10 Gentle Spells: Sunday 26 January

The Golden Pass, Michael Longley poems, crazy record shops and true queens

Hold on. They’re coming.

1. Thank goodness for the algorithm that gave me this Blossoms and CMAT video in the middle of one hell of a parenting week (it began with nits, survived a teary, mid-week school football tournament, and is now in the throes of a nasty bug for our boy which so far has involved three broken nights.) This video, about how they wrote the song I Like Your Look with CMAT, is just a joy – and to this female journalist who used to dread interviewing bands of young men who played guitars in the early days of my ‘career, Blossoms seem like a dream. They aren’t arrogant in-joke merchants but decent, generous lads, and have a sense of humour about themselves. Of course, their never-not-uplifting Rick Astley/Smiths hook-up should have confirmed this already but now it’s 100% clear. And CMAT continues to be wonderful in every way.
   

2. If you need another unexpected, lovely, self-deprecating online cwtch, James Dean Bradfield came up trumps this week with his top five of crisps. Read out like a dryly funny Welsh dad by way of Alan Partridge, no less, in what I think is their studio in Malpas where I interviewed James nearly five summers ago at a distance in that strange Covid summer. Session ham &. mustards all round.

   

3. Last bit of Welshness this week, promise: my Ruth Jones love hasn’t shifted since the BBC’s Gavin and Stacey Christmas. It’s grown if anything. This snappy 15-minute profile of her, featuring her GP sister in Porthcawl, is still up on BBC Sounds.
   

   

   The B4348 between Dorstone and Peterchurch, Wednesday morning.
   

4. I went to Hay-on-Wye earlier this week for a meeting, and the journey there is always a delight through Abbey Dore, Bacton and Peterchurch, especially in the soft winter sunshine. While driving, I listened to Thom Yorke’s Desert Island Discs, which is funny, because I’d had a bit of Radiohead revival on this stretch, a year or so ago, and found it such a lovely experience I wanted to repeat it. If you haven’t heard this show, Thom is so surprisingly funny and giving. I love how he talks about his encounter with Talking Heads being like “a bomb going off in my head”, and there’s lots of lovely other stuff about the success of his first demo, classical music, Neil Young, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, and a nice dynamic with Lauren Laverne (I wonder if their paths crossed at all in their bands in the mid-1990s).
   

   

   
   

5. Post-meeting, and delighting in finding Jeremy Cooper’s Bolt From The Blue on the shelves at Richard Booth’s, I stopped in Haystacks, a wonderfully eccentric Hay institution, where all the records are cleaned, before being packed tightly together among shelves of other ephemera. I bought a few books this time for friends, including one about May Day, full of pictures of maypoles and Bobby osses. A delight to read on a wet, windy and knackered Sunday morning. Support your local bonkers record shop. And come on, Spring.

   

   Haystacks, terribly photographed, by me, on Wednesday morning
   

6. Last Hay recommendation: I drove home to Jeremy Deller’s Desert Island Discs (pointed out to me, helpfully, by Lauren, in the BBC Sounds outro). I couldn’t believe his luxury item: a road from Hay to Abergavenny. It wasn’t the road I was on – which although rural and windy is much more sensible than the one he was talking about, but didn’t know the name of, which I do. It’s called the Gospel Pass. This route winds to the west of where I was, high in the Black Mountains, giving an incredible view of the Brecon Beacons beyond. It’s dotted with small passing places (usually occupied by sheep) on the sides of vertiginous hills, before coming down to Capel-Y-Ffin and to Llanthony Priory, one of my favourite places in the world.
   

   

   Llanthony Priory, by me, June 2018
   
   I’ve not attempted the highest part of the Gospel Pass before though. This made me want to do it.
   

7. This oral history of Twin Peaks in the Guardian on Thursday was just gorgeous. Great work by Steve Rose. And Isabella Rossellini was considered for Joan Chen! And I loved hearing from Shelly (Madchen Amick).

   

   

8. Our TV watching this week has been Giri/Haji, currently on Netflix after beginning life on the BBC, after we enjoyed its writer Joe Barton’s Black Doves before Christmas. It is not gentle at all, although you could definitely call the illustrated interludes beautiful.
   

   

   
   But it’s Will Sharpe’s Rodney that has cast a spell on me most, a sex worker with a tender soul under all the self-destruction and bravado. His lines are to die for – like how a queen, in his eyes, is rightly named because they’re “a fabulous old bitch with a hat for every occasion.”
   

   

   Will Sharpe (right) as Rodney Yamaguchi in Giri-Haji
   

9. I’m in a Whatsapp group with lovely people with whom I shared a Literature Wales week in North Wales last March, while writing a piece on songwriting for the Guardian. One of them, the brilliant poet Maura Dooley, shared this Michael Longley poem with us this week. Just beautiful.
   

   

10. Also beautiful is this piece of music, which I just heard on Cerys Matthews' 6 Music show while waiting for a callback from 111, and it absolutely was what I needed. I’d shamefully never heard of Llio Rhydderch before this morning. She’s still playing, and listening to her I’m reminded of how my love of the harp has changed so much over the years, after hating the instrument as a kid and the culture that surrounded it. This review on her website says how I feel best: “Llio Rhydderch is a unique harpist in a Wales sadly too full of eisteddfodic elbow flappers, who in their prettiness often fail to reach the soul.” This reaches mine.
    

    And the snowdrops are starting to come through too, in the middle of it all. Cwtches all round. See you next week.

xxxx