Postscript
Taff's caffs
P. J. Kavanagh
We were given a rare opportunitY to,So°
c`
for a day or two on our own, a 11.,„, rather than a family, to one of our favourn," parts of Britain. I no longer know what It I,is called. It used to be Radnorshire all; Breconshire (in the past I was neversti„r which I was in, not being a keen macollt but content to follow my nose) and 11c/i7e irritatingly, it is called something else. Iti;t two old names are redolent of so mach, t„Tri I have not been able to bring myself to Jew' the new substitute. Whatever the name it is still there, the redolence; of stream and rock and el°s'n cropped grass and thin wild-looking shee', poking up their heads to stare from araort_r' the bracken. The place is a series of Parr(); valleys between steep hills and you do llavn, to .follow your nose, prepared to be disfif,, pointed by one and surprised, thrilled, u.7_ the next. It is hard to say why one landscar appeals more than another, but those slia. clumps of rowan trees on hillsides and On ding sheep-paths and high hazel hedges,' and foxgloves — it is like parts of Irelanai or a Welsh Greece — give me a sense ° fire,e,dotn, a lifting of the heart and, besides, like the Welsh. Their obvious suspicion makes me feel at home. The Severn Bridge has opened up that Part or Wales and there are now more roads and more caravans, but there is still room to find silence. The worst effect has been on the Pubs. Ones that I remembered as wood- Panelled and sat in by shepherds in rakish, greasY caps are now paste-boarded and formica-surfaced and full of people in Shorts; but the locals behind the bar are the same, flustered by the extra trade. We made one discovery: popular art has moved from the pubs to the caffs. We spent the night in our van on 'the tops' and, dreseending for breakfast to Builth wells, we I°tInd (opposite the Midland Bank should You find Yourself there) the prettiest cafe we had ever seen; a frieze of light blue willow- Patterned wallpaper, a hanging Indian rug with an orange and gold elephant and, s behind the cooker, painted, a shining ttlare of pillar-box red. The cafés have no
distant chain i -brewer to tell them what s taste and the 'latest' thing.
Nothing much happened: buzzards cir- c,led, brown rivers rustled. We paid a visit to !tie grave of Henry Vaughan, that poet of littfnucence and freshness. It is at Llansant ""l- „,,r,,aed, a place which seems to consist of
hu Del
;y a crch, on the main road, above his oved River Usk. A grave-digger was at the d bottom of his neatly shaped pit in the re' rocky soil. No, he didn't know of any 1\)7et but there was somebody called aughan under the yew there. . c`Gentlemen were buried inside the church those days (the Vaughan family was callY important) but Henry Vaughan 1.3!'eferred to be outside, nearer the Usk. Most of the horizontal slabs in the church- ce Yard are covered with the leaf-mould of .tituries but the surface of his had been vwalPed, clean of yew leaves. `Henricus t-118Itan • . 1695 . . . Unworthy servant, reat sinner' (in Latin, his chosen epitaph). site surface is clear but the incisions in the au are so deep that yew leaves have stayed the lettering and turned bright yellow so that his name and the rest of the inscription 2,111e out, bright, from the grey-red stone; Which is as it should be for such a luminous man.
. We were glad to have seen that, and en- uYed being alone together as we used to be ure the fettered delights, or delightful rgeotters, of family life settled upon us for
bothd. ill; like most things, a mixture of 0 As Was as evidenced by a remark heard in tin! g°°d pub we found, in Crickhowell.
.urfacemanYWelsh interiors every possible was covered with little knick-knacks
ten brass or china; very pocketable; Taffy is _e, rtainly not a thief.) The remark may be a
"uestnut, i
but I have never heard it before; t .ina,Y eV. en be sexist but everyone seemed to Welsh tt; 'Hello Judy!' a man called out in a .14,elsh lilt; 'I didn't see you there! I saw " ,h°1.11 corn' in but he looked so cheerful I :°ught he must be on his own!' Judy laughed as much as everybody else.
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