back from the dead

It’s not that I’ve given up (on?) this blog - or Wales, or Welsh, for that matter -, it’s just that I’m suffering from severe writer’s block.

Alors, je regarde Amélie encore une fois. Some years ago, I got this diary, with the girl on the cover, and I had this idea, I was going to copy the film script on it day by day, one sentence a day, and this, together with the fact that I’ve probably watched the film at least a dozen times, made me learn several of its lines by heart, sort of. Just like this blog, and most of what I do, it didn’t last, the copying-the-script-onto-my-diary plan. I might go back to it next year, though, just like I’m now giving this blog yet another chance. And this is all there is to a possible connection between these two topics. So let’s move on - let’s go back to Cardiff.

How do you say

Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain

yn Gymraeg?

I’ve deleted the other two texts I’d started, one began with a mention to the rain and I can’t even remember what the other was about. I haven’t got much to say today, either, but I’m feeling slightly happy and, when that happens, I usually recall Cardiff. When I’m sad as well, but then it’s more deliberate, as a way to cheer me up a little, yes. It’s been raining quite often these past few days, but not as on the day I tried to start writing a post for this blog. That rain reminded me of Wales. The rain now is just our typical tropical country rain, the feel is different, not only the temperature. Hard to explain, you’d have to experience it, just like I only understood what the rain means in the UK after I’d been in it.

Two of my friends-from-Cardiff (who aren't actually from Cardiff, friends I made whilst in Cardiff, I mean) and I have been discussing plans for this year(’s summer in Cardiff, yes - which I’m not even sure will happen in my case, but anyway) and we briefly mentioned the fact that it’s hard to properly enjoy the city during the course. It’s a full-time intensive course, so that’s expected. Still, staying for a few extra days once it’s over will give you the chance to do and see things you might have missed. This isn’t something we did on one of my extra days in Cardiff - or is it? -, it was probably just a weekend, but, for example, Liz and I went to Ely Cemetery (I had no idea there were Facebook pages for cemeteries, but then there are also tourists who visit them ‘for fun’, so).

I find them rather educational, cemeteries. There’s a lot going on in them if you take a closer look. There’s death, obviously, there’s religion, there’s architecture, there’s history, there’s love and there are stories, dozens of them. A couple of years ago, I paid a visit to one of my most beloved storytellers, whose abode is now the Montparnasse cemetery. We had a one-way talk, I left him a note inside an empty make-up case and promised to be back the next time I were in town. There was a personal reason for us to visit Ely Cemetery as well, but we ended up spending a few hours there so we could have a look at some of the other graves.

And here’s something else which differs considerably from what we’ve got here in Brazil. I’m not familiar with graveyards in big cities like São Paulo, for instance, they might have more in common with what I saw in Ely. I’m not referring to the size of the grounds or even to the varied religious aspect of the place. I’m talking… Grave decoration. I’d never thought it conveyed so much about a culture before this rainy Welsh afternoon (yes, it was a wet day that day, which explains, I hope, why I started this text speaking of returning to Cardiff and ended up in a cemetery). I left the place thanking my friend for suggesting going there and thinking that the British (generalisations are dangerous, I know) have very... peculiar taste when it comes to paying homage to their late beloved ones. We don’t do, or at least not usually, poems, let alone poems written by ourselves, and we don’t do ultra-creatively-shaped tombs, or gigantically-sized ones, by the way. We certainly do lots of other... singular things which would astound foreign visitors. Anyway, I was impressed by the lengths people will go to to immortalise the dead.

Does anyone know the name of this flower?

I promise I’ll write about something less gloomy one can do in Cardiff when their summer Welsh course is over and they’ve got several days to themselves.

And this a shorter post, but, hey, I’ve managed to finish it this time, yay!

P.S. Make sure you know where to get off the bus if you’re going to Ely Cemetery (which is actually called Western Cemetery) - Liz and I got lost (well, in our defence, the cemetery is hidden by a bunch of trees if you try to spot it from a certain street) and had to ride the bus back to our initial stop, then try to figure out what we had done wrong, then get on another one. Or we could have asked the driver, I guess. I don’t know about Liz, but I’m not the ask-the-driver type.