Bridging the Severn
Before I came to know the topology, I was often a little disorientated during frequent drives on the A470 alongside Afon Hafren (river Severn) flowing north and then Afon Gwy (the Wye) flowing south, knowing that both rivers meet again in the south. Both start from Pumlumon Fawr in the Cambrian Mountains, in opposite directions, but meet again in the south. I crossed the border, spending a few days by the Severn in one of the cradles of the industrial revolution.
Afon Hafren (meaning “boundary”) travels 220 miles, first north west through Powys to cross the border into England near Amwythig (Shrewsbury), then turning south through Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. It inhabits both Cymru and England again in that great estuary between Glamorgan and Somerset, becoming the Bristol Channel and merging with the Celtic Sea, then the North Atlantic. It has been a natural boundary and transport artery for millennia.
On both sides of the border, and in two neighbouring languages, I have increasingly enjoyed many chance conversations, always full of interest, good humour and occasional banter. Have people everywhere I visit become more welcoming? Or is it me? Is it a post-lockdown “thing”, or have I been changed by the transcendental qualities of the river? Probably me.
As a child I was painfully shy. Members of the school astronomy club were invited for a short interview (Andy Price, Southern Television, c1969) to fill a scheduling gap at the end of a biographical TV programme about Patrick Moore. I froze, necessitating countless takes. Eventually I answered, monosyllabically. To be fair, my peers were just the same. Our teacher was in the control room, and told us later the director had commented “They'll pee themselves if they have to do it again”.
At fourteen, all the boys (as they then identified at that establishment) were interviewed individually by the “headmaster” (as they were then known), to consider their career intentions. He was a good person, and personally paid for those without the means, to attend university interviews. But he also asked “Do you cavort with girls, boy?”. Some went back to the English teacher to find out what “cavort” meant; others to understand the word “girls”. I asked both questions. I am glad today that I had been shy rather than that predatory sort of toxic male that hits today’s headlines. I would run away rather than be a “pursuer”.
(Cautionary note: there is a fine line between shyness, aloofness, arrogance and rudeness.)
On reflection I was, at least in part, much the same during a 34 year career in mental health, surviving as an “imposter” in both practice settings and in the rarified realm of university tutoring in the same field. Many will share the sense that life is all an act, a put-on persona to get through the day. But I am in no doubt that I am a different person since learning Cymraeg for the last eleven years. Many others have reported thinking differently in different languages. A changed mindset, idiomatic thinking and learning the political and cultural history have all played their part. The connecting river makes a timely contribution by its role along the border.
Fear and anxiety go hand in hand with so-called “imposter syndrome”: feeling a fraud, being in awe of others, class inferiority, professional insecurity, the need to “keep up with the Joneses”. Those clever psychologists have made it a “syndrome” and cornered the market in pathologising everyday experiences. The psychobabble of their “learned” texts suggests that this so-called syndrome makes people more “prone” to anxiety, rather than recognising that anxiety is just what it is anyway. It ignores the idea that fear and anxiety are the root of all suffering, as the Buddha observed.
Self-deprecation is not the same as self-pity. I recall a happy memory from my tutoring days. A respected student took me to one side after a lecture to say “Mark, I think you are full of bullshit”. Respect to him for feeling able to say this to someone that would be grading his work a week later. Shared laughter. I look back with amusement and no regrets.
So, a recent journey has inspired this blog. It's one thing to feel a renewed outgoing confidence, cheekiness, nosiness even, when I inhabit the one who speaks Cymraeg, but another to find the same when I cross the border and engage everyone in my original tongue: whether shop workers, hospitality staff, street cleaners, people fixing their cars, visitors, professionals, house-painters, in a new-found bonhomie.
Cymru has a more egalitarian zeitgeist; people generally have little interest in the status, wealth or job position of others. But these things are bread and butter to language lessons, in which, as a classroom exercise, I am required to ask people questions the like of which I cautioned against previously for obvious reasons, such as “Where do you come from originally?”. Oh dear.
Sometimes the river speaks quietly. Today it is in spate, and nearly 100 tonnes of water per second pass under the iron bridge (1779) at Ironbridge, as if roaring questions to those who will listen. Which version of me I have become? Probably both.
Footnote: the commercial value of that huge quantity of water crossing the border approximates to £250 million per month. Just leaving that one there for the independence campaign.
LINKS
Top 4 facts about the River Severn (riverseverncanoes.co.uk)
Medicalising everyday life doesn’t help anyone’s mental health | Adrian Massey | The Guardian
https://cambriancrumbs.blogspot.com/2024/02/recycling.html
Recycling (cambriancrumbs.blogspot.com)
Iron Bridge | English Heritage (english-heritage.org.uk)
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I look forward to your comments. Also it would be nice to know where you are in the world. Thanks for reading.