Hills So Green/A Tan So Red

David D Unpopular with a brief rallying call from the valleys

There’s a certain slant of light
Shining from the sun bed
That will no doubt give you cancer
But also a tan so red

The Rhondda today is filled with creatures that look remarkably like the characters seen in the bar in Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, only most of them seem to be living on the sun and just visit our planet on the weekend. A generous quota also went to the hairdressers and got themselves some highlights cause it’s fashionable. The devil’s basin hasn’t always been in such a state though, in days of yore it was a place filled with tales and legends, or so I’m told by elders. I’m not too sure to be honest, it all seems so far back, and little traces are left.

Anyway, at least for the purpose of this article, today, the Rhondda is populated with:

ｷ The S.A.S – (sun-beds and steroids)
ｷ The strange ones
ｷ Boys’ Club folk
ｷ Trad rockers (and trad rock kids - how sad…)
ｷ People who should know better
The latter group is pretty broad, but these are just the majority of people. I would also like to apologize to the tiny minority who cannot be put into any of these groups. Congratulations.

S.A.S
Trying to find a metaphor for the S.A.S has been what I’d imagine it would be like to play against the master Steve Davies on an eighties’ green baize. But after a few hours of thinking I stumbled across one in the very back of my mind. Imagine Popeye after he’s had his intake of spinach, wearing Stewy’s t-shirt from Family Guy only in pink, living on the sun and coming back to earth on the weekend to get a new batch of steroids and a horizontal hairstripe. You’ll have to do some serious imagining but times that by a hundred and that’s exactly what you’ll get on a night out in certain parts of valleys’ hotspot “Tonerife” on the weekend (hello Fagins!). Tonerife was once known as Ton Pentre but its name has been changed due to the intensity of the tans.

The strange ones
This group is where the, ahem, “cultured” people of the Rhondda can be found. Groups of Goths, skaters and indie kids are on the rise, splitting the Rhondda up into new and welcomed counter movements. Oh yes, even dark lords are welcome here, brought up on Bauhaus and black bedroom walls etc. Give me them any day to the horrible mainstream. The cultural split is possibly the first tentative reaction to the ever-present sloth culture seen walking the streets and could hopefully lead to further like-phenomena. Hope is important, right? Even in my small group there’s an element of the alternative, even if it’s more Green Day-anger than Camera Obscura poetry and more Lord of the Rings than The Dark is Rising. One thing is certain, there’s a real love for Half Man Half Biscuit which is ace. And Flipron are coming to a local club, thanks to fucking Mi***g.

Boy’s Club folk
Oh, there’s nothing better than watching mothers and fathers taking the fun out of a game of football that their kid is participating in. Shouting and screaming at their 10 year olds, anyone know where I can get a speakerphone from so I can tell them to fuck off home? I went for a stroll in the park a while back and I swear I saw the competitive dad from The Fast Show. There he was, a pair of shorts on in winter, watching his kid playing with friends, jumpers for goal posts and running keepers. I thought to myself that perhaps he was also having a stroll in the park and happened to see his son so stopped to say hello, but it wasn’t to be. He started shouting stuff like “get on the ball” and “express yourself” so searching through my pockets I found a pack of water balloons and took no time in filling them up in the park keeper’s cabin. I came back out and he was really shouting now, so I looked him in the eye and unleashed. This reduced him to tears and, ashamed as he was, he marched home, leaving his son to enjoy a game of football for once. So Boys’ Club folk you can look out when I’m on watch cause I take no prisoners.

Culture/fashion eunichs
There are many people that are the casualties of culture in the Rhondda. Some more perversely so than others, but the saddest group really are the young entrepreneurs of… what can I call it? … “Nu-Trad-Rock.” It has to be said: Monophonics, you’re shit, and anyone under the age of fifty who sings a tribute to Razorlight and Robbie Williams should be hung from the Porth bridge by their pants. These are the cultural eunuchs of the valleys, and the lesser of the two evils are the fashion eunuchs, who’s fairy-like embrace of sun beds and pink muscle tops runs contrary to any kind of working class heritage. Guys, I feel your frothing, repressed shame. On a weekly basis these sad sunbed and pink top wearers can be found topping up their tan in Tonerife, they also have a habit of picking up on some of the worst clobber that can be seen in the Rhondda which is bad bad and fucking bad, believe me. These creatures are different from the other pond life in the Rhondda cause these people wear something way worse than anyone else. It’s their grin, that says ‘We’re twats!’ but spells ‘We’re the only ones that don’t know it’. From past experience I can confirm that this kind of person would take joy in seeing Lamar live in concert and would buy Simon Webb’s album and talk about it to others. Well if I’d known they were coming I’d have slashed my wrists.

After many a year of sloth culture though the Rhondda is really on something of a cultural rise. It’s just going about it really slow. And as we now enter the realm of summer, which gives the tan lovers hope of a real tan, I’ll end on a few lines from a winter poem:

There’s a certain slant of light
Winter afternoons-
That oppresses, like the heft
Of cathedral tunes

© 2007 David D Unpopular

David D Unpopular is of no relation to John D Traynor (pictured), but aspires to one day meet him.

John D Traynor is not a wearer of pink shirts. These pictures are fabrication

© Miwsig