
Just updated my ‘Ponty Town’ web site. A much clearer, cut-down version of the site with loads of stuff deleted, edited etc. Got rid of a fair chunk and also added some much needed new images for the pub guide and other pages. A little bit more to do but basically that’s it – hope you like!
Take a look here
Ponty Town
Message board is still the same.
Filed under Web sites
Ponty Park
they say time
is a healer
when actually it’s time
that kills us
Filed under Photography, Poems
I went to the pub the other night. It was empty. Well, actually it was a Tuesday. And that of course was the problem. We just don’t have enough people around to drink every night of the week anymore.
But then I got to thinking about what it would be like if our little town was a big city – plenty of people to fill pubs and streets in those, but would it be as nice?
Well, probably not and here’s why. Most people would agree that over population is the biggest crisis facing the planet at the moment but living in Pontypridd you’d hardly notice would you? But just for a moment let’s compare our town to the seventh largest city in India – Calcutta.
We have a famous old bridge of course – called the Old Bridge. Not sure if it was called the ‘old’ bridge when William Edwards built it in 1758 but I digress. Well, the inhabitants of Calcutta also have a bridge which they are very fond of too. Unlike our stone version though, we built theirs in 1937 out of steel. So what you say?
Well, while we just marvel at the beauty of the River Taff from the top of our little landmark and watch the world go by the locals of Calcutta are trying to work out how to stop their lovely old bridge falling down because pedestrians use it as a giant spittoon.
Yep! It seems that spit is corroding the base of the mighty bridge. The problem of course is not really spit but over population. While we have a grand total of 6 people a day using our lovely river crossing in Calcutta there are 500,000 pedestrians and the same number of vehicles using it every day.
So I ask you, what would happen if we had more people? Let’s say the same number out for a beer on a Saturday night (or a Tuesday even) as in India. Would our gorgeous bridge be able to withstand 500,000 chip cartons, a swimming pool of corrosive curry sauce, a lorry full of vomit, unknown quantities of other bodily fluids and the odd gob from disgruntled tourists?
Nah, it’d never survive, so be glad you live in lovely deserted Ponty, oh yes, and visit a pub on a Tuesday please. I’m getting fed up talking to myself.
I’m always amazed to find we actually have a Tourist Board in Wales. I mean, you just assume we don’t. Apart from attracting rich Americans & retired Japanese to our very expensive hotels to play golf or eat our poor sheep the WTB doesn’t really seem that concerned with tourists. You can tell they don’t get paid on results.
A few weeks back there was a massive opportunity to grab some visitors when we found out that people were avoiding London because of the Olympics and the rising cost of staying in the capital. The Scottish Tourist Board were quick off the mark of course but we heard not a peep from the principality.
Well fear not for here’s another chance to up our tourist quota and it should go down well with everyone. In Switzerland recently the highest court in the land has ruled that local authorities can impose fines on people hiking nude in the Alps.
Apparently, naked hiking is an increasingly popular pastime in Switzerland but it seems many there are not happy having to watch a gang of buxom 21 year old Heidis yomping past the family picnic in nothing but their clogs.
Well, if naked hikers are looking for another country which will offer them a warmer welcome why not Wales I say? So come on WTB lets get campaigning!
Mind you, I wouldn’t set your cuckoo clock to it happening soon.
Well folks it’s that time of year again. Time when we pray for a few feet of snow so the council can ‘learn lessons’ the following year while we miss work and retire early to the warmth of a friendly watering hole. So, when the snow ploughs are safely locked away in their garages where will it be this year? And if miracles happen and we have to work right up until ‘Black Friday’ where will you be on the 23rd? Personally I fancy a boys morning stroll to the now world famous ‘Wonky’, an award winning pint of Dark, a Daily Mirror, some mistletoe and my compact camera. How about you?
Filed under Beer
Terry Wogan is worth over £20 million yet he spends a few hours a year asking the poorest people in the UK to send money to the BBC’s Children in Need which at time of writing has raised £26 million. I think I see an obvious solution here…
Maybe worth mentioning that in this ‘have’ and ‘have-not’ Britain we live in bankers are still paying huge bonuses. Example – RBS are set to payout £500 million – click here.
Hi anyone out there in cyberspace
Thought I’d start a blog and see what happens. Aim I guess is to get a few people reading my columns, checking out my books and other online stuff.
Will hopefully update once a week or so when I finally get going…
Filed under Uncategorized
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